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This Side of Paradise

3.69 of 5 stars 3.69 · rating details · 21,325 ratings · 1,384 reviews

This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald's romantic and witty first novel, was written when the author was only twenty-three years old. This semiautobiographical story of the handsome, indulged, and idealistic Princeton student Amory Blaine received critical raves and catapulted Fitzgerald to instant fame. Now, readers can enjoy the newly edited, authorized version of th...more

Paperback, 288 pages

Published July 14th 1998 by Scribner (first published 1920)

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Sep 06, 2012 Anne Nikoline rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Fitzgerald fans

Recommended to Anne Nikoline by: hardcore Fitzgerald fans

Shelves: adult-ilterature, classics, american-literature, fiction, own-a-copy, poetry, read-in-2012

This Side of Paradise by F. S. Fitzgerald is something very different from his other works, however, it also happens to be his first published work which got a lot of negative critique. The reason why I happened to like it was because of the author's never failing language and writing style; no matter what Fitzgerald did, he never seemed to fail his audience in this matter.

As I have already mention, this is his first published novel, and the reason why it is so much different from the rest of t...more

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Feb 29, 2008 Lee rated it 4 of 5 stars

Of all the writing by writers in their early 20s I've read (and written), this book is down the street and around the corner from most. I wish I'd read about the Romantic Egotist before I wrote a book called Incidents of Egotourism in the Temporary World that also takes place in the Princeton area. (I loved when Amory Blaine biked at night with a friend from P'ton to my hometown.) Fitzgerald writes sharp, swervy, gorgeous, clever sentences, pretty much always with his eyes on the socio-existenti...more

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Jun 13, 2012 David Fleming rated it 3 of 5 stars

So how is it that this novel, despite it’s shortcomings, was still able to be successful? Ask any New York agent to represent your literary novel with a male protagonist and he'll tell you: “Literary novel’s with a male protagonist are hard sells.” And they are. Think about it: How many literary novels with male protagonists have you enjoyed in the last, say, five years? Probably zero. The key to the success of This Side of Paradise is in Fitzgerald’s mastery of the Male Protagonist in a Literar...more So how is it that this novel, despite it’s shortcomings, was still able to be successful? Ask any New York agent to represent your literary novel with a male protagonist and he'll tell you: “Literary novel’s with a male protagonist are hard sells.” And they are. Think about it: How many literary novels with male protagonists have you enjoyed in the last, say, five years? Probably zero. The key to the success of This Side of Paradise is in Fitzgerald’s mastery of the Male Protagonist in a Literary Novel Problem. But why should this even be a problem at all? It’s my belief that males generally don’t relate to one and other. They dominate each other. The question of ‘do you respect a full grown man?’ really comes down to: ‘is he dominate in some way?’

In a literary novel, a male protagonist is essentially going after the status quo. He’s saying that the society in which you live needs to change. We’re not apt to give credence to a full grown male who thinks things should change and yet is not in a powerful situation. We’ll assume it’s sour grapes. So, in a literary novel, a male lead must be powerful enough to have an unbiased view of the problem he sees with society. The difficulty is that powerful, dominant men generally don’t tend to be sensitive and open-minded enough to appreciate a societal problem. What’s needed in a literary male protagonist is a delicate balance of sensitivity and strength that we don’t normally see in the real world.

Many a would-be author will pen a male protagonist who just isn’t strong enough for us to feel sympathy for him. And striking this balance, or countermining this principle, has been the secret struggle of many a literary author. Shakespeare’s Hamlet was a whinny, emotional punk… but he was the king of Denmark; T.S. Garp was a famous author; most all of Hemingway's male leads were war veterans or soldiers or, in the case of The Old Man and the Sea, handicapped with age. Other ways to get around the unsympathetic male protagonist is with youth, ie, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Finn, or insanity, (see: Hamlet, yet again), Lolita, Moby Dick (Captain Ahab) and Slaughter House Five.

