Second acts

In a self-pitying moment, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "In American lives there are no second acts.  I disagree.  The most interesting American lives in particular are distinguished by their second acts.  It goes back to the age when pioneers had little to keep them in the east, so they went west to make a fresh start.  And even to the immigrant forefathers making a fresh start in the New World!

I think of Washington and Eisenhower going from General to President.  Or outstanding ex-presidents John Quincy Adams and Jimmy Carter.  Or someone like Vito Corleone going from godfather in the first part of the movie to his son Michael's adviser in the last part.  Or the silent movie actress Louise Brooks writing important essays about Hollywood in her later years.  Even Fitzgerald's life had an interesting second act:  the sadder but wiser writer of The Last Tycoon, "Babylon Revisited" and the letters to his daughter Scottie.

I also think of Ulysses Grant, whose life had five acts!  In the years before the Civil War he was largely a failure in military and civilian life; in the Civil War he became a triumphant general; as U.S. president he was a well-intentioned failure; as ex-president he was a failure on Wall Street, ending up deeply in debt; in the last act, dying of cancer, he wrote a courageous memoir whose sales restored his family's fortune, which has stood the test of time.

(P.S.: Actually, someone said that what Fitzgerald really meant is that American lives only have a first act and a third act!)