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5.0 out of 5 stars
VERY TOUCHING, VERY WELL DONE, April 10 2004
"It is seven thirty on an August evening. The windows in the living room of the gray house are wide open patiently exchanging the tainted inner atmosphere of liquor and smoke for the fresh drowsiness of the late hot dusk. There are dying flower scents upon the air, so thin, so fragile, as to hint already of as summer laid away in time." This is the story of a young couple Anthony and Gloria Patch living out their days to the hilt in New York City as they await the death of Anthony's grandfather, Adam Patch from whom they expect to inherit his massive fortune. Gloria is a spoilt child from Kansas City turned into a sophisticated and most beautiful woman. Gloria does not intend to lift a finger to do any domestic work in the home, no matter how slight; while Anthony who considers himself an aesthete, finds it quite hard to get his act together and instead of buckling down to some work, prefers instead to hang with his wife and their friends on nightly binges. They drink and eat in the classiest restaurants and hotels, rent the most expensive apartments, travel out to the West in the spring time driving plush cars, wearing top-of-the-line clothing and just generally living it up high on the hog, as they wait. Meet Maury Noble who is Anthony best friend who spends his time between New York and Philadelphia; Richard Caramel who has just completed a writing a book and looking for new ideas for a second one. Joseph Bloeckman from Munich who started out small in America and is now a big shot in Show Biz. Also the quiet Jewess Rachael Barnes and Muriel Kane who is young, flirtatious and sometimes a bit too talkative and Tana the Japanese housekeeper of the Patches. We are shown the Patches at their very best as the novel starts, with the world at their feet and loaded with cash with which they make very expensive choices. But, as we get further in, we see things begin to change gradually and we realize that those very choices will be their very downfall. It was quite a good read but it could be very heartbreaking at times as we put ourselves into the shoes of the main characters. All lovers of F. Scott Fitzgerald should read this book if you haven't done so already, and those of you who like reading about the ultra rich in the Roaring Twenties this one is for you. It is the kind of book that you feel you will want to read again. It is that good and I shall miss it. Heather Marshall 10/04/04
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4.0 out of 5 stars
The Tragic Tale of Anthony Patch, Mar 19 2004
The Beautiful and Damned, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a tragic tale of a man named Anthony, struggling with several issues. It begins with his own laziness and social anxiety, only to continue with an effort to achieve the love of a beautiful, yet seemingly unattainable, woman. War, alcohol and other women also play a large role in the struggles Anthony encounters throughout the novel. Ultimately, this book portrays the life of a man whose lackadaisical attitude about life, eventually leads to his own downfall and inevitable insanity.
Fitzgerald wrote this piece in order to analyze the time in which it was written. Throughout the entire novel, there is a specific reference to prohibition and how alcohol was used not only for pleasure, but also as an escape. Throughout the story, as Anthony's life becomes more troubling and hard for him to handle, the reader is able to see he resorts to alcohol more and more and it eventually ends up consuming his life. His addiction and lack of purpose in life eventually leads to his downfall. By the end, Anthony is unable to go one day, let alone a few hours, with out getting drunk and spends the little money he and his wife have to obtain more alcohol. This drunken scene only continues to grow worse after he enters the war scene.
Another significant event perceived by the author through this piece is the war. Fitzgerald was in the army, following his senior year at Princeton, and due to this, many of the details of the war in the novel may have been significant memories to Fitzgerald in which he wished to reveal to those who were uninformed. The war played a large role in this novel as a whole. While things were growing dull in Anthony and Gloria's marriage, issues in the world were elevating. When Anthony goes to enlist, their marriage is given time to breathe and recuperate while they are apart. Yet, Anthony's faithfulness is questioned once he has been away from Gloria for a while and he begins to forget his life back at home. While providing an escape for Anthony and Gloria's' marriage, the war changed their relationship. It seemed to be a turning point at first with Anthony's return, yet after the first week they were reunited, the couple was once again back to their fighting, drinking and partying away what little patience and money they still obtained.
