This Side of Paradise

I finished reading This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The book follows Amory Blaine as he attends school, encounters people, and how he reacts as a person. Amory was born in the late 1890s. He attended a boarding school and went to college at Princeton. When he graduated he was in the Great War. While the book is not an autobiography, it is close to one. Fitzgerald drew extensively from his experiences and modeled characters on people he knew.

My favorite part of the book was being in the world of the early 1900s. It was a time of debutantes, letters of introduction, and clubs being vitally important in college society. The world of 100 years ago was so different from today. Yet some striking similarities are still there.

I find myself comparing Amory's life to my own. Most things are differences, but I can understand how he operates. If Fitzgerald was born 90 years later and wrote the same book about his experiences, it would have a lot in common with my life. We are both from upper middle-class families, went to good colleges, and try to make sense of our lives after graduation when everything around us is falling apart.

The writing style and format are interesting and vary from section to section. For example, one part of the book is written in narrative drama, which is like a play. All of the dialogue is preceded by the name of who is speaking. A few parentheticals describe how the actors should deliver their lines. There are even stage directions saying who is in the scene. I like dialogue written like this better than the standard method. Many times in books I am not sure who is speaking a line until I read a few lines beyond. The format also helps me stage the scene mentally.

Amory is a fan of literature and he mentions a lot of the authors of the day. While I have not heard of many of them, a few of them are on the list of writers I want to read. There are also several poems in the book written by the different characters. I try to imagine their world where people use the mail to send poems to their friends.

One part of the book I kept reading myself into were the romances. It was just a couple of months ago that I fell into and out of love, so I keep comparing the experiences of Amory to my own.

When I finished reading the book I did not know what to make of the ending. Was it good or bad? I went back and reread a couple of sections to find some explanations. One of Fitzgerald's well known quotes is "Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy." I have not decided if the ending is triumphal or tragic.

What elevated the book to above average quality for me was how I related to Amory Blaine. If you are interested in reading the book after what I have described you should read it immediately. The book ends a few years after college, so that is when you should read it.

I look forward to reading more of Fitzgerald's works.