F. Scott Fitzgerald Books

Author's Name is Paul Hoch

Lee Harvey Oswald became the most hated man in America after the tragic death of John F. Kennedy. But did Oswald actually do it? If he did was he alone? The Assassinations Dallas and Beyond contemplates these questions as well as the integrity of the commission composed to answer them. The book is a compilation of several official reports, which were both rewritten and analyzed by editor Peter Dale Scott. The books main points focus on the credibility of the Warren Report by evaluating several disregarded pieces of evidence and witnesses that may have proved Oswald's innocence. The Assassinations also describes Oswald's social life, including his communist ties. Although packed with an insurmountable amount of information, this book has a gross redundancy. Still after reading through it all, I feel Oswald was innocent. Only someone with a passion for either JFK or Lee Oswald could stand the long nights of reading a lot of the same information only written differently. However, if you enjoy bleeding from your eyes, or just have trouble sleeping at night, then feel free to read The Assassinations Dallas and Beyond. Take my word for it; don't waste your money on this one and check it out at your local library.

He designed a roller coaster ride of a novel - you can see him telling his fellow post-grad students about it. "...and *then* - no wait, there's more! - and *then* he goes to prison, but he escapes, see..."

The hero has a strong voice which makes the novel whole, and the novel is about him commenting on the things that happen to him, but he starts in grad school, quits and goes to Mexico, then gets a job pumping gas - all commented on with irony and self-detatchment, very amusingly - then he gets framed and goes to prison, then he plays baseball in the prison league, then his team escapes from prison...it's a unique take on many genres, well worth reading.

It reaches no conclusions except that you can't live your life based soley on romatic principles, and if the end of the novel leaves you at no particular destination, at least you had a lot of fun getting there. Great title. A must read for young men for whom The Great Gatsby is their favorite novel.

This book has a heart so big that it makes you breathe a big sigh and smile and say, "First Novel." The whole kitchen sink is here and the devil in the drain too. The venue shifts often and different parts of the book are hilarious in different ways. I've read this book a few times over several years, and I keep telling people about this part or that part that was called to mind by my current situation. Not perfect, but inspiring for any writer looking at the mountain of a novel to be written.

I love it when nonfiction keeps me up late at night, turning pages. "Intimate Lies" may well be the definitive source on the last years of Fitzgerald's life, during which he tried (and failed) to be a Hollywood screenwriter. Westbrook's evenhanded, well-researched treatment of the romance between Fitzgerald and columnist Sheilah Graham (Westbrook's mother)is a snapshot of Hollywood just before World War II, a mixture of glamor, socialism and absurd censorship.

I didn't really expect to like this book. I have always enjoyed F. Scott Fitzgerald's works and that was what drew me to this book. I had heard about Sheilah Graham and i think i had read somewhere of there relationship. Bored one day with my usual 'type' of books i picked this one up amd began to read. What struck me immendiatly was the honesty, brutal at times being displayed by the Miss Graham's own son Robert Westbrook. His writing is presise and detailed recreating the golden age of Hollywood. He presents Fitzgerald honestly showing other aspects of the doomed author. His mother is shown as a master of the 'makeover' recreating herself from a very humble beginning. Take a chance with this book i think you'll be pleasently surprised..

So I love classic English literature, but F. Scott, and the Great Gatsby in particular are not my favorite. My wife loves them, but I can go without them. To me, it never really makes me relate or care about the characters, and if you cannot care on some level about the characters, what is the point of reading a book, you know??

"Pursuit of happiness"? More like the pursuit of money leading into happiness. The novel starts off with a dull beginning but soon develops into what is known as one of the greatest written novels during the First World War. In the Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the theme of importance of social class along with money status to show that Mr. Jay Gatsby is a symbol for the average American during the 1920s. The story is narrated by Nick Carraway who is a young lad living in West Egg, Long Island. Next to him lives the infamous Jay Gatsby who falls in love with a taken woman. Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan had met five years earlier and had fallen in love but unfortunately Jay left and was not able to contact Daisy for some time. After waiting for five long years Daisy decides to marry Tom who is one of Nick's friends from college. Sooner or later Gatsby and Daisy meet up again at Nick's house and fall in love all over again. Nick ends up being caught in a love tangle when he finds out that not only are Daisy and Gatsby having an affair but also that Tom has an affair with Myrtle Wilson. In the end three people end up dead due to the entanglement, but it is made clear that Daisy's choice to stay with Tom is solely based upon the recently found news that Gatsby was actually a poor man who inherited money. This then ties in the theme of "money does matter" and the downfall of the American society due to a shortage of money in the 1920s seen on pages 40-41. I recommend this book to those who are interested in reading twisted romance novels with a little rising action thrown in.

At only 182 pages in the paperback edition, The Great Gatsby looms far larger in the life of American fiction than its slim dimensions. Unlike many novels with a great deal of hype latched to them, Gatsby lives up to its reputation in every blessed way. Perhaps part of the staying power and widespread appeal of this work is that it and its author were nearly forgotten. This powerful work was hardly read for more than 25 years, and now it is widely assumed to be one of the greatest works of American fiction in the 20th century. It earned its kingdom through dark years. From amnesia to aggrandizement shows that behind the swirl of its reputation is a powerfully complete artistic vision. Like all great work, Gatsby can be read on many levels: as a critique of the shifting American psyche, as a critique of the pitfalls of capitalism, as a time capsule of the roaring 20's... each reading brings new surprises. Perhaps the most refreshing reading is the uniqueness of the language. Fitzgerald here created prose masterpiece. Every sentence is finely wrought and cleverly designed, like jewels in an exquisite setting. He created, as he stated, a consciously artistic achievement.

Aside from making a powerful statement about the so called "American Dream," this novel is brilliantly written. Mr. Fitzgerald's mastery of the English language is evident in his genius sentence structure and meticulous word choice. One cannot help but stop reading to simply marvel at some of his phrasing. I highly recommend Gatsby to anyone out for great read.

