In many respects, the early novels—This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and Damned (1922)—can be seen as Fitzgerald experimenting with and mastering his craft. Both books contain flaws in terms of structure that would be rectified when he reached artistic maturity with The Great Gatsby. Similarly, there is some attempt at experimentation that is not entirely successful but demonstrates an engagement with contemporary innovations in fiction that saw a breaking away from omniscient narrators and a single, accepted view of the fictional world. In terms of subject matter, he was more successfully in touch with the mood of the times; indeed, it could be argued that he was fundamental in creating it. He is particularly concerned in these novels with his generation and what made him and his contemporaries different from the generations that had come before in terms of social attitudes, life experience, and priorities. This focus on youth and—in This Side of Paradise—college life ensured that he garnered a wide readership, in particular, for his first novel.
Another key factor of his writing that would not be fully mastered until Gatsby is Fitzgerald's control of narrative voice. In both of these early novels, the narrator tends to be intrusive and overbearing with Fitzgerald almost offering a running commentary as to how the reader should respond to what is being read. As a result, the novels have a jarring quality that fails to fully immerse the reader as attention is constantly being drawn, in an unsophisticated manner, to their artifice. However, they remain important in charting Fitzgerald's progression as a writer in terms of style. They also are significant in their explorations of thematic concerns regarding marriage, vocation, alcohol, mental instability, and the impact of war, to which Fitzgerald would return repeatedly throughout the remainder of his career.
As we saw in Chapter One, Fitzgerald's interest in writing had started early in life with short stories being written for school and university magazines as well as involvement with amateur dramatics as both writer and performer. However, when he turned his attention to writing a novel in the fall of 1917, after briefly flirting with the idea of poetry, he was attempting to leave behind his life as an amateur writer in the hope of turning professional. At the time that he began his first draft of the novel that would eventually become This Side of Paradise, he was still at Princeton. However, he had all but abandoned his college career and was waiting on an army commission after U.S. entry into the First World War. Perhaps a combination of wanting to justify his academic failure by undertaking a more significant project and the morbid preoccupation that he may, like many before him, die in a trench in northern France motivated him to literary action. Composition of this first draft, called The Romantic Egotist, was completed by March 1918 in the army camps that he was stationed in. It was rejected in August and then again in October of 1918 by Scribner's although there was evidence that Max Perkins, editor at the publishing house, was interested in seeing the novel in a redrafted format.
By the following year, Fitzgerald was in love with Zelda Sayre and keen to marry her. After he was discharged from the army, he headed to New York to work at an advertising agency while continuing with his writing. Zelda, unconvinced that Fitzgerald would make either career path a success, ended the engagement to a heartbroken Fitzgerald in June 1919. He retreated to his hometown of St. Paul with his manuscript to rewrite it once again. No doubt spurred on by the loss of Zelda and motivated by a wish to have a career that promised glamour as well as an income, Fitzgerald set to work. During a sustained period of work, he redrafted the novel from early July through to the end of August. He also changed the title to The Education of a Personage before settling on This Side of Paradise. The title was taken from the poem “Tiare Tahiti” (1915) by English poet Rupert Brooke.
In The Making of This Side of Paradise (1983) James L. West III, the leading textual scholar of Fitzgerald's work, traces the process of rewriting and revision undertaken by Fitzgerald during this time. He points out that a number of approaches that the author took to speed up the process of rewriting, and to keep in the book passages that he deemed worthy of preservation, contributed to some of the unevenness and implausibility of plot and mood. West points out that at the beginning of this period of redrafting, Fitzgerald was writing out everything in longhand. At times this involved copying word for word passages from The Romantic Egotist unchanged. At the beginning of this rewriting process Fitzgerald's methods benefited his work. West correctly asserts that:
A typescript resists change; the determination to revise soon melts before the fixed verbal form and sequence on the paper. New thoughts must be made to fit between old ones, and a thoroughgoing revision is impossible. A fresh longhand draft, by contrast, takes its form as it goes. Its development is not hampered by an existing text. Even if the author is working with a previous version at his elbow, as Fitzgerald was doing here, he is free to expand, condense, add, delete—and to rethink. (West 1983, p. 46)
However, for whatever reason, Fitzgerald did not stick to the method that West notes significantly improved the first chapter. Possibly it was impatience to see the fruits of his labor that led him to turn to the cut‐and‐paste approach that he had initially resisted. West highlights the significant shortcomings of this on the novel as it shifts from being a redraft to a revision. The textual scholar, who has worked extensively with the manuscripts, asserts that this change in approach was detrimental to the construction of dialogue, sentence structure, and mood. New material was proving to be considerably better than what had appeared in the first draft of the novel. The impact of combining the new with old was an unevenness in quality and inexplicable shifts in the tone of some of the scenes. West writes that “[t]he old dialogue especially, was less effective than the new. Fitzgerald improved those old typescripts by revision and tinkering, but he was unable to refine out all of their weaknesses” (p. 47).
