“Very few things matter and nothing matters very much.”
-\tF. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
Reading The Great Gatsby was a crucial experience for me. It came at a time when my passion for reading was on the verge of fading. I had loved books since a young age, but high school English was like a bucket of cold water on my enthusiasm. It wasn't that I had difficulties; quite the contrary, I did extremely well with little effort (while the opposite was true in physics). Instead, it was about taking something enjoyable and turning it into a chore. Reading became something I had to do within a specific timeframe, rather than a leisurely activity. Moreover, the feeling of being forced to extract something from a book - to find the themes, symbols, and meaning in the text, as if it were an objective exercise like a "find the hidden objects" game in Highlights magazine - took away all the joy.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby managed to keep that spark of love alive - just barely - long enough to carry me into early adulthood, when I could once again read for the sheer pleasure of it.
Why The Great Gatsby? Among all the assigned readings I've ever done, I found it the most accessible, the smoothest, and the most entertaining. Unlike Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, who has always baffled me, 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 a significant part of my day. Sure, I was required to write an essay on the symbolism, but that was easy because the symbols were 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 envision 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 returned from Gatsby to Fitzgerald’s first novel: the somewhat-weird, mildly annoying, yet ultimately worthwhile This Side of Paradise.
This Side of Paradise tells the story of Amory Blaine, a young boy from a wealthy and well-respected family. We meet Amory in preparatory school, follow him to Princeton, and eventually leave him adrift and searching. During this time, Amory experiences love and heartbreak, avoids combat in World War I, and engages in a series of internal and external dialogues that have come to represent a generation, although it really only applies to a narrow group of white, privileged, upper-class Ivy League students like Amory.
Fitzgerald’s novel is semi-autobiographical, incorporating events and locations - such as St. Paul, Minnesota; Princeton; and a painful breakup - into his fictionalized story. If Amory is meant to be a substitute for Fitzgerald, it is a relatively harsh self-portrait. Amory is a mostly-unlikable protagonist: self-absorbed, overly-confident, thin-skinned, aimless, and lazy.
Unlike the straightforward Gatsby, This Side of Paradise is composed 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 perspective. Most of the action takes place at Princeton, where Amory is convinced that he has a bright future and that he shouldn't have to work hard for it. I found the first book to be a bit of a chore, as Amory is a prime example of unearned privilege. He is fickle, prickly, and generally unpleasant to be around. The supporting characters, such as Monsignor Darcy and Thomas Park D’Invilliers, are only minimally developed. Certainly, none of Fitzgerald’s secondary characters make as vivid an impression as Tom Buchanan in Gatsby.
The "interlude" portion of the novel quickly covers Amory’s participation in World War I as an instructor. No further details are provided about his military service. Thus, unlike other postwar novels like The Sun Also Rises, the war does not overshadow the story. 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, complete with stage directions and dialogue. There is no explanation for this sudden change in narrative style, but it works, despite drawing attention to itself. Here, we learn about Amory’s courtship and love affair with a debutante named Rosalind (presumably based on Zelda Sayre). The ebb and flow of their relationship, described through conversation, comes close to making Amory a relatable and somewhat sympathetic character, redeeming him a bit from the first book.
For long stretches, I felt trapped by Amory’s pompous pronouncements. His long monologues can be quite frustrating. However, every now and then, Fitzgerald inserts a beautiful moment. Near the end of the novel, for example, Amory is walking down the road when a man in a limousine offers him a ride. Amory then subjects the man to a tiresome lecture 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 attempt by an extremely talented author. There is some experimentation going on, 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 impressed or distracted by this changing structure.
(Note: this "experimentation" might simply have been Fitzgerald piecing things together, since This Side of Paradise started out as a different, unpublished work.)
My paperback copy is less than three hundred pages long, but This Side of Paradise still felt meandering, baggy, and episodic. There were parts where my eyes simply glazed over. But just as often, I was carried away by Fitzgerald’s lyrical and beautiful prose, his ability to describe a place so vividly that you feel as if you are 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 continue to live on in the American imagination, at least as measured by the number of Roaring Twenties parties I've attended in my life. This Side of Paradise adds fuel to that fire. In hindsight, it has been credited - according to Professor Sharon Carson, who wrote the introduction to my copy - with creating "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 small slice of America's population. Those who were wealthy. Those who were white. Those who were living a fast and luxurious life during Coolidge’s laissez-faire administration, unknowingly headed towards economic disaster. Missing - or rather, completely ignored - is any indication of a world beyond the elite. There are no minorities. There are no wage-earners. There is no sign that anyone from this era managed to get through life without an emotionally-turbulent relationship with a flapper.
Because of the combination of author, setting, and historical context, This Side of Paradise will endure forever. As for me, I started to forget about it almost immediately.
