What do you think?
Rate this book
422 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1922
As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.
Oh, he was a pretentious fool, making careers out of cocktails and meanwhile regretting, weakly and secretly, the collapse of an insufficient and wretched idealism. He had garnished his soul in the subtlest taste and now he longed for the old rubbish. He was empty, it seemed, empty as an old bottle…
…the exquisite regularity of nose and upper lip, the chin, faintly decided, balanced beautifully on a rather short neck. On a photograph she must have been completely classical, almost cold – but the glow of her hair and cheeks, at once flushed and fragile, made her the most living person he had ever seen.
Anthony found that he was living with a girl of tremendous nervous tension and of the most high-handed selfishness. Gloria knew within a month that her husband was an utter coward toward any one of a million phantasms created by his imagination.
After that reflowering of tenderness and passion each of them had returned into some solitary dream unshared by the other and what endearments passed between them passed, it seemed, from empty heart to empty heart, echoing hollowly the departure of what they knew at last was gone.
'Gloria's darn nice – not a brain in her head.'Gloria about herself (brace yourself since the internalized misogyny is real with that one):
'A sense of responsibility would spoil her. She's too pretty.'
'She's so utterly stupid.'
'Remarkable that a person [Gloria] can comprehend so little and yet live in such a complex civilization. A woman like that …'
'I value my body because you [her husband Anthony] think it's beautiful. And this body of mine – of yours – to have it grow ugly and shapeless? It's simply intolerable.' (BITCH WHAT?)Some of the lovely descriptions about other women in the novel:
'Women soil easily,' she said, 'far more easily than men.'
She had no sense of humour, but, to take its place, a happy disposition that made her laugh at the proper times when she was with men.Scottie also had a wilde sense of 'healthy' relationships:
Her bosom is still a pavement that she offers to the hoofs of many passing stallions, hoping that their iron shoes may strike even a spark of romance in the darkness. (This is honestly one of my favorites like what kind of crack was Fitzgerald smoking?)
Then Anthony knew what he wanted – to assert his will against this cool and impervious girl, to obtain with one magnificent effort a mastery that seemed infinitely desirable.Don't get me wrong, I'm aware that Fitzgerald knew that he was writing about fucked up relationships. However, he constantly propagates the notion that Gloria (and later Dot) want Anthony to seize the power and control their bodies and actions.
'Hit me!' she implored him – wildly, stupidly. 'Oh, hit me, and I'll kiss the hand you hit me with.' (the fuck outta here)
Yet in the morning, coming early into her room, he knelt down by her bed and cried like a little boy, as though it was his heart that had been broken.Anthony is also the one cheating in the relationship. However, when he suspects that Gloria cheated on him as well (which she didn't) he gets super aggressive and accusatory and makes her feel like a whore for pleasing men etc. It was truly sickening to read. In general, Fitzgerald portrayed the women in his story as the properties of men, rather feeding than questioning that fucked up trope.
Trouble was she had heard that she might have to bathe Negroes in alcohol, and after that she hadn't felt so patriotic. (I hope you burn in hell)And when she and Anthony went out to dance, they saw
a tragic Negro made yearning, aching music on a saxophone until the garish hall became an enchanted jungle of barbaric rhythms.Barbaric rhythms? Dude was playing the saxophone, so can ya'll chill.
"'The Beautiful and the Dammed' is Fitzgerald's least known novel, yet it provides fascinating insight into his development as a writer and his evolution as a person. Stylistically, it functions as the intermediate step between the unfocused but exuberant vitality of his debut novel, 'This Side of Paradise,' and the superb craftmanship of his third and in many ways, his greatest book, 'The Great Gatsby.'"
A thousand taxis would yawn at a thousand corners, and only to him was that kiss forever lost and done. In a thousand guises Thais would hail a cab and turn up her face for loving. And her pallor would be virginal and lovely, and her kiss chaste as the moon...