Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published four or more years ago.
ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE NOVELS AND STORIES OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD – PART TWO, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
Continuing my survey of the novels and short-stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald’s second novel The Beautiful and Damned is not as idealistic, muddled and romantic as This Side of Paradise and is in many ways a more mature book. It also has a robust and almost straightforward narrative, unlike the fragmented This Side of Paradise. There is a greater awareness that youth has its limits, in spite of there still being a yearning for careless (or carefree) youth and the dread of growing old. Taking advice once again from Edmund Wilson and his editor Maxwell Perkins, Fitzgerald worked hard at revising and re-revising The Beautiful and Damned, trying to purge himself of the lush, romantic prose he had often deployed in This Side of Paradise. In this, he was not entirely successful. The Beautiful and Damned was first presented to the world in serial form in the (now long-since defunct) Metropolitan Magazine between late 1921 and early 1922, and only then published in book form in mid-1922. Once again, Fitzgerald divided his novel into “Books”, with each “Book” divided into chapters. It’s also worth noting that most of the novel takes place before the 1920s. We follow the life of the protagonist Anthony Patch from the age of 25 [when he has finished studying at Harvard] to the age of 33 – that is, from the years 1913 to 1921.
The title The Beautiful and Damned at first seemed to me to be a cheaply sensationalist title – the type of thing that would be attached to a B movie. But as I read my way through this longish novel (about 400 pages) I gradually understood its meaning. The “beautiful” are those who think they can float through life supping on aesthetic experience, enjoying the moment and imagining that life will always be easy, especially if somebody else is footing their bill. They rejoice in their youth. But they are “damned” because youth is ephemeral – it passes, adult responsibility falls on them, and they are no longer youngsters, no longer the brightest and wittiest… and yet there is still that unfulfillable yearning for flaming youth.
Here is my simplified synopsis:
Book One is almost completely set in New York. Fresh from college [Harvard] and renting a very luxurious apartment, Anthony Patch lives off the money regularly sent to him by his multi-millionaire grandfather Adam J. Patch. Old Adam is intensely Protestant, a moral reformer, a promoter of Prohibition who expects and assumes his grandson Anthony is living the same sort clean moral life he himself endorses. Anthony is also aware that he will inherit a fortune when his grandfather dies. But Anthony is a hedonist, a party-goer and a wastrel. Seeing himself as an aesthete, he believes he has a superior appreciation of the arts and he will one day prove himself, probably in the arts… but not yet. He has his moments of doubt, but still talks big with college friends such as Maury Noble, who sees himself as a sort of philosopher; and Richard Caramel, who is set on writing a novel. More alluring of course are women and Anthony tries to find one. First there is Josephine, but she becomes a pal rather than someone to love. Then the beautiful Gloria Gilbert comes into his life. She is young, fashionable, often unsuccessfully wooed by other men, insouciant, careless, self-absorbed, often silly, emotional - in short a flapper of the age. Gloria is fully aware that men are attracted to her. Anthony Patch’s courtship of her is, credibly and painfully, drawn out. He is envious of the other beaux who follow after her. He is aware of her apparent impassiveness and her loud annoyance at anything that will disturb her hedonistic ways. Yet gradually they are drawn together.
Book Two. And so Anthony consults his sceptical grandfather, Adam J. Patch, who tells him that he should by now be thinking of work – getting a profession and earning his way in the world. Adam nevertheless endorses Anthony’s getting married and still funds him. Anthony marries Gloria. They are in conjugal ecstasy… for a while. With the money they have at their disposal they idle about and travel. They think of going to Europe, but by now the World War is in progress [though the United States are not yet involved]. Instead they dawdle off to California and the West Coast and they swim and tan and idle… and they get bored… and they dawdle back to New York and they begin to quarrel. Should they have a baby? Gloria isn’t up for it. Gloria wants to go down South and visit her family but Anthony doesn’t like the food they serve down South and isn’t sure he likes her family. And, between moments of carnal passion, they have their first really violent quarrel. They think they can enjoy life more if they live somewhere out of the city, so they buy a grey house in a rural area north of New York. In matters of importance, Anthony and Gloria are chronically lazy. When Anthony is offered a job in finance, he lasts for one week. When Anthony is dissatisfied with his Japanese servant Tana, he is too lazy to fire him. There is much tension when other men make passes at Gloria, for her beauty is legend, and in one very vivid section Gloria runs away after she has been frightened and humiliated by one such pass. We would now call it sexual harassment. For all her faults, and for all her flightiness, she nevertheless remains loyal to Anthony. And they drink and they party and hope for the best and they party and drink and assume their workless lives will go on forever. It is magic. It is romantic. At which point catastrophe hits. While Anthony and Gloria are hosting a wild and boozy party in their rural grey house, grandfather Adam J. Patch unexpectedly drops in, is disgusted with Anthony’s drunken behaviour, and stalks away cancelling the payments that have so far supported Anthony. He also cuts Anthony out of his will. When grandfather dies, Anthony begins the long and expensive legal business of contesting the will. Meanwhile, he has to earn money for the first time as he and Gloria have to shift into a less salubrious apartment in a more slummy part of New York. He tries writing trash for popular magazines, but he doesn’t have the talent to succeed. But at this stage (in 1917) the United States joins the Allies in fighting the war in Europe and Anthony is drafted into the infantry… after having failed to join the officer corps.