The average, weak and sensitive male is to be avoided at all costs by the would-be author of literary fiction. History shows us that it is only kind to those that follow this principle and This Side of Paradise is no exception. Where Fitzgerald succeeds is with his execution of what I’ll call the Snob Narrator (something that he wasted no time in establishing in The Great Gatsby). Armory Blaine is sensitive and weak in many ways—for example his vanity—but since he is a Princeton student and literary scholar, we know he also has dominance. It’s this balance of sensitivity and strength (much like Shakespeare’s Hamlet) that convince us through the 268 pages of this novel until the very end that Armory Blaine might have the solution to what is wrong with society. SPOILER ALERT: He didn’t. Fun read though. And very inventive.
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Jul 01, 2008 oriana rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2008, why-werent-you-better

after reading: Meh. Meh, meh, meh. See, this is the problem with re-reading books that shine so bright in your memory — sometimes they just don't live up. I mean, there's really no reason I shouldn't have loved this book. It's filled with philosophical musings and snappy, flirty dialogue; it's pleasantly disjointed, very slice-of-life-y; it's definitely full of verve and probably powerful ideas.... but I just couldn't get into it. I was in fact very impatient throughout. I found Amory Blaine to...more

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May 22, 2013 Kat (Le Pauvre Cœur) rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: F. Scott Fitzgerald fans who are patient

Recommended to Kat (Le Pauvre Cœur) by: Myself.

Shelves: classics, beach-reads

Amory Blaine was always a selfish, unsympathetic child. He grows up to be a fine egotist, attending Princeton Academy and always becomes a victim of love in the end.

I am in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing. I have been ever since I read The Great Gatsby. I would kill to be able to write like him.
His descriptions, his flow, are so beautifully executed that it takes some of the attention away from a boring and non-active story.
Okay, in my last status update, I said this book was amazing. Li...more

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Nov 05, 2012 Tom rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, literary-genre-fiction, classics

There's no denying that F. Scott Fitzgerald was a gifted writer, even in the beginning.

A lot of his problems lay in the thinly-veiled autobiographical nature of his novels.

In "This Side of Paradise," the protagonist--he certainly never does anything heroic--is Amory Blaine. Like Fitzgerald, Amory was born into a family with money, went to prep school then Princeton, drank too much, couldn't find the right woman, and briefly wrote for an ad agency.

The problem with using a bright, young man as a...more

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Dec 11, 2007 Kirk rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sentimental-faves

A very flawed novel but one much adored in its day---in fact, Paradise was FSF's best known work during his lifetime (not Gatsby). Inevitably, biographers pun on it: THE FAR SIDE OF PARADISE, EXILES FROM PARADISE, CHEESEBURGER IN PARADISE---okay, maybe not that last one, but you get the point.

What's most interesting about TSOP (as we in the Fitz biz call it) is the new type of Bildungsroman it established. Unlike Victorian coming-of-age novels (think Dickens), Amory Blaine's story avoids easy re...more

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Nov 04, 2007 Adrianne Mathiowetz rated it 3 of 5 stars

Someone needed to tell F. Scott Fitzgerald to stop writing poetry and including it in this book as the work of his characters. You have to read it, because it's freaking F. Scott Fitzgerald and you don't skim the man's work, but honestly this was insufferable.

There were passages in this book that I loved, and parts that I couldn't put down: but overall the work seemed uneven. The plot structure wasn't really there. The whole focus of the book is simply one character's development as a person fr...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Lily rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Lily by: Light to Read By Retreat

Just read this for an upcoming retreat. Delightful. Hard to realize such mastery at such a young age. (Fitzgerald's first novel written when he was in his twenties.) So many lyrical lines. His politics may go a bit astray at the end, IMHO. But, he was young and time for such exploration. Also amazing is his ability to make comparisons across authors and philosophers. I suppose this reflects his prep school and Princeton education? Can see the outlines of his own upcoming life with Zelda. Somewha...more

