The Beautiful and Damned

Steven

Rating: really liked it
I can't think of any writer other F. Scott Fitzgerald that has had such of a yo-yo effect on me. I thought 'Gatsby' was the real deal, 'This Side of Paradise' I gave up on, some of his short stories left a big impression on me, whereas, 'Tender Is the Night' felt like a bit of a mess. I put this down to his personal life, which wasn't exactly plain sailing. 'The Beautiful and Damned' sits comfortably in-between this lot, lounged in the Ritz-carlton to be precise. With a cigarette in one hand, and a cocktail glass in the other, not worrying about the tab, at least for now.

Regardless of how I perceived much of his work, one thing about him does stands out, he WAS the voice of a generation. My first experience with Fitzgerald was something completely new, like tasting champagne for the first time, or putting on an expensive suit. The whole experience was plush, sensuous and dazzling. Although I didn't think the story here was that great, his writing at least felt less floppy and more tightly focused, not too far off Gatsby standard. Written during the golden age of jazz, his second novel looks at the rise and fall of young couple Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert, through their first meeting, courtship, and marriage. Like with all Fitzgerald's characters they are complex when it comes to relationships, and draws comparisons to the problems of himself and wife Zelda.

At the core of it's story along with the couple, is money, and the problems of overspending, or living beyond ones means. Antony & Gloria live the high life, spending well at every opportunity, but eventually realizing their funds are dwindling. This is where Antony's ever so rich grandfather comes into play, he hopes to get his hands on a large fortune as Inheritance, but to his dismay is not written into the will, the couple start to feel the strain. With their bank balances and each other.
It is a novel not of disillusion but of decay. What happens to the kind of people that Anthony and Gloria are has happened to the same kind of people over and over again. In our foolish optimism, our pride and certainty in progress, we like to forget that disintegration is a competing and often victorious force. And so, when we see signs of something uncommonly like it in the young generation, we think it has never happened before, the setting changes, of course, but since Fitzgerald has described our modern setting with its prohibition parties, socialites and promiscuous kissing in such magnanimous detail, we are apt to think that, because the scenery is startling, the scenario is a new one.

Anthony Patch is built up in pages which, while blazing with clever irony, do not give us a picture of him in three dimensions. Later we find him using that mixture of standing aside and telling us what he says and does and acting as his intimate psychological confidant, which often betrays. Within rather large limits Anthony is clear, but clear as a type rather than a person. The most telling accounts of him, while real, could also seem real of other persons quite different from him in other ways. Gloria, admirably sharp and witty at first, deliquesces and loses her personality as Fitzgerald grows intimate with her, until toward the end we find her speaking very little as problems start to mount. She too, broadens into a person with too many characteristics which other characters could share with her and still be differential. The treatment of the two of them leaves the curious impression that Fitzgerald was at first inside Anthony's head before gradually exchanging positions. Also minor characters written about actually felt sharper than that of Antony and Gloria, even though in the novel they are limited to scenes here and there.

There is the very small allowance for tenderness and proper love here, and even less of pity, contained within there is a lot of hatred and boiled over arguments that I guess goes with the territory. It's lively with epigrams, so many that one half suspects that their origin is less in a perpetually ironic state of mind than in a facility and joy in turning them out. He did get the fine line of using enough energy and weariness spot on in all the right places, and I really liked the last 30 or so pages, but the couple I seemed to love one minute and semi-despised the next. Had they lived in the 21st century, they would have racked up huge debts on twenty credit cards, whilst both having about five on-line affairs apiece.

Well written, with some great moments, but over all it just lacked that something extra.
3.5/5 - minus the tip.

Ahmad Sharabiani

Rating: really liked it
The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Beautiful and Damned, first published in 1922, is F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel.

It explores and portrays New York cafe society and the American Eastern elite during the Jazz Age before and after "The Great War" and in the early 1920's.

