The Beautiful and Damned (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Geoff Dyer (Introduction), F Scott Fitzgerald (Author), Geoff Dyer (Introduction), F Scott Fitzgerald (Author), F Scott Fitzgerald (Author), F Scott Fitzgerald (Author), Geoff Dyer (Introduction)

• New

  Paperback
  2004

  $11.95

  Exploring the decadence of Jazz Age New York through a fictionalised version of his own marriage to Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned includes an introduction by Geoff Dyer in Penguin Modern Classics . Anthony Patch and his wife Gloria are the essence of Jazz Age glamour. A brilliant and magnetic couple, they fling themselves at life with an energy that is thrilling. New York is a playground where they dance and drink for days on end. Their marriage is a passionate theatrical performance; they are young, rich, alive and lovely and they intend to inherit the earth. But as money becomes tight, their marriage becomes impossible. And with their inheritance still distant, Anthony and Gloria must face reality; they may be beautiful - but they are also damned. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) has acquired a mythical status in American literary history, and his masterwork The Great Gatsby is considered by many to be the 'great American novel'. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre, dubbed 'the first American Flapper', and their traumatic marriage and Zelda's gradual descent into insanity became the leading influence on his writing. As well as many short stories, Fitzgerald wrote five novels This Side of Paradise , The Great Gatsby , The Beautiful and the Damned , Tender is the Night and, incomplete at the time of his death, The Last Tycoon . After his death The New York Times said of him that 'in fact and in the literary sense he created a generation '. If you enjoyed The Beautiful and the Damned , you might like John Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer , also available in Penguin Classics . A prose that has the tough delicacy of a garnet . ( New York Review of Books ).

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $4.45

  'The victor belongs to the spoils.' Fitzgerald's ironic epigraph to The Beautiful and Damned exemplifies his attitude toward the young rootless post-World War One generation who believed life to be meaningless and who pursued wealth despite its corrosive effect. Gloria and Anthony Patch party until money runs out; then their goal becomes Adam Patch's fortune. Gloria's beauty fades and Anthony's drinking takes its horrible toll. Fitzgerald here once again displays a wariness of the upper classes, 'an abiding distrust, an animosity, toward the leisure class - not the conviction of a revolutionist but the smouldering hatred of a peasant'.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1989

  $3.50

• New

  Paperback
  1999

  $19.49

  This is Fitzgerald's second novel, published in 1922. The story displays that 'touch of disaster' which is at the centre of his work. Young, beautiful and wealthy, Gloria and Anthony want their marriage to be a 'live, glamorous performance'. Seemingly perfectly matched, their love begins to deteriorate as each discovers imperfections in the other. In a desperate search for happiness, they spend recklessly and live riotously, until the final crackup comes. In his portrayal of individualfailure, Fitzgerald illustrates the corrupting power of money and the fleeting nature of beauty. He explores a preoccupying theme - the need for illusion and the tragedy that springs from its inevitable breakdown.