Book description
The work that signaled Fitzgerald's maturity as a storyteller and
novelist,
The Beautiful and Damned
is a devastating portrait of the excesses of the Jazz Age. Anthony
Comstock Patch is a Harvard-educated gallant who leisurely aspires to
author a book as he awaits an enormous inheritance upon his
grandfather's death. Not quite gorgeous, but considered handsome here
and there, he thinks himself an exceptional young man -- sophisticated,
well-adjusted, and destined to achieve some subtle accomplishment deemed
worthy by the elect. Gloria is a sparkling young socialite and a rare
beauty. Armed with an incisive wit, she's at once level and reckless.
Patch's impassioned marriage to Gloria is fueled by alcohol and
consumed by greed. The dazzling couple race through a series of
alcohol-induced fiascoes -- first in hilarity, and later in despair.
The Beautiful and Damned is a piercing and tragic depiction
of New York nightlife, reckless ambition, squandered talent, and the
faux aristocracy of the nouveaux riches. Published in 1922 on the
heels of Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise, it
gives evidence to the sharp social insight and breathtaking lyricism
of one of the most important American writers of the twentieth
century.
Anthony Patch The victors belong to the spoils.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in
1896, attended Princeton University, and published his first novel,
This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda
Sayre and the couple divided their time among New York, Paris, and the
Riviera, becoming a part of the American expatriate circle that
included Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos.
Fitzgerald was a major new literary voice, and his masterpieces
include The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and
Tender Is the Night. He died of a heart attack in 1940 at the
age of forty-four, while working on The Love of the Last
Tycoon. For his sharp social insight and breathtaking lyricism,
Fitzgerald stands out as one of the most important American writers of
the twentieth century.
