The Beautiful and Damned

Maybe it’s just me, but to me personally “The Beautiful and the Damned” drew a lot of parallels with Fitzgerald’s personal life and relationship with his wife, Zelda. Certain aspects of it come across as eerily autobiographical, but maybe that’s what makes the novel so positively fascinating.Set in the age of jazz and prohibition, Anthony and Gloria represent a perfect picture of the entire high-society generation of that time. The transition between old money and the nouveau-riche of New York society is wonderfully presented, and both of our characters find themselves caught in the swirl of that new age, with nothing to offer it. They’re young and clueless and entirely devoted to the idea that lavish lifestyle is something that they’re both entitled to without having to actually do something to support that lifestyle. After putting all of their hopes into Anthony’s inheritance which he should have gotten from his exceedingly rich grandfather, they learn that the elderly gentleman wrote off all of his money to his aid and multiple charities instead. But even that doesn’t stop them from selling more bonds and throwing more parties all the while hoping to win the money back through the interminable court appeals.From that point on, the couple’s story became a train wreck from which one can’t tear their eyes off. With the same apathetic attitude, Anthony develops a drinking problem all the while thinking himself being somehow cheated out of his rightful position in society. Driven to near poverty in a shabby apartment, both Gloria and Anthony live hand to mouth most of the time, yet both still positively refuse to do anything about it. The ending was… interesting. On one hand, I was glad everything turned out as it did for the couple; on the other, I was a bit disappointed as a lesson was clearly not learned by either.The setting and the prose is fabulous as always, and Fitzgerald doesn’t disappoint with his imaginative metaphors and set of characters, some of whom you’ll love and some - detest. Fitzgerald was indeed the voice of his generation and the novel is worth reading just for that reason. It’s not as brilliant as “Gatsby,” but it’s brilliant nevertheless, in its own, somewhat shallow and destructive, way. Highly recommended.

There's a reason F. Scott is one of the GOATs. What he can do in describing a dinner scene is greater than what most authors can do in their entire novels. The words here are beautiful, decadent, oozing style and grace and charm and sensuality in spades. While the pacing is often slow, when you realize that it was done deliberately you begin to enjoy the words upon words F. Scott uses to delve into the minutiae of these people's lives. Anthony and Gloria aren't exactly likable characters, and they weren't meant to be, but in watching their lives fall apart and their dreams become ever more deferred they do manage to extract a tiny bit of sympathy from the reader. If you have some time on your hands and enjoy a little bit of schaudenfreude, it's more than worth a read.

I have read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby at least twenty times. I truly believe it is the great American novel. Having read Fitzgerald’s first novel and found it dull, I decided it was time to try the second one The Beautiful and the Damned. This novel is filled with the beautiful turns of phrase that Fitzgerald is known for. I reveled in the words. It was obvious, to me, that this work points toward Gatsby. It is said that he and his wife Zelda were the prototypes for the main characters Anthony and Gloria in The Beautiful and the Damned. But the life of debauchery these two lead could not have been identical to Scott and Zelda’s, for Anthony, in the book, does not have the self-discipline to do any work, much less write a masterpiece like Gatsby. As for the character Gloria, she points toward Daisy in The Great Gatsby, both beautiful, flighty, and reckless. As for the plot, like novel number one The Other Side of Midnight, not a lot happens very fast. In fact, in The Beautiful and the Damned, we read almost two thirds of the novel before much happens, other than endless drinking and partying. Eventually, we readers do get caught up in the plot somewhat, and the ending—which is not the ending I was hoping for—is actually a good one. Ultimately, I, not being a Fitzgerald scholar, see this book as a precursor, a sketchbook if you will, to the masterpiece. The Great Gatsby is a compact story with well-drawn characters couched in gorgeous language. The Beautiful and the Damned is a long, and, for me, drawn out journey on Fitzgerald’s path to greatness.

