—from
New Republic
(May 17, 1922)
LITERARY DIGEST
A book like this book is worth writing and worth reading for its vivid picture of a phase of life that always exists, that is no more modern than the pyramids and a great deal less important, but that goes into the huge cosmos to add its modicum of color and motion to the sum of life. It is not important as a picture of to-day for that very reason, tho it takes on the hue of the moment and speaks in the slang of the hour. Our young people are not like Anthony and Gloria, tho there are a great many Anthonys and Glorias in our cities. As a strain in the national make-up nothing could be more negligible; they perpetuate themselves rarely, for they have not even force for that. They exist in each generation as the dregs and mistakes, the cripples and the morons, exist. They are worth noting, but a little of them goes a long way....
No one can read very far into “The Beautiful and Damned,” without realizing that here is a born writer. His style is natural, easy and free, and he has the creative power; that is, his characters are living people, he gets inside them and gives you all there is of them. He knows where to begin and where to stop and when he does a bit of description he does it well, with sufficient vividness and without making it obtrusive. He has humor, too, and a gift of wit. If one quarrels with him it must be on his choice of subjects. So far he has written only of the worthless and the immaterial. A man is, in the end, no bigger than his point of view, and if Mr. Fitzgerald sees no more in life than the spinning dance of midges he portrays with so much skill and intelligence, then he is but a midge himself, with the single added quality of being aware of his midgeness and able to describe it. There is no reason at all why an author should not be interested in studying the ineffectual type to which the characters in the novel belong; but there is no particular reason why there should not be included some perception that there is a good deal beyond this phase, and that the world is full of persons of infinitely greater force, feeling and imagination.
—July 15, 1922
Questions
1. Is there a moral implied by the course of events in
The Beautiful and Damned,
a moral such as, “For every action, there is a consequence” ?
2. What brings Anthony and Gloria to ruin? Is it the society in which they live, or the times? Divine retribution? Poor values? Irresistible fleshly desires? Money?
3. A critic for the
Literary Digest
complained that Fitzgerald writes only about “the worthless and the immaterial,” and that his characters “exist in each generation as the dregs and mistakes, the cripples and the morons, exist.” Do you agree? Can you sympathize with Anthony and Gloria?
4. Is it a uniquely American act to come into a fortune by means of litigation, as Anthony and Gloria do? Does Fitzgerald comment on this in the novel?
5. Do we have now in America an equivalent to Fitzgerald’s beautiful and damned?
FOR FURTHER READING
Selected Other Works by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Afternoon of an Author: A Selection of Uncollected Stories and Essays.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957.
The Basil and Josephine Stories.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,1973.
The Crack-Up, with Other Pieces and Stories.
Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1965.
The Great Gatsby.
1925. With notes and a preface by Matthew J. Bruccoli. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Edited by Andrew Turnbull. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963.
A Life in Letters.
Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, with the assistance of Judith S. Baughman. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
Tender Is the Night.
1934. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
This Side of Paradise.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920.
Biography
Bruccoli, Matthew.
Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship.
New York: Carroll and Graf, 1994.
—.
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
With a genealogical afterword by Scottie Fitzgerald Smith. Second revised edition. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002.
Bruccoli, Matthew, ed.
The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
New York: Harcourt Brace, 1978.
Douglas, Ann.
Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the
1920s. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995.
Latham, Aaron.
Crazy Sundays: F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood.
New York: Viking Press, 1970.
Mizener, Arthur.
The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.
—.
Scott Fitzgerald and His World.
New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972.
Turnbull, Andrew.
Scott Fitzgerald.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962.
Literary Criticism/Biography
Hook, Andrew.
F. Scott Fitzgerald.- A Literary Life.
New York: Pal-grave Macmillan, 2002.
Kazin, Alfred, ed. F.
Scott Fitzgerald: The Man and His Work.
New York: World, 1951.
Le Vot, André.
F
.
Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography.
Translated from the French by William Byron. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983.
Mizener, Arthur.
F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963.
Prigozy, Ruth, ed.
The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
a
Follower of Bilphism, a fictitious religion.
b
French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).
c
Samuel Butler (1835-1902), an English writer best known for his satire
Erewhon
and his novel
The Way of All Flesh;
his notebooks were published posthumously.
d
Charles de Talleyrand (1754-1838), a French diplomat skilled at political survival.
e
More commonly known as Francis Bacon (1561-1626), he was an adept philosopher and statesman.
f
Character in the Bible who lived to be 969 years old; see Genesis 5:27.
g
Literally, reduction to absurdity (Latin); refutation of a theory by showing that it leads to absurd conclusions.
h
Star of the silent movie era and the first screen vamp (c.1885-1955).
i
Muriel is muddling the lyrics from a popular tune by Irving Berlin (1888-1989).
j
Fictional or historical sirens.
k
In Greek mythology, a beautiful youth kidnapped by the gods to serve as a cup-bearer and, according to some versions, as a lover.
l
Gustave Flaubert’s classic novel, published in 1869, about a young man’s unrequited love for a married woman.
m
Reference to a theory that German zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) promulgated ; it hypothesized that the embryonic development (ontogeny) of an animal repeats the evolutionary development of its ancestors (phylogeny).
n
Stylized drawings of young women that illustrator Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944) created for many popular magazines at the turn of the century.
o
Secret clubs at Harvard and Yale, respectively.
p
Silent film star Mary Pickford (1893-1979) was dubbed America’s first sweetheart ; she also produced many of her own films and helped found the motion picture production corporation United Artists.
r
From “A Forsaken Garden,” by British poet Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909).
s
Although he wrote “Celt” and “Irishman,” Fitzgerald most likely meant instead to refer to the “Sicilian” who appears on pages 255 and 267.
t
Poem by Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909).
v
Heavyweight champion prizefighters during the 1910s and 1920s.
w
From Odes 3.1, by first century B.C. Roman poet Horace. The full Latin phrase odi
profanum
vulgus et arceo, meaning “I hate the vulgar rabble and keep them at a distance.”
y
Fitzgerald’s first novel, a best-seller.
z
Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) was Fitzgerald’s favorite writer.