This Side of Paradise (Penguin Modern Classics) by Scott Fitzgerald

Very Fine novel by one of the great American writers of 20th century. Wonderfully crafted wriiting which flows beautifully. One of Scott Firgerald's 2 major works the other being the Great Gatsby which I preferred.

Very well written but that virtue does not overcome the fact that it's all about self-centered and entitled elitists, and immature ones at that, going to Princeton in the second decade of the 20th century. I wanted to read it because it was the first success of the guy who wrote "The Great Gatsby," which was indeed great, but I could not bring myself to care about these characters and did not finish the book. I might assign this book in an American literature or creative writing class so students could compare an early work to the same author's more mature one, but I would never recommend it to be read for pleasure.

Had never read Fitzgerald before--found the book a little boring--having seen The Great Gatsby(movie) I expected more !
Knowing about the author's rocky life makes me want to read more of what he wrote--will look forward to his other writings

It is a very contemplative look at the life of youth in early 20th century America, however the struggles that Amory contends with throughout can easily be applied to life today...especially as Americans deal with a great financial recession and the longest war in American History.

the good is in good shape. the story is very readable. i always liked F.Scott Fitzgerald. i saw the movie long ago. the only character that i remember was Nicole and her husband who was a doctor. the narrative of the story is a ingenue actress from Hollywood. I have not finish reading it but i know the jest of the story.

Very profound and poetic. The poetry was wonderful and the plot was different. Could not put it down. It was written during a very different time, about a about a man and his difficulties with his political views and his relationships.

Had to remember my 30 days to a more powerful vocabulary. His use of the english laguage is simply beautiful. It is a style missing in todays era. Plot centers around personal issues of characters and how they are intertwined. Did not finish book because I have my own problems. Do not need to deal with fictional characters concerns

the good is in good shape. the story is very readable. i always liked F.Scott Fitzgerald. i saw the movie long ago. the only character that i remember was Nicole and her husband who was a doctor. the narrative of the story is a ingenue actress from Hollywood. I have not finish reading it but i know the jest of the story.

Very profound and poetic. The poetry was wonderful and the plot was different. Could not put it down. It was written during a very different time, about a about a man and his difficulties with his political views and his relationships.

Had to remember my 30 days to a more powerful vocabulary. His use of the english laguage is simply beautiful. It is a style missing in todays era. Plot centers around personal issues of characters and how they are intertwined. Did not finish book because I have my own problems. Do not need to deal with fictional characters concerns

When faced with a « classic » novel, how do you come to terms with the fact that you don't like it ?
At the risk of being labeled boorish and unsophisticated, I'll take the plunge and say it : I didn't like Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night.
I'd heard of that novel all my life. Expecting a real treat, I decided that it was time I did something about it. May be I was expecting too much.
First disappointment : the style. I know : it's wonderful at times, with moving and enchanting comparisons and metaphors ; flashes of beauty in the night. However, when you stumble across sentences that have to be read two or three times before you can be sure what they mean (and even then...), it spoils your pleasure somewhat.
Second disappointment : the plot. It sounds hollow.
Third disappointment : the characters. Even more hollow than the plot. Hard to identify with poor little rich girls and boys who have never encountered any real problem, setback or suffering in their lives.
Ibsen used to say : "The rich know how to have fun, but they don't know how to be happy".
In Tender is the Night, you wonder if they even know how to have fun.

I consider myself a pretty well-read person, and I'm always willing to give a book a chance. But try though I may, I could not finish this mess. It was like trying to plow through concrete.

It is Fitzgerald's first attempt at literature and it shows. The book sounds like a lot of notes the author jotted down and then put together in a hurry, without bothering to go through it more carefully before submitting it for publishing. Amory Blaine is a vapid, self-centered, insecure, silly young man who seems incapable of sticking to one subject or idea for too long. He considers himself superior to others (no, don't ask me why), but at the same time envies his friends and craves their approval. He is a political dilettante, who babbles a lot of nonsense that sound like a pastiche of ideas snatched hurriedly and superficially from conversations with his friend Burne (very much like the format of this book). In short, Amory is not a likeable or even intriguing character. I don't care a straw for political correctness, but yes, this young man is racist, xenophobic and discriminating. I found him obnoxious, tiresome, and finally exasperating. If Paradise - the reward for a righteous life, we're told - is as boring as this side that Fitzgerald shows us, you might as well indulge in wickedness and get your fun while you can.