As in his other novels, Fitzgerald's characters in this novel are complex, especially with respect to marriage and intimacy. The work is generally considered to have drawn upon and be based on Fitzgerald's relationship and marriage with his wife Zelda Fitzgerald.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: بیست و دوم ماه نوامبر سال2012میلادی

عنوان: زیبا و ملعون؛ اثر: فرانسیس اسکات فیتزجرالد؛ مترجم: سهیل سمی؛ مشخصات نشر تهران، ققنوس، سال1390، در496ص، ادبیات جهان104، رمان89، شابک9789643119348، موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م

رمان «زیبا و ملعون»، همانند دیگر نگاره های «فیتزجرالد»، شیوه ی پخته شدن جوان‌های رمانتیک، و خام را، در بستر جامعه‌ ی آمریکایی، بیان می‌کند، و نشان می‌دهد که چگونه از آن‌ها توهم‌ زدایی شده، و به واقعیت‌های زندگی «آمریکا» وارد می‌شوند؛ این اثر و دیگر آثار «فیتزجرالد»، در واقع سوگ‌نامه‌ هایی، برای پایان دوران «رمانتیک» هستند؛ «زیبا و ملعون»، سه بخش اصلی دارد، که با عنوانهای: «کتاب اول»، «کتاب دوم» و «کتاب سوم» نامگذاری شده‌ اند؛ هر بخش نیز خود به سه بخش دیگر تقسیم می‌شود؛ «آنتونی پَچ»، «تصویر زن افسونگر» و «خُبره احساسات» بخش‌های کتاب نخست هستند؛ در کتاب دوم هم، خوانشگر بخش‌های: «ساعت درخشان»، «سمپوزیوم»، و «عود شکسته» را می‌خواند؛ «مسئله تمدن»، «مسئله زیبایی شناسی»، و «مهم نیست!» هم، بخش‌های کتاب سوم همین رمان هستند

تاریخ بهنگام رسانس 05/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 04/09/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Brian

Rating: really liked it
A deeply flawed book. A good amount of editing would've greatly improved this book. However, Fitzgerald was coming off his huge success with "This Side of Paradise", so the publisher allowed him to publish this very uneven piece of work. This was the final Fitzgerald novel that I have read, and by far the worst.

Yes, Fitzgerald writes beautiful prose. Eloquence for its own sake doesn't make a novel. Indulgent eloquence, uneven pacing, unsympathetic characters, a generally poor plot, and a terrible ending made it difficult for me to even finish this book. We are first introduced to Anthony and Gloria, our "protagonists". Then, a seemingly endless array of vignettes aim to portray them as examples of the moral bankruptcy of the Jazz Age. Are Anthony and Gloria products of their environment, their upbringing, etc? I don't care, because I hated both of them 100 pages in and didn't want to read any more about them.

Then, the book just keeps going, and going… It finally gets interesting when Anthony goes off to military boot camp (i.e. the first time anything actually happens in the plot other than Anthony and Gloria partying). Once he reunites the Gloria, the same tired plot starts up again. The pacing and tone has improved and tightened considerably at this point, and shows Fitzgerald's promise in later novels. This book is a bridge between "This Side of Paradise" and "The Great Gatsby" and is interesting in this aspect, but taken alone, not at all.

leynes

Rating: really liked it
I know I said I wouldn't bother writing a review for this piece of trash but I couldn't resist to compile some of Scottie's 'greatest hits' just to give context for my dislike of this novel.

Some of the lovely descriptions (from men) about our main protagonist Gloria:

'Gloria's darn nice – not a brain in her head.'

'A sense of responsibility would spoil her. She's too pretty.'

'She's so utterly stupid.'

'Remarkable that a person [Gloria] can comprehend so little and yet live in such a complex civilization. A woman like that …'

Gloria about herself (brace yourself since the internalized misogyny is real with that one):

'I value my body because you [her husband Anthony] think it's beautiful. And this body of mine – of yours – to have it grow ugly and shapeless? It's simply intolerable.' (BITCH WHAT?)

'Women soil easily,' she said, 'far more easily than men.'

Some of the lovely descriptions about other women in the novel:

She had no sense of humour, but, to take its place, a happy disposition that made her laugh at the proper times when she was with men.

Her bosom is still a pavement that she offers to the hoofs of many passing stallions, hoping that their iron shoes may strike even a spark of romance in the darkness. (This is honestly one of my favorites like what kind of crack was Fitzgerald smoking?)

Scottie also had a wilde sense of 'healthy' relationships:

Then Anthony knew what he wanted – to assert his will against this cool and impervious girl, to obtain with one magnificent effort a mastery that seemed infinitely desirable.

'Hit me!' she implored him – wildly, stupidly. 'Oh, hit me, and I'll kiss the hand you hit me with.' (the fuck outta here)

Don't get me wrong, I'm aware that Fitzgerald knew that he was writing about fucked up relationships. However, he constantly propagates the notion that Gloria (and later Dot) want Anthony to seize the power and control their bodies and actions.