This story of the 'lost generation', those who came of age in time to fight in WWI and, if they were lucky, returned home to find that everything had changed, especially themselves. This generation was no longer content to stay in the small towns and cities that their families had lived in for generations. The young men did not want to enter into the family business and settle down with a suitable young woman from nearby. The young women were not content to stay in their parents' house and wait, they wanted out in the world to 'do something'.

The story is told, not through the eyes of Gatsby but through those of Nick, a young man from the midwest who has settled in New York to learn the bond game. By chance he has rented a house on Long Island for the summer, a small cottage stuck among much grander mansions and, again by chance, across an inlet from a cousin, Daisy and her husband Tom, who, also by chance Nick had known slightly in college. Also by chance, Nick's neighbor, the mysterious Gatsby had been one of Daisy's many suitors before she had settled down with Tom. Nick soon finds himself swept into the glittering, glamorous world of Gatsby and Daisy and Tom. He is made an unwilling witness to Tom's infidelity, the one sided romance of Gatsby and Daisy and finally to the tragic results of it all.

THE GREAT GATSBY is a very American story, one that depicts the American restlessness, the desire to be more, better, different from all that has come before. As with many books that are assigned reading this one is often forced on an audience that is too young to appreciate it. Like many others I hated this novel when I first read it (I was an 18 year old college freshman) but found that it stuck with me, unlike many other assigned books, long after the final exam. Over the years I have read it several times and each time discovered something new, a different aspect of the novel becoming the 'point' of the story.

This is one everyone really should read at least once, perferably a couple times, in their lives.

"Tender is the Night" is a poignant story of a psychiatrist who fell in love with his patient and married her to stay close. Fitzgerald wrote the book under the impression of psychological problems of his wife Zelda; thus, the story is very real and sincere.

The book manages to show complexity of characters underneath the casual masks. Dick Diver (the psychiatrist) is not merely a great doctor; he is a husband as well, which means two most important things in his life (work and Nicole) closely intertwined. Nicole (the patient) is not merely a rich psycho; she manages to remain strong through her disease, understand and forgive her husband, and find a new, happier marriage, after Dick became miserable in his alcohol addiction. Rosemary (a young promising actress) does not have a crush on Dick; she loves him for the first and, arguably, only time in her life. Fitzgerald's characters are not ordinary people, as there are no ordinary people in life, in general.

Fitzgerald did not create a happy ending for the story, as there would be no happy ending in life. Confessions are made, and characters found their niches in life, but at the same time, there is some sense that the story is not over by the end of the book. "Tender is the Night" leaves the reader astonished, eager to know the end, at the same time showing that there is no end to some stories. They dissolve in the air and disappear slowly, as the letters from Dick to Nicole.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's book, Tender is the Night, is widely regarded as his second best offering (after The Great Gatsby) and, as with other second best efforts, it suffers by comparison. There are three things wrong with this book, two of which can be corrected and one which cannot. The first problem is that Fitzgerald uses far too many obscure (to an American reader) references and words in French. While such use lends a certain authenticity to the book, it also makes it difficult to read without a considerable amount of knowledge of France, French culture and the French language. One way to overcome this obstacle is to read the Wordsworth Classics edition which provides a list of 399 notes to explain the text. It is somewhat awkward in that you have to flip back and forth between the text and the notes which are in the back of the book. It would be a good idea to make a photocopy of these notes so that they can be referred to as you read the story.

The second problem, also correctable, but more awkward, has to do with the structure of the book. The main story idea is the disintegration of an idealistic and decent man, Dr. Richard Diver, who is corrupted by money and the loss of purpose in his life. To fully experience this tragedy the story should begin at the beginning, namely when Dr. Diver is working as a young psychiatrist in Switzerland. Instead Fitzgerald starts in the middle, that is to say after he is married to Nicole and they are on the French Riviera When we first meet him he comes across as a rich, indolent man given to hanging around with rich, unpleasant people. We also don't know, as Malcolm Crowley has pointed out, what the book will be about--some Americans in the South of France or its true purpose, the "the glory and decline of Richard Diver as a person." The Introduction to this edition by Henry Claridge of the University of Kent does a good job of explaining this problem. Professor Claridge indicates that in fact another edition was put together to correct this very situation, but for various reasons it is no longer in circulation. One could, of course, simply start reading the book at the chronological beginning (the start of Book 2) and then backtrack as necessary.

But the biggest problem, the one that cannot be corrected, is that we just don't care about these people, this insufferable group of Ugly Americans. The book begins by introducing us to Rosemary Hoyt, a 17-about-to-be-18 year old actress who has made one teeny bopper movie (Daddy's Girl) and regards herself, and is regarded by others, as the next coming of Greta Garbo.(For those of you too young to remember Garbo think Meryl Streep with a Swedish accent.). Rosemary has the de rigor mother who is micromanaging her career. She arrives in the South of France and meets a whole host of unpleasant people. There is Tommy Barban, a soldier of fortune apparently on leave between wars, Abe North, an alcoholic who gets more unpleasant as Book 1 continues, the fey Luis Campion, Earl Brady, the stereotypical Hollywood movie director, Mr. McKisco whom nobody likes, Mrs. McKisco who "sees something in the bathroom" and touches off a duel) and other assorted neer-do-wells. Even the Diver children, Lanier and Topsy, seem too too perfect, singing a tune in French. In this bunch Nicole comes off as clearly the best of the lot. And then there is Dick. But this isn't the idealist Dick, this isn't the tragic Dick. It's the idle rich Dick, whiling away his life on the beach, giving parties, doing the tourist thing in Paris.