This novel is just further proof that even the most exalted authors in literature are human, therefore, fallible, which is why nobody should expect ALL their work to be perfect. Praising this book just because it was "written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald" is as pretentious and fatuous as going into raptures over a boring musical piece just because it falls under the category of "classical." I'm going to pick up The Great Gatsby again and remind myself why Fitzgerald made it to the hallowed grounds of American Literature.

I read it somewhere that this novel was a roaring success upon publication in 1920. Really? Well, no wonder they called it The Lost Generation.

Boring and pointless. The writing style, of course, is certainly not modern, but it lacks transition and continuity. I couldn't wait to be done with this book!! I'm sure Fitzgerald has written better novels, but our book club picked this one. Sorry!

I kind of expected a better binding, but it is a book,and looks like it will be okay on the shelf. Haven't read it,so can't comment there,except that Fitzgerald was a master,and thus it should be good.

The book was in okay condition -- but the spine of the book was very dry and as I read it the book literally fell apart. The book itself was very good. The plot was compelling, the characters detailed and the readability excellent.I could see the influence of filmmaking on Fitzgerald.

I enjoy Fitzgerald and I'm really attracted to how well he paints his characters, this book being no exception. You can really feel and understand Dick and Nicole's separate views on their relationship as you watch it unravel.

This is the worst book I've ever read. It's inconceivable that his next book was The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald spends way too much time on late night bull sessions, but then skips over Amory's military service in World War I. Did anything happen to Amory while he was there? A great alternative to sleeping aids.

A college minor in English had not introduced me to this well-known author so I was anxious to give him a try. PERHAPS his better known works are more interesting, but the last 80 percent of this book went nowhere and I am disgusted with myself for wasting time finishing it. Totally unsatisfactory.

Read Fitzgerald in my young adult years and this was my favorite of his books. Just read it again (many decades later) and appreciated it just as much, if not more. I had forgotten how influential it was in forming my foundational views about the meaning of life and the purpose of living.

I only bought this book for its cover. I needed it for a craft I was working on and I paid more for shipping than the book, so Im not totally disapointed. However, I am disapointed that the image of the book is not what the book actually looks like since that was the only reason I purchased the book. If I knew what it looked like I would not have gotten it. The book was in good condition and if I were to read it was well worth it. It was just not right for my craft.

This is the worst book I've ever read. It's inconceivable that his next book was The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald spends way too much time on late night bull sessions, but then skips over Amory's military service in World War I. Did anything happen to Amory while he was there? A great alternative to sleeping aids.

A college minor in English had not introduced me to this well-known author so I was anxious to give him a try. PERHAPS his better known works are more interesting, but the last 80 percent of this book went nowhere and I am disgusted with myself for wasting time finishing it. Totally unsatisfactory.

Read Fitzgerald in my young adult years and this was my favorite of his books. Just read it again (many decades later) and appreciated it just as much, if not more. I had forgotten how influential it was in forming my foundational views about the meaning of life and the purpose of living.

I did not like the main character from the beginning of the book. He seemed self-centered and spoiled, and I considered not finishing the book, but kept hoping he would change and improve. He didn't. I haven't read any other books by this author, and now I probably won't read anymore, not even the Great Gatsby.

I only bought this book for its cover. I needed it for a craft I was working on and I paid more for shipping than the book, so Im not totally disapointed. However, I am disapointed that the image of the book is not what the book actually looks like since that was the only reason I purchased the book. If I knew what it looked like I would not have gotten it. The book was in good condition and if I were to read it was well worth it. It was just not right for my craft.

