Status Updates From The Beautiful and Damned

Imagine my surprise when Fitzgerald placed the emphasis on the “Damned” of the title. It’s a hollow victory for Anthony, and a morbid one for Gloria. I wasn’t exactly expecting just how we got there, though there was an inkling in the dropped plot thread.

Also props to Fitzgerald when his drunken antihero throws a racial slur at his one-time rival and Bloeckmann beats the SHIT out of him

Boy was I wrong about Anthony and the army. The dude had glimpses of wanting to do things to “make something of” himself but he keeps doing nothing, throwing parties, and dwindling their income. When his year of army is juxtaposed with Gloria’s faithfulness he feels utterly repellent and barely worthy of pathos, and I am totally with her when she harangues him.

“Through the dark light of the enclosed train-sheds their glances stretched across a hysterical area, foul with yellow sobbing and the smells of poor women. They must have pondered what they had done to one another, and each must have accused himself of drawing this somber pattern through which they were tracing tragically and obscurely. At the last they were too far away for either to see the other’s tears.”