Book Three. The third part of the novel is very different in tone from the first two parts. It is more matter-of-fact, more concerned with material events, than Parts One and Two. There are fewer of the intensely analytical passages charting the different moods of Anthony and Gloria. With the United States now involved in the World War, the army enlists Anthony and he is taken to a camp down South. For a while he acts as a well-behaved soldier and he is promoted to sergeant. There is even a possibility that he might be officer material. But he is more interested in women. He begins flirting with a clearly working-class woman called Dorothy Raycroft who apparently has had many lovers. (She is most often called “Dot”, which rather cruelly suggests how unimportant she was to all the men who loved-her-and-left-her.) Flirtation turns into an affair. [Okay, the novel was published in 1922, so there are no explicit scenes of sexual engagement, but that is clearly meant.] Dot thinks Anthony is her one true love. But Anthony falls foul of the army when he goes A.W.O.L. after a boozy engagement and breaks curfew. He is broken back to the ranks and later, for other misdemeanours, he spends some time in the lock-up. The army moves up to New York, expecting to be transported to the war in Europe. But it is late 1918, the armistice had been signed and the war is over. Anthony is discharged from the army and is at last reunited with Gloria, who has written him few letters and has also had to ward off some wolves. She has taken things hard in their diminished circumstances. They depend on what little money they have by selling bonds. She drinks more. He drinks more. In fact, with Prohibition having become law (in 1919), there is more desperate drinking in society than ever. They are well on the way to being alcoholics, especially as much of the hooch they drink comes from unreliable bootleggers. Fitzgerald inserts some raw satire when Anthony tries to train as a travelling salesman, attempting to sell booklets on how to get rich. It is pure, nonsensical boosterism, not helped by the inebriated state Anthony is in when he tries to sell his worthless wares. Former Harvard pals shun him. Now 29 years old Gloria, still hoping they can raise more money, still believing she is as beautiful as she was when she was twenty, decides she might make it in the movies [then still silent]. She is given a screen test… but she is told that she is too old for any leading part and might at best gain a small walk-on part. She is devastated. She weeps. Where have her youth and beauty gone? Anthony and Gloria sink lower and lower, drunker and drunker, ravaged by alcohol, more and more degraded. At which point you may think that Fitzgerald has written a perfectly conventional morality story – thoughtless, hedonistic youth destroyed by its own idleness. But, literally in the last three pages of the novel, Fitzgerald turns the unexpected knife. Grandfather’s will has been overturned. Anthony has inherited millions after all. Is this a happy ending? No. Because, worn out by his boozing debauchery, Anthony can no longer enjoy the things he once enjoyed. He has created nothing and does not have the will to create anything. He has reverted to a sort of permanent childishness, poring over his old stamp collections…
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And of course, dear reader, I have stripped The Beautiful and Damned of much of its texture by giving you a very simplified synopsis, ignoring Fitzgerald’s distinctive style and even ignoring some of the characters who play important roles. Perhaps I will amend things a little by quoting some of the things in the novel that stood out to me. In summing up a character, Fitzgerald paints the picture of a wealthy young man’s ideal, money-dominated life, thus: “Behind Maury Noble’s attractive indolence, his irrelevance and his easy mockery, lay a surprising and relentless maturity of purpose. His intention, as he stated it in college, had been to use three years in travel, three years in utter leisure – and then to become immensely rich as quickly as possible.” (Book One, Chapter 2)
Despite his attempts to live the easy life of a wealthy aesthete, even from early in the novel Anthony Patch has the uneasy sense that his life is really pointless, thus: “Back in his apartment the greyness returned. His cocktails had died, making him sleepy, somewhat befogged and inclined to be surly…. Anthony Patch with no record of achievement, without courage, without strength to be satisfied with truth when it was given him. Oh, he was a pretentious fool, making careers out of cocktails and meanwhile regretting, weakly and secretly, the collapse of an insufficient and wretched idealism. He had garnished his soul in the subtlest taste and now he longed for the old rubbish. He was empty, it seemed, empty as an old bottle…” (Book One, Chapter 2)
