Much of your familiarity with F. Scott Fitzgerald likely comes from a little sensation by the name of The Great Gatbsy. This may be because you skimmed through it in high school or maybe your more modern self finds DiCaprio to be utterly irresistible. Either way, I would argue that Fitzgerald is quite a household name. But here's my confession: I don't much care for The Great Gatsby (gasp!). There was always something missing in it for me. Or perhaps not enough missing. Is that even a plausible argument? Anywho, I knew I couldn't simply give up on my pal Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (Side track: I, being the occasional ditz I am, ignored the obvious era differences and at first thought, "wait, did he write the Star Spangled Banner?"--cue Homer Simpson "D'oh!"). Okay, back to the point. So, after several recommendations to do so, I put This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald's first novel, at the top of my reading list. Boy, am I glad I made that decision.
Let it go down in history that on this blog in June of 2015, I let the Internet know that--with 98.5% certainty--I will name my firstborn Amory Blaine.
For all those ladies looking for a field trip into the mind of a brilliant & narcissistic young male, Amory's your guy. Oddly enough, I found myself somewhat empathetic towards "The Young Egotist", particularly when also referred to as "the Cynical Idealist," a label I'd use to describe myself. He's got a taste of that irresistible romantic enchantment found in tales of the twenties. (And for the record, Amory Blaine > Nick Carraway.) His mind is an anthology of poetic recitations, often including the products of his own unbearable laments. Although my brain needs a refresher on Salinger's work, I often sensed Catcher in the Rye undertones throughout my reading. Could Fitzgerald have paved the way for a critically acclaimed novel 30 years later?
Even though the work produced from Amory's Ivy League brain is far better than most could ever hope to write, he has an innate tendency to succumb to the artist's curse of questioning the ability of his poetic license:
"There are only a few obvious things that I notice as primarily beautiful: women, spring evenings, music at night, the sea; I don't catch the subtle things like 'silver-snarling trumpets'."
Despite Amory's sometimes redundantly vain self-interest and "tortured artist" demeanor, Fitzgerald's characterization is full of an indescribably attractive spark. As a creature of the theater, I am especially partial to character development. Fitzgerald's is truly mesmerizing. If I had to choose one contributor to what lights Amory's unique spark, I'd point to this quote (Clara to Amory):
"You're a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in the world, your imagination."
I think we all have a certain affinity for the imagination.
I'm writing this post mostly as a device of reflecting on a novel I quite enjoyed, so I don't want to give away any juicy plot twists. But to me, Amory Blaine is sort of like a walking, talking dichotomy. He's an enigma and yet he's an open book. One of the most prominent fascinations in the story, for both the reader and Amory, is the idea of a personality vs. a personage--an idea introduced by his role model of sorts, Monsignor Darcy.
The gist:
PERSONALITY= "Personality is a physical matter almost entirely; it lowers the people it acts on...a personality is active."
PERSONAGE= "...a personage, on the other hand, gathers. He is never thought of apart from what he's done."
In other words, Monsignor Darcy is pro-personage--a firm believer in its durability and personality's superficiality.
Apart from his own self-discovery, Amory's second major preoccupation consists of discoveries through love and its messengers. He is a romantic to a fault. I found myself fascinated by Fitzgerald's female characters, each one a symbol of different foundations upon which to build a relationship.
So as not to spoil, here is a brief overview of my favorite quotes because do you honestly think my paraphrasing could possibly compete with F. Scott's words??
The first is Isabelle--Ah, young love! Physically exhilarating and blindly incompatible:
"So they proceeded with an infinite guile that would have horrified her parents...Such is the power of young contralto voices on sink-down sofas."
The second is less based on fascination and more based on Amory's introduction to pure goodness and the idea of eventual practicality. Her name is Clara:
"She made her goodness such an asset. Amory had decided that most good people either dragged theirs after them as a liability, or else distorted it to artificial geniality..."
(Wow what a quote!)
And then there's Rosalind--the all-encompassing, totally dumbfounding love:
"Monsignor Darcy would have been quite up a tree whether to call her a personality or a personage. She was perhaps the delicious, inexpressible, once-in-a-century blend."
(THIS IS HUGE! THERE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A BLEND!)
Rosalind is Amory's fairytale love and he subsequently falls so very hard that I felt reader empathy in a weird way I hadn't felt much before.
But we mustn't forget Eleanor-the intellectual love:
"Their chance was to make everything fine and finished and rich and imaginative; they must bend tiny golden tentacles from his imagination to hers, that would take the place of the great, deep love that was never so near, yet never so much of a dream."
(Personally, I felt the intellectual stimulation they shared seeping through the pages.)
Of course, a major take-away is that an ideal love would include small pieces of each of Amory's experiences to make up one delicious pie.
And ultimately, Amory's self-discovery proves itself more rewarding. But I won't give away the final line.
Whilst living this post-grad life, I'm discovering many new details that life has to offer and it's delectable! One of these details is the reward in doing a steady close reading of a novel and absorbing myself in it. My assertions of this novel have no real merit or purpose, but I found such beauty in Fitzgerald's words and there is really nothing as refreshing as a reminder of how powerful words are.
