This Side of Paradise was the debut novel of acclaimed American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story follows the young Amory Blaine, born into the upper-class and raised by a highly cultured and slightly eccentric mother, Beatrice. From prep school to Princeton to New York City, Amory is in a struggle to find himself, to discover who the "fundamental Amory" truly is.
I hadn't read any of F. Scott Fitzgerald's works before this, but from this book I got a very strong impression of who Fitzgerald is as a writer, and as a person as well. Amory Blaine seems to be an almost auto-biographical character of the writer himself: his insights and feelings are too intimate and specific to be imagined.
The beginning of the book, chronicling Amory's elementary and teen years, was quite reminiscent of The Catcher in The Rye, which I also read this year. The idea of a youth, in some ways rebellious, thinking himself different from everyone, sent away to prep school with a stint in New York City- there were many similarities to be seen. However, as I got more into the book the differences started appearing, developing Amory as his own independent character. I got many gasps and shocked expressions when I told my friends that I did not identify with Holden from Salinger's book. However, Amory Blaine was a character I strongly connected with. He was this illusion that he was different, somehow, from everyone else. Better. This led him to being very vain, as he was well aware of, and this trait carried with him throughout the book. Despite this vanity, though, he didn't have too much a sense of who he was, and he was sensitive to other's criticisms. He let many things affect him, and change who he was, and he was in the habit of putting on "poses", acting like who he wanted to be. I admired this about his character, that he was aware of what he was doing quite a bit of the time. I think most people act like who they want to be, or how they feel they should in different contexts, so at the end of the day we seldom, if never, actually act like ourselves.
An aspect of Fitzgerald's writing that appreciate, although much of it went over my head, is how educated his storytelling is. He makes many allusions to writers and philosophers, many of whom I don't recognize, but you can tell he is very well read, and this trait carries over to Amory. At first Amory's reading is introduced as part of a pose- he feels it's cultured to read deep books. And don't so many of us do this, though? Why did I even read this book in the first place? It's because it's a classic, and to a certain degree I feel special, or educated, or better than others by saying that I'm reading Fitzgerald. Of course it's not something that I'm proud of, and so I don't truly acknowledge it, but that's the thing about this book; it acknowledges truths and feelings that we hide from because they're distasteful. Amory acknowledges these things in himself, which is a little ironic considering he feels like he doesn't really know himself for most of the book. But back to his reading career, he soon becomes more and more involved in books and poets, and it stops being for the benefit of his image and becomes simply for himself. He starts writing, and thinking about ideas. This was the point where I really began to see myself in Amory's character. One of my favorite quotes was ," He was proud of the fact that he could never become a mechanical or scientific genius." I mean, that sounds pretty pretentious, right? And yet without letting myself be truly aware of it, that's how I've felt quite a bit of the time. Later Amory says to his friend, "I'm in a superior class. You are, too. We're philosophers." That was the quote that really cemented my love for this book, and for Amory as a character. Fitzgerald pinpoints that superiority that writers and philosophers and thinkers feel, combined with the inadequacy that is inherent in those types of people simultaneously, or, at least for me.
My favorite part of the novel was book one, where Amory is in prep school, and mainly, Princeton. It's the period where he experiments most with who he is and who he could be, and is surrounded by interesting individuals. The thing I like about Amory is his lack of motivation to achieve. He floats, and he doesn't live to get somewhere, he just lives for living, and he thinks, and he's subject to moods and whims and bursts of interest, all of which he takes in stride. At Princeton he did want to be class president, but when it came down to it, to really having to do something he didn't want to to achieve his goal, he gave it up. His friend told him, "You're a literary genius. It's up to you." to which Amory replied, " I wonder if I could be. I honestly think so sometimes. That sounds like the devil, and I wouldn't say it to anyone except you." It's interesting to consider that Fitzgerald may have been modeling much of this off of himself, that he was writing this book and put that in there because he thought it about what he was writing- he knew it was good but he couldn't say it outright, so he had his character say it for him.
After book one a lot of my interest for the novel waned. I knew from the start that there would be a lot of focus on love in the book because, well, the main character's name was AMORy, but the parts when Amory was in love tended to be my least favorite: they were the parts where I felt most distance from Amory. Maybe Fitzgerald meant for that to happen, because when Amory was in love he wasn't as in touch with himself. There was a part in the book that was written as a play, where Amory was in love with a girl Rosalind, and I liked this technique- it made the lovers seem like actors in a play. This was contrasted with Amory's next love, where everything was written in poetry and beautiful descriptions, like some kind of eloquent dream. Although I wasn't really as interested in the ideas of love in the book as in some other things, I did like how Amory tended to not be in love with actual people, but rather what he projected of himself onto them. This supported his persona of vanity and egotism. And I really do admire Fitzgerald's representation of the women in the story. There was not one weak woman character- they all were interesting and knew what they wanted, didn't fold to love like women in stories so often do. Fitzgerald saw the unfairness of womens' situations during the time, but instead of simply protest it, he made his women take advantage of it. No, they didn't like that they had to get married, but they didn't simply rebel and say they were in love. They understood love, but they saw the importance of marriage and money for them, and put themselves first above everything.
Fitzgerald expresses a lot of views on class and money, greed, social systems, but personally I'm not so interested in those things, which was one of the only downsides to me.
The writing style in the book was so beautiful- the F. Scott has a way with words where he can describe things in fresh new ways, clever ways, that show them in a light you had never seen them in before. I liked how much poetry was in the book- it was beautiful and added to the feel of the story. A complaint would be how much he jumps around- from place to place and time to time without so much transition or context, so that sometimes I got a little lost. But overall it was a very good book, and I can't wait to read more Fitzgerald's works.
Some of my favorite quotes:
"They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered."
"The great tapestries of trees had darkened to ghosts back at the last edge of twilight. The early moon had drenched the arches with pale blue, and, weaving over the night, in and out of the gossamer rifts of the moon, swept a song, a song with more than a hint of sadness, infinitely transient, infinitely regretful."
"'I was born one,' Amory murmured. 'I'm a cynical idealist." He paused and wondered if that meant anything."
"'I'll never be a poet,' said Amory as he finished. ' I'm not enough of a sensualist really; there are only a few obvious things that I notice as primarily beautiful: women, spring evenings, music at night, the sea; I don't catch the subtle things like 'silver snarling trumpets' . I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocre poetry.'"
"You'd sniffled through an era's must,
Filling your nostrils up with dust,
And then, arising from your knees,
Published, in one gigantic sneeze..."
"People unconsciously admit it,' said Amory. 'You'll notice a blonde person is expected to talk. If a blonde girl doesn't talk we call her a doll. If a light haired man is silent he's considered stupid. Yet the world is full of 'dark silent men' and 'languorous brunettes' who haven't a brain in their heads, but somehow are never accused of the dearth."
"And he must have remarked patronizingly how different he was from Eve, forgetting how different she was from him..."
"His judgement walked off to prison with the unconfined imp, imagination, dancing in mocking glee beside him."
"If we could only learn to look on evil as evil, whether it's clothed in filth or monotony or magnificence."
"SHE: You're not sentimental?
HE: No, I'm a romantic- a sentimental person thinks things will last- a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't."
"He wanted people to like his mind again- after awhile it might be such a nice place in which to live."
"'Then you don't think there will be any more permanent world heroes?'
'Yes-in history- not in life"
"The man in the street heard the conclusions of dead genius through someone else's clever paradoxes and didactic epigrams."
"'I know myself,' he cried, 'but that is all.''"
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