The emotional manipulation is also quite real with these two. After Anthony hits his wife at a train station (classy, I know), this happens:

Yet in the morning, coming early into her room, he knelt down by her bed and cried like a little boy, as though it was his heart that had been broken.

Anthony is also the one cheating in the relationship. However, when he suspects that Gloria cheated on him as well (which she didn't) he gets super aggressive and accusatory and makes her feel like a whore for pleasing men etc. It was truly sickening to read. In general, Fitzgerald portrayed the women in his story as the properties of men, rather feeding than questioning that fucked up trope.

Oh, and at one point suicide is used as a form of blackmail and Anthony says some pretty anti-semitic things. I won't even begin to fully cover the blatant racism in this novel. It made my skin crawl. The skin colour of a character was only mentioned to showcase that POC were subservient to whites. We encounter 'a coloured doorman', 'a glib Martinique Negro, with an incongruous British accent and a tendency to be surly, whom Anthony detested' and sidewalks peopled 'by an intermittent procession of ragged, shuffling, subservient Negroes'. None of these characters are given a voice (speech part) in the book.

Dot considered working for the Red Cross,

Trouble was she had heard that she might have to bathe Negroes in alcohol, and after that she hadn't felt so patriotic. (I hope you burn in hell)

And when she and Anthony went out to dance, they saw

a tragic Negro made yearning, aching music on a saxophone until the garish hall became an enchanted jungle of barbaric rhythms.

Barbaric rhythms? Dude was playing the saxophone, so can ya'll chill.

In conclusion, the book is way too fucking long and needed some serious editing. Its exploration of themes is hella messy and the story isn't coherent at all. The ending was such a clusterfuck and made me want to throw the book across the room. I have nothing against narratives featuring unlikeable characters (heck, I usually find them fascinating) but you somehow have to make me care. The Beautiful and Damned is painfully unnecessary. Nothing happens except rich kids whining about the hardships of life. Sorry, can't relate.

There's nothing left to say except BITCH, THE DOOR. Also, where is my award for finishing this piece of trash?

Lea

Rating: really liked it
“I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.”

The Beautiful and the Damned follows the story of Anthony Patch, and his beautiful wife Gloria, living in the New York elite café society during the “Jazz Age“ before and after the Great War in the early 1920s. So much of Beautiful and Damned reminds me of Belle du Seigneur, which in my opinion is a deeper and stronger dive into the subject of existential dread of upper-class beautiful and rich people. In the autobiographical tone Fitzgerald tears down the idealized American dream of youth, beauty and wealth, and shows it is not a promised land of perfect life nor an anesthetic for despair and psychological suffering. Indeed life is hard no matter what cards you have been dealt with.

“Life is so damned hard, so damned hard... It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever any more. That's the last and worst thing it does.”

There is no escape from being human, alive, and therefore succumbed to suffering and bearing one's cross. Anthony grows up in all the worldly riches but loses both of his parents in early childhood, and his only parental figure is cold and distant tycoon grandfather, who demands that he takes on adult responsibilities in a very strict way, with a threat of punishment in disinheriting him (view spoiler)[(which he ultimately does) (hide spoiler)]. Fitzgerald's writing is beautifully crafted, at the same time emotional and controlled. The characters are juvenile, immature, fixated in the state of inaction, unable to cope with the reality of life, the world, and their own relationships. The circumstance of being well-off enables them to stay in prolongated adolescence of drinking, partying and resting on expensive holidays. Following Fitzgerald's favorite theme of the influence of money on a young person, they are damned by their fortune, in not being forced by circumstances to get a job, make something of their life, to achieve financial freedom. In a state of permanent adolescence, they remind self-absorbed and selfish, each in their own specific way, living in their illusions, a fantasy of eternal beauty or great influence and wealth, while being unambitious and unmotivated. Both Anthony and Gloria have a complicated relationship with wealth, class and status, placing in them the meaning and value of their life, and Gloria also places a lot of her personal value on beauty, renowned for her good looks and flirtatious behavior, and is ultimately confronted with the transience of physical looks.
Her obsession with appearance even draws her away from being a mother, an idea that briefly crossed her mind while feeling lonely.