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Aug 02, 2007 Christine rated it 3 of 5 stars

If you liked the Great Gatsby this might be one to check out. The main character isn't quite like Gatsby: he seems to be the sort that starts out with the white upper-class set, and his quest for a sort of "American Dream" isn't like Gatsby's rise to riches, but I felt like Amory's fate mirrored the "downfall" like Gatsby's. The chapters on the romance of Amory and his gals somehow makes me visualize it was very similar to F. Scott (Scotty) Fitzgerald's courting of Zelda, or if you are not famil...more

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Jan 20, 2009 Dan rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fitzgerald completeists, prep school wannabes

Recommended to Dan by: masochistic id

Too little here to like, too much here to ignore. This book comprises set-pieces in the life of a boy growing into adulthood. Amory is attracted and repulsed by his peers endlessly re-classifying them while working his way through prep-school, Princeton, and the trailings of a trust fund in New York.

Amory's internal struggles often come across as affectations-- his lack of energy and focus less a concern for Fitzgerald than his hero's attempts to define success and thereby himself. I want to bel...more

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May 05, 2013 Katie rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was hard. I am probably not intellectually mature enough for this, or, if I try not to be so self-depricating, it seems like Fitzgerald wraps his ideas in circling words that never quite make their point. I'll concede probably the former and not the latter. In other words - you guys, I don't get it! But it had some pretty moments -

Here's a very relevant one:
" 'Fifty years after Waterloo Napoleon was as much a hero to English school children as Wellington. How do we know our grandchildr...more

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Apr 15, 2013 Alan Keslian rated it 2 of 5 stars

I very much admire this author's short stories and novel "The Great Gatsby", but I found this book difficult. It is an early work, and much of the story is about the life of a rich boy at home in the US and later attending Princeton, and then life after surviving 1st World War. Perhaps the environment described - the moneyed class in the United States in the early 20th century - is simply too far from my own - middle income, British, late 20th to early 21st century.
The book was very successful w...more

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Mar 15, 2013 Steve rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Very interesting to read a popular intelligent novel from 1920 America. It's not a literature I know at all.

The world of this novel is of upper middle-class Americans in college and immediately afterwards - Fitzgerald clearly knows this world and shares it with us with appropriate critical distance, although his perspective, like that of his protagonist Amory, remains firmly rooted in that world. However, it is more interesting than that, in that Amory in his aspiration to be a great writer all...more

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Mar 08, 2013 Tangueray added it

"People one could be contemptuous of and charming about; a culture rich in all arts and traditions, barren of all ideas, in the last of those days when the great gardener clipped the inferior roses to produce one perfect bud". F. Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise" captured my attention with his romance and deep vocabulary of a young man named Amory Blaine trying to figure out love.

The book is written with two books and an interlude. The first book being The Romantic Egotist and the seco...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Alnoory. rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was F.Scott Fitzgerald' first novel and strangely the bestselling novel of his lifetime. I say strange because The Great Gatsby is the novel that comes to mind (though I liked The Beautiful and the Damned the best.) Fitzgerald has always been described as the voice of the Jazz age, 1920s, and it was this novel that was said to define it actually came out well before. This is interesting because Fitzgerald essentially then predicted it with this novel. The 1920s saw the end of the World War...more This was F.Scott Fitzgerald' first novel and strangely the bestselling novel of his lifetime. I say strange because The Great Gatsby is the novel that comes to mind (though I liked The Beautiful and the Damned the best.) Fitzgerald has always been described as the voice of the Jazz age, 1920s, and it was this novel that was said to define it actually came out well before. This is interesting because Fitzgerald essentially then predicted it with this novel. The 1920s saw the end of the World War I, the war to end all wars. Mass killing hadn't been seen on that scale in modern times, as the US was catapulted into the European conflict, it had to directly confront the modern age. The youth who were drafted and fought in this war (like the 1960s) questioned the absurdity of such an event and with it the value systems of the civilized nations that partook in it. The protagonist of this novel then represents this disillusionment trying to make sense of this societal shift.

