It's true what they say: the first novel always ends up being partly autobiographical, whether intentionally or not. This Side of Paradise is quintessential Fitzgerald, plain and simple. The novel oozes with easily recognizable youthful charm, rich poetic style, and warm nostalgic spirit - all in all, an absolute pleasure to read, which did put a big smile on my face more than once. Highly recommended.

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“Beauty and love pass, I know… Oh, there’s sadness, too. I suppose all great happiness is a little sad. Beauty means the scent of roses and then the death of roses.”

Clearly an early work (1920), with many imperfections, but still, it captivates. The composition is a bit messy, pluriform, so not everything is equally good. The central themes are that of the Fallen Angel and of punctured certainties. Perhaps this could qualify more as a Quest than as a 'Bildungsroman' or a 'coming-of-age'. Reading this, it felt a bit like Oscar Wilde, with an intrusive accumulation of quotes. (2.5 stars)

the kind of book that you can steal personality from but mine is already suspiciously close

I wanted to like this book because it has all the trappings of books I tend to enjoy, including gradual disillusionment with life and a character who I relate to, i.e. bad work ethic and excessive emotional reactions. I think the issue is I can't stand when people are condescending or care about status and so it made it hard for me to like the character. On top of that I wasn't quite sure what the plot or purpose of the book was. There was a lot of random poetry included in between the prose and I didn't think the poetry was good to be quite honest. The book just felt meandering, the main character was unlikeable, none of the other characters were developed in any meaningful way and so I didn't really like this one. I liked this even less than The Great Gatsby. Mostly I just felt bored.

I love that Fitzgerald started this novel when he was twenty-one years old and a Princeton dropout, for he had spent most of his time writing and avoiding college work. I enjoy knowing that he was as much a maverick as his characters have been. This novel certainly is a resounding response to the shifting social consciousness of that time, with an "identifiable youth culture" claiming its place within literature and the post-war women workforce showcased as economically and socially independent. The proper "Victorian maid" was now applying makeup in public, wearing short skirts, buying her own drinks, and one could always count on Fitzgerald to subtly note these social changes in his novel.

Fitzgerald has a flair for words and it resonates in this novel. The writing is more supple than I found in
The Beautiful and the Damned  even if characterization still remains a problem for this reader. Amory's relationship to his mother was a lure initially, as the story seemed to have this D.H. Lawrence sort of texture. Yet Amory's reactions to many events wasn't very motivating. The ambitious structure of the novel was also a distraction but the way in which Fitzgerald writes about wealth is in most instances unparalleled. When writing about rich people galavanting ceremoniously, the underpinnings are the immense fear of poverty, maybe even fear of people living in poverty, fear of ever becoming poor so that power is wielded to do damning things. In any case, Gatsby remains my favorite Fitzgerald novel.

My musings on This side of Paradise:

Truthfully, I really don't know where to begin this review-of-sorts. I didn't Love this novel, not like The Great Gatsby but it is definitely a unique one. A fabulous start to a great writing career for F. Scott Fitzgerald.

This was his first novel and I can definitely see why it got the acclaim it did. The journey of self discovery is an often written of thing but seldom, in my experience, from a boy/man's POV. I'm not really sure why that is. I don't believe women are naturally more reflective than men or anything asinine like that but for whatever reason male self discovery books are more rare.

I won't say I liked Amory Blaine because I didn't. He's loathsomely selfish and egotistical through much, if not all, of the novel. He sees himself chiefly through others opinions of him which is usually detrimental. His sense of the romantic is actually a bit disturbing. Also, he seems to create definitions to words or behaviors that mostly have nothing to do with them.

That being said, despite the fact that the main character frustrated me greatly I enjoyed this novel. Fitzgerald's writing causes a great deal of reflection and internal philosophical debate. Through Blaine he delves into some interesting debates that make you question the world and it's nature at large. Anyone who can do that holds high stock with me.

I kept thinking: "this is pretty good for a 22 year old." I also kept thinking: "this book would never have been published today." I'm not asserting that as a truth about the book. I'm just saying I kept thinking it.

On almost every page I felt reminded that this novel was written by a young writer, someone who hadn't figured out quite how to pace a novel, or how to focus his themes, or how to deal with dramatic scenes without either short-changing them or turning them into bathos. World War I as narrative summary called "Interlude?" I don't care if Fitzgerald hadn't actually been to war--neither had Stephen Crane. Also the different structural choices and narrative voices from one section to the next don't feel like an author with mastery over the material, or an author making conscious choices. They feel like the author doesn't know what he is doing yet.

Almost because the book was such a startling mess to me, I loved the detail in the novel about Amory's reading habits. Throughout the book Fitzgerald assumes that a list of authors' names will telegraph to his readers Amory's current state of mind and maturity. Here is an example:

"He read enormously every night—Shaw, Chesterton, Barrie, Pinero, Yeats, Synge, Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons, Keats, Sudermann, Robert Hugh Benson, the Savoy Operas—just a heterogeneous mixture, for he suddenly discovered that he had read nothing for years."

