Many reviewers have criticised the book for its length and seeming verbosity. Yet, the book would suffer if it were as short as "The Great Gatsby." I preferred this book to "The Great Gatsby" for the meticulous manner in which F. Scott Fitzgerald depicted the two main protagonists in the book. They are imperfect creatures with fatal flaws. Their flaws are open for everyone to see.

He traced their downfall because they had nothing to do with their lives but party and wait for Anthony's grandfather to die and leave them his money.

Their marriage disintegrated, but I foresee them living together until the end of their days. More than this, the depiction of their fall in society and the disintegration of their characters is masterly. ( )

The two main characters of Fitzgerald's The Beautiful & Damned are two of the most selfish, self centered, and unlikable characters I've come across in a work a fiction. And I must say I actually enjoyed watching their lives fall apart while they contested the will of a rich relative who had deliberately disinherited them. What I didn't enjoy was the ending where they actually won their case and inherited the 30 million dollars. Perhaps by entitling the novel The Beautiful and Dammed Fitzgerald was trying to tell the reader that in the end they will ultimately get what they deserve, but after reading hundreds of pages watching this couple spiral further and further downwards, seeing them come out on top at the very end came as a jolt and left me feeling unsatisfied with the entire novel. ( )

unread, fiction, novels, classics

This was an intriguing read, but overall a very uneven novel; the three books feel very different in tone and theme, almost as if Fitzgerald were juggling so many issues without the ability to bring them fully into a narrative cohesion. There's a lot going on here: evocations of Freud and how the modern complexes are at variance with classical philosophy and aesthetic values; a fascinating portrayal of love and pain in Anthony and Gloria's relationship which plays out Fitzgerald's preoccupation with Hegel and Freud both; there is even some interesting dialogue that is very unique for blending different genres (e.g. screenplay, interior monologues, Greek tragedy, etc.).

What is perhaps most compelling in the novel is Fitzgerald's very overt pacifism, as well as his condemnation of the bourgeois class and the values associated with capital, money, and status -- values that run counter to art. Indeed, there is a nice tension between Anthony and his writer friend, Dick, about different kinds of art, how an artist can be bought and sold, how art can be catered to fit the needs of the masses and turn a profit instead of for the sake of art in and of itself. But all of these aspects, while compelling and beautifully drawn out, fail to speak to one another in a nice dialogue; the result is a very fragmented and scattered novel where many of the main characters aren't fleshed out enough, forcing the reader to view them as "types" and nothing more.

One brilliantly written chapter toward the end of book two, the longest one which takes place in the middle of the night and begins with Gloria's perspective and meanders through much of the philosophical and aesthetic debates above is Fitzgerald at his finest in this novel, I though, and the section might well stand on its own to illustrate his central concerns in the text and in his work more generally. ( )

I liked this novel, but at the same time I didn't like this novel. Maybe the weakest out of the three Fitzgerald books I have read. It's not really the story that bothered me, but it's more the fact this book was too long for Fitzgerald's style. In my opinion he works better if his novels don't go on for 400 pages. There were parts that could have been cut out or shortened.

I did like the story though. It was very different then Paradise and Gatsby, which is good. Noticing all of his works aren't the same tone or style. The other two I read were more upbeat, while this one was more slow and melancholy. With this book it's important to take the title literally.

This also shows a more realistic view on the Fitzgerald's marriage. If you know about Zelda's life, it's kind of obvious who she is in the book. It shows that they both loved each other, but that their marriage was perfect nor romantic I would say. Zelda had to put up with his drinking and Scott had to put up with her ambitions. They do make a great literary couple throughout Fitzgerald's novels.

I'm still on a Fitzgerald/1920s lit-kick. I guess I' reading Tender is the Night next. Hoping that one is a little better. Should be interesting since that one is mostly in Paris unlike his other that focus on New York. ( )