Though considered the last romantic American novelist, his first novel does everything to dispel this. Presented is riches to rags story, that actually comes to play out like a realist novel. It is about a young man who is born into a good situation and graduates to a prep school and goes on to Princeton only to start in uncertainty in New York City soon after. The Jazz age as depicted through this character is that of uncertainty. Essentially torn between idleness and ambition, self absorbed yet highly capable is what the character is. In the end however he reveals himself to be that of a hopeless romantic.

Interesting enough this novel is quite autobiographic. Yet it shows a maturity as the character is set for failure on its onset. The opening chapter suggests this thought with the title, "The Romantic Egotist." Like Balzac's protagonists the young man is too narcissistic and egotistical to really succeed, yet realism pervades. Quotes from the main character reflecting this sentiment, "I'll never be a poet. I'm not enough of a sensualist really; there are only a few obvious things that I notice as primarily beautiful: women, spring in evenings, music at night, the sea I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocre poetry." The autobiographical nature can again be felt throughout. A good one.(less)

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Feb 10, 2013 Lucian McMahon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I thought the ending weak.

“Yet he knew that where now the spirit of spires and towers made him dreamily acquiescent, it would then overawe him. Where now he realized only his own inconsequence, effort would make him aware of his own impotency and insufficiency” (51-52).

“Don’t let yourself feel worthless; often through life you will really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself; and don’t worry about losing your ‘personality’, as you persist in calling it; at fifteen you had the...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Dave marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: calibre, fiction

EDITORIAL REVIEW: AMORY ELAINE inherited from his Brother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while. His father, an ineffectual, inarticulate man with a taste for Byron and a. habit of drowsing over the Encyclopeadia Britannica, grew wealthy at thirty through .the death of two elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers, and in the first flush of feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harbor and met Beatnce'Q'Hara. In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down t...more

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Dec 30, 2012 Jared Logan rated it 2 of 5 stars

The Great Gatsby is colossal. It's one of those books from your high school reading list that you probably still like. I do. I love Gatsby. When I saw the Baz Luhrman movie was coming out I remembered that I once promised myself I would read all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels. This Side of Paradise is his first novel, published in 1920.

It's not a good book, but it's a sincere book. It's an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink book. You can tell young F. Scott Fitzgerald put EVERYTHING HE HAD into th...more The Great Gatsby is colossal. It's one of those books from your high school reading list that you probably still like. I do. I love Gatsby. When I saw the Baz Luhrman movie was coming out I remembered that I once promised myself I would read all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels. This Side of Paradise is his first novel, published in 1920.

It's not a good book, but it's a sincere book. It's an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink book. You can tell young F. Scott Fitzgerald put EVERYTHING HE HAD into this book. His life, his loves, his poetry, every idea, every experience--he crammed it all in here and called it a novel. A lot of it doesn't fit together. Not all of it is interesting. Some of it is truly puzzling. The saving grace is that behind it all there's this exuberance and passion that keeps you turning the pages.

There's not much plot to speak of. At first you're reading a bildungsroman, the story of a young american, Amory Blaine, coming of age at Princeton University. Then the story seems to focus on his love life and becomes very episodic, with touches that show you this is a very autobiographical book. The last third of the book gets...experimental. Part of it is written as a one-act play. One brief section is stream-of-consciousness (the introduction says Fitzgerald was inspired by Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man). Then there are the poems. Loads and loads of poems. Some of them are just sort of hanging there in the middle of the chapter, without a lot of context as to what they're doing there. Oh, and there are reading lists of the hip authors Amory and his friends are reading at Princeton. Huge swaths of the novel are just discussions between Amory and his classmates about literature.

So, yeah, all the freshman mistakes are here. I can tell F. Scott Fitzgerald is a first-time novelist here because he makes the mistake new comedians make. They do stand-up comedy ABOUT stand-up comedy. Here, Fitzgerald is writing about writing before he knows how to write.

