Reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise was a pleasant surprise, more complex & fully-developed than I'd expected, especially given some of the critiques I'd noticed prior to reading the book.


Like many if not most first novels, This Side of Paradise, the tale of Amory Blaine's quest to find himself in the 1920s, recasts the early life of its author. As I often do, I read a biography of Fitzgerald while also making my way through his novel. In that biography, distinguished writer Jeffrey Meyers, commented:

As a youth, Scott was attractive, egotistic, socially insecure, with a lifelong weakness for showing off instead of listening and observing, unaware of the impact he had on others. Later, his wife Zelda seemed to function as a mad Ophelia to Scott's tortured Hamlet.

Indeed the reader senses much of Meyer's portrait of the author in the person of the rather effete but handsome Amory Blaine, early on dependent on his domineering mother Beatrice, middle class but affecting the air of aristocrats in their Minneapolis setting.

Off to Princeton, young Blaine continues his pursuit of status while on campus, at what was then felt to be the "pleasantest country club in America". Finding a direct path to classes had little attraction for either Blaine or Fitzgerald, who never graduated from Princeton, parties & booze holding greater sway for the would-be author, though he did participate in literary & musical activities on campus.


Thus, the stories of Amory Blaine & the author who created him seemed innately linked. But Blaine does have a friend at Princeton named Tom, a lad who seems to go against the grain, declaring "I'm sick of adapting myself to the local snobbishness of this corner of the world. I want to go where people aren't barred because of the color of their neckties & the roll of their coats." Does this perhaps reflect some self-doubt on the part of Fitzgerald?

One of the more interesting aspects of this novel is the presence of Amory Blaine's father confessor, Monsignor Darcy, who counsels the young man who has declared that he "has lost half of his personality in a year", after being suspended from Princeton. Later, Darcy declares in a letter to Blaine that the young man is the son he never had, with Blaine standing as "the reincarnation of myself".

Gradually, the novel transitions into a consideration of Amory Blaine's development as a person, with Fr. Darcy's suggestion that he use "heaven as a continual referendum."

One of the aspects I liked most was the characters Fitzgerald inserts who acts as foils for young Blaine, including one killed in an auto crash, another who perished during WWI, yet another who gives away his possessions & just heads off in search of enlightenment.


Book II includes an interesting playscript and there are poetic insertions as well within the novel that seem to broaden it well beyond the tale of a young man coming of age. Throughout, Blaine has a series of infatuations that are short-lived. Blaine declares that sadly, the women were like mirrors to his own image.

Their poses were strewn about the pale dawn like broken glass. The stars were long gone and there were left only little sighing gusts of wind and the silences between...but naked souls are poor things ever and soon he turned homeward and let new lights come in with the sun.

On another occasion, after a dissolute period in NYC, Blaine hitches his way back to Princeton, a kind of home-base and is picked up by a very wealthy man & his driver, the rich fellow just happening to be the father of a Princeton friend of Blaine, killed in the war. Blaine espouses socialism, not so much because he believes in it but because it seems an alternative pose, one that seems to demonstrate an incipient form of compassion.

At novel's end, Blaine felt that he was "leaving behind his chance of being a certain kind of artist but it seemed much more important to become a certain kind of man. I know myself but that is all."

The writer Richard Russo once declared that for many, college is "akin to taking part in a witness protection program", a time when you attempt to strike different poses, try on different modes of dress, in search of an identity.

To a large degree, that is how I viewed the character of Amory Blaine in Fitzgerald's initial novel, This Side of Paradise, a rather formidable beginning statement and in spite of its critics, a rather memorable novel.

*Included with my Penguin edition of the novel is an excellent introduction by Patrick O'Donnell. **Within my review are two images of the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald + a photo of the program for the annual Princeton class musical review for which Fitzgerald contributed the lyrics.

(audiobook)
This was such a quintessential Fitzgerald novel, and in that respect I loved it! I felt very unsympathetic towards the main protagonist Amory Blaine, which I think is the point. He is very vain and immersed in a world full or greed and status. I loved the references to different literary/art idols like Tolstoy and Charles Dana Gibson. Was this the best novel I've ever read, unfortunately no. Did I enjoy it, absolutely!!

