About this title: THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED, F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 novel, is heavily based on his own troubled marriage as he describes the moral, physical, and financial decline of a beautiful and gifted couple. Anthony and Gloria Patch seem made for each other, and their idyllic relationship is enhanced by their expectations of inheriting Anthony's ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: Reprint.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Scribner's, New York
Date Published: 1950
ISBN-13:9780684717586ISBN:0684717581
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. No hand-writing or marks inside. Sun-faded spine. Light soiling to outer page edges and in places on covers. Spine significantly creased. A lot of wear to covers including scratches, creases, bumped corners, etc. Quite worn but readable. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons
Date Published: 1920
ISBN-13:9780684717586ISBN:0684717581
Description: Acceptable. Fair Condition. Considerable wear, but still very useable. Text has writing/underlining, but appears free of highlighting. May have bookstore-related stamps/stickers/marks. Multiple copies may be available. SHIPS W/IN 24 HOURS! FREE INSURANCE on all orders! E-mail notification! Careful, thorough packaging. Fast, personal service. No hassle, full refund return policy! COMBINE SHIPPING-TENS OF THOUSANDS OF OTHER BOOKS/CDs/MOVIES AVAILABLE! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons
Date Published: 1920
ISBN-13:9780684717586ISBN:0684717581
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. Book has tanning or browning due to normal aging process. -, Trade PaperBack, Very Good / read more
Description: Acceptable. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
"As with all of Fitzgerald's books, I'm amazed at how timeless the characters are. Any of these people could be living today. It is also fun to read about an old New York that seems very familiar. My favorite passage, about fully jaded, hard drinking 30 something year olds:
As the conversation continued in stilted commas, Anthony wondered that to him and Bloeckman both this girl had once been the most stimulating, the most tonic personality they had ever known - and now the three sat like overoiled mahines, without conflict, without fear, without elation, heavily enamelled little figures secure beyond enjoyment in a world where death and war, dull emotion and noble savagery were covering a continent with the smoke of terror. In a moment he would call Tana and they would pour into themselves a gay and delicate poison which would restore them momentarily to the pleasurable excitement of childhood, when every face in a crowd had carried its suggestion of splendid and significant transactions taking place somewhere to some magnificent and illimitable purpose..."
"F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing is positively flawless. His prose is effortless, poetic. This book is phenomenal, beautiful, heart breaking. It makes you ache inside.
Altough sometimes slow moving, this is wonderful, haunting story. If you're a fan of Fitzgerald, this is a must read.
This is the story of the tumultuous marriage of Anthony and Gloria: two members of 'the idle rich' in the 1920s. Their affair is selfish, tragic and as we turn the last page we can finally see just how disillusioned they were by their own philosophy of life. Effortlessly, Fitzgerald shows us the irony of prohibition, the mockery of war, and the unavoidable loss of two people's faith in God, in life, in each other.
"In the feverish perambulations of her mind she prowled through the house of bleak unlighted rooms hunting for her mother. All she wanted was to be a little girl, to be efficiently taken care of by some yielding yet superior power, stupider and steadier than herself. It seemed that the only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream.""
"Well, there's a reason this is the Fitzgerald you've never heard of, but I still really enjoyed it. It's directionless and unsatisfying, but of course that's sort of the point. This one is on of the ones people think is just straight up about him and Zelda, and if so, I feel bad for both of them and neither of them. It's so searingly cruel, and, I have to believe, honest that I feel obligated to classify it as a great book, even when reading it made me feel terrible.
Two quotes I liked:
"He had been futile in longing to drift and dream; no one drifted except to maelstroms, no one dreamed without his dreams becoming fantastic nightmares of indecision and regret"
"She told herself that the years had brought her tolerance - actually they had slain what measure she had ever possessed of moral courage."
If I read The Last Tycoon I will have read all of his novels. Satisfying!"
"In the shadow of The Great Gatsby (and recently the revival of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), much of Fitzgerald's other works are forgotten. The Beautiful and the Damned is perhaps less shocking than the supernatural or the violence contained in the other two books, but has in its the seeds of the idea of suburban distopia which would dominate American literature of the 50s and 60s and which still fascinates us today. The cause of the unhappiness of the protagonists is enfolded so deeply in the narrative and hides so much beneath the surface as to be barely perceptible not only to to the characters but, much more interestingly, to the reader."
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