He's still more brilliant than you or I will ever be. Each section, by itself, is obviously the work of a very precocious young genius in the offing. They don't make a novel when you glue them all together, but taken a piece at a time there's a lot of fascinating stuff here. I particularly liked the section where Amory Blaine meets the devil. And some of the Princeton bits reminded me so much of my own college experience, how your mind develops and your ideas change during that time.

But what I take away is how ON FIRE Fitzgerald was to write, to get it all down, to get it all out there. That excitement is there in every line. That's the lesson of the book and it's a good one.

Oh, and I also take away that 'Amory Blaine' is a terrible name for a character.(less)

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Nov 28, 2012 Brendan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Following life, liberty and the pursuits of American youth, the narrator's voice is of the well-to-do university student. Published in 1920, This Side of Paradise's wanderings ring familiar almost 100 years later. The book asks the usual First World literary questions. Is life worth living. Is being young a prerequisite for change. Is conformity or its opposite false. Does having a family, or merely getting older, age one into conservative pursuits. Is socialism overly idealistic. Are advertisin...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Ms. Ford rated it 4 of 5 stars

This Side of Paradise captures the life of a pretentious man's plight from childhood into the sunken sorrows of young adulthood. Amory, an over-zealous academic who resembles not only Fitzgerald but also every I-take-myself-too-seriously student in America, seeks to find his identity in a nation that already has pre-determined what characterizes a "gentleman:" becoming an Ivy-League student; getting drunk with friends and sleeping with girls; having a witty manner; and writing well. But even liv...more

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Oct 19, 2012 Seth rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american-literature

One of the things I loved about this book was the character development. We first encounter the protagonist Amory Blaine as a privileged young boy and we accompany him on his journey to prep school, university, and early career. Essentially, this is a coming-of-age novel featuring all of the customary rites of passage.

From the beginning, Fitzgerald describes Amory as a romantic egotist. Only in the last chapter does the egotist evolve into a personage, as he achieves self-understanding. One of t...more One of the things I loved about this book was the character development. We first encounter the protagonist Amory Blaine as a privileged young boy and we accompany him on his journey to prep school, university, and early career. Essentially, this is a coming-of-age novel featuring all of the customary rites of passage.

From the beginning, Fitzgerald describes Amory as a romantic egotist. Only in the last chapter does the egotist evolve into a personage, as he achieves self-understanding. One of the most fascinating elements of the maturation process is that Amory, whose first letter is a juvenile response to an invitation to a children's apple bobbing party, gradually becomes more sophisticated in his ability to communicate. Fitzgerald's ability to capture this linguistic evolution in all its subtlety is one of his singular achievements as an author.

Another fascination that the book has for me is its depiction of Princeton University (my alma mater) before, during, and after World War I. In the period of pre-war innocence, Amory was drawn to Princeton "with its atmosphere of bright colors and its alluring reputation as the pleasantest country club in America." Little did he suspect that his classmates would soon be marching in uniform in the gymnasium and shipped off to war in Europe.

The chapter describing his arrival on campus is called "spires and gargoyles." Amory is a dreamy, undisciplined student and social climber who wanders the campus in a daze and eventually pays the price for his lassitude by failing a class in solid geometry. He is still a dreamer upon graduation, but at least one who is better read than when he arrived.

As much as Princeton has changed since Fitzgerald's day, some of the campus traditions described in the book still exist. For example, ambitious students still try out for the Triangle Club (a musical group that tours the country over the holidays), the chairmanship of the Daily Princetonian (the student newspaper known as "the Prince"), and the eating clubs of their choice. Incredibly, reunions were already being held (the author recounts the quiet presence of a class that graduated shortly after the Civil War). Already back then, previous university president Woodrow Wilson had failed to abolish the eating clubs in an effort to raise Princeton's academic standards. However, Wilson did not entirely fail. He left behind two legacies: an undergraduate senior thesis requirement and discussion classes known as "preceptorials." Nevertheless, as far as traditions and some perceptions are concerned, the cliche still fits: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

