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.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel-written at a pivotal moment in his career-is now available in a beautifully designed special collector's edition.
The Beautiful and Damned is a stunning satire of the glamorous but doomed marriage between Anthony Patch and his wife, Gloria. Harvard-educated Patch is waiting for his inheritance upon his grandfather's death. His marriage to Gloria is fueled by alcohol and destroyed by greed. This shallow, pleasure-seeking couple race through a series of fiascoes-first in hilarity, then in despair.
A devastating portrait of the nouveaux rich, New York nightlife, reckless ambition, and squandered talent, The Beautiful and Damned was published in 1922 on the heels of Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise. This keenly observed novel signaled Fitzgerald's maturity as a storyteller and confirmed his enormous talent as a novelist.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in St Paul, Minnesota, and went to Princeton University which he left in 1917 to join the army. Fitzgerald was said to have epitomised the Jazz Age, an age inhabited by a generation he defined as ‘grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken’.
In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre. Their destructive relationship and her subsequent mental breakdowns became a major influence on his writing. Among his publications were five novels, This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and The Love of the Last Tycoon (his last and unfinished work): six volumes of short stories and The Crack-Up, a selection of autobiographical pieces.
Fitzgerald died suddenly in 1940. After his death The New York Times said of him that ‘He was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a “generation” … he might have interpreted them and even guided them, as in their middle years they saw a different and nobler freedom threatened with destruction.’
F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel-written at a pivotal moment in his career-is now available in a beautifully designed special collector's edition.The Beautiful and Damned is a stunning satire of the glamorous but doomed marriage between Anthony Patch and his wife, Gloria.
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 Scribner
The Beautiful and Damned has 496 pages
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