One is hard pressed to admire Dr. Richard Diver at any point in the novel. He is certainly bright--Yale, Hopkins, Oxford--but the picture that Fitzgerald paints of him is more one of professional ambition than service to humanity. We are not talking Dr. Switzer here. He is also a bigot, witness his attitude toward Italians, which gets him into an argument with Italian taxi drivers and leads to negative consequences. And then there is his problem with women or should I say young girls? When we first meet Nicole she is barely 16 and still in shock from a traumatic incident that would affect any child. Yet we find him "falling in love" with her. At this point Diver is 27 years old. Later (chronologically) when the same thing happens with Rosemary Hoyt she is just turning 18. This is not Romeo and Juliet; it is not even the 47-year-old Bogart and the 19 year old Bacall in To Have and Have Not. It is Humbert Humbert and Lolita redeux. Perhaps the problem is that Fitzgerald is trying too hard. It took nine years to write the book and after creating one of the most memorable characters in American fiction, Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald was trying to top him. But the result is just not very successful. On the other hand Book Three is easily the best of the lot. Here Fitzgerald picks up the action and includes some scenes that are basically slapstick comedy, such as when Mary North (now Mary Minghetti) and her friend Lady Caroline Sibly-Biers are thrown in jail for impersonating two sailors and picking up some local girls. The scene ends fittingly when the local person who can arrange their release (Gausse), after taking much abuse from Lady Caroline, gives her a well-deserved boot in the rear.

The ending is also disappointing. Instead of a dramatic climax the book goes out, as t.s. eliot might have said, "not with a bang, but with a whimper." The whole Nicole and Tommy thing is simply not believable--and Dick as a GP in Palookaville??

When we read a novel it is like entering into another world. The characters become real and we want to care about what happens to them. When Quasimodo meets a tragic end at the end of The Hunchback of Notre Dame we are saddened because we have come to care about him. But by the end of the first book of Tender is the Night I found myself not really caring about any of these people and plunged on with the novel only because it is Fitzgerald.

Then is there any reason to read the book? The answer I think is yes, for two reasons. First of all for the language. Fitzgerald is simply a marvelous writer of English prose. His language here is beautiful and evocative. Take for example, these lines from page 129: "She crossed and recrossed her knees frequently in the manner of tall restless virgins." "...she was a compendium of all the discontented women who had loved Byron a hundred years before..." All this about a relatively minor character, Baby Warren. And this line from page 193 about a policeman: "He had possessed the arrogance of a tall member of a short race, with no obligation save to be tall." Then there is this exchange between Nicole and Tommy Barban on page 246: (Tommy) "You know, you're a little complicated after all." Oh no," she assured him hastily, "No--I'm not really--I'm just a--whole lot of different simple people."

The second reason for reading Tender is the Night is that one should not confine one's self to just one book by an author. Just as we cannot fully appreciate Thackeray if we just read Vanity Fair or Dostoyevsky if we limit ourselves to Crime and Punishment we should read more of Fitzgerald's work than his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. To fully appreciate this book and Fitzgerald, one should read his first novel, This Side of Paradise and a good biography of his life as well as Gatsby. As with many authors much of his work is autobiographical and it is only by knowing his life that you can understand and fully appreciate his writing. In the end Fitzgerald is writing about himself and his own wife, Zelda. Knowing the lives these two led is vital to a full appreciation of this book.
Amazon forces reviewers to make a choice between a positive or a negative review. But this is a false dichotomy. This book is both very good and very bad. I recommend reading it as a part of Fitzgerald's body of work,, but not as his only work and not as your first reading of his novels.

Fitzgerald was a supreme talent, and he showed what he was capable of with The Great Gatsby...but Tender is the Night lacks direction and inspiration. (I read the restored version, so my chronology may differ from other readers'.)

The plot is a bit scatter-shot and uneven, with a very sweaty ending (for a slice-of-lifer, many developments come across as factitious rather than organic), but the writing is still unmistakably that of a master. Numerous sentences stick with the reader, and Fitzgerald's facility with the phrase causes me no end of admiration.

However, the air-tight perfection of Gatsby is noticeably lacking. (I know: they can't all be as good as Gatsby...but the comparison is natural, and leaves Night far behind.)

Tender is the Night is ranked #28 on the MLA 100, which puts it ahead of some better stuff, but I can't quibble too much with the novel's placement. It's virtuoso writing by a literary titan, and definitely should be read.

Not the most cohesive of Fitzgerald's work, Tender is the Night does deliver on Fitzgerald's beautiful prose and heartbreaking characterizations. The novel explores the disintegration of a promising young American doctor whose idealism comes under the crushing weight of hard capitalistic power. At times it becomes difficult to believe in the main character's steady decline since early in the novel he is depicted as so brilliant and thoughtful. However, Fitzgerald tries (and generally succeeds) in making the argument that American idealism is a fragile thing and not impervious to the destructive power of money.

Donald Gallinger is the author of The Master Planets

Dick Diver has studied hard to finally gain his role as a Psychiatrist. But his meeting with the ethereal Nicole proves to be the one thing that could take it all away from him. Nicole is unlike other women he has met. She's willing to convey her deepest and darkest thoughts to him. She cares little about the current fashions. She worries about him when he's not around. Basically, she's everything he could have ever dreamed of. But the circumstances of their meeting aren't exactly perfect. Nicole is not some random women he has met out on the street. Quite the opposite, in fact. Nicole is a resident at a mental health facility. The victim of Dissociative Identity Disorder (a.k.a. split personality). While she is loaded with money, the poor thing has fallen victim to DID after an indiscretion with her father - something she has buried in the back of her mind. While Dick is not Nicole's personal Psychiatrist, he can't help but feel that, by becoming romantically involved with her, he may risk her completely losing her mind; or him losing his license to practice. But he marries her nonetheless.

As a couple, Dick and Nicole Diver are wealthy and fabulous. People are drawn to them like moths to a flame, and shower them with love, attention, and affection at just the mention of their names. They are glamorous and respected by all. Even the young Rosemary, a screen actress who has the world at her fingertips. Rosemary is quickly drawn into the world of the Diver's, and finds herself falling in love with Dick, and he with her. But Dick is not one to place Nicole's mental health on the line, and must work to control himself when around Rosemary - which proves harder than he ever expected. Between shopping sprees on the French Riviera, and glitzy dinners at the most wonderful restaurants, Nicole and Rosemary become better and better friends; of course, this is at the risk of damaging Nicole even more than she already is. And if Dick is not careful, he may find himself lonely once more, if Nicole is driven into the dark depths of madness.

