This book was free on Kindle, and I’m glad I didn’t spend any money on it, because, frankly, it pissed me off. Tremendously pissed me off.
From Amazon:
“The Beautiful and Damned”, first published in 1922, was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s second novel. It tells the story of Anthony Patch (a 1920s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon’s fortune), his relationship with his wife Gloria, his service in the army, and alcoholism. The novel provides an excellent portrait of the Eastern elite as the Jazz Age begins its ascent, engulfing all classes into what will soon be known as Café Society. As with all of his other novels, it is a brilliant character study and is also an early account of the complexities of marriage and intimacy that were further explored in “Tender Is the Night.” The book is believed to be largely based on Fitzgerald’s relationship and marriage with Zelda Fitzgerald.
I also read this in the Bahamas. It took me a long time to get through it, even though it was only 400-ish pages.
…spoilers ahead.
I picked this up for a stupid reason - it was on the season finale of Gossip Girl, and by a classic author of whose work I’d always intended to read more. F. Scott Fitzgerald, for those who don’t know. But I should have known that if Serena van der Woodsen loved it and related to it, it would hugely infuriate me. But I enjoyed The Great Gatsby in high school, so I figured, “What the hell, why not?”
The Beautiful and Damned might be hailed as a spectacular character study in marriage and intimacy and blah blah blah but you know what? This was a not-so-compelling story about two spoiled rich kids who are infatuated with each other, get married, waste money on extravagant triviality, and then don’t know what to do when their money runs out.
There was so much to dislike about this book. First, there were the characters.
At the start of the book, I found Gloria incredibly irritating. Yes, she was devastatingly beautiful, but she was nothing of substance. She was a self-centered, self-absorbed rather callous wanna-be socialite who led men on and whose opinions were shallow, uninteresting, and unsubstantial. Her only goal was to catch a husband. I found Anthony less annoying, although he was older than Gloria.
By the end, I liked Gloria better than Anthony. She might have been shallow, and whiny, and still self-centered, but at least she was strong enough not to descend into alcoholic despair, which is what happens to Anthony. Gloria has a touch of “the alcoholism” as well, although she’s much less whiny so I’m willing to forgive her.
The turning point of the book, some time in the middle, is when Anthony’s uber!conseravative grandfather walked in on an out-of-control party at Anthony’s & Gloria’s summer home, and then disinherits them, leaving them with no future inheritance, which is what they were relying on to get by.
They contest the will, but that takes a long time. Anthony joins the army. He has an affair. He never goes over for World War I, the war ends before he’s deployed, but he goes through the training. Gloria never has an affair, although her friends urge her to have one, and disapprove when she doesn’t. He’s FURIOUS with the idea that she might have had one though, and rushes back as soon as he has the opportunity when the war is over. So he’s a hypocritical bastard as well.
Then there’s some more huge parties and nights out they can’t afford, and they’ve moved into a terrible apartment, and on and on. They’ve lost their friends, their status, their money, and while Gloria is aware of this but trying to get by, Anthony becomes temperamental and falls victim to alcoholism.
Finally, they win their settlement in court - they’re worth $30 million. But that same day, Anthony’s gone completely mental and the book ends with Gloria with a mentally regressed Anthony with all their money but still unhappy.
Looking for a credible analysis of the book (SparkNotes has become a completely useless website and this book wasn’t even on there), I first went to Wikipedia, which is ideal for stuff like this. The footnotes are priceless. Anyway, someone theorizes that this book is about vocation - “What do you do when you have nothing to do?” and I think that, at the heart of it all, is what made me so.damn.angry.
The answer to all the problems of Anthony and Gloria Patch is that Anthony GETS A JOB. Gloria would have had a more difficult time getting a job, I think, during that time, but the bottom line is that Anthony decided work was beneath him. Seriously. Someone he knew (his grandfather?) even got him a job at one point, which he quit after a couple of weeks because he “didn’t like it.” He tried writing, he sucked at it, still no job. Things just got worse. And worse. And worse. And getting a JOB didn’t cross Anthony’s mind. He’d rather regress to being a mental 12 year old staring at his stamp collection than get a job.
Their sense of entitlement is matched only by their arrogance and neither of them have any really redeeming qualities. No wonder Anthony’s grandfather disowned them, I’d try to as well. They were so obnoxious I just wanted the book to be over, although I hated Anthony so much more than Gloria by the end.
Next, there’s the issue of how nothing really happens, but this is so hugely dwarfed by how much I hated the characters that it almost doesn’t matter. But, yeah, there’s literally almost no plot. The plot progresses, I’d say from about page 150 or so, as such: Anthony and Gloria spend too much money. Anthony and Gloria say they’re not going to spend too much money. Anthony and Gloria pretend they’re going to do something serious about their money problem. Anthony and Gloria then go and immediately spend too much money. Rinse. Repeat. There’s also some pseudo-intellectualism in there, but mostly, it’s all about the Benjamins.
The first 150 pages is devoted mostly to pseudo-intellectualism and Anthony and Gloria “courting,” which is, more or less, as boring as it sounds. He wants to have sex with her - er, he falls in love with her, I mean - because she is SO BEAUTIFUL, OMFG. Then he’s wearing her down, and after putting him off, she consents to marry him completely out of the blue.
There were a lot of lines in this book that I found particularly insightful. The line about Gloria’s father crushing all moral courage out of Gloria’s mother and her mother mistaking it for tolerance struck me especially deeply. There was another line that I liked but can’t remember it, so I guess I didn’t like it that much. But certain lines do not justify the mostly unimpressive experience of an entire book.
I don’t recommend this book unless you are doing some kind of study or particularly love Fitzgerald. I was just not impressed with the book. At all.
