The Beautiful and Damned
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Book Summary Information
Author: F. Scott FitzgeraldEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-01-01
ISBN: 1420931571
Number of pages: 228
Publisher: Digireads.com
Book Reviews of The Beautiful and Damned
Book Review: As good or even better than Gatsby
Summary: 4 Stars
Set at the dawn of the Jazz Age in a blooming New York that is at the same time the picture of decadence and searing poverty, this story centers on the generation of aimless wealthy who, as the descendants of hard-working pioneer fathers and grandfathers, have been handed their money and privilege without too much toil on their part, thereby playing out that ages-old cautionary tale about the children of the rich who grow up listless, jaded, and a little cold because they can't even begin to grasp the morality and ethics of the working class who afforded them the privilege in the first place.
Forwarding the story here is Anthony Patch, a layabout if there ever was one since he's banking wholeheartedly on inheriting his grandfather's millions. Not that he's entirely unlikable; when he's not partying or sleeping off the latest booze-fest, he can wax philosophical with a few friends and even manages to join the army for a brief stint, although what could be a promising career is soon derailed by his usual bad behavior. Anthony's counterpart is his wife Gloria, a Midwest beauty of the genteel poverty station in life who enraptures Anthony with her blend of outrageous flirtatiousness and astonishing narcissism. Equally directionless, Gloria too shows glimmers of insight and intelligence on the few occasions she's not shopping for a new dress or obsessing about getting older (she nearly commits suicide as the doddering old age of 26 looms). Both of them obsess continuously about "the inheritance", drink too much and live far beyond their means, and after only a few years of marriage find themselves knee-deep in the kind of gradual deterioration that eats slowly away at love, like a book left outside in the rain. It's still hanging on, but a shell of what it was. According to some sources it's loosely - or not so loosely, depending on who tells it - based on Fitzgerald's own marriage to Zelda Sayre.
Written a few years after The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned was not the commercial or critical success Gatsby was, but I found it fascinating. I think Fitzgerald is the 1920's version of Bret Easton Ellis in the way he examines the American upper classes, especially the tendency for succeeding generations to become less and less useful or motivated, a sort of dilution in progress, a result of too much given and not enough taught.
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