Country: USA
Genre: Literary/Drama
Pages: 388
I am one of those people that thinks there's really nothing to dislike about Francis Scott Fitzgerald and THE BEAUTIFUL & DAMNED is another novel that proves my point. He's to literature what The Beatles were to music. An artist that got sophisticated with time, but didn't lose any of his mass appeal by doing so. The stories of Fitzgerald are ones you can relate to and his characters are so deep and complex that you can't never completely hate the villains or fall in love blindly with the good guys. Fitzgerald is a master at drawing beautiful and flawed human beings (and I don't like to throw this word around, "master"). THE BEAUTIFUL & DAMNED was the novel he wrote right before his magnum opus, THE GREAT GATSBY. While the language is not as studied and luxuriant and the story might not be as airtight, it's one of the most tragic and compelling character studies I have ever been given the chance to read. Mr. Fitzgerald, you rocked my world again.
THE BEAUTIFUL & DAMNED is the story of Anthony Patch and his wife Gloria. Anthony is the heir of an impending fortune that takes time to arrive. He's a youth who never had to worry about money in his life, so his standard for living is very high. Gloria doesn't come from the same background as him and sees the money gradually disappear along with their union, her youth and her beauty. THE BEAUTIFUL & DAMNED is about the slow and painful death of innocence at the hands of reality. The story structure is very loose (and it's apparent from the way Fitzgerald built his chapters), but the story itself is the characters. The growing gap in between Anthony and Gloria's reality and the sheltered world they live in with their friends. Anthony's drifting through life, waiting for it to get easy and just keeps getting worse as some of his friends are working very hard and find success. It's fascinating to see their fate meet and go different ways like inverted bell diagrams. The slow, steamrolling thud of reality, crushing the American dream.
My two favorite characters in THE BEAUTIFUL & DAMNED were Gloria and Anthony's writer friend Richard Caramel. Gloria is a little girl, slowly withering in a world for grown-ups. She's beautiful, she's always been told she was and that seems to be the only thing she wants to preserve. Anthony's failing her as the provider for her eternal youth and becomes slowly, page by page, the source of her despair. Caramel (what a weird name), I thought was first brought in for comedic relief. Anthony and his friend Maury are poking fun at him in the beginning. But his work eventually finds a home, encouraging him to work harder and to write more. He becomes a symbol of the hard working pursuit of a dream. Richard touches his dream by having a hard working, no non-sense attitude, but also by believing in something, unlike Anthony. Richard is driven by his thirst for aesthetic beauty and finds his way through and empty and materialistic world because of this guiding light he set for himself.
I have read THE BEAUTIFUL & DAMNED in four frenzied sitting, and especially in a memorable five hours, two hundred pages long one, where I couldn't pry myself away from the pages to save my life. I was hungry, I was sleepy, but damn I had a killer book, so who cares? While I don't think this novel is outdoing THE GREAT GATSBY as an emotional experience and efficiency, it's a little easier of approach. I haven't read THIS SIDE OF PARADISE yet (although this is bound to happen very soon), but I would say THE BEAUTIFUL & DAMNED is a very good introduction to Fitzgerald. It's longer than Gatsby, but it's simpler and it's flowing a lot better. You're going to read a hundred pages and look at your watch seeing that you've missed bedtime because you were caught-up in the story. Yep, this is THAT kind of book. Definitively, that Fitzgerald guy can do no wrong.