Two things about 'This Side of Paradise' will leave a lifelong impression on me. I've only just finished the novel, but I already know that its marks will remain embedded in me like luminescent sparks fallen from the starry skies of literature. The first thing impressed on me, Amory Blaine. Never have I connected with a protagonist more than I have with him. I know his thoughts and musings well, for many of his notions and ideals mirror my own. For good or ill. Amory is my favorite character in literature. The second thing impressed on me from the reading of this book is the way that it was written. Reading of the escapades of Amory was like reading a journal of his that was stuffed with hidden folded letters and notes, scraps of poetry and fiction and even sections of a play. I've never read a novel written like this, and I am extremely impressed that it was F. Scott Fitzgerald's first published work. This is a groundbreaking work.
As always, Fitzgerald's writing was lyrical, descriptive, flowery, and composed of such outstanding memorable prose as to be set apart and above the work of Fitzgerald's contemporaries. Ernest Hemingway will remain my favorite writer, but I can say with assurance that Fitzgerald's talent with words is much more pronounced, though not as true and gripping. Fitzgerald's prose, though phenomenal, has a way of wandering aimlessly in a charming way.
This was a novel I'd started reading at some point last fall, stopped, and only recently started again. I'm not sure why it took me so long, pausing to finish other novels by other writers. What I can say is that I read this novel in they way that Fitzgerald wrote it: in scraps and tatters, half-remembered fragments, until today, in a feverish pace, I read 'This Side of Paradise' from somewhere around its middle to its end. This book, now completed, was absolutely astonishing, a marvel. I can easily see how this novel was instrumental in ushering in the Jazz Age.
I recommend starting Fitzgerald's collection with 'Tales of the Jazz Age' and maybe 'The Great Gatsby', but 'This Side of Paradise' should certainly be coming up next on the reading list. Amory Blaine doesn't disappoint, and you'll never read another book like it.

Oh, Brother !!! This book is just about nothing else but incoherent wordy rants. Fitzgerald pulls a Conztanza even when pulling a Conztanza wasn't even invented yet !!!!.
The main character is an unlikable , unrelatable annoying young man who goes around life expecting everything by doing next to nothing.
The story (if any) is complicated with a bunch of philosophies that makes the reader unable to understand what the author meant. To be honest , i am not sure what i did just read ...i started skipped entire sections in hopes that it will get interesting ,but never did. It is a total mess .Probably someone from that era could had related to this story ...but as today in 2016 just not !.

Before the decade of the Twenties became known for its flappers with bobbed hair and a general freedom for America's youth, F. Scott Fitzgerald advertised those possibilities in his first novel, "This Side of Paradise."

Fitzgerald wrote parts of the novel while a student at Princeton, based on his own experiences. He was a mediocre student at the Ivy League institution, but obtained an education nevertheless by performing with a college theatre group called the Triangle Club and reading literature, much like Amory Blaine, the main character of the novel. Just before he enlisted in the army for the Great War, Fitzgerald tried to get a first draft of his novel published. After the Armistice was signed, Fitzgerald worked as an artist for an advertising firm before quitting, moving to Minnesota, and reworking the novel.

Mass consumerism and mass marketing developed after the Second Industrial Revolution in America. Businesses found that a catchy slogan and well-constructed advertising sold their products. As others caught on, advertising became required. A popular political cartoon of the day reflected the importance of advertising. In the cartoon, an inventor fell asleep outside the door of his out-of-the-way cottage. The reader realizes that building a better mousetrap doesn't guarantee that people will buy the new product, especially if they do not know about it.

Advertising firms hired artists like Amory Blaine to construct the advertisements for these products. Advertisements were featured in newspapers and weekly publications, who hired talented writers to compose short stories to entice the public to read their journals and thus, improve their viability to advertisers. Prices fell as the journals made their profits on selling advertisement. Fitzgerald's short time as an artist with an advertising firm, and his subsequent career as an artist of short stories were as much a fabric of the Twenties as the hedonism in the novel that most readers responded to.

Two of the love interests of Amory Blaine, Isabelle Borgé and Rosalind Connage, were based on real-life loves of Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was able to get the girl in real life that Amory Blaine could not. The fame generated by his first novel improved Fitzgerald's earnings potential and made him a viable suitor. Thomas Parke D'Invilliers and Monsignor Darcy were also based on friends of Fitzgerald. Amory's mother, Beatrice Blaine, was based on a mother of a friend.

Critics loved the novel, citing it as the only adequate study of the contemporary American adolescent and young adult. Universities condemned Amory Blaine's impression of college life as a country-club atmosphere of snobbery even though colleges, at the time, were primarily composed of students of well-to-do families from prestigious high-school academies. American adolescents and young adults experimented with the drinking and casual kissing outlined in the novel, creating a new sea of morals for the Roaring Twenties. The mass-produced automobile, available to more customers because of its low price, brought mobility into the life of people. Young lovers could get away from judgmental eyes, and they did.