Of course these passing mentions of authors, some referred to just by last name because they were so well-known back then, can't have the same effect now as they did when Fitzgerald wrote the novel. Many of these authors are out of print or rarely read. But the references to books and authors in This Side of Paradise served to remind me of the mystery of literary endurance, and this became the question that preoccupied me, while reading it: Why do some books stay popular for a few months or years, and others are read for generations? This Side Of Paradise itself is now part of that mystery.

What the hell was that?

“Very few things matter and nothing matters very much.”
-tF. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

Reading The Great Gatsby was an important experience for me, coming as it did at a time when my love for reading was threatening to lapse. Having loved books from a very young age, high school English proved a bucket of cold water for my ardor. It wasn’t that I struggled. Quite the opposite, as I did extremely well with very little effort (the obverse being true in physics). Rather, it was a matter of taking something fun and making it into a chore. Instead of being a leisurely activity, reading became something I had to do within a given timeframe. More than that, the sensation of being forced to get something out of a book – to find the themes, the symbols, the meaning in the text, as though it were as objective an exercise as a “find the hidden objects” game in Highlights magazine – took away all the joy.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby kept alive that flicker of love – just barely – long enough to get me into early adulthood, when I could once again read for the pleasure of reading.

Why The Great Gatsby?

Of all the assigned reading I’ve ever done, I found it the most accessible, the smoothest, and the most entertaining. Unlike The Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield, who baffled me then and now, I understood Jay Gatsby’s desire to impress a girl. After all, I was in high school, and fruitless attempts to impress others took up most of my day. Sure, I was forced to write an essay on the symbolism, but that was easy, because the symbols were all right there, like shells on the beach at low tide, easy to find and pick up. But it wasn’t just the simplicity, it was the beauty. When Nick Carraway imagined the brooding Gatsby pondering the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock, I could imagine it too, as clearly as anything in the world.

This is all a rather long way of saying that I was bound to be disappointed when I circled back from Gatsby to Fitzgerald’s first novel: the somewhat-weird, mildly annoying, ultimately worthwhile This Side of Paradise.

This Side of Paradise tells the story of Amory Blaine, a young boy who comes from a family with money and a good name. We meet Amory in preparatory school, follow him to Princeton, and eventually leave Amory adrift and searching. During this interim, Amory falls in and out of love, avoids combat in World War I, and carries on a series of dialogues – both internal and external – that has come to encapsulate a generation, even though it really only applies to a narrow cohort of white, privileged, upper class Ivy-leaguers with names like Amory.

Fitzgerald’s novel is semiautobiographical, weaving events and locations – St. Paul, Minnesota; Princeton; a lousy, heart-breaking breakup – into his fictionalized tale. If Amory is meant to be a stand-in for Fitzgerald, it is a relatively scathing self-portrait. Amory is a mostly-unlikeable protagonist: self-absorbed, overly-confident, thin-skinned, aimless and lazy.

Unlike the straightforward Gatsby, This Side of Paradise is constructed of three separate acts: two “books” separated by an “interlude.”

The first book, titled “The Romantic Egotist,” covers Amory’s matriculation. It is written in the third-person, from Amory’s point of view. Most of the time is spent at Princeton, where Amory is convinced that he has a bright future – and is equally convinced that he shouldn’t have to work for it.

I found the first book to be a bit of a chore, as Amory is a striking exhibit of undeserved privilege. He is fickle and prickly and generally unpleasant to spend time with. The peripheral characters, including Monsignor Darcy, with whom he exchanges letters, and Thomas Park D’Invilliers, a student and would-be poet, are thinly drawn at best. Certainly, none of Fitzgerald’s supporting cast leaves an impression as vivid as Tom Buchanan, with his “cruel body” clad in “effeminate” riding clothes.

(Since I clearly cannot get off the subject of Gatsby, I will note that the fictional D’Invilliers gave Gatsby its famous epigraph: “Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her…”).

The “interlude” portion of the novel, dividing books one and two, briskly covers Amory’s participation in World War I, where he served as an instructor. No further information is given regarding his military stint. Thus, unlike other postwar novels – such as The Sun Also Rises – the shadow of the war does not loom overlarge. To that end, it’s worth noting that Fitzgerald himself – unlike Hemingway – never went overseas.

The second book, titled “The Education of a Personage,” begins with a chapter written as a play, with stage directions and dialogue. No reason is given for this temporary shift in narrative style, but it works, despite desperately calling attention to itself. Here we learn about Amory’s courtship and love affair with a debutante named Rosalind (standing in for Zelda Sayre). The ebb and flow of this relationship, delineated by conversation, comes close to making Amory into a relatable, half-sympathetic human being, and salvaging him a bit from the first book.

