This Side of Paradise (by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
There's something very touching about This Side of Paradise. I don't mean the story itself; rather the foreknowledge that F. Scott is going to figure it all out eventually--like he's unearthing nuggets of deep psychological truth on which to base his future great works. It's like the NaNoWriMo of a young genius. (I don't know the precise timeline of this book, but I am educatedly guessing that this is one of his early efforts.) (I just looked it up so as not to appear like an idiot, and it was his first book.)
In this book he also writes a lot about the great and not-so-great writers of history, as well as their works, and it's sort of eerie to know that one day Fitzgerald will write a novel that stands with the best of them. Did he have any idea at the time?
The format for this excavation is the life story of a Sebastian Flyte/Adrian Mole type character: Amory Blaine. The story is broken into short chapters and incorporates play-like dialogue, poetry, and other prose experiments.
My experience of the book is so bound up in my awareness of Future Fitzgerald that it's hard for me to evaluate the book on its own. I would say it's not in itself a work of genius, but it was clearly written by a genius, and that's why it becomes worthwhile. It's a character sketch that never quite turns into a story. But it's a wonderful character sketch nonetheless.
"...so he wrote one day, when he pondered how coldly we thought of the 'Dark Lady of the Sonnets,' and how little we remembered her as the great man wanted her remembered. For what Shakespeare must have desired, to have been able to write with such divine despair, was that the lady should live ... and now we have no real interest in her.... The irony of it is that if he had cared more for the poem than for the lady the sonnet would be only obvious, imitative rhetoric and no one would ever have read it after twenty years." (Page 124).
In this book he also writes a lot about the great and not-so-great writers of history, as well as their works, and it's sort of eerie to know that one day Fitzgerald will write a novel that stands with the best of them. Did he have any idea at the time?
The format for this excavation is the life story of a Sebastian Flyte/Adrian Mole type character: Amory Blaine. The story is broken into short chapters and incorporates play-like dialogue, poetry, and other prose experiments.
My experience of the book is so bound up in my awareness of Future Fitzgerald that it's hard for me to evaluate the book on its own. I would say it's not in itself a work of genius, but it was clearly written by a genius, and that's why it becomes worthwhile. It's a character sketch that never quite turns into a story. But it's a wonderful character sketch nonetheless.
"...so he wrote one day, when he pondered how coldly we thought of the 'Dark Lady of the Sonnets,' and how little we remembered her as the great man wanted her remembered. For what Shakespeare must have desired, to have been able to write with such divine despair, was that the lady should live ... and now we have no real interest in her.... The irony of it is that if he had cared more for the poem than for the lady the sonnet would be only obvious, imitative rhetoric and no one would ever have read it after twenty years." (Page 124).
posted by mo pie at 9:59 AM
2 Comments:
I was enamored of this book in high school. I tried to read it again a few years ago but it didn't have the same effect on me. Maybe it's time to try again?
I haven't read it, but am now going to, drawn in by the musings about the Dark Lady. I don't know that they're true, but they're interesting...
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