DNFing this one. Maybe it's because I'm not in the mood, or maybe it's just slow and not my jam in general. Either way, just thinking about picking this book up was not inspiring me to read so I'm done.

So how is it that this novel, despite it’s shortcomings, was still able to be successful? Ask any New York agent to represent your literary novel with a male protagonist and he'll tell you: “Literary novel’s with a male protagonist are hard sells.” And they are. Think about it: How many literary novels with male protagonists have you enjoyed in the last, say, five years? Probably zero. The key to the success of This Side of Paradise is in Fitzgerald’s mastery of the Male Protagonist in a Literary Novel Problem. But why should this even be a problem at all? It’s my belief that males generally don’t relate to one and other. They dominate each other. The question of ‘do you respect a full grown man?’ really comes down to: ‘is he dominate in some way?’

In a literary novel, a male protagonist is essentially going after the status quo. He’s saying that the society in which you live needs to change. We’re not apt to give credence to a full grown male who thinks things should change and yet is not in a powerful situation. We’ll assume it’s sour grapes. So, in a literary novel, a male lead must be powerful enough to have an unbiased view of the problem he sees with society. The difficulty is that powerful, dominant men generally don’t tend to be sensitive and open-minded enough to appreciate a societal problem. What’s needed in a literary male protagonist is a delicate balance of sensitivity and strength that we don’t normally see in the real world.

Many a would-be author will pen a male protagonist who just isn’t strong enough for us to feel sympathy for him. And striking this balance, or countermining this principle, has been the secret struggle of many a literary author. Shakespeare’s Hamlet was a whinny, emotional punk… but he was the king of Denmark; T.S. Garp was a famous author; most all of Hemingway's male leads were war veterans or soldiers or, in the case of The Old Man and the Sea, handicapped with age. Other ways to get around the unsympathetic male protagonist is with youth, ie, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Finn, or insanity, (see: Hamlet, yet again), Lolita, Moby Dick (Captain Ahab) and Slaughter House Five.

The average, weak and sensitive male is to be avoided at all costs by the would-be author of literary fiction. History shows us that it is only kind to those that follow this principle and This Side of Paradise is no exception. Where Fitzgerald succeeds is with his execution of what I’ll call the Snob Narrator (something that he wasted no time in establishing in The Great Gatsby). Armory Blaine is sensitive and weak in many ways—for example his vanity—but since he is a Princeton student and literary scholar, we know he also has dominance. It’s this balance of sensitivity and strength (much like Shakespeare’s Hamlet) that convince us through the 268 pages of this novel until the very end that Armory Blaine might have the solution to what is wrong with society. SPOILER ALERT: He didn’t. Fun read though. And very inventive.

"I know myself...but that is all" decries Amory Blaine at the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, published to literary acclaim in 1920. The book describes Amory's journey of self-realization, one in which along the way he discards love, wealth, and propriety to find his true self. He firmly believes that his personal quest has revealed what Cervantes described as "the most difficult lesson in the world," to know oneself. Alas, Amory, the self-described Romantic Egotist, indicates by the conclusion that he has become a "personage'" through his passage from youth to the wisdom he has accumulated...all by his mid-20's! Undoubtedly, Fitzgerald, who was 24 when this book first appeared, had a comparable belief in his artistic genius, but the trajectory of his own life might well have led him to express a less audacious analysis for Amory had he written this work later in his dazzling, but tragic career. Fitzgerald's young protagonist has much to tell us about introspection and heart-searching meditation, but (with apologies to the ancient Athenian reformer Solon) "count no man happy (or wise) until he his final day."