I read THE GREAT GATSBY quite a few years ago, and have always counted it as one of my favorite novels. Now, however, TENDER IS THE NIGHT has also garnered a spot on that particular list. Perhaps it is the fact that I am a Psychology student; or because I love tales full of romanticism and riches, but F. Scott Fitzgerald's TENDER IS THE NIGHT spoke to me in more ways than one, and truly gave me a glimpse inside the lives of a wealthy socialite and her husband/Psychiatrist. Nicole is such an elegant character whose frequent trips into madness are riveting, and impossible to tear your eyes away from; while Dick's constant philandering, yet extreme passion for his wife is hard to ignore, and makes the reader sympathize with and adore him, yet, at the same time, loathe him. Together they are a couple full of power and popularity who stay on your mind long after the last page is turned. Fitzgerald has an uncanny ability of glamorizing anything and everything - from mental illness to starlets and everything in-between. His descriptive language, and impossible to ignore characters are poetic and lovely; while the undertones conveyed within TENDER IS THE NIGHT are somber and tragic. Another winner from Fitzgerald!

Erika Sorocco
Freelance Reviewer

Fitzgerald's brilliant, serious, and triumphant first novel can be summarized as follows: Bittersweet experience transmutes Amory Blaine's youthful enthusiasm for wealth and romance and art into a mature understanding of self and of the need to serve others.

Fitzgerald is a watercolorist, not an oil painter. He conveys meaning with deft gestures that allow a part (of a room, a person, a conversation, etc.) to suggest the whole. His insights into the social dynamics of wealth, romance, and art dazzle the reader from the first page to the last.

This Side of Paradise isn't a perfect novel, but it is a very fine first novel and a timeless one, and anyone lucky enough these days to read it before reading The Great Gatsby will enjoy Gatsby all the more. The book ends with one of the finest final sentences in all of western literature.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels are a one trick pony in the sense that he writes about the same time period (the 1920's), the same kind of people (rich or successful Americans) and protagonists who suffer the same fate (men whose ultimate failures are the result of their own shortcomings and the influence of women). His works are also highly autobiographical. Thus to read Fitzgerald with understanding one should start at the beginning (This Side of Paradise), move to the full bloom of his talent (The Great Gatsby) and culminate at the end (Tender is the Night). It would help to read a good biography along the way. The other option is to just read Gatsby which is one of the finest American novels ever written.

This Side of Paradise is his first novel and here we see both the promise of the character, Amory Blaine, and the author. On the very first page of the novel Fitzgerald displays his talent for words in his description of Amory's mother: "All in all Beatrice O'Hara absorbed the sort of education that will be quite impossible ever again; a tutelage measured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of and charming about; a culture rich in all the arts and traditions barren of all ideas in the last of those days when the great gardener clipped the inferior roses to produce one perfect bud." This lengthy sentence, despite its seeming awkwardness, tells us all we need to know about Beatrice and suggests that the son will share the same qualities. Other examples of Fitzgerald's facility with words follow. On page 45 he describes Isabelle thusly: "She paused at the top of the staircase. The sensations attributed to divers on springboards, leading ladies on opening nights, and lumpy, husky young men on the day of the Big Game, crowded through her. She should have descended to a burst of drums or a discordant blend of themes from `Thais' and `Carmen.' She had never been so curious about her appearance, she had never been so satisfied with it. She has been sixteen years old for six months." And on page 47 is Isabelle's description of Amory: "she had expected him to be dark and of garter-advertisement slenderness." Only Fitzgerald could come up with such vivid and evocative descriptions.

One fault of the book is that it is too episodic without clear transitions. First Amory is a child, then a student at Princeton, then a soldier (although we really do not see this part of this life and it seems to have not affected him), then a lover of Rosalind, then at loose ends, then has a relationship with Eleanor, then the book ends with Amory alone in the world and spouting socialist maxims. It is hard to picture this individual, who for 200 pages has been totally absorbed with himself, suddenly developing a social conscience!

Another problem I have is that Fitzgerald tries too hard to show his education. The book is full of poetry and literary references. It is written much as a college student would write a paper to try to impress the professor and thus get a high grade, rather than in a manner that is appropriate to the telling of a story. Fitzgerald is, of course, at this point in his life not far removed from Princeton and perhaps is still writing as a college student.

In the end, then, we should read This Side of Paradise for the beauty of the language and not be overly concerned with the story line and characters.

Fitzgerald's first novel, full of autobiographical undertones, has already the mark of the Lost Generation: a US that is frivolous, nouveau riche, at the same time innocent and perverse. Amory Blaine is the scion of a young American fortune. He's handsome, well read, and spoiled by his eccentric, alcoholic, and overpossessive mother, Beatrice, who gives him a bookish education while at the same time she carries him around the US, where he mixes with all kinds of people. During a stage of drinking problems, Beatrice sends his son to live with some relatives in Minneapolis, where Amory begins his flirting career with rich brats. Then comes life in Princeton, his first real love, his passive service in WWI, his first job in advertising, and a maturing process expressed as the full acceptance of egocentrism, which simultaneously adopts and kills his former religious and altruistic spirit. Religion becomes not so much conviction and mysticism, but a mere reference and moral containment. Similarly, Beauty stops meaning the appreciation of a transcendental experience, to be left only as an aesthetic perception of Pleasure. Amory Blaine becomes a kind of disenchanted Oscar Wilde, less caustic and more introspective. The game of playing to be Dorian Gray finishes in front of the difficulties of life, and what remains is not the criminal being, but the eternal dilettante. The apparent frivolity and emptiness of Amory's story is more than redeemed by the the poetic quality of the prose. Behind the merry life of a rich kid, the XX century is full fledged already: "a new generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken".

Although not yet in league with successive works, especially "The Great Gatsby", this book gives a good appreciation of how Fitzgerald would develop as a writer.

