美麗與毀滅

This book differs from most others in terms of structure. It takes you forward in time and blurs the periods which separate one depicted scene from another. This Side of Paradise is partly an autobiography that has for a cornerstone the heartache of Fitzgerald himself first with King and then with Zelda. It is no ordinary autobiography however. To be more specific, it is a Bildungsroman which follows the character of Amory Blaine through the experiences of his youth and up to a point of saturation that can be likened to an epiphany. The latter state is reached at the very end when Amory turns against all the values he had previously embraced, and places socialism in their stead in a burst of enlightenment that he himself never predicted or conceived as a possibility. The plot appears at times unfocused and purposeless, and that is because Amory's path towards his final state of self-enlightenment is more of a process filled with trials, mistakes, and errors than a journey towards a fixed purpose. They are episodes experienced step by step in a manner analogous to the lives of each one of us; lives we go through without knowing what stands at the end of the line. Thus Amory's interactions with other characters always end in either him walking away or them leaving him, but not before teaching him something new about himself or about the world in which he dwelt. The restlessness of Amory all throughout the novel can be read as Fitzgerald's reference to the lost generation which Amory depicted as a generation "grown up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.” In short, much more than just the outlines of Fitzgerald's autobiography are to be discovered in This Side of Paradise. It all depends on the viewpoint you take in regard to the work.

I feel like this had potential to be a 5, but it was in need of serious editing. It was about 120 pages too long, the dialog was stiff, and the tone was all over the place. That being said, this book was certainly worth the $4 I paid for it. The story of Anthony and Gloria is tragic and said, and it's hard not to see a little bit of Fitzgerald himself in there.