As others have said here, this is no Gatsby. Nor should it have to try to be--if Gatsbys were a dime a dozen, the literary sphere would be a much different place. This novel does indeed suffer from occasional prosiness, an attitude that is perhaps too bleak, and a cast of characters you probably wouldn't want to speak to even if you were paid for your time. But it also contains moments of brilliant lyricism almost on par with some of the writing in Gatsby, and although you wouldn't necessarily want to befriend its cast of characters, their struggles and situations are universal to all of us.This is a novel about rich white people in the years around WW1 suffering from ennui, and if you can't handle that sort of thing as a matter of principle, you should probably look for a different book. The characters are not likeable in any conventional or meaningful sense: they make terrible decisions, say terrible things, and spend much of the novel destroying themselves and one another. That's why it's important that, before you read this, you dispense with the idea that characters need to be likeable to be empathetic. Although we may not relate to the extraordinary amounts of privilege these people possess, we can relate to their habits and attitudes--all of us have gone into slumps, deferred on our responsibilities, spat at the world, and done things that we regret. These are the things that constitute the lives of the characters of this novel. If we find these things to be unlikeable in our characters, maybe that's just because we don't like them in ourselves.

How to describe the entirety of this novel?Often I will put one or two lines on Goodreads after finishing a book. For The Beautiful and Damned, the lines were as follows:“What a beautiful and strangely desolate novel. My goodness.”And The Beautiful and Damned is exactly that. It soars from theatrical beauty and then plummets to cold desolation, to unfolding of horrific emotion. The characters are at once vivid and on the verge of crumbling. The prose, as ever, is delicious, decadent and evocative.The theatricality comes mainly in the form of Gloria, a shining beacon for the indulgence of the Jazz Age, who delights in the social freedom and seemingly exquisite nature of her life, and who enthrals Anthony Patch, a writer and the narrator of this tale of excess. Within the first few pages of their encounters, it occurred to me that both characters seemed to represent both Scott and Zelda. Once this idea had taken hold, I found it impossible to shake off, and by the time I closed the book on the final page, I was convinced that this was what The Beautiful and Damned was: Scott’s wishful thinking for their life and his bitterness and adoration for his wife poured into a single novel.Which is heartbreaking, but it makes for a compelling and achingly wistful tale. Admittedly, it took me a good few pages to get into the story – I was waiting for Gloria to appear and ignite the fireworks – but when the lady arrived, I was gripped. I followed every encounter with wide eyes, and I admit that I had no idea how the novel would end, if it would be happy or not. When the end did indeed come, I found the climax very startling, very sudden. Some might argue that it was too sudden, that the novel feels cut off or rushed because of it, but I disagree. It left me shocked, but realising later on that it had been building up to it, with both characters hurtling towards trouble and not knowing how to stop. It was gripping, wonderful, and agonising all at once.Anyone who knows me will tell you how much I adore Fitzgerald’s style, and The Beautiful and Damned only reinforced this love for his writing. It is a complex exploration of human character, and the heights it goes to are dizzying, as are the sudden falls.I highly, highly recommend this. I cannot recommend it enough. The Great Gatsby might be considered his masterpiece, but I much prefer the characters in The Beautiful and Damned. They’ve stuck in my head much longer than Gatsby or Daisy Buchanan have.And that really is saying something.

I loved this book.It sets up it’s characters as wealthy, beautiful, privileged, educated, imbued with imagination and dreams.Only to have them squander everything from money to love, illusions overturned, with harsh reality crushing them.Gorgeous, glorious writing.F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote beautifully, he lived too fast and died too young.Maybe that tragic darkness makes his sentences shine that much brighter.

The quality of this book is absolutely AWFUL. I didn’t realise the copy I was buying was independently published. The paper is so thin you can see the words from the next page through the page you’re reading and the text has just been dumped in, in the most lazy way. It’s like they had a word document and just printed it into a book without a thought for how to actually format it in a way people can read. The paragraphs are all over the place, the spacing between words is off and the chapter heads are just randomly printed in a larger font.It’s also a really weird size- not the size or feel of a normal paperback book. It’s much bigger and flimsier which makes it really hard to read comfortably.It feels very amateur and I’m really surprised this book is even allowed to be sold. I will be returning my copy as it’s just unreadable

The writing is beautiful and it paints vivid pictures. There's not a single likeable character to warm to and it's tragically sad that people with so much can make such a sad mess of life.

F.Scott Fitzgerald's reputation rests chiefly on his magnum opus - the irrepressible The Great Gatsby, however sometime before Gatsby came this novel - the tale of a pair of socialites who marry with great hope and passion, but whose fortunes are soon undermined by alcohol, money, and regret. Gloria and Anthony's presumptuous attitude and decadent leanings are portrayed as indicative of 1920s US culture, and the novel is a very one-sided affair that leaves little room for hope or optimism. Despite this it's an absorbing read, and as the fortunes of the pair start to shift, the underlying tensions are laid bare, and the once united lovers start to become prised apart by their own greed and ambition.