At the end of the book, having hit rock bottom in work and romance, a chastened Amory returns to campus--itself now transformed by the war just ended--because he considers it to be his real home. More than that, it represents a mecca and source of inspiration. Fitzgerald captures Amory's mood:

"Long after midnight the towers and spires of Princeton were visible, with here and there a late-burning light--and suddenly out of the clear darkness the sound of bells. As an endless dream it went on; the spirit of the past brooding over a new generation, the chosen youth from the muddled, unchastened world, still fed romantically on the mistakes and half-forgotten dreams of dead statesmen and poets. Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken..."(less)

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Aug 18, 2012 Jeff rated it 4 of 5 stars

Though not as remarkable as his later works, This Side of Paradise is a novel of astute observations into common aspects of life described in ways most readers would have considered unthought-of. Fitzgerald has the uncanny ability to be witty, observant, and uniquely descriptive at once.

Following in the vein of Joyce's Portrait of an Artist (published only 4 years before) and to be followed by Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (only a few years after), Fitzgerald opines on the age-old Lost Generat...more

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Aug 06, 2012 Mitch rated it 3 of 5 stars

TL;DR - Some people (particularly young people) don't know what to do with their lives, and the rich are different than the rest of us.

If I didn't know by reading the foreward that this was Fitzgerald's first novel, I may have guessed it anyway. The story is draws most of it's major plot elements from the author's life, and the narration and style of the novel shift drastically several times. Which isn't to say that it's a bad book or a bad story, because it is fairly enjoyable overall, but some...more TL;DR - Some people (particularly young people) don't know what to do with their lives, and the rich are different than the rest of us.

If I didn't know by reading the foreward that this was Fitzgerald's first novel, I may have guessed it anyway. The story is draws most of it's major plot elements from the author's life, and the narration and style of the novel shift drastically several times. Which isn't to say that it's a bad book or a bad story, because it is fairly enjoyable overall, but some things jump out that mark it as a Freshman effort.

The middle of the story cuts away from the novel format and becomes a play, complete with stage direction. There are also a few sections where the story is carried through letters written by the characters. These sections work, in and of themselves, but I found it jarring. Perhaps I was supposed to. I don't recall any explanation and I can't think of any reason for the shift, as these sections of the story could have been told equally as well using Fitzgerald's regular prose. My guess is that he was just trying whatever he felt like and throwing it against the wall. It isn't enough to drive the reader to distraction, but it did take me out of the story for a time.

The story itself, which explores growing up before and after the first world war, and the beginning of what would come to be known as the "Roaring '20s", is fairly good. The main character, Amory Blaine, is a handsome, charismatic, intelligent, and insecure boy who grows up to be a handsome, charismatic, intelligent, and insecure man.

Possible Spoilers: Amory doesn't know what he wants to do with his life, and floats along the paths of most interest and least resistance. While he makes friends incredibly easily, he seems to have a hard time connecting to people, and an even harder time finding the point in anything. He stumbles through prep school, Princeton, and a war, and doesn't find anything worth putting any real effort into. He falls in and out of love and employment, and at the end of the novel, hasn't really changed or figured anything out.

Which, quite likely, is why I enjoyed the book. The character is easy to relate to as a male who grew up thinking they were charismatic, and intelligent (handsome just isn't in the cards for all of us), only to later find out that our insecurities are far closer to the truth. Guess what Amory? Nobody else has life figured out either. Welcome to the club. We have cake.(less)

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Jul 21, 2012 Nyssa rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. My favorite quotes from the book:

He asked her if she thought he was conceited. She said there was a difference between conceit and self-confidence. She adored self-confidence in men.
(p.63)

"Sometimes," he said slowly, "I think you're my bad angel. I might have been a pretty fair poet."
"come on, that's rather hard. you chose to come to an Eastern college. Either your eyes were opened to the mean scrambling quality of people, or you'd have gone through blind, and you'd hate to have done that--been...more

