The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Published in 1922, The Beautiful and Damned is Fitzgerald's second novel and the one I was most looking forward to reading after Gatsby. It is divided into three main parts, then subdivided further into sections which seem to reflect the fragmented snippets of experience associated with married life. These bite sized chunks were ideal for short bursts of reading, especially whilst travelling. The novel begins by introducing Anthony Patch, a young, studious and slightly nervous young man with a tendency towards apathy and idleness, living in his New York apartment. His grandfather, a highly renowned and immensely wealthy religious tycoon holds the key to his possible inheritance. Anthony is introduced to Gloria, one of Fitzgerald's many beautiful, vain and spoilt desirables. After a somewhat shakey courtship, the pair decide to get married. What follows is a portrait of their early years of married life, complete with reckless extravegances and overwhelming lethargy which gradually leads to alcoholism, pending bankruptcy and the deterioration of their relationship.

The style of the book is greatly experimental, ranging from standard prose, alternating perspectives, playful philosophical whimsy and even a few playlets (which some critics believe should have been edited out). I personally enjoyed the stylistic deviations and found they added much flavour to the tumultuous text. The narrative itself was also suitably engaging, particularly in the last third of the novel which I whipped through at breakneck speed. Perhaps Fitzgerald's greatest accomplishment with The Beautiful and Damned was creating two immensely vacuous and dislikeable characters who by the end of the novel have succeeded in engaging our sympathies. Anthony Patch, for instance, must be one of the most pathetic fictional characters of all time; the quintessential, work-shy idler with not a scrap of resolve. Even so, one cannot help but feel some pity for the spineless wretch. Gloria cuts an equally tragic character as the long suffering wife of an inadequate husband who, despite her unwearying selfishness, strikes a chord of pathos when her beauty begins to wilt.

Often likened to a premature Tender is the Night, I would argue that this earlier portrayal of marital collapse is actually superior. There was a definite light heartedness running throughout which served as a welcome change to the brooding intensity of Tender. The novel is frequently very funny, particularly a chapter concerned with Anthony's disastrous attempts at selling bonds for a recruitment agency. The passages on drunkness and alcohol are quite clearly drawn up by a man with lots of experience on the flip side of reality and the descriptions of the ensuing hangovers are some of the best I've read. Like Tender, it is a self confessed biographical account of Fitzgerald's marriage to Zelda and a scathing critique of the indolent leisure classes, of which he himself was a party to. Ultimately, like many of his novels, The Beautiful and Damned is a story about failure. We are made privy to a slow and humiliating descent from riches to rags and the result is a hauntingly beautiful abandonment of dignity. Sure to be enjoyed by anyone who has fallen from dizzying heights.

Rating: 3/5