“She wanted to exist only as a conscious flower, prolonging and preserving herself”

In the limbo of having ”everything”, in a very superficial sense, they lose a sense of life's purpose and meaning and a chance to create something of authentic value. And for a person stripped of personal meaning and formed identity reflecting in the ways a person is contributing to the world, it is hard to have a meaningful and thriving relationship with real substance, so Anthony and Gloria are stuck in the limbo of miserable dysfunctional marriage. (view spoiler)[Even though Anthony reclaims his inheritance of millions (hide spoiler)], in the end, there is nothing of value left in Anthony and Gloria's world and relationships (view spoiler)[and he decompensates psychologically, as his richest point becomes his life's lowest point. (hide spoiler)]
Despite having everything physical and material both Anthony and Gloria are two tragic characters with heartbreaking endings, drawing the parallel between the real lives of Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. I assume that Fitzgerald's writing is so striking and convincing because it represents his inner psychological world and the world of his relationships, the weight of the unhappiness, despair, decadence and dread he carried that no amount and fortune and beauty could lift.

“Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.”

Briynne

Rating: really liked it
Fitzgerald wasn't joking with that title. These people were completely screwed from the moment they hit the page, and it was fascinating to watch it all disintegrate. As I mentioned in the review I just finished for Tender is the Night , I found Anthony and Gloria to be some of the more unsympathetic characters I've encountered lately. They are both vain and shallow and utterly useless people in terms of anything practical. I can't imagine being friends with these people. This book worked for me primarily on the level that Fitzgerald managed to keep me hoping that they'd finally get their act together. Of course they don't, but that's not really the point. I kept caring about them even though I didn't particularly like them. I wanted to plead with the judge to give them the money, even though my better sense told me the money really wasn't as much of the problem as they were.

I really enjoyed this book - also, an excellent cautionary tale on how not to handle your personal finances.

Tom

Rating: really liked it
"The Beautiful and Damned" is the perfect title for this novel, as well as for the author's life with his wife Zelda.

This is Fitzgerald's second novel, and he had become wealthy and famous. His protagonist and his wife--Anthony and Gloria Patch--move in a circle of rich, hard-drinking sybarites, who seem to move glibly from party to party. (On the first edition dust jacket, Anthony and Gloria are painted as Scott & Zelda)

Anthony doesn't want to work. After graduating from Harvard, he wanders around Europe for a few years, before moving to New York City to live. He finds a nice apartment, and lives well on his allowance, while waiting for his industrialist grandfather to die, at which point he'll be a bazillionaire.

He meets Gloria, the young, beautiful cousin of his Harvard chum, Dick, and is smitten. As is she: the couple marry, enjoy a protracted honeymoon, and settle back into NYC's pre-War party scene.

Gradually, their life together crumbles. The only consistent motifs are A) that they don't want to work, and B) that their investments are not producing enough income to cover their lifestyle.

When Anthony's grandfather finally does die, he leaves not a dime to Anthony.

All-too-soon, World War One looms, and Anthony applies, with his friends Maury and Dick, to go to officer training school. Anthony fails the medical.

This doesn't prevent him from being drafted later, and he's shipped south for basic training.

Far from home, Anthony finds affection in the arms of Dot, a local girl.

The war ends before Anthony's unit can be shipped overseas, and he and Gloria are reunited. They quarrel over money, and find any excuse to drink, which seems the only way they can tolerate life and each other. They wait for Anthony's lawsuit against his grandfather's estate to settle.

Their apartments get smaller, their clothes less-trendy and more frayed, and the need for alcoholic oblivion even stronger.

What is disturbing about "The Beautiful and Damned" is how loathsome Fitzgerald obviously finds this society, especially himself.

At one point, Anthony is talking to Dick--an author of great success--and Dick talks of how vapid modern fiction is, and how everyone asks him whether he's read "This Side of Paradise." Dick decries how detestible the characters in "Paradise" are.

"This Side of Paradise," of course, was F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel.

It's obvious that Fitzgerald and Anthony are both alcoholic, and that Gloria--like Zelda--is both a big drinker, and suffering from early stages of mental illness.

Things hit rock-bottom: Anthony has bounced checks, and been thrown out of a club where he and his friends once held court. They're at the absolute bottom. Then he wins his lawsuit. He's rich again, but we sense--as the book concludes with Anthony and Gloria aboardship for Italy--that he really didn't "win" anything at all.