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Jul 01, 2012 Bob Mustin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise was given a tentative thumbs-down by the literati of the day, most not understanding what Fitzgerald was trying to accomplish. And even today it's not a particularly easy read. From the standpoint of early twenty-first century, though, the book seems a precursor to postmodern literature, with its disjointed narrative, its social and political references, and above all, its overwhelming self-awareness. The book has been called a critique of humanity...more Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise was given a tentative thumbs-down by the literati of the day, most not understanding what Fitzgerald was trying to accomplish. And even today it's not a particularly easy read. From the standpoint of early twenty-first century, though, the book seems a precursor to postmodern literature, with its disjointed narrative, its social and political references, and above all, its overwhelming self-awareness. The book has been called a critique of humanity's attraction to glamour, but that hardly seems the complete story.
Amory Blaine is a well-to-do, bratty WASP - egoistic, handsome, with a glib mouth. Underlying all this is an insecurity that begins to show its teeth during Amory's Princeton days, as his mum dies and leaves him with nothing of value. He turns to girls for succor, but he quickly discovers, in the way of early twentieth-century life in the U.S., that his looks, his disarming way, have little truck without a serious jingle in his pocket.
So Amory enters into a series of promising but ultimately unfulfilling romances, joins the army during World War I, and returns to life as a menial ad copy writer. His conscience during this time is a Catholic priest, Thayer Darcy, who has had a dalliance with Amory's mum in days past. But Amory can't be corralled by faith and religion. He does, though, offer to sacrifice himself before the law in order to save a friend's reputation. Still, even this turns to spoiled milk.
In the book's final pages, Fitzgerald offers a clumsy, summarizing motif: Amory is given a ride by two well-off, conservative men, and they enter into an argument concerning what today would be Milton Friedman's capitalism versus socialism. I was stunned as I read these pages - how appropriate that argument seems to today's bare-knuckled conflicts over the same ideological ground!

Fitzgerald's writing here is brilliant in places, but his structure seems of the ad hoc variety. As with the argument mentioned above, many of the book's themes and situations are handled clumsily or are dropped unfinished as the author moves on to other ideas. At its basis it's a bildungsroman. But there's also Amory's fall from grace, which establishes his reinvention, something that was a religio-literary staple of the day. In the end, Fitzgerald leaves Amory disillusioned but hopeful. In the final paragraphs, Amory sums up thusly:

"It's all a poor substitute at best," he said sadly.
And he could not tell why the struggle was worth while, why he had determined to use to the utmost himself and his heritage from the personalities he had passed....
He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky.
"I know myself," he cried, "but that is all."
Still, that 's a start, as this supremely talented writer began a slow, awkward climb toward a never-achieved literary perfection.
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Jul 01, 2012 Zach rated it 4 of 5 stars