This is the tale of the idiosyncratic life of a hansome and bright Amory Blaine born to a rich (but distant and diffident) father and a sophisticated and thoroughly modern mother. He struggles with dying social conventions, changing mores, and a new political values (particularly, after World War I), but despite his efforts to conform even at Princeton, he must seek his own course. Along the way, he encounters friendship, love, and even intellectual-spiritual guidance from a variety of individuals. With the trademark Fitzgerald touch many of the character names are whimsical comments on personalities or clever bows to literary predecesors (for example, at least three of the women possess names of strong-willed characters in Shakespearean comedies). What is more impressive about this first novel is its experiemental use of a mixture of styles, which includes a stream-of-consciouness section (thus predating the more prodigious works of Joyce, Woolf, and others), and the inclusion of both verse and dramatic stage dialogue (the later reminiscent of Noel Coward). Moreover, there are some of those spectacular ands variegated descriptions that Fitzgerald was later to master in THE GREAT GATSBY and TENDER IS THE NIGHT. Last, but not least, this work deals with themes of importance beyond Amory's self-actualization; it provides a sublime insight into the changing image of America in a post-World War I world.

All of the above element are praiseworthy and it seem churlish to state that in reading this volume nearly a century later one admires the incipient talent, but does not always relish the result. I have already suggested that Amory's ultimate epiphany seems to me to be a rather bold assumption. More significantly, the book's loose form often demonstrates the author's inexperience in structuring a novel; it is more a montage of scenes that seem to incorporate some of his earlier writings. In addition, the book's two perspectives--Amory's and the omniscient author's-- seem inconsistent and occasionally jarring to read. Some sections are even inflated (such as those at Princeton) in contrast to the brief commentaries on Amory's military life or working career. The balance is missing because Fitzgerald as a young man (genius though he was) was writing what he knew...and university life certainly seemed a predominant feature of his early years. This indeed is a book that deserves our respectful admiration but not our undying love.

Wow, what a tale of opulence and young angst - allow me to explain. In this semi-autobiographical novel of Fitzgerald's, the narrative follows a young Amory Blaine from his teenage years until his mid-twenties. It is a story of young love, loss of innocence, and tragedy, all compiled into one, admittedly elitist, work. Fitzgerald's opulent taste is evident throughout, and his high-class upbringing makes for a main character that is at times dislikable but also ultimately lovable. Although I found the ending abrupt and not giving of closure, the journey through Blaine's years was enjoyable and afforded me a wonderful bit of escape into an entirely different era than our own. 3.5/5 stars.

This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940)

This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was published in 1920. Taking its title from a line of Rupert Brooke's poem Tiare Tahiti, the book examines the lives and morality of post–World War I youth. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive Princeton University student who dabbles in literature. The novel explores the theme of love warped by greed and status seeking.

Fitzgerald's first novel, was an immediate, spectacular success and established his literary reputation. Perhaps the definitive novel of that Lost Generation, it tells the story of Amory Blaine, a handsome, wealthy Princeton student who halfheartedly involves himself in literary cults, liberal student activities, and a series of empty flirtations with young women. When he finally does fall truly in love, however, the young woman rejects him for another.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و دوم ماه نوامبر سال2011میلادی

عنوان: این سوی بهشت؛ اثر: فرانسیس اسکات فیتزجرالد؛ مترجم: سهیل سمی؛ تهران، ققنوس، سال1389، در376ص، ادبیات جهان101، رمان86، شابک9789643118976، موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م

در سی سالگی، «ایمری (آموری) بلین»، با ثروتی که با مرگ دو برادر بزرگ‌ترش، به او می‌رسد، احساس می‌کند دنیا مال اوست؛ پدرش «استیفن بلین» مردی نالایق، که به اشعار «لرد بایرون»، شاعر «انگلیسی» علاقه‌ ی بسیاری داشت، تزلزل، و دودلی ویژه ای برای پسرش، به ارث گذاشت، که او را انسانی سست عنصر، با صورتیکه نصفش پشت موهای ابریشمی و عاری از حیاتش، محو شده بود، نشان می‌داد؛ «این سوی بهشت» داستان زندگی پسرکی است، که تا پیش از ده سالگی، مادرش به او آموزش‌های فراوان داد؛ او در یازده سالگی می‌توانست روان، و راحت، یا شاید با لحنی یادآور «برامس»، «موتسارت»، و «بتهوون»، حرف بزند؛ پسری که به گمان مادرش، واقعا با فرهنگ و جذاب بود، و در عین حال خیلی ظریف، با زندگی در خانه‌ ای که همیشه تشریفات ویژه ی خودش را داشت؛ ...؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 17/03/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 29/10/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Introduction
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of F. Scott Fitzgerald

