I recently learned a valuable lesson: some books are best left unread. This summer I spent ten weeks struggling to enjoy F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise. It was an accidental-impulse buy at Half Price Books. I mistook Paradise for a later novel, Tender is the Night. It is rumored that Night was plagiarized appropriated from the journals of F. Scott’s wife, Zelda. I fantasized that a book conceived by a provocative, mentally-ill writer would be impossible to put down. I quickly realized my literary mistake on page 20 when protagonist, Amory Blaine, “thought that he was exceedingly handsome…. He fancied himself an athlete of possibilities and a supple dancer:” Amory is a guy whose ass Hank Hill would like to kick and someone that I immediately despised.
WHY I didn’t abandon Fitzgerald’s tedious tome may become a major life regret. I want to kick my own ass because I allowed my blogging responsibilities to suffer as I attempted to finish…the dreaded novel. What began as an intellectual pursuit turned into a masochistic misadventure. This Side of Paradise could have easily been titled This Side of Humdrum. We meet Amory as a self-absorbed fifteen-year-old and leave him as an egotistical twentysomething. “He found something that he wanted, had always wanted and always would want – not to be admired, as he had feared, not to be loved, as he had made himself believe, but to be necessary to people, to be indispensable….” I begrudgingly admit that Section I of Book Two, “The Débutante,” was not sleep-inducing. I credit the increased white space, not the actual words found on those 27 pages. I was frequently more intrigued by the spelling and punctuation standards utilized by Fitzgerald than anything else found on the pages.
Similar to a critically acclaimed independent film, not much happens in This Side of Paradise. Unlike said acclaimed film, the little that occurs does nothing to make insipid incarnation Amory Blaine the least bit interesting. A 1920 New York Times review described This Side of Paradise, “As nearly perfect as such a work could be… Amory, the romantic egotist is essentially American.” Have Americans really changed that much in 90 years? I refuse to believe anything other than the critic’s funky use of “such a work” is a subtle back-handed compliment.
Over 260 pages are devoted to upper class intellectuals and their failed attempts at mating rituals and happiness; while a measly three – maybe four -- sentences allude to The Great War. Amory Blaine was a World War I Veteran; he could have had the decency to liberally share war stories or European adventures with his acquaintances (and the reader)!
I am a simple person woman gal from Central Texas. It takes little to make me happy. Tasty treats, melodic music, pleasing prose, including scripted TV programming, all bring a smile to my face. A first novel about an arrogant, well-bred pip-squeak does not. To paraphrase film critic Roger Ebert, I hated, hated, hated this book.
Hi! I'm Eden the unequal side of the isosceles triangle known as the Moss triplets. If I am pricked...I will bleed. If am saddened...I will cry. If I am amused...I will laugh. If I am angered...I will bite.
