| The Beautiful and Damned | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
| Publication date | 1922 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
The Beautiful and Damned, first published by Scribner's in 1922, is F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel. The novel provides a portrait of the Eastern elite during the Jazz Age, exploring New York Café Society. As with his other novels, Fitzgerald's characters are complex, especially in their marriage and intimacy, much like how he treats intimacy in Tender Is the Night. The book is believed to be largely based on Fitzgerald's relationship and marriage with Zelda Fitzgerald.
Contents |
It tells the story of Anthony Patch (a 1920s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune), his relationship with his wife Gloria, his service in the army, and alcoholism.
Toward the end of the novel, Fitzgerald references himself via a character who is a novelist by quoting this statement given after the novel:
"You know these new novels make me tired. My God! Everywhere I go some silly girl asks me if I've read 'This Side of Paradise.' Are our girls really like that? If it's true to life, which I don't believe, the next generation is going to the dogs. I'm sick of all this shoddy realism."
The Beautiful and Damned is at once a morality tale, a meditation on love, money and decadence, and a social document. This thematic dualism is created and sustained by an overarching consistency of tone and delivery. There exists a rare balance between Anthony's poetic commentary and immediate circumstances, and the wider context of the novel, creating two equally significant levels to the text that complement each other synergistically. Were it not for the intensity of Anthony and Gloria's fall we would not find ourselves sufficiently discouraged from complacency, and moral laxity as for the novel to have any great effect; were it not for the all-encompassing despondency—the sheer breadth of depravity exposed in the novel—we would not be able to comprehend the extent to which a society may be steeped in such a transparent vice. Ultimately, it becomes apparent that the novel concerns the lurches of a lethargic society, trying desperately to find a cause for which to progress. Indeed, it is significant that the only diligent reformer of the novel—the only man who has found a cause to which he may commit—is Anthony's grandfather, who belongs to the previous generation, which has now been replaced by the present directionless one. Equally, and on a more personal level, the novel is about the ephemerality of all life. It concerns characters' disproportionate appreciation of their past; an inaccuracy of interpretation that invariably consumes them in the present.
The novel concerns itself with the question of vocation—what does one do with oneself when one has nothing to do?—writes Fitzgerald critic West. He says that Fitzgerald was concerned with the question of vocation for men as well as for women. In the novel, Fitzgerald presents Gloria as woman whose vocation is nothing more than to catch a husband. After her marriage to Anthony, Gloria's sole vocation is to slide into indolence and alcoholism; her husband's sole vocation is to wait for his inheritance.[1]
Fitzgerald wrote The Beautiful and Damned quickly, following editorial suggestions from his friend Edmund Wilson and his editor Max Perkins. The book was serialized in Metropolitan Magazine in 1921 and in March 1922 the book was published. Based on the credible sales of his first book, This Side of Paradise, Scribners prepared an initial print-run of 20,000 copies and mounted an advertising campaign for the book. The book sold well enough to warrant additional print-runs reaching 50,000 copies.[2]
A 1922 film adaptation, directed by William A. Seiter, starred Kenneth Harlan as Anthony Patch and Marie Prevost as Gloria.
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