--This Side of Paradise

Explanatory Notes

Por primera vez en su vida deseaba que la muerte se llevara a toda su generación, borrando sus mezquinas fiebres y luchas y alegrías
3,5/5
Esta fue la primera novela de Fitzgerald y no la recomiendo para empezar con el autor (mejor 'El gran Gatsby'). Creo que es un libro que se disfruta mucho más si ya has leído otras de sus novelas antes y conoces su estilo y vida... Porque una vez más, 'A este lado del paraíso' tiene mucho de relato autobiográfico, y aquí Fitzgerald libera toda la decepción y disgusto que siente ante el mundo.
La novela relata los años en la universidad de Princeton del joven Amory cuando era un joven adinerado y egocéntrico, hasta la llegada de la Primera Guerra Mundial y el cambio que supuso en la sociedad y especialmente en su generación.
Sorprendentemente la guerra no tiene una importancia real para Amory (igual que para Fitzgerald) pero sí nos muestra sus consecuencias.
Como me ha ocurrido con todas las novelas que he leído de este autor, es un libro que me ha dejado más poso del que esperaba y sus últimas 100 páginas me han gustado muchísimo por lo críticas e inconformistas que son.
Aunque durante la mayoría de la historia los personajes resultan bastante odiosos por ser unos jóvenes millonarios caraduras yo me divertí mucho con sus andanzas, e incluso en los trágicos amoríos de Amory encontré un poso de reflexión sobre la situación de la mujer, tan terriblemente limitada.
Otra cosa a destacar es la maravillosa prosa de Fitzgerald, siempre insuperable, aún en su primer escrito, y además aquí hay que añadir lo original que resulta este libro que intercala cartas, poemas e incluso un pequeño drama teatral que encaja a la perfección.
Sea como sea, no me parece una de sus grandes novelas, pero me hizo disfrutar y sorprenderme una vez más de la habilidad con las palabras de este gran autor.

Unlike most books I re-read decades after first reading them, this one has fallen significantly in my esteem. But, hey, Fitzgerald wrote it when he was twenty-three! I admire that very much. I certainly could not have accomplished such a book, then or now.

But the only writer to whom I feel that I can fairly compare Fitzgerald is himself, and I've only just finished re-reading two of his better novels: The Beautiful and Damned and Tender Is the Night which is my favourite of all his books. Both Tender Is the Night and The Great Gatsby contain passages that I find so beautiful my heart beats harder when I read them. It's palpable.

So, should I say that my judgment of this novel is fair and that Fitzgerald became a better writer as he aged? Well, one could say that age always improves us . . . but it's not true, is it? I do not assume that it's true with artists, especially, because some burn early and bright and then fade away. I will stand by my belief, though, that Fitzgerald did rather the opposite: his flame grew brighter and brighter until it was snuffed out by a sudden heart attack. We know that he and Zelda had a roller-coaster ride of a marriage that took its toll on both of them, but that also seems fated. We know, too, that his alcoholism consumed him more and more as he aged. Either in spite of or because of all that, he matured into a magnificent writer. But he was not yet that, at twenty-three.

The parts of This Side of Paradise that I liked, I liked very much, but the book's quality varies a great deal from chapter to chapter, due not so much to the writing itself (even at that tender age, Fitzgerald was talented with words) but the chosen content. At times, for whole long passages, I found Amory's blathering on about himself, "his" women, his beliefs, and his life, excruciatingly tedious. I realise that this is part of the point: It's a cliché but nevertheless true that, when we are young, many of us are quick to judge our elders as silly old fools, to tell them how they've got it all wrong, and to dream of ourselves as budding geniuses on the brink of greatness. Amory was no exception to this; in fact, he was rather the poster-child for the enormous vanity, arrogance, and folly of adolescence and early adulthood which means that, in many ways, he was a crashing bore.