In the beginning of the book, I was turned off by its seeming self-indulgent tone and nature. A brilliant, handsome, self-centered young man goes to prep school, then to Princeton, then out in into the world. The story seemed obviously autobiographical, and I knew what had happened to F. Scott Fitzgerald: a short, romantic but unpleasant, alcoholic life. So I read on, with the thought, "This is explaining why his life was such a disaster", so maybe that can be a reason to keep reading. (Also, I wrote a lot of largely autobiographical, very poor -- not that This Side of Paradise was poor in any way -- fiction when I was in my twenties, so maybe that was bothering me, as I identified too much with Fitzgerald's self-obsession.) And, as Amory Blaine's (the Fitzgerald-like protagonist's) story progressed, it became more entrancing and the self-centeredness less an obstacle and more of the heart of the novel itself. In the end, I would have to summarize that it was a beautiful, brilliant, compelling book, at least as good as Fitzgerald's other work. It's about the experience of the transition from childhood to adult life as viewed by a priviledged (although he wastes/loses his advantages), wonderful (if not very likable at times), artistic genius -- expressed aptly through prose as well as poetry and playscript-type sequences.

It's an enormous comfort to find that the 24 year old Fitzgerald did not produce a perfect novel. It's not as comforting to know that the 29 year old Fitzgerald did. Ah well, the Beatles were done being the Beatles before they were 30.

This book is no pleasure to read unless you're interested in seeing FSF develop, and this is his start. This is an interesting lens on Gatsby and reveals some of the more subtle techniques by being used crudely here. The primary similarity is the use of satire in the real old Satyricon sense. In both novels, there's a devoted attempt to meticulously record his surrounding in order to hold their trappings up to ridicule.

The problem with This Side of Paradise is that it's a bildungsroman and a fairly autobiographical one at that. The self-criticism and self-knowledge that is necessary to declare one's own quest for adulthood as absurd isn't available to one immediately upon entering it (See Stephen in Ulysses for a successful version - decades older). That's sort of the problem with the whole work. F keeps falling in and out of admiration for Amory, and consequently, Amory is never a reliable lens on his world. It's kind of a wreck.

This book made Maxwell Perkins's career at Scribner, and so TSOP could be said to have been crucial to the development of Hemingway, Wolfe, et al. What made Perkins think that this was so revolutionary? Perhaps some was scandalous - She's been kissed many times! - it's not so shocking now. Perhaps it showed a world not seen before, St. Paul's, Princeton. Perhaps he was the first voice of a generation. Maybe Perkins just had an unbelievable eye for talent. The evidence is there if you look hard enough. It's up to the duly warned potential reader to decide whether they want to.

However, as an inspiration to young writers out there. Get going. Write a bad book. Write another bad book. Then write a great one.

The Beautiful and Damned is Fitzgerald's longest work and certainly his most criticized. As with 1) This Side of Paradise and 2) Tender is the Night, this novel has a sort of wandering plot that mirrors its main characters' uncertainties. Much of the novel is a life on hold -- waiting for the war to end and for a rich grandfather to die, all while friends variously succeed through work and 'move on' with their lives. All told a magnificent portrait of wealth and beauty and sloth.

The prose is brilliant; some of the best lyricism Fitzgerald has ever written. His metaphors still glow today. As a bonus, there are a few extended, rattle-the-cage, blow-your-mind speeches ('specially one by Maury in 'Symposium') that create those rare moments of literary rapture and practically scream to be read aloud.

If you tend to read quickly, 'skimming' through lyricism to follow speech and plot developments, this may not be the novel for you. The beauty if not hidden between the lines, as in Joyce or Nabokov, but nonetheless it *is* wrapped up in extended metaphors and omniscience that paint pictures of youth and folly. You'll want to read every word, and pause to imagine and reflect. If you're up for it, there is hardly a better choice than The Beautiful And Damned.

An aside: in life, Fitzgerald had a weakness for popular opinion (lacking, somehow, real self-confidence). Often he would view himself based on the quality of his latest work's reception. As The Beautiful and Damned was considered something of a muddle, Fitzgerald often spoke about its poor, rushed quality and his desire for some sort of redo (which turned into The Great Gatsby, which was *also* received poorly!, considering its reputation today). This is an astounding novel, and if you like Fitzgerald *please* don't let the quirks of self-deprecation keep you from this novel.

At first it is hard not to fall in love with Gloria Gilbert who, like all the self-besotted children of the heady and hedonistic Jazz Age, is so riotously frivolous, so disingenously self-centred. You excuse the fatuous languidness of her husband Anthony Patch as the transitory aimlessness of youth. But you know that these two have it coming when Gloria - in what FSF calls her "Nietszchean moment" - declares "I don't care about truth; I only want happiness!" While the rest of the Ivy League brahmins live out their dreams as writers and movie-makers, Gloria and Anthony squander their money and beauty on endless parties and clubs. At the end they are the flotsam of the Jazz Age. This tale strains at tragic grandeur without quite achieving it, chiefly because its two main protagonists remain essentially unlikeable, without any redeeming attribute that would stir our sympathy. The prose drips with lyricism, but it is without grace, poise and maturity. FSF was only 26 when it was first published, and this book displays a raw diamond that would attain polish a little later.

"It is the manner of life seldom to strike but always to wear away." In The Beautiful and Damned, the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald creates a compelling struggle between life and his two dynamic characters Anthony and Gloria. Fitzgerald inserts his own questions of life and relationships in the offhand statements of his characters, usually too well placed to even be noticed by the reader. And such is the manner of The Beautiful and Damned, to strike at the soul and mind and to wear away our own definitions and conceptions through silent screams of indecision, fear and regret.

Fitzgerald uses his understanding of literature and the power of words to convey two stories: one on the surface, and one, hidden below all plot lines, running deep within each character and within all people who have ever dared to live. He uses color and imagery to clue his readers to this underlying message. Also, Fitzgerald writes in a "play-like" manner, with certain character dialogues, a sense of staging, narration and even in some parts of the book even special "play-like" formatting. This method creates an image of the surface plot, the plot the reader can tangibly grasp: the raised print on the page, the crisp sheets, the grammar and the structure of the story. These elements leave behind all that the reader feels and understands on a deeper level inside the mind, making each reader digest all this information alone, because it is not just bluntly stated by Fitzgerald on paper. This story allows the reader to just read a story, or to jump into the structure of the mind and soul, freeing locked feelings and questions. Fitzgerald's power is to massage his words giving each phrase the power to strike the reader and let them see themselves for the first time.

