The Beautiful and Damned in Never too Late to Read Classics

May 12, 2017 Chrissie rated it liked it

Shelves: usa, audible-us, 2017-read, philo-psychol, classics, fiction, free, love

What is special about this novel is the author’s ability to make the most despicable of characters interesting. The reader is jogged into another world. There are two central characters – Anthony and Gloria. I never came close to feeling even the slightest pinch of empathy for either. Their values are opposite to my own. I sat and watched, fixated, glued to the end, but not for a second thinking that either my views or theirs would change. It is like watching a train crash.

So why did I watch? I What is special about this novel is the author’s ability to make the most despicable of characters interesting. The reader is jogged into another world. There are two central characters – Anthony and Gloria. I never came close to feeling even the slightest pinch of empathy for either. Their values are opposite to my own. I sat and watched, fixated, glued to the end, but not for a second thinking that either my views or theirs would change. It is like watching a train crash.

So why did I watch? I watched because Fitzgerald, through his words, has the ability to capture an era, a group of people and places as through a movie camera. We observe millions of small thing each perfectly portrayed - light slanting through blinds, nasty arguments, NYC on a hot summer night, cocktail parties with insipid, meaningless chatter. The reader recognizes a world that does exist. I liked this realism and it is this that drew me to the book. It is the author’s writing that I like.

At the same time, the writing is definitely patchy. There are sections that are a total bore. The beginning is horrible. It took me quite a while before I knew I would not abandon the book.

Anthony is lazy, self-centered and shallow. Gloria she is lazy, self-centered and shallow too. Anthony does not want a vocation; he can’t possibly think of anything he wants to do. No goals and no aspirations, except maybe having a beautiful wife by his side, alcohol in unlimited quantity and being entertained by others. Gloria, for her beauty is everything. Her guiding principle is to never do anything for another. You don’t give a damn about me and I don’t give a damn about you – that is her life philosophy in a nutshell. The two are married. They are waiting for an inheritance from Anthony’s grandfather. An inheritance that will give them millions and insure that they need never work or do anything that doesn’t please them. And if that dream comes true, what then?

There is humor to be found in the lines. It is cynical. It is full of irony. Intellectualism is scoffed at. Here follow some examples:
-They were in love with generalities.
-Happiness is only the first seconds after the alleviation of misery.
-I don’t care about truth; I want happiness.
-I don’t want to spend money in driblets.
-His imagination was almost incapable of sustaining a dialog.
-Everyone had something to talk about and they all enjoyed it. (This was about war.)

Not all of the humor is serious though. Try this:
-10 o’clock bumped stuffily into 11.
What I am saying again, in just another way, is that the writing has a style of its own and it is special.

Just so you are warned - the book is a product of its own time. It was published in 1922 and draws the era before and after the First World War. It has racist lines. What is assumed and taken for granted then does not represent how we think today. Well, for most of us.

The audiobook is narrated by William Dufris. He turns this into a theatre production. I would have preferred a simple reading of the lines. He dramatizes; he interprets the text for you. I’d rather think for myself. (My trick for getting around this is to repeat the lines in my head, thereby squashing the narrator’s exasperating intonations.) I have to admit though, that at times he did have me laughing. I kind of got used to the narration; while at the beginning it drove me nuts, by the end I was desensitized.

So what am I thinking as I complete the book? You simply cannot change people! Is that what Fitzgerald wanted to say? I have read that the book is based on his life with Zelda. Is he observing and recording? The book certainly has something to say about work and life goals, but this message is so obvious there has to be more.

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Dec 27, 2012 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american-fiction, kindle, e-books, fiction-20th-century, read-2015, gutenberg, mtbr-challenge-2015

Free download available at eBooks@Adelaide.

Splendid book!!

Page 2:
In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality.

Page 20:
"A classic," suggested Anthony, "is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it's safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It's acquir ...more

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Feb 14, 2009 Jaci McCon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, read-in-2009

Better than the person who wrote the afterword for this edition wanted to give it credit for. Riveting, full of momentum, a great metaphor for live in the early 1900's that has truths which stand the test of time. Author's racism and ego are obvious throughout (one character asks another if they have read "This Side of Paradise"...) but in a way that did not fully detract from the plot. ...more

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Sep 24, 2016 Tara rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, classics

I found this book quite arduous after a little while. it flipped from beautiful prose to play writing and back again. It seemed disjointed at times, and I found myself pushing to finish it as I eventually lost interest. In the end, I no longer cared for Anthony or Gloria. I'm glad I've read it and stuck with it, but not one I'd read again. ...more

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