He continues by raising concerns about how scenes work alongside one another:
When an author composes each scene in fresh holograph, he develops a sense, a “feel,” for the ebb and flow of the work. His characters’ moods and emotions must not shift abruptly without good reason; their attitudes must instead change gradually, and the reader must be prepared for these shifts. When an author is working with blocks of old typescript, however, he often finds it hard to recapture this feeling, and he is likely to juxtapose old scenes awkwardly. This is exactly what happened when Fitzgerald assembled Chapter Two. In a chillingly realistic section near the end of the chapter, Amory witnesses the bloody death of Dick Humbird in a car accident … Humbird had been an ideal of sorts for Amory, who is profoundly shocked by his sudden realization that human life is impermanent. But the very next night Amory is happily fox‐trotting at the Spring Prom with Isabelle, having entirely forgotten Humbird's terrible death—or so we are expected to believe. (p. 47)
The final problem that West identifies with the redrafting of the novel relates to point of view. Fitzgerald—partly because his approach of mixing old material and new and partly because he did not have the artistic experience and maturity to master it—had incorporated the optimistic and somewhat naïve tone of his original first‐person narrator to coexist with his third person omniscient narrator who has a world‐weary and more cynical attitude. This creates an uneven tone that runs throughout the novel and is jarring and inconsistent.
Fitzgerald sent his revised book back to Max Perkins at Scribner's and on September 16, 1919, he received the letter that informed him This Side of Paradise would be published. The story of the novel, however, did not end there. As West has explored in great detail, the book on its publication was littered with spelling and grammatical errors that damaged Fitzgerald's reputation as a serious writer. Perkins did attempt to get these mistakes rectified in later printings, but the saga dragged on through a number of print runs. Despite these problems, the book sold exceptionally well and was not surpassed in terms of sales by any of Fitzgerald's novels in his lifetime. Between March 1920 and October 1921, the book sold approximately 49,000 copies (p. 111).
One hundred years after the novel's publication, This Side of Paradise does appear rather dated and self‐conscious. However, within this novel are the beginnings of fiction that explores the experiences of teenagers and young people. The book is focused on how the lives and attitudes of the young are different from their parents and may indeed be quite shocking to them. It is possibly, therefore, not such a stretch to see in this book the seed that would grow into Holden Caulfield in J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951) and the young adult fiction that subsequently emerged. The first step, perhaps, in the creation of the teenager that would be such a central figure in popular culture after World War II.
Amory Blaine is the child of a wealthy woman, Beatrice Blaine, who indulges her son throughout his childhood. She is the dominant force in his life and his father has minimal influence over him. Amory believes that he is exceptional and destined for greatness. He attends the St. Regis prep school where he is initially unpopular but eventually becomes the editor of the school paper and a football quarterback. Through his mother, he is introduced to Monsignor Thayer Darcy who will be pivotal in Amory's formation of his own sense of self.
After school, Amory attends Princeton but is more concerned with extracurricular activities such as the Triangle Club and involvement with the university paper, the Princetonian. During the Christmas vacation of his sophomore year, he falls in love with Isabelle Borgé. However, when she attends the prom at Princeton, the couple quarrel and break up.
During this period, Amory's father dies, and he realizes that the family wealth is dwindling. He also misses out on a number of opportunities at Princeton and fails important exams. Monsignor Darcy, with whom Amory is in touch, explains what he sees as the difference between what he considers a personality and a personage: “Personality is a physical matter almost entirely; it lowers the people it acts on—I've seen it vanish in a long sickness … Now a personage, on the other hand, gathers. He is never thought of apart from what he's done” (Fitzgerald 2012b, p. 101). Darcy asserts that both he and Amory are the latter. Amory meets and falls in love with his widowed cousin Clara Page, but she refuses to marry him. He graduates from Princeton and joins the army as the United States enters World War I.
During his time in the army (not detailed in the novel) his mother dies and he learns that his financial situation is worse than he had thought. He returns to America and takes an apartment in New York with two friends, Alec Connage and Thomas Parke D'Invilliers (who would reappear as the author of the epigram at the beginning of The Great Gatsby) as well as a job in advertising. He falls in love with Alec's sister, Rosalind, and the two discuss marriage. However, because of his financial situation Rosalind rejects him in favor of the wealthy Dawson Ryder. In response to this break up, Amory quits his job and goes on a three‐week drunken spree.
