The Beautiful and Damned is one of Fitzgerald's two vaguely autobiographic novels (the other being Tender is the Night). It is the story of Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert- somewhat modelled on F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda...before she went somewhat off the rails. Anthony and Gloria are the perfect jazz era couple. Anthony was orphaned as a small child and raised partly by his prohibition loving wealthy grandfather and mainly by private schools in Europe and later Harvard. In his 20s, he spends his days lazying round his New York doing nothing and then at night he emerge to go out on the town with his friends, Dick Caramel (an aspiring novelist) and Maury Noble (Anthony's best friend and like Anthony, he does pretty much nothing all day). One day he meets Dick's cousin, Gloria, a Kansas girl who has gained a name around New York as a bit of party animal. Gloria is beautiful but cold and though she has dozens of men questing after her, she doesn't want to settle for any one man yet. Both Anthony and Gloria declare that they will never marry. Gradually this is forgotten as they fall for each other and ultimately marry. The problem is of course that these jazz darlings are under the surface pretty much just grumpy teens and their marriage quickly flounders as she wants to live beyond their means and he just starts to drink more and more.
I came to F. Scott Fitzgerald late. Many people land The Great Gatsby as a study novel in high school but alas it was on the lower level course the year I finished high school and so I studied works from prior to the 20th century and then just to add some "fun" Waiting for Godot (that play still fills me with a cold dread). I finally read The Great Gatsby last year and I thought it was masterful- I don't think it is the best novel ever written or the "Great American Novel" but it's up there. Whilst I was travelling last year, I read Tender is the Night and I thought it was better than Gatsby (disagree if you must but it's a greater novel in my books and is knocking on the door of being one of my favourites). I found The Beautiful and Damned somewhat of a let down after Tender is the Night. I think it is largely because I didn't warm (in a good or bad way) to either of the main characters until quite late in the piece when I developed a tiny slice of sympathy for Gloria. I found them both so profoundly childish and so completely in denial about the realities of life that I just wanted to scream "GROW UP ALREADY!"- especially by the end of the novel when she is approaching 30 and he has already passed it. The only minor thing that get my attention early on is the half hint that Gloria might have got an abortion which was only notable because she and Anthony hint at not wanting the baby they think she might be pregnant with and then said pregnancy disappears without further mention, and abortion was just SO beyond illegal even in the period in which the book is set- oddly fascinating methinks.
The writing style is good and it is easy to read but I'd be shocked if anyone had as much affection for this as Fitzgerald's other works. I did like the minor characters in particular Dick Caramel and Gloria's friend Muriel but they couldn't completely redeem it. I also will say that I wasn't a fan of the section of the novel where Fitzgerald decided to write it like a play instead of a novel. Good compared to some fiction, even some fiction that would be deemed "classics", but it has none of the pathos of either Gatsby or Tender is the Night, and the characters cannot hold you as Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan and the Divers do.
It's the last month of the crazy novel fest I feel I should add. First book of the last month (I finished The Beautiful and Damned on Wednesday but didn't have time until now to blog) is Jostein Gaarder's Maya which I will probably finish tonight so you may get a new post tomorrow....who knows?
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