This Side of Paradise - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald's first novel sets the precedent for what would be his career in chronicling America's Jazz Age through fiction. This Side of Paradise, published in 1920, originally to be titled 'The Romantic Egotist' and later 'The Education of a Personage', follows the exploits of Princeton university student Amory Blaine. The character has much in common with the author himself, rendering the book heavily autobiographical. It was composed from various scraps of writing amassed during Fitzgerald's years at university and later during his time served in the war. As a result, the plot is fragmentary and experimental, ranging from fluctuating viewpoints, poetry, letters, plays and extended streams of consciousness. Whilst the novel does show talent, insight and a lot of promise for future works, as a standalone piece, the text fumbles and flails to the point of tedium.

Amory Blaine, a precocious and handsome Midwesterner with an appreciation for literature, arrives at Princeton pretentious, narcissistic, egotistical. His constant seeking for a sense of identity and purpose reflects the mental condition of postwar youth. This Side of Paradise is effectively a Bildungsroman, charting the moral progression of young Amory from a self centered egotist to a contemplative personage. Several affairs with girls are had along the way, each doomed to failure as the protagonist fails to commit or provide the requisite wealth. His indecisive nature preempts Anthony Patch from Fitzgerald's next novel, The Beautiful and Damned; at times they are almost indistinguishable. Despite the sense of pathos which inhabits them both, neither characters are sentimentally appealing to the average reader. Unlike the spineless Anthony, Amory fails even to marry the girl of his choice; spoilt debutante Rosalind. His repeated failures to enter life and matrimony mark him as a tragic social outcast.

My biggest problem with This Side of Paradise was not so much the inertia of the main protagonist, but the overall lack of clarity in the text. An overabundance of very specific cultural and literary references had me frequently baffled and since none of the characters were described particularly well I usually lost track of who they were. I found the various love interests tiresome, repetitive and unnecessary, the pace of the plot was ponderous and nowhere did I find myself particularly intrigued by what would happen next. To be fair on Fitzgerald, this was his debut novel and although it was rejected several times before publication, it met with instant public success. The key to this success was no doubt its inventiveness, for this was modern literature as had never been seen before. The irony remains, that his later, greater novels, never reached such high critical acclaim in his lifetime. Like Amory, he was a man who peaked too soon and had nowhere left to climb. Recommended to those readers of a more philosophical bent.

Rating: 2/5