I recently went to see Gatz, the wonderful adaptation of Gatsby by the Elevator Repair Service, and it inspired me to go back to Fitzgerald's body of work. I had read all the major the major works except for The Beautiful and Damned, and I decided to remedy that gap.

The Beautiful and Damned is an interesting book-- I probably liked it the least of all the Fitzgerald works, but I like his work enough that this is far from a bad thing. I could have lived without the overly obvious moralizing genaralities, but Fitzgerald himself recognized that this book had been written in too much of a hurry.

The major strength of the novel is, of course, the characters. We have all known versions of Gloria and Anthony Patch. We went to college with them. They were the social butterflies who seemed to have no worries, no weaknesses, and no real cares. We all assume that somewhere along the way they had to have stopped partying and found something to do-- you cannot imagine these people at 30. The Beautiful and Damned is something about what happens when the butterflies of the world keep going well past the point of excusable youthful mistakes.

People who already enjoy Fitzgerald should give The Beautiful and the Damned a read. It is certainly no Great Gatsby, but still contains much of the style and talent that made Fitzgerald so justly famous. Pay particular attention to the language and the turn of the phrase-- even in his lesser works, Fitzgerald is unparalleled at his particular kind of style.

Fitzgerald's farce or satire on upper crust New Yorkers can only be described as being realty becoming greater than fiction. Proclaiming the story "was all true", Fitzgerald intimated that this book was something akin to a kiss-and-tell novel about what had happened within America's richest crowd during the time of World War I.

"Anthony, Maury, and Dick sent in their applications for officers' training-camps and the two latter went about feeling strangely exalted and reproachless; they chattered to each other, like college boys, of war's being the one excuse for, and justification of, the aristocrat, and conjured up an impossible caste of officers, to be composed, it appeared, chiefly of the more attractive alumni of three or four eastern colleges."

Princetonian Fitzgerald created a Harvard protagonist Anthony Patch whose birth right is basically his only strong characteristic - at least so at the end of the novel. During his venerable youth, he locks eyes onto friend Rick's cousin, beautiful Gloria, whose unique spirit and vivaciousness make the self-described bachelor become betrothed.

The book follows the couple for a period of just less than a decade, during which time they fall into numerous elations, and depressions. This see-saw bipolar personality/lifestyle depiction is all-too-common in Fitzgerald's novels. Such was well accentuated in Fitzgerald's doctor and patient relationship in "Tender is the Night" as the patient is ultimately cured and the doctor falls into a deep feeling of desultory depression -- dipsomania. Another of Fitzgerald's common themes is of men chasing after beautiful women who make the boys feel blushing discomfiture. Well depicted here with Gloria as well as in "This Side of Paradise" and its Amory Blaine who constantly trips in his whirlwind attempts to conquer beautiful Rosalind (whose personality and looks mirror those of Gloria).

As the book progresses, you see the self esteem of Anthony deflate, while his wife amazingly awaits him to recover, by miracle or otherwise, and be the man she grew to love at the tender age of 22. Like "Tender is the Night", alcohol interferes with the person and with his relationships -- Anthony becomes a drunken "bore."

There are points of this book you have to think - is this a hypothetical autobiography. Had "Tender is the Night" bombed instead of won critical acclaim, would not Fitzgerald have fallen into the liquor bottle like Anthony? I am sure he wondered as such.

But, as sad as the book can be, Fitzgerald had times of folly and humor. Even a self-deprecating humor. He writes, in one discourse where the people talk disapprovingly about the new novels: "You know these new novels make me tired. My God! Everywhere I go some silly girl asks me if I've read `This Side of Paradise.' Are our girls really like that?"

Amazingly well written, and even more astonishing in that Fitzgerald was 25 years old when he wrote this novel, this book deserves its acclaim and infamy.

Tragically, in Grade 11 we were forced to read "The Great Gatsby" and I thought it was the stupidest book pretty much ever. Gatsby was too full of himself, Daisy was a blonde ditz, Nick I just really didn't care about, and all in all Jordan was the only one I really liked. My teacher said I was looking at things too much in the black and white perspective, but when it really comes down to it this book was about stupid people who did stupid things. Wish I could have put that in my essay. It barely showed anything about the twenties lifestyle for those who say it's a great commentary on those times unless you count descriptions of cars and clothes. It was like "Romeo and Juliet" only not tragic and you wanted to kill off Daisy and Gatsby yourself half way through it. I don't know who says what Great Literature is, but if this is among them, then that's a tragic commentary on our times. I can normally appreciate most literature we're made to read: "The Glass Menagerie", "Hamlet", "To Kill a Mockingbird" even "The Bean Trees" I had to read, but "The Great Gatsby" is just a lot of stupid nonsense I really could have cared less about. My apologies to those who liked it, but for myself it was the biggest waste of time in school. Math made more sense and trust me, I usually hate math a whole lot more than literature.

F S FITZGERALD - THE GREAT GATSBY The best descriptions of Fitzgerald was made by one of his critics : "he stood outside the ballroom , a little boy with his nose to the glass , wondering how much the tickets cost and who paid for the music " . His place in American literature was clearly defined . He records an age and a particular social circle within the age . The Great Gatsby is a character study of a wealthy Long Island parvenu , Jay Gatsby . Gatsby , who had aquired his fortune through shady means , is the archietype of the American self made man , seen in the hurried -crazy alchooldominated haze of the Jazz age , but through the eyes of Nick Carraway , an objective cold blooded observer who represents the the older values of the American Middle west before the war ; The Great Gatsby gives expensive parties , he recalls his struggled youth with romanticism and he seeks to rearrange his friends lives to suit himself . In fact through this behaviour he tried to escape his loneliness of fear of remaining alone . When he rencounters Dasy Fay , a youthful love romance whose memory he has long cherished but who is now married to Tom Buchanan , he seeks to take up the affair where he left off . Dasy ,driving Jay from New York to Long Island in his car , runs over and kills a woman named Myrtle Wilson , who by improbable coincidence is Tom Buchanan`s mistress. Myrtle`s husband , who has seen the car before in the possession of Buchanan , follows Jay , murders him and kills himself . Gatsby`s funeral is attended only by Nick and Jay`s father . The Great Gatsby is a study of success and presents the evolution and developement of the american dream : a poor boy is hurted by a rich and beautiful girl , spends his life in order to aquire wealth and this way to become worthy of her , then finds , after he has achived success that the girl was not worthy of his struggle . The "mystery " of Gatsby , uncovered by Nick Carraway as the novel evoluates , is that his extravagant and vulgar way of life represents an attempt , perhaps subconscious freudian struggle , to win the recognition of the beautiful Dasy who rejected him years before because he was poor and unknown .