This is not an easy book to read. Its tale of the bon vivant who loses everything reminded me of "The Magnificent Ambersons," but this was just so much sadder. Maybe part of it is knowing how similar is the author's life, that just three years later, he would publish "The Great Gatsby," which made it impossible for him ever to turn back.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote beautifully; he lived too fast, and died too young. Maybe that tragic darkness makes his sentences shine that much brighter.

Sam

Rating: really liked it
This book was... heavy. I read it in a couple days, but it's so emotionally and mentally exhausting it was just painful most of the time. Fitzgerald almost viciously pulls the rug out any time there's a slight chance of things getting better for Gloria and Anthony who, rather than confronting their flaws and getting their shit together, seem to alternate between wallowing and reveling in their self-destructive boredom and self-pity. It's a study in absolute misery. It reminded me more than a little of Dickens' Bleak House, watching Richard and Ada's downward spiral as the lawsuit eats up any ambition or practicality they ever had. Unlike Richard and Ada, however, Gloria and Anthony aren't particularly deserving or likable, and that's probably one of the bigger flaws for many of this book's detractors. For a lot of people it must be like watching a car crash which also happens to make you late for work...frustrating and a bit tragic. But I actually found them quite sympathetic (if not the most well-defined characters) and even relatable at times, which made their decline all the more real, disturbing, and frightening to me. There are a lot of horrible aspects of their personalities and thoughts that I can't imagine would be easy to relate to, or to admit relating to, for most people, but I certainly could and can't be the only one. Ultimately I found it moving, yet somewhat raw and hollow, and though I didn't like it as much as This Side of Paradise or Gatsby it didn't do anything to lessen my admiration of Fitzgerald and his beautiful prose. "Say things to the world that are true": though I don't know much about its author, that quote has been stuck in my mind since I first saw it, but never so much as when I was reading this book.

Sharon Barrow Wilfong

Rating: really liked it
Aside from the Great Gatsby this is the only other novel I've read by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Years ago when living on a small Caribbean island, with limited things to do, I read a large collection of books that I had had the foresight to bring with me (it got dark at 6pm every evening after which it wasn't safe to leave my apartment). One book was a collection of Fitzgerald's short stories and I enjoyed them immensely. This book I also enjoyed.

The Beautiful and the Damned starts like most of his short stories. Young man falls hopelessly in love with young, beautiful, charming, highly intelligent yet distant girl. Her beauty, her charm draw the young man in like a siren's call. Her smile, which is no more than a mask of aloofness, lets no one in and drives him mad, almost to despair.

Fitzgerald invented the prototype of the Manic Pixie Girl that is so popular in Romantic movies of today. You know the type, she's sweet, sexy, devil-may carish. She dances in the rain, sings along in movie theaters and other behavior that would be considered irresponsible and weird in real life but comes across as funny and sexy in the movies.

The man is mesmerized and the fact that she's just out of reach emotionally keeps him reaching for her. Today's aggressively eager woman might learn a thing or two from these girls. Don't chase the boy, run away and have him chase you.

Ah, but I'm hopelessly old-fashioned. I'm also happily married, but that's a topic for another time.

Most of Fitzgerald's short stories end with the boy finally catching the girl. I don't say they all end happily, they're more complicated than that, but they don't continue into married life.

The Beautiful and the Damned does. The boy in this story, Anthony Patch, does finally catch the girl he passionately pursues but that is half the story. The rest of their story is about their married life. It is not a pretty tale, it is a tragic, but fascinating one.

The interest does not lie in the storyline per se. I suppose lots of authors have written about drunk people racing toward destruction, but Fitzgerald's writing simply bubbles and flows like an icy, clear water brook down a mountain side. His insight into the human soul, his ability to lucidly display its depraved nature, its desperate longing for greater things and its inability to save itself both repels while it simultaneously draws the reader in.

Anthony and Gloria get married. They soon discover that what, on Anthony's part at least, manically attracted them to the other person was not enough to sustain a marriage.

Gloria is still lovely to look at, but her impulsive behavior,self-absorption and strong will have lost some of their allure.

We are not entirely sure why Gloria married Anthony. He perhaps bored her less than the other men who sought her attention. She doesn't seem to have much of a conscience or reason to do anything except have a good time.

And what is a good time to Anthony and Gloria? Getting pleasantly inebriated with friends. This naturally costs money and neither of them have much. Anthony is counting on an inheritance he will receive at his grandfather's death.