Other notable authors produced stories on similar topics later in the decade. Sinclair Lewis wrote of a middle-aged George Babbitt catching the seven-year itch and going on a drunken spree of debauchery. Oil! of Upton Sinclair also explored the era's possibilities with Bunny Ross, the son of a wealthy oil mogul. These two heavy hitters of literature helped capture the spirit of The Roaring Twenties, but the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald defined the era. This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby are required reading for anyone looking to explore the changing cultural fabric of American society in the Twenties.

Comparisons between Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night and The Great Gatsby are inevitable. Both are viewed as his most complete artistic visions; and both are in the enviable position of being on the Modern Libraries list of the 100 best pieces of fiction of the twentieth century.

Gatsby is gorgeously written, and the language is expressive, nuanced, and multi-leveled. One can read and re-read Gatsby and find new things with each reading. A better definition of a classic I cannot find. Gatsby is also a radically economical novel. Coming in at just 50,000 words, it is nearly a novella. A short book, it seems long due to its reputation and genius. But in the end, it is petite, and Fitzgerald had to work within the confines of this short narrative structure.

Not so with Tender is the Night. At 108,000 words, the novel allows Fitzgerald to sprawl; in the course of the novel, we see far less compressed development of the characters than in Gatsby. There are far more graphic representations of scene, the flow of time, and the outcome of events. Tender shows the reader how good Fitzgerald could be in a longer form. He stretches his wings, and the results are astonishing. It is a moving and tragic novel of love and life gone astray.

Even with some of the novel's problems (does the text really give us enough of Nichole's insanity? Is Dick Diver's descent given enough grounding) Tender is the perfect accompaniment to Gatsby and Gatsby to Tender. For writers, it shows that if lighting does not exactly strike twice, similar results can be produced by and expressed by the same electric charge.

Tender is the Night describes the life and unraveling of a young doctor, Dick Diver, who lived in the 1930's in Paris. The book describes Dick's marriage to Nicole and Dick's love affair with Rosemary, a young actress. This novel is a touching story and a worthwhile read. However, it grapples with some very deep and complex themes, and therefore may leave the reader with more questions than answers.

Tender is the Night wrestles with the powers and limits of several different kinds of love - father, Healer, and Lover. I have written my review about these three kinds of love because I think these themes are central to the understanding of the novel.

For many women it is difficult to untangle between what they need from a man and what they still need from their daddy. Emotionally and psychologically, there can be a fair amount of overlap between the two roles. Physically, however, there is no overlap. Sex with a father is inappropriate and damaging. From the male's perspective, many men enjoy being the savior of the damsel in distress and find it empowering to become the daddy the girl never had. But again there comes a point when the man tires of being a savior/daddy figure and just wants to be a man who is loved for himself without it being predicated on his ability to save or heal. Many men try to give away too much of themselves, and then like Dick, they end up defeated and drained.

Tender is the Night deals with these complex relationships. The love between Dick Diver and Nicole is based on his ability to be her savior/healer. She is his life's work, Fitzgerald notes. The question posed by the book is, however, is this a healthy foundation for a marriage? It means Nicole has to remain sick to continue needing Dick, and he has to forbear on his dreams so he can concentrate on her needs only. How long can this last? The book seems to indicate that this cannot last long. Eventually, Dick tires of his role and becomes resentful of Nicole. Nicole, from her end, keeps her end of the bargain and her illness persists throughout the marriage. However, as soon as she decided to leave Dick and become her own healer, her illness improves. Did Dick and Nicole ever love each other? Maybe; it's an open question.

The theme continues with Rosemary who becomes famous by starring in a film called "Daddy's Girl." Rosemary too is looking for a daddy but for other reasons. She has not been abused by her father like Nicole but has never known her father. She adores Dick in a childish way and yearns to be sexually intimate with him for the wrong reasons; she just wants a daddy figure. Dick responded to her initially by being exactly what she needed him to be--a kind father figure who refused to be intimate with her. But then, just like with Nicole, he couldn't remain the heroic, idealized man for too long. Eventually, Dick gives in and becomes intimate with Rosemary. But Rosemary is disappointed; she liked him better when he was a daddy figure who stood on high moral ground. Was there ever any love between Rosemary and Dick? Again, it's an open question.