AH THE GREAT GATSBY THIS IS A VERY UNIQUE NOVEL IT'S ALMOST LIKE WHAT WE TODAY WOULD CALL A JERRY SPRINGER SHOW THIS NOVEL IS A NOVEL WITH A LOT OF SYMBOLISM IF YOU LOOK FOR IT BUT IF YOU DON'T IT'S STILL A VERY CLEVERLY WRITEN NOVEL. BECAUSE OF THE LOVE TRIANGLE AND THE MANY TWISTS AND TURNS I GAVE IT 3 STARS

The Great Gatsby is one of the best novels I have ever read. The story centers on Jay Gatsby, a millionaire, whose past is a mystery, but with his tremendous wealth, he is able to attract everyone into his life circle. Nevertheless, his entire motive is to win back his old lover, Daisy. His loyalty for love eventually paved the road toward his tragic ending.

This book was excellent in my opinion. It contained love, lust, undying devotion, betrayal, and every other element that makes for a good love story. But it was more than that, meaning can be found in each and every character. Some characters such as Daisy represented the times (the 20's), as she was dependent upon her husband and was nothing more than the vision her husband held in his eyes. While a character such as Gatsby represented the struggle that we shall face until the end of time. The struggle I speak of is one of the heart. If you are at all romantic, I suggest this book to you, and if you are not I suggest it to you because of its intrigue and content.

The novel is beautiful written. I have one problem is with the theme: money doesn't buy. I don't disagree with that statement, it is just king of obvious. I mean it is not exactly an epiphaney.

deep and insightful, full of intellegent analogies and representations. i read Gatsby the begining of my junior year in high school and-didnt really like it. i wrote papers on it, and dissected the ...poor novel. now-months later-it finally hits me: Gatsby is a book to be read and enjoyed! not dissected and torn appart. all the quotes and passages that i liked so much came rushing back to me... i understood what fitz may have been writing about! i though and though and thought about Gatsby and realized that i did not just Like the book-i [really] LOVED IT!

I don't know if its just me, but I did not like this book too much. It feels empty- missing something almost. Perhaps it is Nick. He seems to be without a personality. He's just there. The story might as well be told in third person for crying out loud. I like protagonists with personality. Also, the author is quite sexist and racist and that is unacceptable.

I did give it two stars becuase to the author's credit, it was a tidy little book and not a sprawing mess. But then, it was too tidy and neat. After finishing it, I thought, "so what?" It did not particularly dazzle me and enlighten me, and I was not entertained. It is, all in all, a hollow book.

i know i probabnly didnt read alot but i was assgiened this book. its complexity is so thrilling. i truly recommmend it!
its something that each of us has to ponder about ourselves becuz truly...
we are what we crate ourselves.
if u read this book ull know what im talking about.

This book is about knowing that some dreams are too far from reach, yet we still always try to attain them. Like Gatsby, we are taunted by how close we can come to that dream, but in the end, we realize that our efforts are fruitless. Each of us have our own "Daisy" -- each person did during the 20's, each person does now, each person will in the future -- The Great Gatsby is a classic. Fitzgerald does a fantastic job depicting a timeless theme that people of all time periods have experienced.

The book edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli is a work in progress, left with various kinds of incompletion at F. Scott Fitzgerald's death. The narrator, Cecilia Brady, is on planes frequently. She attends Bennington. She is the daughter of a producer. Monroe Stahr is someone who was born sleepless. He has no talent for rest. Pat Brady, Cecilia's father, and Monroe Stahr are partners. Wylie White, one of the travelers on the plane, is a writer.

There is never a time when the studio is absolutely quiet. There are always technicians present. There is an earthquake and a small water main bursts. Stahr's work is secret in part, devious, slow. He seems ready to shelve a work the writers have labored over to bring to the screen. He notes that when he wants a Eugene O'Neill play he will buy one. If a director disagrees with Stahr he does not advertise it. The writers are people who are employed because they accept the system and manage to stay sober.

Stahr sees a girl who resembles his deceased wife. He has her found in order to see her. He has difficulty explaining his interest to her and she is troubled by people fawning for reason of his power and, in general, the notoriety of being seen in his company. Sustained effort is difficult in California it is asserted. It is Monroe Stahr's ability in this area that accounts for his success.

F. Scott Fitzgerlad chased ghosts, evanescence. Stahr pursues a girl, Kathleen Moore, because she is the image of his dead wife. The author pursued the following idea obsessively--when did his life derail. The Kathleen Moore character shares some of the attributes of Sheila Graham. She lived in England previously and was tutored in classical literature by her live-in companion.

It is reported that Fitzgerald had a life-long capacity to hero-worship. A writer character in the novel compares Monroe Stahr to Lincoln carrying on a long war on many fronts. At the end of the volume there are working notes and a brief biography. Revisiting the bright, shining world of F. Scott Fitzgerald, even with the melancholy features, is lots of fun.

This work derives part of its importance from what it says about Fitzgerald at the untimely end of his career: fans of his earlier work will be pleased to see that this final tome showed all the hallmarks of becoming another masterpiece. By 1940, when "Tycoon" was written, FSF hadn't written a book in six years. But the familiar voice, though muted, had not been lost.

The lapse provides welcome proof of the endurance of Fitzgerald's talent over time. We can only imagine what biting, incisive insights he would have come up with if magically sent to chronicle the 1990s.

