F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The beautiful and damned"

William Blazek, David W. Ullrich, Kirk Curnutt

"F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, has in the century since its publication in 1922 been dismissed as an outlier and curiosity in his oeuvre. At best, it has been viewed as a transitional work, a stepping-stone from the coming-of-age plot of This Side of Paradise to The Great Gatsby's masterful critique of American aspiration. To date, there has never been a scholarly collection devoted specifically to it, even though at 449 pages it is Fitzgerald's longest work with the broadest scope. The Beautiful and Damned belongs to a genre that is widely misunderstood: the "bright young things" novel in which spoiled and wealthy characters succumb to decay because of their privilege and lack of purpose. Set between 1913 and 1922, the novel touches on many of the decisive issues that mark the passage from the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era into the Jazz Age:...