After moving out of his apartment, Amory visits an uncle in Maryland. Here, he meets and falls in love with Eleanor Savage. She declares herself an atheist and refuses to conform to social expectations of womanhood. The relationship ends, however, when she threatens suicide by attempting to ride her horse over a cliff.
On a trip to Atlantic City Amory meets up with Alec Connage where he protects his old friend from accusations of sexual impropriety by pretending that it was he who was in a hotel room with a young woman, Jill Wayne. He learns that Rosalind is now engaged to Dawson Ryder; his inheritance has diminished further; and he is informed of the death of Monsignor Darcy. Weighed down by what he sees as the futility of life and disillusioned by the people around him, he attends Monsignor Darcy's funeral and heads back to Princeton. Amory has a discussion about socialism with the father of a young man, Jess Ferenby, with whom he had been at university and had been killed in the war. In the closing paragraphs of the novel and pining for Rosalind, Amory asserts that his generation was “dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in men shaken …” The final line reflects the only certainty that Amory has: “I know myself,” he cried, “but that is all—” (p. 260).
Fitzgerald was living in an age of rapid social change that included shifting attitudes toward the position of women in society on every level. There was a reconsideration of the nature of the relationships that women had with men as wives, daughters, mothers, and independent individuals. As a result, it is perhaps unsurprising that Fitzgerald reveals in the novel a simultaneous enthusiasm, anxiety, and ambivalence about both masculinity, femininity, and how the two interacted. His ambivalent response to womanhood can be traced through the course of the novel when the protagonist, Amory Blaine, encounters a series of women who represent “types” of female or aspects of the “feminine” that Fitzgerald had identified as both new and traditional forms of womanhood. He presents us with “the debutante,” “the young widow,” “the flapper,” and “the free spirit.” Motherhood is also represented in the form of Beatrice Blaine, a woman who is decidedly different from the author's own. These female characters reveal more about the ambivalence that Fitzgerald felt toward the changes that were occurring in America, particularly after World War I, than they do about the reality of women and their lives during the period before, during, and after American involvement in World War I.
The overnight success of This Side of Paradise published on March 26 and his marriage to Zelda Sayre on April 3 meant that the spring of 1920 was a time of excitement for Fitzgerald. The early weeks of the marriage were spent in hotels in New York drinking too much and throwing parties much to the unhappiness of hotel staff. They were young, beautiful, and famous. The lifestyle may have been enjoyable, but it was certainly not conducive to work. In May 1920, with the hope of a more regulated life, Fitzgerald rented a house in Westport, Connecticut. The location may have changed, but the lifestyle did not fundamentally alter. There were alcoholic parties that would last all weekend and beyond. Some of this drunken partying and the marital arguments that were one of its by‐products were documented in the novel.
Fitzgerald drafted meticulous plans for what he hoped to achieve by the end of the year. It was a lifelong habit that did not always come to fruition. However, during the course of the summer, he wrote three stories: “The Jelly‐Bean” published in Metropolitan, “The Lees of Happiness,” which appeared in the Chicago Tribune, and “The I.O.U.,” which did not sell (Bruccoli 2002, p. 143).1 However, the novel was clearly on his mind; as Matthew Bruccoli notes, he wrote to Charles Scribner II—then president of Scribner's—in August 1920 summarizing the plot and thematic concerns (Fitzgerald 1994, p. 41).
The restlessness that marked much of the decade for the couple led them back to New York where they lived at 38 West 59th Street. Fitzgerald worked on the novel through the course of the fall and winter. By February 1921, Zelda was pregnant, and the couple decided to head to Europe before the baby arrived. Before their departure in May, Fitzgerald was able to send a draft of The Beautiful and Damned to his literary agent, Harold Ober, with the hope of selling it to a magazine for serialization. Ober sold the serial rights for $7,000.
They were not particularly enamored of their time in Europe. One highlight was Oxford in England that Fitzgerald deemed one of the most beautiful places on earth. He also visited Cambridge and made a pilgrimage to Grantchester, where Rupert Brooke had lived at the Old Vicarage—the inspiration for one of his most famous poems. A second literary pilgrimage was taken to the Spanish Steps in Rome and the house where his hero, John Keats, had died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty‐five. The couple also spent time in Paris.
By August, the Fitzgeralds were back in the United States living near St. Paul and awaiting the birth of their child. Fitzgerald spent time working on revisions of The Beautiful and Damned for its publication in book format. It was serialized in the Metropolitan between September 1920 and March 1921 but had been edited significantly by the publication rather than the author himself. The couple's daughter, Scottie, was born on October 26, 1921. On March 4, 1922, The Beautiful and Damned was published.