Fitzgerald's "Unfinished Symphony" is presented in this Scribner paperback edition in a way that will appeal to both casual readers and serious students. Leading Fitzgerald expert Matthew Bruccoli has assembled the fragments of this book into a gripping and highly readable narrative, and the publisher has included a detailed preface exploring FSF's thoughts at the genesis of the work, as well as a selection of working notes which will delight writing students looking for some insight into the workings of a great mind.

This book tells the story of Monroe Stahr, an early Hollywood producer who makes his mark on the industry almost at its very inception. Stahr's word is law within his studio, and a single order from him is enough to reshape, delay or outright kill a film in process. Since the death of his wife, actress Minna Davis, Stahr's job is his life - a life that illness and overwork threaten to cut short. But a chance sighting of englishwoman Kathleen Moore brings back a flood of old memories and new desires. Stahr's pursuit of Moore leads him briefly into the world outside the studio, and then her actions leave him reeling from the blows just when his rivals gang up against him.

The book is truncated at a very unfortunate point, Episode 17 of 30 - the precise point at which events begin to turn against Stahr. To finish the book in our minds, we can visualize the ending put forth in Fitzgerald's surviving notes, though we have not his words to shape it for us. But even in unfinished form, this book is still worth reading, if only to revisit one last time the mind that produced phrases such as this, in describing loops of unedited film hanging in a projection room: "Dreams hung in fragments at the far end of the room, suffered analysis, passed --- to be dreamed in crowds, or else discarded."

I have no doubt that The Last Tycoon would have warranted at least one more star if Fitzgerald had lived to finish it. But like it or not, we have no way of knowing what he would have written and can only judge the merits of what he did write. And that, in any case, is still pretty good. It is definitely a departure from his earlier works, and a tantalizing taste of what he might have continued to do with his talent later on. The images of Southern California back when it was a nice place to live are wonderful, as is the behind-the-scenes look at the movie industry during its golden era.

This is also the only Fitzgerald work I know of in which the narrator is a woman, and it's defnitely fascinating to see how he went about that exercize. Cecilia Brady is just about as egotistical and cynical as most of his other protagonists, but her innocence is refreshing. Also, telling the story through the eyes of one just outside the loop of the movie industry (she's the daughter of one producer, and hopelessly in love with another) was a very clever move. It allowed the plot to develop around the personal life of Cecilia's crush, Monroe Stahr, with only a bit of the bitterness from his work-related troubles seeping through.

But the sad truth is that that plot had only begun to develop. We know far more about Monroe Stahr from the notes and sketches Fitzgerald never intended for publication than we do from the "finished" part of the novel (which wasn't entirely finished either). If nothing else, though, this was a great start. As long as you don't expect more than that, it's worth reading.

Fitzgerald's last novel--left unfinished due to his heart attack--presents darker themes than his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. Told by Cecelia, the 18-year-old daughter of a studio hotshot,and alternately by an omniscient narrator, this story depicts the glory days of the Hollywood studio system, where producers were America's new royalty. Egos collide, budgets quail and the earth quakes at the dawn of the Forties, when the country was threatened by the red menace of Communism. Not even Hollywood was immune from the birth pangs of unionism and pre- McCarthy era political paranoia over the secret revolution of the masses.

The protagonist is 44-year-old Monroe Stahr, a successful and powerful producer whose insight re movie-going America usually proves correct. Having a hopeless crush on this associate of her father's Cecelia gradually realizes that her workaholic idol has fallen in love with a mysterious lady--a British Cinderella raised completely outside the glittering purviews of starlets and gossip columnists. The tragic affair between the mogul and the lovely Kathleen (who resembles his beloved dead wife) is doomed by her prior commitment to an American man, her humble past and Stahr's own failure to take decisive action at critical moments in their poignant relationship.

The completed storyline may be deduced from Fitzgerald's extensive notes for each chapter,plus his conversations with associates. Health concerns plagued both Stahr and ultimately Cecelia--presaging the author's own private medical battle. How frustrating for him (and his alter-ego) to be snuffed out while yet so productive and mentally alert. It would be curious to see how contemporary Hollywood might finish this story if made into a movie. Like rats caught in a maze of their own devising, the characters are trapped by weakness and vanity, while naively convinced of their own personal or business power. As evil schemes corrupt backstage Hollywood, filth and crime trickle down to ultimately contaminate even the once idealistic Stahr. Tragically he did not live long enough to impress the man on the beach: that movies Were worth attending. THE LAST TYCOON proves a starkly grim but gripping tale of searing emotions at the end of the Depression era.

No other author in history has so astutely penned such profound and sublime novels with such amazing social insight as has Scottie(as his contemporaries called him) - all the while doing it with such amazing and unparalleled grace and lucidity. While The Love of the Last Tycoon may not be finished, I can easily discern that F. Scott was well on his way to achieving his goal -penning a novel on the level of The Great Gatsby and not as "depressing" as Tender is the Night.

What makes this so amazing, yet so painful, is the extraordinary potential that this work exudes. The Last Tycoon does seem to be like Gatsby moreso than any other Fitzgerald work in its endearing and sympathetic characters such as the self-made Monroe Stahr, the young Cecilia, & tragic Kathleen. As usual, Fitzgerald recreates and tells of his life experiences - this time of his tumultuous years in Hollywood as a screen writer. Although hardened somewhat at this stage of his career, Fitzgerald, like his hero Stahr, still purveys his characteristic idealism laced with a latent hint of foreboding tragedy inevitably awaiting on the horizon. Stahr, like Fitzgerald, is forever viewed as a boy wonder, despite being a seasoned veteran at this stage of his career, due to his overnight success at age 23. So, Fitzgerald, who had the splendid This Side of Paradise published at age 23, and who also was known for his propensity to turn a sickly pale white just as Stahr does, ingeniously incorporates himself into his work one last time.

The incredibly insightful notes, outlines, and revisions written by Fitzgerald shown at the conclusion of the book open an amazing new world of intropection to the reader. I give it 5 stars not for what it is, but for what it would have been. I just finished reading all of his works chronologically and I must say, unequivocally, that this very well could have eclipsed his other works of fiction, all of which are truly sublime.

"It is an escape into a lavish, romantic past that perhaps will not come again into our time." - F. Scott on The Last Tycoon