F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Beautiful and Damned

• ISBN-13: 9781593082451
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Publication date: 1/15/2006
• Pages: 416

In 1921 F. Scott Fitzgerald was twenty-five and heralded as the most promising writer of his generation, owing to the success of his first novel This Side of Paradise. Recently married to the girl of his dreams, the former Zelda Sayre, Fitzgerald built upon his sudden prosperity with The Beautiful and the Damned, a cautionary tale of reckless ambition and squandered talent set amid the glitter of Jazz Age New York. 

The novel chronicles the relationship of Anthony Patch, a Harvard-educated, aspiring writer, and his beautiful young wife, Gloria. While they wait for Anthony’s grandfather to die and pass his millions on to them, the young couple enjoys an endless string of parties, traveling, and extravagance. Beginning with the pop and fizz of life itself, The Beautiful and the Damned quickly evolves into a scathing chronicle of a dying marriage and a hedonistic society in which beauty is all too fleeting.

A fierce parable about the illusory quality of dreams, the intractable nature of reality, and the ruin wrought by time, The Beautiful and the Damned eerily anticipates the dissipation and decline that would come to the Fitzgeralds themselves before the decade had run its course.

I read The Great Gatsby in high school, for sophomore or junior year, I don't remember. I hated it. Partially because I was not (and still sort of am not) terribly fond of stories that don't end happily, and partially because it was required of me. Naturally, I chafed under my mandated reading. I love to read, but somehow being told to read something sucks a lot of the enjoyment out of it. The point is, I was not a fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald. However, my commitment to reading the entire BN Classics Collection is going to force me to read several Fitzgerald novels. The first of which was The Beautiful and Damned.
  I'm older now, and I was reading it by choice. I noticed a lot more than I probably would have otherwise. Namely, the language. God, it was beautiful. You just don't find such a wordsmith any more. The English language has long fallen short of its capacity. I'll give you two quotes as examples:
  "Silence! I am about to unburden myself of many memorable remarks reserved for the darkness of such earths and the brilliance of such skies."
  "Immediately and rather spunkily she had borne him a son and, as if completely devitalized by the magnificence of this performance, she had thenceforth effaced herself within the shadowy dimensions of the nursery."
  Isn't that amazing? It's the most beautiful way to say she had a baby and then disappeared from social life that I have ever had the pleasure of reading.
  The plot was interesting and if ever there was a novel that captures the glitter as well as the seedy underbelly of the 1920's, this is it. The depiction of a couple in decline, both financially and emotionally, is hard to connect to, though. There really is no problem in their lives - it's simply a matter of personality issues. They created their own downfall and I don't feel sorry for them. All they had to do was change their mode of living and be less selfish. Ironically, Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda would follow a similar path in later years. It's almost eerie.
 While it dragged in the middle a little, overall the book was one that I recommend everyone should read, if only for the beauty of Fitzgerald's words alone. Also, as a portrait of two people who never worked for anything in their lives and lived in an illusion where everything was ideal instead of reality, I think everyone should read it and think on what they're doing with their lives.
  Overall: A