Jesse’s Reviews > This Side of Paradise > Status Update
Jesse
is 72% done
An entire eon passes, here. Amory goes off to war; he falls in love with his friend Alec’s sister, Rosalind, and gets a day job; she is expected to marry for money, which he doesn’t have, and the two have a heart-rending breakup; and he begins an epic, alcoholic bender. It being based on Fitzgerald’s own life experiences—with Rosalind as Zelda—makes the whole thing kind of wild.
— 2 hours, 18 min ago
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Jesse’s Previous Updates
Jesse
is 48% done
Up until The Devil this book had been a sort of feeling like Amory marinating in the satisfaction of his ego like a warm jelly, not necessarily malicious but entirely self-interested. When he starts to regret its passing, the astounding hollowness of being clever and cynical and all that is revealed to him, linking back to the dead Dick Humbird, who had been his ideal.
— 7 hours, 16 min ago
Jesse
is 24% done
This is a frightfully funny examination of a young man growing up prior to WWI and into the roaring twenties. I love the anecdotal episodes and Fitzgerald is such a fun writer. I can’t help but contrast his concept of Amory’s college years against Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman, though. Amory expects and is poised to inherit the world where Natalie is barely keeping it together.
— 9 hours, 27 min ago
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rated it 4 stars
2 hours, 14 min ago
Like, to a certain extent, the amount of baring of his soul means that he is skewering his own self-importance as he describes his youth and first passionate love. But, well, it’s hard to decry him as an egotistical monster with the calculating way in which he approaches pre-Rosalind women when the narrative POV basically lines out how the women were operating along very similar lines.
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