Another problem, besides boredom, that I had with this book: Perhaps due to current sociopolitical attitudes that we are bombarded with daily, I found it hard to keep taking in Amory's oft-repeated and sickening attitudes towards the poor, towards "foreigners", and towards any woman who is not considered beautiful by the standards of his day. I should explain that it is a principle of mine to appreciate works of art in their own terms, in their own right, and within their own social, political, and cultural contexts, rather than judging them against our own current cultural ideals. But that doesn't mean that I never get enough of reading about characters who find foreigners "disgusting" and poor people loathsome. Seriously, I needed a break and was glad when the end came.

Also, I find the book has not aged well, unlike Fitzgerald's other works. To me, it reads as very of-the-moment, but the moment was the first two decades of the twentieth century. Amory was a trendy sort and those trends seem silly and uninteresting to us now, which is the way of all trends. Also, Amory's taste in writers, especially poets, at that time, do not reflect my own, so I found his regular tangents on poetry tiresome and dull. Swinburne is not to my liking much at all, but he was the among the best of those mentioned, besides E.A. Poe and Rupert Brookes, for both of whom I hold some affection. It is my own fault that, because of the type of reader I am, I am constitutionally incapable of skipping bits. But I can still blame Fitzgerald for making me read it!

So, that's my take on This Side of Paradise from this side of adulthood, now that I am old enough to be Amory's mother rather than his girlfriend, such as I was the first time round this particular dance floor. :)

Fitzgerald has long been one of my literary blind spots. The Great Gatsby is a masterpiece, sure: I studied it in school and have read it another couple of times since, as well as lots of background nonfiction and some contemporary novels that riff on the story line. But everything else of his that I’ve tried (Tender Is the Night was the other one) has felt aimless and more stylish than substantive.

Amory Blaine is a wealthy Midwesterner who goes from boarding school to Princeton and has literary ambitions and various love affairs. He’s convinced he’s a “boy marked for glory.” But Monsignor Darcy, his guru, encourages the young man to focus on developing his character more than his dashing personality.

Hugely popular at its first release, this debut novel won Fitzgerald his literary reputation – as well as Zelda Sayre’s hand in marriage. What with the slang (“Oh my Lord, I’m going to cast a kitten”), it felt very much like a period piece to me, most impressive for its experimentation with structure: parts are written like a film script or Q&A, and there are also some poems and lists. This novelty may well be a result of the author cobbling together drafts and unpublished odds and ends, but still struck me as daring.

In a strange way, though, the novel is ahistorical in that it glosses over world events with a flippancy that I find typical of Fitzgerald. Even though Amory is called up to serve, his general reaction to the First World War is dispatched in a paragraph; Prohibition doesn’t get much more of a look-in.

I understand that the book is fairly autobiographical and in its original form was written in the first person, which I might have preferred if it led to greater sincerity. I could admire some of the witty banter and the general coming-of-age arc, but mostly felt indifferent to this one.

I believe this was Fitzgerald's first novel and certainly shows his potential, but not his best. I see the future of some of his flapper characters and their superficial, transitory relationships with each other, but he has not yet perfected them to the point of making them interesting. They are fairly dry and so are their relationships.

This book lacks the keen insight displayed in so many of the other novels.

Brief summary: Armory is a bored rich kid who does the usual bored rich kids things: goes to private school; goes to Princeton; gets into several ethereal relationships and eventually forms existential conclusions about the world and life.

If any of this could have been developed beyond merely introducing characters or coloring them more richly, it could have been an enjoyable read. Fortunately, I've read Fitzgerald's other novels first. I suppose one could say the character types haven't changed, but they have matured and ripened in later novels.

Unless you're a determined Fitzgerald fan, I'd give this one a skip.