Followers of this blog my remember previous ‘review’ of Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night in which I noted that it was not a book I would have appreciated prior to living abroad but while living abroad it was a positively terrifying book. This Side of Paradise is worse in that it is far too close to home. Paradise, it seems, comes at the apogee of Amory and Isabella’s relationship which coincides neatly with the apogee of Amory’s status at Princeton. While it would be hard to call Amory idealisti...more Followers of this blog my remember previous ‘review’ of Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night in which I noted that it was not a book I would have appreciated prior to living abroad but while living abroad it was a positively terrifying book. This Side of Paradise is worse in that it is far too close to home. Paradise, it seems, comes at the apogee of Amory and Isabella’s relationship which coincides neatly with the apogee of Amory’s status at Princeton. While it would be hard to call Amory idealistic or naive, he has a sort of innocence for the the first half of the book, the innocence that comes with believing oneself worldly, urbane, and wise- the innocence of privilege, be it wealth, talent, or beauty, all of which Amory enjoys to a certain degree. The book, however, is written from this side of paradise, the far side: paradise lost. It is not, however, a peon to an idealized past. It is the realization that paradise only ever existed insofar as the subject is able to dwell solely on the self at the expense of all others. Amory’s affairs- as he realizes- are self-actualizing to the extreme. Rather they are self-fashioning. They are what Amory uses to define himself, an Amory he bounces off the Amory fashioned by Monsignor Darcy. While he treasures ‘the fundamental Amory,’ the hard truth gained by the book is quite simply that there is no fundamental Amory. There is only Amory the product of his experiences rather than the master- the commander- of them. Paradise is Princeton. It is the aristocratic life Amory aspires to at Princeton. The ideal of idealized life- a world fashioned by Amory for Amory. At the end, though, when ‘the egoist’ becomes ‘a personage’ it seems the primary knowledge gained by Amory, his self knowledge, is quite simply that he is not the arbiter of his own reality. This is Fitzgerald’s first- and most formally daring- novel. It darts between prose, poetry, and drama to capture a world now almost a century old. And yet it feels strikingly appropriate. And far to close to home for someone reading it on the far side of an Oxford much like Amory’s Princeton- an idea as much as an education- and who’s life, to a great extent, has charted by relationships with women. Amory’s diagnoses of others and himself- and Fitzgerald’s diagnoses of Amory and Amory’s world- ring too true for enjoyment. Amory’s ennui is unsettlingly familiar. As the Gatsby movie approaches, it may be worth dwelling on Fitzgerald, especially for young, privileged people (if you are reading this online, you are privileged, fyi). This Side of Paradise is, in fact, a deeply anti-nostalgic novel, in my opinion. It, like much of Fitzgerald’s work, is the excoriation of nostalgia, the realization that we all must have at some point that that was not paradise and to desire a return is to reject any chance of a future. The past is not castigated, it is simply the past, it is part of who Amory is, but it is not his future. His walk to Princeton is no walk to Emmaus but rather the last grasp at past more beautiful in memory than in truth. (less)

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Jun 19, 2012 Ben rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Read this a few weeks ago. I had read Great Gatsby in high school, and didn't get it at all (it's just a bunch of rich people running around. WTF) But they do say he's one of the greatest modern novelists, so I figured I'd give him another shot. There were parts of it I liked a lot. Fitzgerald is a master stylist, and the book of is full of the these crystalline, highly-wrought sentences that are so precise and poetic that you want to read them over and over. He also has a sharp, witty humor tha...more

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Jun 08, 2012 David Rain rated it 5 of 5 stars

No one would say this was Fitzgerald’s best novel: The Great Gatsby (1925) is that. But this is a book I’ve always loved. Fitzgerald was very young when he wrote it, and few books capture better the flavour of youth; youth, in this case, at a very particular time, America just before and after the First World War, and in a very particular place, the privileged milieu of Princeton University. In the story (highly autobiographical) of Amory Blaine, “romantic egotist,” Fitzgerald virtually defined...more

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May 06, 2012 Thom Swennes rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, Amory Blaine is masterly portrayed in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise. Above all, this is a story of love. This should not, however, be confused with a love story in the traditional sense. If the saying: to have loved and lost is far better than to have never loved at all, than Amory would have indeed been a very happy man. The saying and his situation can’t be so easily and neatly summed up. Amory first loves Isabelle Borgé but you...more

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Ravelry Knitters: April Group Read - This Side of Paradise	11	39	Apr 13, 2013 09:54am
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About F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American writer of novels and short stories, whose works have been seen as evocative of the Jazz Age, a term he himself allegedly coined. He is regarded as one of the greatest twentieth century writers. Fitzgerald was of the self-styled "Lost Generation," Americans born in the 1890s who came of age during World War I. He finished four novels, left a fifth unfini...more

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Quotes from This Side of Paradise

“I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.” — 2,820 people liked it

“I'm not sentimental--I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know,
is that the sentimental person thinks things will last--the romantic
person has a desperate confidence that they won't.” — 1,317 people liked it

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