This Side of Paradise (Penguin twentieth-century classics)

"Oh, I'll admit there's money in it eventually. Talent doesn't starve anymore. Even art gets enough to eat these days. Artists draw your magazine covers, write your advertisements, hash out rag-time for your theatres. By the great commercializing of printing you've found a harmless, polite occupation for every genius who might have carved out his own niche. But beware the artist who's an...more

"Oh, I'll admit there's money in it eventually. Talent doesn't starve anymore. Even art gets enough to eat these days. Artists draw your magazine covers, write your advertisements, hash out rag-time for your theatres. By the great commercializing of printing you've found a harmless, polite occupation for every genius who might have carved out his own niche. But beware the artist who's an intellectual also. The artist who doesn't fit--the Rousseau, the Tolstoi, the Samuel Butler, the Amory Blaine--" Do not be mistaken--This Side of Paradise isn't about youth or love or status or the university. It isn't about any of the cookie-cutter genres it may fall under, it isn't easily defined as a "university novel" or a novel about an emotional awakening. It's about establishing oneself as a person, about the way we go through our early twenties in a cloud, a haze of grandeur only to realize by 25 that we were duped into feeling successful, into feeling capable. It's about the way that once we've hit that point, we've got to adopt our own ideas and with an ugly lack of remorse, cast off those that were given to us by the people who told us we'd already made it. It's about the difference between green and blue ribbons and why I ultimately choose neither. I can think of no other novel that's been so constantly misinterpreted and I can think of no other work of fiction that has done so much to affirm the current state of my existence. This Side of Paradise is about becoming, essentially, and about what it means to be.   hide

"This Side of Paradise" is distinctly the first novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald, chiefly because it is an example of a talent in development. Following the path of Amory Blaine, a young Princeton undergraduate who is overwhelmed by the unbridled possibilities of life, and later pulled down by a world unwilling to acknowledge him. For the most part, it is an exuberant novel with a buzz that...more

"This Side of Paradise" is distinctly the first novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald, chiefly because it is an example of a talent in development. Following the path of Amory Blaine, a young Princeton undergraduate who is overwhelmed by the unbridled possibilities of life, and later pulled down by a world unwilling to acknowledge him. For the most part, it is an exuberant novel with a buzz that matches the Coca-Cola Fitzgerald claimed he consumed in excess while finishing it. Amory's life is an exciting one, filled with the drama of Ivy League colleges, jazz age parties and literary banter as he walks in a privileged world. Anyone in or leaving college will be drawn into his world, fresh with the optimism of a world to conquer. The sheer grace that is identified with Fitzgerald is easily identifiable, with lines such as "He expressed his lack of principle by sweeping a seltzer bottle with a broad gesture to a noisy extinction on the floor" brilliant in a way the reader admires and the writer envies. However the novel, like Amory's life, loses some direction once he leaves the university. The second half of the book has several strong passages (particularly Amory's final judgment of himself as the product of a restless generation, Jay Gatsby in embryo) and his passages on girls Rosalind and Eleanor are expressions of young love untainted by knowledge of their later actions. It begins to drag, however, with several long paragraphs that show self-pity in the extreme - youthful idealism crushed to be sure, but still paragraphs best edited down. Fitzgerald wrote the book, on his own admission, before he headed to World War I in case he died in action - he wanted to leave a legacy behind. Had he died, the novel would serve as disappointment to the talent lost; as it stands, it is the first step on the road to greatness.   hide

I felt this novel was absolutely breathtaking, the realism that is Amory Blaine is quite refreshing in a world of heroes and detectives. The most striking aspect is the internal conflict within our character and the analysis thereof. He, not unlike the layman, is in constant battle with the conceptions of honor and vanity and how he may find a place within the dichromatic definitions given by...more

I felt this novel was absolutely breathtaking, the realism that is Amory Blaine is quite refreshing in a world of heroes and detectives. The most striking aspect is the internal conflict within our character and the analysis thereof. He, not unlike the layman, is in constant battle with the conceptions of honor and vanity and how he may find a place within the dichromatic definitions given by society. A viable cavalcade of narcissistic philosophy, all with a flagrant sense of sardonic presentation, coupled with a host of eccentric personalities(or is it personages?) and a general coming of age tale made this novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald entirely worthwhile, if not necessary to read.    hide

This novel is beautiful and gripping. The plot is not particularly strong, but the ideas in the book are very potent and so relevant that one can barely tell it was written nearly a century ago. The book is more than mere angst, it's the sort of existential grief you'd expect from Camus, but so much more satisfying. It is much more genuine than other novels dealing with similar issues and it is...more

This novel is beautiful and gripping. The plot is not particularly strong, but the ideas in the book are very potent and so relevant that one can barely tell it was written nearly a century ago. The book is more than mere angst, it's the sort of existential grief you'd expect from Camus, but so much more satisfying. It is much more genuine than other novels dealing with similar issues and it is surprisingly profound. Fitzgerald's prose is so elegant that it reads like one long lucid poem. This is far better than The Great Gatsby, perhaps not in literary merit, but it was far more enjoyable. This work is very autobiographical, and in many ways it is the autobiography of millions of other bright young men and women who are seeking out answers amidst chaos and confusion.   hide