Anthony is both contemptuous of his grandfather and also fears him because a wrong move could cost him millions of dollars. His grandfather points out Anthony's lack of ambition and also employment. He offers to provide Anthony employment. Anthony is a writer. His grandfather can get him a job as a war correspondent. (WWI has just started).

Anthony immediately protests. He could never desert Gloria! At the same time he imagines himself in uniform and the glamour this kind of work would give him.

Gloria would also like to work. A friend who produces Hollywood movies would like to give her a screen test. But Anthony absolutely refuses to permit it. His wife will never degrade herself like that.

So what do they do? Live on what little stipend and savings they have, but mostly they spend it on alcohol and parties with friends. They also make very foolish decisions such as renting both a country house and apartment in New York City.

They see that they are acting foolish but cannot seem to stop themselves. They know they must stop holding and attending parties, but when the evening rolls around, the empty life they see around them impels them to the social amusements. Life isn't worth living until after the fifth or sixth drink.

This cannot last and it doesn't. The grandfather dies, but unfortunately he dies shortly after walking in on a typical gathering of Gloria and Anthony's and everyone there is quite sloshed. The grandfather, a strong prohibitionist, goes home, cuts Anthony from his will and dies.

Anthony retains an expensive (and I mean very expensive) lawyer to contest the will. The court case drags on for years in Bleak House-ian style. In the meantime, Anthony is drafted, travels south for training but luckily avoids actual service since the war ends before he finishes boot camp.

He returns to Gloria and they carry on.

The two slide steadily toward the abyss. A few unexpected things happen toward the end and I won't deprive you of a good read by spoiling it.

Anyone familiar with Fitzgerad's real life can see obvious autobiographical connections. I was constantly reminded of Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast" where Hemingway describes Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda in a way not very different from Anthony and Gloria.

Because they were close friends who spent a lot of time together in Paris, I found myself comparing Hemingway's writing to Fitzgerald's. I can only describe Hemingway's writing as a large, heavy, aggressive predator and Fitzgerald's as a lightweight boxer who rapidly and gracefully dances around his opponent getting jabs in that are only painful to himself. Hemingway enjoyed slaughtering his perceived enemies.

Hemingway's stories may pack a punch, but Fitzgerald's go down as smoothly as one of the alcoholic beverages his characters are forever imbibing.

-,-

Rating: really liked it
I was in my friend's room to discuss about songs and movies and This Book found Me.

The story revolves around a couple Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert and their 'friends', about how their marriage and everything around them falls into abyss because of their idleness and recklessness.

"The victor belongs to the spoils." speaks for itself. The victor here is at some point Anthony and spoil is Gloria but another moment, it's the opposite. In the initial pages, I had little interest, maybe because I wasn't used to Fitzgerald's style of writing. But it gets interesting when Gloria enters into the picture.

Two moments while reading this book, when I felt like hugging myself again and again -


1. I was thinking about the question my roomie asked me "What are classics?", I told her what they were, she seemed satisfied but I didn't rest easy. I wasn't feeling happy and kept thinking about it so much that I finally forgot it. And when reading this book I came to an answer -

"A classic,' suggested Anthony, 'is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it's safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It's acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion."


2. These days, I kept wondering about two quotes by Oscar Wilde

a) There are two tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want and another is getting it.
b) When God wishes to punish us, He answers our prayers.

These two statements, I read in different places and different times but somehow I decided to combine them and make some sense out of it. I tried my best to articulate them but I felt my conclusion was incomplete, and then this book talked about the same thing, that fascinated me-

"Dot,” he whispered uncomfortably, “you’ll forget. Things are sweeter when they’re lost. I know—because once I wanted some-thing and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot. And when I got it it turned to dust in my hands.”

“All right.” Absorbed in himself, he continued: “I’ve often thought that if I hadn’t got what I wanted things might have been different with me. I might have found something in my mind and enjoyed putting it in circulation. I might have been content with the work of it, and had some sweet vanity out of the success. I suppose that at one time I could have had anything I wanted, within reason, but that was the only thing I ever wanted with any fervor. God! And that taught me you can’t have anything, you can’t have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It’s like a sun-beam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it—but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you’ve got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone—” He broke off uneasily.

Who Can Read This Book -

I liked the way how Fitzgerald had used adjectives, and wrote it so beautifully. I found many words I read in a GRE book. Anyone who has ever wished to be mesmerized by the use of words, will find this one enjoyable.

