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Title: F. Scott Fitzgerald: This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, James L. W. III West ISBN: 0-521-40234-4 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 26 January, 1996 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $43.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.09 (68 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: First of all, his name is Amory...
Comment: ...Not Armory. Just wanted to clarify that, although I agree with many of the points raised by other reviewers.
This is the first work of Fitzgerald's that I've ever read, and now I realize that I will have to read another (perhaps Gatsby) to give him a chance to redeem himself in my mind.
Amory Blaine is possibly the least appealing protagonist I've ever encountered in fiction. He is self-centered, spoiled, snobbish and priggish, and not in an amusing way. Worse that this, as the book progresses, Amory gets progressively more misogynistic and racist. He "discovers" that beautiful women are evil incarnate, is disgusted by having to share a train car with "stinking" foreigners, and wishes that America were comprised of "a homogeneous race". Because I was determined to finish the book, I tried to excuse some of these appalling views on the grounds that this novel was written some 85 years ago, and cannot be judged the same way as modern novels. But it's funny, isn't it, that authors like Twain held such enlightened views decades before Fitzgerald was born?
So why do we consider Fitzgerald one of the masters of American lit? THis Side of Paradise gave me no clues. Apart from being morally and politically repulsive, it was mind-numbingly boring, completely lacking in dramatic tension. I am going to have to read another of Fitzgerald's books, just to see if I can comprehend the reasons for his fame. But first I'll read a different author, to rid the bad taste from my mouth.
Rating: 3
Summary: Okay read
Comment: Not as great as "The Great Gatsby" or Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises," but still a good read. It's a little more "gnarly" than his Gatsby, and not quite as colorful.
Also recommended: Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, Bark of the Dogwood
Rating: 3
Summary: 4 years of paradise
Comment: This Side of Paradise is a paean to that special period in a young man's life when he forges the principles, flirts with his talents, find and loses love.
Fitzgerald's story is a bit more convoluted as he nurtures his hero from strangeness of childhood (a Portrait of the American Artist, to some extent), through the vanity of teens, through the confusion of college. He captures some of the ubiquitous sensations of being a college student - of the effervescent but ephemeral experience that feels like it will last forever; of friendships, and the general experimentation of finding and losing.
The book is also notable for a protofeminist (albeit from a male perspective) subtext that seems to play out in the background. When women enter into Emory Blaine's Life, it is as if the narrator yields the floor to the object of his affections so that she can write her own part, and by providing differentiation and individuation for the female characters, Fitzgerald validates them as living, breathing, self-willing entities.
By its end, This Side of Paradise seems like an incomplete story whose only outcome is melancholy. It is the gateway to FSF's biggest works, as the pathos of graduation from college leads to our most consequential decisions and ambitious acttions. Yet something is missing - the carefree, unadulterated moments of certainty that we will do something great, that the world is great, and that anything is possible as long as we don't attempt it.
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Title: TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald ISBN: 068480154X Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 01 July, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED by F. Scott Fitzgerald ISBN: 0684801558 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 04 May, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald ISBN: 0684801523 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 01 June, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: LOVE OF THE LAST TYCOON by F. Scott Fitzgerald ISBN: 0020199856 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 14 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway ISBN: 0684800713 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 01 March, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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