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This Side of Paradise

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This Side of Paradise

By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Narrated by: Robertson Dean
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If the Roaring Twenties are remembered as the era of "flaming youth", it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who lit the fire. His semiautobiographical first novel, This Side of Paradise, became an instant best seller and established an image of seemingly carefree, party-mad young men and women out to create a new morality for a new, post-war America. It traces the early life of Amory Blaine from the end of prep school through Princeton to the start of an uncertain career in New York City.

Alternately self-confident and self-effacing, torn between ambition and idleness, the self-absorbed, immature Amory yearns to run with Princeton's rich, fast crowd and become one of the "gods" of the campus. Hopelessly romantic, he learns about love and sex from a series of beautiful young "flappers", women who leave him both exhilarated and devastated.

Fitzgerald describes it all in intensely lyrical prose that fills the novel with a heartbreaking sense of longing, as Amory comes to understand that the sweet-scented springtime of his life is fragile and fleeting, disappearing into memory even as he reaches for it.

Public Domain (P)2010 Tantor Classics
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Having read and cherished the great gatsby (my favourite novel ever) I thought I’d delve into fitzgerald’s other works. I decided to try his debut and, whilst there are at times, moments of value and insight, it’s a novel that is largely bereft of structure. It sort of goes from one scene to another without any impetus or momentum and I found it a bit tedious after a while. I’m hoping the beautiful and damned will be much better.

Void of structure

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If you are waiting to get to the point, you will spend many hours waiting. However, it is also a fairly satisfying snapshot of its time, and of the complete and utter self-absorption lived and justified by the elitist set of Fitzgerald’s generation. If you are one who rolls your eyes at pretentious poetry, you may give this a miss, because it is absolutely loaded with it. My generation’s (X) message to FSF’s generation would be simple: Dude, get a job…

Rambling, but at times funny

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