Though he is deeply in love with Gloria, Anthony is very soon aware of Gloria’s narcissism and hedonism, as when he takes her to a dance: “Would she sit on her right or on her left? Her beautiful eyes and lips were very grave as she made her choice, and Anthony thought again how naïve was her every gesture; she took all things of life for hers to choose from and apportion, as though she were continually picking out presents for herself from an inexhaustible counter.” (Book One, Chapter 2) Later, Anthony asks her “Aren’t you interested in anything except yourself?” To which she replies curtly “Not much.” (Book One, Chapter 3) When they are about to agree to marry “Peace was restored – the ensuing moments were so much more sweet and sharp and poignant. They were stars on the stage, each playing to an audience of two; the passion of their pretence created the actuality. Here, finally, was the quintessence of self-expression – yet it was probable that for the most part their love expressed Gloria rather than Anthony. He felt often like a scarcely tolerated guest at a party she was giving.” (Book Two, Chapter 1) Later, showing her flightiness “Anthony found that he was living with a girl of tremendous nervous tension and of the most high-handed selfishness.” (Book Two, Chapter 1)
Long before disaster strikes him, Anthony intuits that his way of life cannot last forever: “He had been futile in longing to drift and dream; no one drifted except to maelstroms, no one dreamed without his dreams becoming fantastic nightmares of indecision and regret.” (Book Two, Chapter 2) Then there is Gloria’s howl when she for the first time realises, after she has had a screen test, that she is 29 and her beauty is fading. She looks in a mirror and “ ‘Oh, my pretty face,’ she whispered passionately grieving, ‘Oh my pretty face! Oh, I don’t want to live without my pretty face! Oh, what’s happened?’ ” (Book Three, Chapter 2)
It has to be noted that there is much unlikely dialogue in this novel with elevated language out of character and sounding like words spoken in a melodrama. In Book Two, Chapter 1 Gloria is angry about Anthony’s love for old things, antiques etc. and she launches into a long tirade when they visit the preserved home of Robert E. Lee, giving an articulate argument about the irrelevance of the past. In Book Two, Chapter 2, after they have had a quarrel, she says “It seemed last night… that all the part of me you loved, the part that was worth knowing, all the pride and fire, was gone. I knew that what was left of me would always love you but never in quite the same way.” This is really Fitzgerald’s diagnosis of Gloria’s situation, not something that Gloria herself would have said. In the same chapter Maury Noble gives a whole lecture about his experience and how he has learnt that life teaches you nothing. Again, this reads like a gratuitous tirade inserted by Fitzgerald to illustrate the blasé mood of young, affluent people of the time. He was often criticised for the way, in The Beautiful and Damned, that he often intruded in his narrative to make admonitory points about his characters.
One trouble in reading Fitzgerald is to assume that most of his work is disguised autobiography. It is easy to play this game as, in later years, Fitzgerald admitted that Anthony and Gloria were really versions of Fitzgerald himself and his wife Zelda Sayre. Zelda was a “belle” from the South, to which she sometimes wished to return, and Fitzgerald was drafted into the army and sent South, as in the novel. But the novel is not entirely autobiographical, even if academics have diligently attempted to identify which of Anthony’s college friend was based on which of Fitzgerald’s college friends. Besides which, unlike Anthony Patch, Fitzgerald went to Princeton, not to Harvard. More to the point, in 1922, when The Beautiful and Damned was published, Fitzgerald and Zelda were beginning to go down the slippery slope of alcoholism – their worst years came later. In the novel, the ambitious author Richard Caramel has a hit in his early twenties with a sensational novel The Demon Lover… but after this success Caramel is lured into writing profitable trash for magazines and film scenarios. This appears to be Fitzgerald mocking himself. He too had a hit in his early twenties (This Side of Paradise) and he too wrote profitably for magazines. But it was only much later, in the 1930s, that he became a Hollywood scenario hack.
So much for the plot and the context of the novel. But what does it add up to? As I read it, I find an author criticising the obsession with youth and the fear of ageing, regret for the past that has gone and the loss of youthful beauty. In spite of this, Fitzgerald was essentially a Romantic. It is telling that his favourite poet was John Keats, a great poet for sure but loved most fervently by adolescents who want to preserve the idea of an ideal, childlike beauty and simplicity, where there are no worldly challenges and complications. But romantic idealist though he was, Fitzgerald understood that this was a dream that could not be sustained. Age comes. Beauty fades and hard reality kicks in. Anthony and Gloria live in a long daydream, and when reality strikes they fall apart .
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