As is evident, the book was written in a frenetic period of the writer's life. He married, he became famous, he became wealthy, he became a father, he was on the move constantly, and at the time of the book's publication he was still only twenty‐five. When considered in this light, Fitzgerald should be applauded for having finished the novel at all. However, the book does show the effects of an author not entirely focused on his craft. Just as in This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald was not in control of his narrative voice and point of view. The novel is also episodic, which at times feels accidental rather than by design.
The Beautiful and Damned (1922) tells the story of Anthony Patch, heir to his rather puritanical grandfather's vast fortune, and his wife Gloria. The couple meet through Gloria's cousin and Anthony's friend Dick Caramel who is a novelist. Gloria is much admired by a number of men, including a filmmaker named Joseph Bloeckman who wants to marry her. However, Gloria chooses Anthony—despite the habit the two have of quarrelling—and dreams of the time when they will inherit his grandfather's money.
They take a house in Marietta in the countryside for the summer and spend the winter in Anthony's New York apartment. The relationship is at times tempestuous and Anthony's drinking increases. He attempts to write but with little productivity. His grandfather, Adam, arranges an opportunity for him to go overseas as a correspondent but he declines. Gloria is offered a screen test by Bloeckman but Anthony objects to it. The couple are living well beyond their means in part because of the shadow of Anthony's inheritance. However, Anthony does take a job—again due to his grandfather's influence—as a bond salesman. The couple and their friends Dick Caramel and Maury Noble go on a drunken spree to celebrate. The job, however, does not last long as Anthony quits and the couple ends up back in Marietta having renewed their lease at a drunken party.
Anthony's drinking continues despite Gloria's pleas to stop. During a drunken party, Adam Patch arrives unexpectedly and is appalled by what he witnesses and leaves in disgust. Anthony's attempts to reconcile with him are unsuccessful. With increasing financial woes, the couple move back to New York. Adam Patch falls ill and dies without reconciling with Anthony, who has been cut out of his will. Anthony retains a lawyer to contest it. The couple continue to squander money on weekly drunken parties. They lose a number of legal battles to overturn his grandfather's will.
America enters World War I and Anthony is drafted. He is deployed to an army camp in South Carolina where he has an affair with a local, working‐class girl, Dot Raycroft. He maintains her as his mistress in a local boarding‐house when he is moved to Mississippi. After the Armistice, Anthony is reunited with Gloria after having dissuaded her from traveling to the South during his deployment.
Reunited, the couple's marital and financial woes continue. Anthony takes a job and Gloria tries to get into the movies through their old friend Bloeckman. However, she is told by the film's director that at the grand old age of twenty‐nine, she is too old for anything but a small, character role. Anthony quits his job and his drinking spirals out of control. The couple is forced to move to ever shrinking apartments and they are left close to penniless.
On the day that the last appeal is to be heard in court regarding the will of Adam Patch, Dot Raycroft appears on the couple's doorstep declaring her love for Anthony. He throws a chair at her and blacks out. Dick and Gloria tell him that he has won the case and is now in receipt of $30 million, but Anthony's mental health is evidently under strain when he tells them he will tell his grandfather if they don't leave.
Some months later, Gloria and Anthony are on a ship heading to Europe. Anthony is in a wheelchair and a couple observing him note that, “[h]e's been a little crazy, they say, ever since he got his money.” They also mention that despite her good looks Gloria seems “dyed and unclean” (Fitzgerald 2008, p. 368). The closing lines of the novel reveal Anthony's thoughts about his life, his social position, and how he is perceived by others:
Only a few months before, people had been urging him to give in, to submit to mediocrity, to go to work. But he had known that he was justified in his way of life—and had stuck it out staunchly. Why, the very friends who had been most unkind had come to respect him, to know he had been right all along …
“I showed them,” he was saying, “It was a hard fight, but I didn't give up and I came through!” (p. 369)
The novel is in many respects a reflection on the need for a vocation that is meaningful. The moral of the story of Anthony and Gloria Patch is that absence of such a focus in life results in dissipation and waste. In the final paragraphs, Anthony's inheritance may have now come to the couple, but Anthony is already broken. Despite Fitzgerald's depiction of Anthony's grandfather, Adam Patch, as a prig and a killjoy, he does seem to suggest that the old man has a valid point regarding what brings happiness and peace to a life.
The Beautiful and Damned is also concerned with the disappointment of married life after the excitement and anticipation of courtship. Once again, Fitzgerald explores the theme of the nature of desire and the paradoxical loss that is experienced when desire is fulfilled.