Much like Anthony's character in the book, Fitzgerald's involvement in the war efforts had a large impact on his life. This greatly influenced the details of the war and Anthony's romantic love affair in the novel. While Fitzgerald was at one of his army posts, he met a girl named Zelda Sayre, who may have been represented by Dorothy's character in the novel. Yet in the novel, Anthony's affair with Dot was what eventually ate away at his pride and confidence. He had worked so long and hard to achieve Gloria's companionship. He had fought so hard to obtain what he thought to be unattainable, a beautiful, young, and full of life, woman. Yet, in the end, he allowed this relationship to disintegrate, and found himself in the arms of another. His guilt eventually became so great that he was unable to deal with it. This guilt lead him to eventually push away all of Dots' affections and do the only thing he knew how to do, drink her out of his memory. In the end, when Dot reappeared at his apartment door, begging for his love, no matter what the circumstance, Anthony's guilt, insanity and drunken state gave way to his need for her extinction. Following this instance, Anthony had nothing left to look forward to, and retreated into his mind, to a place in his childhood where he found comfort. There he stayed, no longer caring whether or not his grandfather's money was obtained or anything else, except his small stamp collection, living content only through his memories of the past.Another conflict of society at this time in which Fitzgerald attempted to portray was the carelessness of the upper class and their inevitable downfall. The Patch couple is a prime example of such social standings. Both came from relatively well off families, yet instead of taking responsibility for their lives and their future life together, they depended solely on the possibility of wealth from Adam's grandfather throughout their entire marriage. In any attempt to find a job to support themselves, they were easily distracted. Although eventually they won the lawsuit and the money Anthony's grandfather had unintentionally left, by this time it was pointless. It took five years to gain the money they had been waiting for, for so long. Ironically, it was not until Anthony had given up both physically and psychologically, that the money was obtained. This symbolized how hard and long someone can work for something, eventually driving themselves to insanity before the goal is reached and once it's actually achieved, one is too exhausted both physically and mentally to care anymore.
In this novel, the author accurately portrayed life during this time, and showed his feelings on issues such as war, love, money, social standing and sanity. The author's indication of how these issues correspond with and affect each other as well as the outcome of the combination of such issues is revealed through this novel. This allows the reader to get an accurate sense of life during this time, both of the prosperous and those who struggled. The war had a great affect on the sanity, monetary situation, and relationships of many men at this time allowing for the creation of such characters as in The Beautiful and Damned. Yet Fitzgerald took it one-step further and created a dramatic and eventually tragic love story that grips the reader until the last line of the story with Anthony saying, "I showed them...It was a hard fight, but I didn't give up and I came through!" (449).
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Often Beautiful, If Ultimately Damned, Jan 28 2004
Fitzgerald's second novel shows a maturation rather than maturity. It is a no-frills, yet poignant and focused portrait of the profoundly amoral young aristocracy boozing up the 1920s, rather than a predictable rise-and-fall morality tale. Here, Fitzgerald holds the reins over his language; he is firmly in control, cutting down on some long-winded passages and verbosity seen in This Side of Paradise.B&D is true to the values of its hero, Anthony Patch, a superfluous and utterly indolent Harvard graduate who's far less sure of what he wants and likes than what he doesn't, except of course, for Gloria, a beautiful and narcissistic partner whose taste is compatible with his own. Awaiting his grandfather's demise, the young couple drinks away their days and nights because there is nothing else they can conceive of doing. Their friends are a philosopher whose fundamental maxim is that there is nothing worth doing and a writer whose early promise deteriorates into banal tripe - a tragic waste of talent he is blind to. Fitzgerald's prose and story are so deceptively fluid that the reader can miss many passive and active attitudes, bereft of any values or standards (other than aesthetic ones), towards life, family, fidelity, war, and death. In this world, marriage is a refuge from boredom (albeit a hopeless one), work is debasing, war is a decoration of the moneyed class, and wealth itself is a presumption. As, usual, Fitzgerald's strengths (reaching the acme in Gatsby) are in his ability to describe feelings and moments. From Anthony's courthship of Gloria to his military affair with Dot, FSF never loses the palpable understanding of his own characters to satisfy effect.
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