Monday, May 18, 2009

This Side of Paradise (Novel). F. Scott Fitzgerald.

New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1920 (1948).


Why read it? The story of Amory Blaine who lives a superficial life at Princeton, flirts, falls in love, loses the love of his life to someone more wealthy than he. Fights in WWI and returns war-weary, cynical and regretful before he is thirty years old. Story of the “Lost Generation.” One of Fitzgerald’s themes is true love blighted by the lust for money. You’ll find it again in The Great Gatsby. This Side of Paradise is an early look at the “Jazz Age.”


Sample quotes:

“Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.” Oscar Wilde. ………. “…he was a slave to his own moods.” p. 25. ………. “…New England, the land of schools.” p. 29. ………. “The slickers of that year had adopted tortoise-shell spectacles as badges of their slickerhood.” p. 39. ………. “Why…I suppose the sign of it [slickerdom] is when a fellow slicks his hair back with water.” p. 39. ………. “The slicker was good looking or clean-looking, he had brains, social brains, that is, and he used all means on the broad path of honesty to get ahead, be popular, admired, and never in trouble.” p. 39.


“ ‘I’ve got an adjective that just fits you’ …one of his favorite starts—he seldom had a word in mind, but it was a curiosity provoker, and he could always produce something complimentary if he got in a tight corner.” p. 66. ………. “I’m in a muddle about a lot of things—I’ve just discovered that I’ve a mind, and I’m starting to read.” p. 116. ………. “I can never judge a man while he’s talking.” p. 133.


“Thousands of old emotions and a platitude for each.” p. 142. ………. “American life is so damned dumb and stupid and healthy.” p. 151. ………. “I’m restless as the devil and have a horror of getting fat or falling in love and growing domestic.” p. 152. ………. “She is one of those girls who need never make the slightest effort to have men fall in love with them.” p. 158.


“The education of all beautiful women is the knowledge of men.” p. 158. ………. “But all criticism of Rosalind ends in her beauty.” p. 159. ………. “When I meet a man that doesn’t bore me to death after two weeks, perhaps it’ll be different.” p. 161. ………. Rosalind: “You’ve made me talk about myself…that’s against the rules.” p. 161.


“Please don’t fall in love with my mouth—hair, eyes, shoulder, slippers—but not my mouth.” p. 163. ………. Rosalind: “Men aged forty-five: …they know life and are so adorably tired looking.” p. 165. ………. “Clever men are usually so homely.” p. 170. ………. “It may be an insane love affair…but it’s not inane.” p. 171.


“Probably more than any concrete vice or failing Amory despised his own personality—he loathed knowing that tomorrow and the thousand days after he would swell pompously at a compliment and sulk at an ill word….” p. 236. ………. “He began for the first time in his life to have a strong distrust of all generalities and epigrams.” p. 240. ………. “He found something that he wanted…not to be admired…not to be loved…but to be necessary to people, to be indispensable….” p. 241.


“Very few things matter and nothing matters very much.” p241. ………. “The chief characteristic of the big man seemed to be a great confidence in himself set off against a tremendous boredom with everything around him.” p. 242. ………. “Those quarter-educated, stale-minded men…who think they think….” p. 250. ………. “Good luck to you and bad luck to your theories.” p. 253. ………. “…a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success.” p. 255.


Comment: How it feels to be young and happy and completely unconcerned about everyone else. And the contrast after having faced life’s disappointments and tragedy. Don’t trust anyone over thirty? That’s because everyone over thirty is cynical. RayS.

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