Who was Dick? Dick tried to be a hero and healer but eventually he couldn't keep up with the high standards he set for himself. He then began to unravel. He might have fared better had he set lower standards. Many commentators have noted that the events in this novel mirror the events in Fitzgerald's personal life. And this may explain why the Fitzgerald describes Dick Diver's descent into alcoholism without any sympathy. Fitzgerald was hard on his character (Dick Diver) because he was hard on himself - too hard. Dick Diver and men like him deserve sympathy. Dick Diver genuinely wanted to be the perfect man who healed all broken hearts and comforted all broken spirits. In the end, however, it was his heart and spirit that needed mending.

This is perhaps one of the best stories for a twenty-something year old to read during the recession, especially if they have had to set aside their dreams and currently search for something less than extraordinary in order to survive. It is amazing how relevant it is even so long after the emergence of the Jazz Age. Where the book was focused on the clash between old Victorian ideals and the emerging youth liberalization after the first World War, today we find ourselves just as lost. These wars that we've been fighting and this recession that we are suffering through will redefine our nation just as it was redefined after the conflict of WWI. The question is how?

Amory is caught in the very center of this clash between Victorian conservatism and youth liberalization. It is up to him and the other young men and women of the times to either create the new new, or stick with the old. I see the character of Amory Blaine in the face of all my college friends who had dreams of what their lives would be like after graduation, only to have those dreams dashed upon the rocks of this recession. Let us all pray that in the end we don't end up like Fitzgerald, who modeled his character Amory after himself. Let us hope that we don't follow in the path of Amory and are able to regain our aspirations when things improve, otherwise we might drown our hopelessness in bottles of alcohol until it kills us just like the famed U.S. author that wrote this book.

I remember my first experience reading it, back in 11th grade. It is not really the best book for high schoolers, but perhaps in that suburban milieu of doctors' kids and dissolving marriages, it was a good choice. Another reason I wanted to read it was that a Fitzgerald biography said this was pretty much FSF's take on his own, deeply troubled, marriage.

The book begins from the point of view of an innocent - Rosemary Hoyt, an American movie star (this was the 1920s) visiting some people on the Cote d'Azur, at a fictitious place on the shore between Cannes and St. Tropez. She quickly falls for an older man, an American doctor named Dick Diver who is married to a beautiful, and very rich, woman named Nicole. On the surface, everything is beautiful, glamorous, luxurious, and rich. But below there is trouble - quarrels, drunkenness, crazy behavior, homosexuality, and other ills. Rosemary doesn't see it though, and with the stubbornness of a beautiful, naïve girl, she goes after Dick. He resists, but begins to fall in love with her. There is a cast of supporting characters such as Abe North, a wacky drunk, and Tommy Barban, a hotheaded young Frenchman with a military career behind him. '

Rosemary is drawn in, as the reader is, and as the wealthy but mentally disturbed Nicole Warren was. Dick radiates calm, knowledge, success, strength, and joie de vivre. As the story turns to the Divers' marital history, the impressions alter, and the book becomes the tale of Dick's undoing. Diver was a young, hardworking, Yale educated doctor at a clinic in Switzerland. A young, but seriously troubled (probably schizophrenic, as Zelda Fitzgerald was, although this word is not used) gets the hots for him, and against everyone's advice, Dick marries her. She has a mindlessly arrogant rich girl sister, named Baby, who is portrayed superbly. Dick and Nicole have a couple of kids and some good times, but he is as much her medical caretaker as he is her husband, and it starts to wear him down. Things start unravelling. The whole book has a tragic, downward trajectory, a feeling of impending misery that no amount of sunlight and good wine and comfortable surroundings can dispel. '

The book is a downer, but it is a fascinating one, with moments of brilliant writing. Fitzgerald can string words together and juxtapose them with sparkle and casual elegance. The characters' conversations are real and believable, as are the depictions of gay people (ahead of its time, I should think) and the playful rich. It is a very good novel, and deserves to be remembered even if it is not the icon that The Great Gatsby is. No doubt there is some satisfaction in watching the Divers crumble, those people that had every advantage imaginable, but it is still a sad read, and the product of a great artist who was in a great deal of trouble.