Perry

Rating: really liked it
I'll Be Damned

How could the same F. Scott Fitzgerald who composed such a brilliant novel in The Great Gatsby have preceded it with such a lifeless moral tale?

A bantam-cock and his haughty hussy, Anthony and Gloria Patch, squander their days for more than a decade of their lives anticipating an inheritance of a large part of the estate of Anthony's grandfather, a Rockefeller-type magnate, who excludes them from his Last Will and Testament because of their debauched style of living.

It's just hard to be captivated by two despicable anti-heroes.

The gritty sand before the pearl.

Lorna

Rating: really liked it
The Beautiful and the Damned was the second book by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published in 1922 when he was twenty-six years old. It is said to be very much autobiographical and based on the unpredictable and volatile marriage of Fitzgerald and the very willful Zelda Sayre. The Beautiful and the Damned, coming out on the cusp of the Jazz Age, the aftermath of the Great War, and the declining economy, with the predominant theme in this book as to how wealth and power affect people. It has been described as a morality tale, a meditation on love, money, power, decadence and social commentary. The book explores the courting relationship and subsequent marriage of the fictional Anthony and Gloria Patch in the early twentieth century. Anthony Patch, while initially interested in writing, pursuing that course but relying mostly on the anticipated inheritance from his extremely wealthy grandfather, Adam Patch. However, when he was disinherited, multiple lawsuits were filed as the will was contested over a long period of years. It is within this backdrop that we watch the undoing and unraveling of Anthony Patch as he descends deeper and deeper into despair and alcoholism. It is a disturbing book on many levels as a lot of social themes are explored. It is a book that I will read again.

"The sheath that held her soul had assumed significance--that was all. She was a sun, radiant, growing, gathering light and storing it--then after an eternity pouring it forth in a glance, the fragment of a sentence, to that part of him that cherished all beauty and all illusion."

The Introduction to The Beautiful and the Damned was a very enlightening and intuitive piece written by Pagan Harleman, studying literature at Columbia College and obtaining an MFA from NYU. I would like to end with her words about the book as follows:

"'The Beautiful and the Dammed' is Fitzgerald's least known novel, yet it provides fascinating insight into his development as a writer and his evolution as a person. Stylistically, it functions as the intermediate step between the unfocused but exuberant vitality of his debut novel, 'This Side of Paradise,' and the superb craftmanship of his third and in many ways, his greatest book, 'The Great Gatsby.'"

Sara (taking a break)

Rating: really liked it
There is no doubt that F. Scott Fitzgerald can handle language. He writes in such a delicious manner that he can keep you going for a long time on that alone, no substance required. That is exactly what he does for the first half of The Beautiful and the Damned. I fully admit that I became weary of this novel by the halfway point, then, in that manner that is also so very Fitzgerald, he began to focus the story and I was lured to go forward to the end.

If any author can invent characters that are unappealing in themselves, Fitzgerald is the guy. I found absolutely nothing redeeming in either Anthony Patch or his wife, Gloria. The two of them are pretty much the epitome of spoiled, selfish, wasteful lives, people who contribute nothing and suck up everything around them. If we are meant at any point to feel sorry for them, it was a miss for me. We watch them deteriorate from a point that might have seemed itself to be rock bottom.

Gloria is a woman who depends 100% on her looks, her beauty, to carry her through life. Anthony is a man who feels no need to accomplish anything in life because he believes he is going to inherit millions from his grandfather. As a result, they live lives devoid of any meaning or purpose. Gloria is too selfish to want children, Anthony is too self-centered to stoop to work. You can’t help thinking that society and their families have set these two up for failure, and failure in a worse form than mere financial failure.

I read this too quickly on the heels of Tender is the Night. I have Fitzgerald burnout. I’m glad he wrote Gatsby, otherwise I think I would not be able to regard him as a great writer, but only a sufficient one. I always hate closing a book and saying to myself, “glad that is behind me.”

Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨ Campbell

Rating: really liked it

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DNF @ 10%



Maybe reading this after GATSBY was a mistake. That was such a polished, beautifully written book, and this just makes me feel like I've spent the last hour banging my head against the wall.



1 star

Lisa

Rating: really liked it
I really enjoyed The Great Gatsby so I was looking forward to this, being especially lured in by the fabulous title. Sadly, this turned out to be the only good thing about the book as it turns out that reading about bored, boring people tooling about being bored is incredibly boring. So boring, in fact, that I've even bored myself writing this, so I won't bother with any more.