This Side Of Paradise

This Side Of Paradise
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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About Book

Amazon.com
Fitzgerald's first novel, reprinted in the handsome Everyman's Library series of literary classic, uses numerous formal experiments to tell the story of Amory Blaine, as he grows up during the crazy years following the First World War. It also contains a new introduction by Craig Raine that describes critical and popular reception of the book when it came out in 1920.

From Publishers Weekly
Fitzgerald's first novel, about a coterie of Princeton socialites, appears in a 75th anniversary edition.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Fitzgerald's semiautobiographical first novel was considered intellectual and daring when it was published in 1920. Amory Blaine grows up in St. Paul in the early years of the century. His mother is an alcoholic whose wealth is sufficient to accommodate her eccentricities. She dotes on her son and encourages him to indulge his whims. His father is conspicuously absent. Amory observes the social graces, as befits someone of his class, but he is only capable of doing so superficially. He is always aware of himself and how he fits into his immediate surroundings. Because of this constant self-analysis, he finds it difficult to relax, to accept people as they are, and to make friends. It is at Princeton that Amory comes into his own, determined to make the best of what he considers from the outset to be the best years of his life. Narrator Dick Hill brings Amory to life with an energetic reading that captures the emotional swings of a spoiled and shallow man who never grows up. Recommended for public library collections.?Nann Blaine Hilyard, Fargo P.L.,
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
F. Scott Fitzgerald's first big hit appealed to the hedonistic youth of The Jazz Age, its immaturity aiding its popularity. Sorely dated, it nonetheless contains vigorous writing and strong characterization. It's a romantic self-portrait of a time in which the hero enters Princeton as a spoiled brat and, after several love affairs, instructive friendships and intellectual awakenings, matures, if that's the right word, into a penniless and sadder but wiser copywriter. Energetic Dick Hill has a good time with this formless novel. In so doing, he chews up a lot of scenery, but the grandiloquent author would probably approve. Indeed, he manages to take the edge off of the "romantic egoists" who so charmed one generation while seeming obnoxious to the current one. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Chicago Tribune
"Bears the impress of genius....splendid and fascinating."

Amory Blaine in This Side of Paradise
"It's essentially cleaner to be corrupt and rich than it is to be innocent and poor."

-- Chicago Tribune
"Bears the impress of genius....splendid and fascinating."

-- Amory Blaine in This Side of Paradise
"It's essentially cleaner to be corrupt and rich than it is to be innocent and poor."

Review
Chicago Tribune Bears the impress of genius...splendid and fascinating.

Book Description
This Side of Paradise describes life at Princeton among the glittering, bored, and disillusioned-the post-World War I "lost generation." Published in 1920, when he was just twenty-three, the novel was an overnight success and shot Fitzgerald to instant stardom.

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There was, also, a curious strain of weakness running crosswise through his make-up ... a harsh phrase from the lips of an older boy (older boys usually detested him) was liable to sweep him off his poise into surly sensitiveness, or timid stupidity ... he was a slave to his own moods and he felt that though he was capable of recklessness and audacity, he possessed neither courage, perseverance, nor self-respect.

From the Publisher
I'm not going to mention how This Side of Paradise is brilliant and perfectly captures "The Lost Generation" in such a way that even a 25-year-old can read this book and somehow feel the tone of that era. Everybody knows all that. Instead, I'd like to just say that one of the reasons I enjoy this book is that it is so damned funny! The self-indulgence and the egoism and the vanity and the arrogance of both Amory and F. Scott Fitzgerald are incredibly amusing. I'm not writing this to belittle or demean the work. I mean this in the best way possible. I love it! It cracks me up! People forget that this book, besides being educational and meaningful, is a really good time and a lot of laughs.

S. Gutierrez, Assistant editor

Inside Flap Copy
This Side of Paradise is the book that established F. Scott Fitzgerald as the prophet and golden boy of the newly dawned Jazz Age. Published in 1920, when he was just twenty-three, the novel catapulted him to instant fame and financial success. The story of Amory Blaine, a privileged, aimless, and self-absorbed Princeton student, This Side of Paradise closely reflects Fitzgerald's own experiences as an undergraduate. Amory Blaine's journey from prep school to college to the First World War is an account of "the lost generation." The young "romantic egotist" symbolizes what Fitzgerald so memorably described as "a new generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken." A pastiche of literary styles, this dazzling chronicle of youth remains bitingly relevant decades later.

"This Side of Paradise commits almost every sin that a novel can possibly commit," wrote Edmund Wilson. "But it does not commit the unpardonable sin: it does not fail to live. The whole preposterous farrago is animated with life."

From the Back Cover
"I know I'll wake some morning and find that the debutantes have made me famous overnight. I really believe that no one else could have written so searchingly the story of the youth of [my] generation." --F. Scott Fitzgerald

About the Author
The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hardbound editions of important works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torch-bearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inaugurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.

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