October 2011 Guest Editor Philippa Gregory on F. Scott Fitzgerald...
I have just re-read this and constantly admired the economy of Fitzgerald. He can write poignant paragraphs that come out of almost nothing, as a reader you can hardly tell what he is doing, but you emerge from the novel feeling emotionally wrung. It’s the story of the most glamorous couple on the French Riviera, and slowly you understand that much of their beauty is a façade, and that even their passion is something that will pass.
It is loosely based on Fitzgerald’s own marriage to Zelda who is an interesting character in her own right and too often “written off” by biographers as the unstable wife to a genius. As this novel hints, perhaps it was far more complicated and interesting than that.
Introduction by Hortense Calisher Commentary by Edmund Wilson, Henry Seidel Canby, and Arthur Mizener Fitzgerald's second novel, a devastating portrait of the excesses of the Jazz Age, is a largely autobiographical depiction of a glamorous, reckless Manhattan couple and their spectacular spiral into tragedy. Published on the heels of This Side of Paradise, the story of the Harvard-educated aesthete Anthony Patch and his willful wife, Gloria, is propelled by Fitzgerald's intense romantic imagination and demonstrates an increased technical and emotional maturity. The Beautiful and Damned is at once a gripping morality tale, a rueful meditation on love, marriage, and money, and an acute social document. As Hortense Calisher observes in her Introduction, "Though Fitzgerald can entrance with stories so joyfully youthful they appear to be safe-when he cuts himself, you will bleed."Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
Introduction by Hortense Calisher Commentary by Edmund Wilson, Henry Seidel Canby, and Arthur Mizener Fitzgerald's second novel, a devastating portrait of the excesses of the Jazz Age, is a largely autobiographical depiction of a glamorous, reckless Manhattan couple and their spectacular spiral into tragedy. Published on the heels of This Side of Paradise, the story of the Harvard-educated aesthete Anthony Patch and his willful wife, Gloria, is propelled by Fitzgerald's intense romantic imagination and demonstrates an increased technical and emotional maturity.
The Beautiful and Damned features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction, eBooks of the Month, General Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
Paperback, Hardback. Not Available.
The Beautiful and Damned was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published by Modern Library an imprint of Random House Publishing Group
The Beautiful and Damned has 386 pages
Yes it is part of The Modern Library Classics series