For long stretches, I felt captive to Amory’s pompous proclamations. His long monologues can get a bit frustrating. Every once in a while, though, Fitzgerald slipped in a little grace note. Near the end of the novel, for example, Amory is shuffling down the road when a man in a limo offers him a ride. Amory then subjects the man to a tiresome disquisition on his economic theories. As the ride ends, it turns out that Amory went to Princeton with the man’s son, who is now dead:

"I sent my son to Princeton…Perhaps you knew him. His name was Jesse Ferrenby. He was killed last year in France.”

“I knew him very well. In fact, he was one of my particular friends.”

“He was – a – quite a fine boy. We were very close.”

Amory began to perceive a resemblance between the father and the dead son and he told himself that there had been all along a sense of familiarity. Jesse Ferrenby, the man who in college had borne off the crown that he had aspired to. It was all so far away. What little boys they had been, working for blue ribbons…The big man held out his hand. Amory saw that the fact that he had known Jesse more than outweighed any disfavor he had created by his opinions. What ghosts were people with which to work!

Mostly, though, Amory is detestable. For instance:

"I detest poor people,” thought Amory suddenly. “I hate them for being poor. Poverty may have been beautiful once, but it’s rotten now. It’s the ugliest thing in the world. It’s essentially cleaner to be corrupt and rich than it is to be innocent and poor.”

To me, This Side of Paradise is a rough first effort by an extremely talented author. There is some experimentation at work, as Fitzgerald transitions from third-person narrative to a play, while also including letters, poetry and verse. You will have to decide for yourself whether you are dazzled or distracted by this shifting structure.

(Note: this “experimentation” might simply have been Fitzgerald stitching things together, since This Side of Paradise began life as a different, unpublished work).

My paperback copy is less than three-hundred pages long. Nevertheless, This Side of Paradise felt meandering and baggy and choppily episodic. There were portions where my eyes just glazed over. But just as often, I was transported by Fitzgerald’s lyrical, beautiful prose, his ability to describe a place by putting you right there:

At first Amory noticed only the wealth of sunshine creeping across the long, green swards, dancing on the leaded windowpanes, and swimming around the tops of the spires and towers and battlemented walls…

The Roaring Twenties live on in American imagination, at least as calculated by the number of Roaring Twenties parties I’ve attended in my life. This Side of Paradise fuels that flame. In retrospect, it has been credited – according to Professor Sharon Carson, who wrote the introduction to my copy – with establishing “the image of seemingly carefree, party-mad young men and women out to create a new morality for a new, postwar America.”

In reality, This Side of Paradise tells the story of only a thin tranche of America’s population. Those who were moneyed. Those who were white. Those who were living fast and high during Coolidge’s laissez-faire administration, unknowingly rushing towards their economic doom. Lost – or rather, ignored, completely – is any hint of a world beyond the elite. There are no minorities. There are no wage-earners. There is no indication that anyone from this time period got through life without an emotionally-jarring relationship with a flapper.

Because of the confluence of author, setting, and historical moment, This Side of Paradise will live forever. As for me, I started to forget about it right away.

Es la primera novela de Scott Fitzgerald y la que le lanzó a la fama.
En ella encontramos una historia pausada e introspectiva que me ha gustado mucho. Trata sobre un joven que busca su sitio en una sociedad en dónde o alcanzas el éxito o te conviertes en un don nadie. Así de duro.
Además Fitzgerald hace una mezcla muy curiosa pero que funciona muy bien: poesía, teatro y narrativa.

No es el mejor libro para empezar con el autor pero si os gustan las novelas reflexivas os gustará.

He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky.
"I know myself," he cried, "But that is all.”

I don't know about you, but I just simply ADORE the jazz age. All that alcohol, all that music, all that raunchiness. It's pure decadence. This book, F. Scott Fitzgerald's first book, is a love letter to this time period. He charts the life of young Amory Blaine as he traverses through college and a number of romances. Even though this story takes place decades ago, it has elements that one can relate to even in this day and age. Plus, Scott's writing is just fun! There's something for everyone to enjoy here! ;)


“I'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires.”

This Side of Paradise by F. S. Fitzgerald is something very different from his other works, however, it also happens to be his first published work which got a lot of negative critique. The reason why I happened to like it was because of the author's never failing language and writing style; no matter what Fitzgerald did, he never seemed to fail his audience in this matter.

As I have already mention, this is his first published novel, and the reason why it is so much different from the rest of this work is because of the story, I believe. The rumour has it that it is somewhat a biography of a young F. S. Fitzgerald, which makes the read so much more intimate, but there is also something that is just off about this book that I cannot put my finger on.

Fitzgerald is honestly one of my favourite authors, but I always find myself in need of a break whenever I finish one of his books. I think the reason for this is because his novels are quite complicated in theirs structure, even though the plot seems rather easy going: from the outside a perfect and rich family, on the inside not so much-plot that happens to be the through story in most of this books. I do think I will reread this again sometime, but it is honestly not my favourite of his work, even though I did fancy his language.