I like to think that somewhere there's a small pocket of readers who also finds This Side of Paradise enchanting and full of both character and knowledge. I know it brought me much literary felicity!
* All preceding quotes taken from F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, which I purchased from the B&N Online Bookstore and perused on my Nook.
xoxo
RMD
Let it go down in history that on this blog in June of 2015, I let the Internet know that--with 98.5% certainty--I will name my firstborn Amory Blaine.
For all those ladies looking for a field trip into the mind of a brilliant & narcissistic young male, Amory's your guy. Oddly enough, I found myself somewhat empathetic towards "The Young Egotist", particularly when also referred to as "the Cynical Idealist," a label I'd use to describe myself. He's got a taste of that irresistible romantic enchantment found in tales of the twenties. (And for the record, Amory Blaine > Nick Carraway.) His mind is an anthology of poetic recitations, often including the products of his own unbearable laments. Although my brain needs a refresher on Salinger's work, I often sensed Catcher in the Rye undertones throughout my reading. Could Fitzgerald have paved the way for a critically acclaimed novel 30 years later?
Even though the work produced from Amory's Ivy League brain is far better than most could ever hope to write, he has an innate tendency to succumb to the artist's curse of questioning the ability of his poetic license:
"There are only a few obvious things that I notice as primarily beautiful: women, spring evenings, music at night, the sea; I don't catch the subtle things like 'silver-snarling trumpets'."
Despite Amory's sometimes redundantly vain self-interest and "tortured artist" demeanor, Fitzgerald's characterization is full of an indescribably attractive spark. As a creature of the theater, I am especially partial to character development. Fitzgerald's is truly mesmerizing. If I had to choose one contributor to what lights Amory's unique spark, I'd point to this quote (Clara to Amory):
"You're a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in the world, your imagination."
I think we all have a certain affinity for the imagination.
I'm writing this post mostly as a device of reflecting on a novel I quite enjoyed, so I don't want to give away any juicy plot twists. But to me, Amory Blaine is sort of like a walking, talking dichotomy. He's an enigma and yet he's an open book. One of the most prominent fascinations in the story, for both the reader and Amory, is the idea of a personality vs. a personage--an idea introduced by his role model of sorts, Monsignor Darcy.
The gist:
PERSONALITY= "Personality is a physical matter almost entirely; it lowers the people it acts on...a personality is active."
PERSONAGE= "...a personage, on the other hand, gathers. He is never thought of apart from what he's done."
In other words, Monsignor Darcy is pro-personage--a firm believer in its durability and personality's superficiality.
Apart from his own self-discovery, Amory's second major preoccupation consists of discoveries through love and its messengers. He is a romantic to a fault. I found myself fascinated by Fitzgerald's female characters, each one a symbol of different foundations upon which to build a relationship.
So as not to spoil, here is a brief overview of my favorite quotes because do you honestly think my paraphrasing could possibly compete with F. Scott's words??
The first is Isabelle--Ah, young love! Physically exhilarating and blindly incompatible:
"So they proceeded with an infinite guile that would have horrified her parents...Such is the power of young contralto voices on sink-down sofas."
The second is less based on fascination and more based on Amory's introduction to pure goodness and the idea of eventual practicality. Her name is Clara:
"She made her goodness such an asset. Amory had decided that most good people either dragged theirs after them as a liability, or else distorted it to artificial geniality..."
(Wow what a quote!)
And then there's Rosalind--the all-encompassing, totally dumbfounding love:
"Monsignor Darcy would have been quite up a tree whether to call her a personality or a personage. She was perhaps the delicious, inexpressible, once-in-a-century blend."
(THIS IS HUGE! THERE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A BLEND!)
Rosalind is Amory's fairytale love and he subsequently falls so very hard that I felt reader empathy in a weird way I hadn't felt much before.
But we mustn't forget Eleanor-the intellectual love:
"Their chance was to make everything fine and finished and rich and imaginative; they must bend tiny golden tentacles from his imagination to hers, that would take the place of the great, deep love that was never so near, yet never so much of a dream."
(Personally, I felt the intellectual stimulation they shared seeping through the pages.)
Of course, a major take-away is that an ideal love would include small pieces of each of Amory's experiences to make up one delicious pie.
And ultimately, Amory's self-discovery proves itself more rewarding. But I won't give away the final line.
Whilst living this post-grad life, I'm discovering many new details that life has to offer and it's delectable! One of these details is the reward in doing a steady close reading of a novel and absorbing myself in it. My assertions of this novel have no real merit or purpose, but I found such beauty in Fitzgerald's words and there is really nothing as refreshing as a reminder of how powerful words are.
I like to think that somewhere there's a small pocket of readers who also finds This Side of Paradise enchanting and full of both character and knowledge. I know it brought me much literary felicity!
* All preceding quotes taken from F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, which I purchased from the B&N Online Bookstore and perused on my Nook.
xoxo
RMD