As soon as I finished this book, I was ready to start all over and read it again. F. Scott Fitzgerald fills This Side of Paradise with his signature lyricism and beautiful phrasing, and combines it here with autobiographical elements and deep introspection. I love the maturity and wisdom with which Fitzgerald reflects on his own life through the story of Amory Blaine, and how it follows Blaine in times of extreme good and bad fortune, making it much more relatable than a standard tale that follows a hero's journey. I feel it is very descriptive and indicative of the time at which it was written, and I appreciate the way you can pick up on the overall feeling of the time without that explanation even being the focus of the story, which I believe is a nod to Fitzgerald's skill. Overall, I would highly recommend reading this book, ideally multiple times, so you can be sure to pick up on each layer of meaning and the motivation and thought behind each word. The story is one of much more than it might initially appear, and it goes much beyond just the life of Amory Blaine, delving into the pitfalls and feelings of the time period and of growing up in general. Readers can certainly draw parallels from this novel, relate them to their own lives, and even learn a little about how to approach their lives. I certainly did.

The first 40 pages is dull. So is the middle 100 pages. The ending is probably one of the most unsatisfying endings I've ever read as it ends not with not a bang but a sad whimper in diminuendo as if the author just didn't want to work on it anymore and dashed off a coda.

Fitzgerald's lyricism, in my opinion, is simply overrated. Granted, there are some breathtaking passages (which I took note of), but most of the writing was just dull, dull, dull. He would've benefited tremendously from studying storytelling as well since he makes the middle portion so deadly dull that it made me want to chuck it across the room, and butchers the last portion so badly that it came across as amateurish - choppy, rushed, and consequently ungraceful - which gives credence to his own remark about the book: "I would give anything if I hadn't had to write Part III of Tender Is the Night entirely on stimulant..."

He also makes tons of basic storytelling faux pas, such as redundant attributions (e.g. "I think so, too," he agreed), unnecessary and dull passages that add practically nothing to the story, a whole section (the middle section, more specifically from p.114 to 207) where we follow the main characters wander around without any specific objective except to kill time, and the last part that's haphazardly and painfully put together. The result is a very uneven book with deep pits of absolute boredom.

Didn't really like it

F. Scott Fitzgerald's second-highest regarded novel reveals the psyche of its tortured author. As a reading experience, it draws interest from the character of that author, equal parts eloquence and self-loathing. But it lacks the easy engagement and storycraft of Fitzgerald's other fiction.

Published in 1934, nine years after Fitzgerald's prior novel "The Great Gatsby" (and the only other novel after "Gatsby" Fitzgerald lived to complete), "Tender Is The Night" centers around a young, handsome couple who live as wealthy American expatriates on France's Mediterranean coast. Dick Diver is practical but somewhat frustrated, a situation exacerbated by the arrival of ingénue film actress Rosemary Hoyt. Encouraged by her mother, Rosemary takes a fancy to Dick and decides to lose her virginity to him. Dick's wife Nicole senses something is brewing, but her husband's fidelity is far from the only issue on her very full plate.

Two psychoanalytic profiles dominate this book. The first, of Nicole Diver, is shallow and unconvincing. The other, of the author himself, is far more engaging, if more a matter of connecting the dots between Fitzgerald and Dick than what the text itself affords. Dick, we come to learn, is a man of great potential, a leader in his chosen field who chooses to exile himself at the height of his success. As the book goes on, Dick descends deeper into alcohol and social-outcast status. While his profession is psychoanalysis, he is often found late in the novel working on a giant manuscript he never seems able to finish. The Fitzgerald parallels are obvious and will fascinate admirers.

But the novel feels thin at its core. I don't think I could put it any better than the title of Michael G.'s review from July 2011 - "Slender Is The Plot." Divided in three sections, each primarily seen through the lens of a different person - first Rosemary, then Dick, then Nicole - "Tender" is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about the continent, with people giving random voice to their concerns in the Age of Anxiety in-between squabbles and trysts. The characters seem more like narrative constructs than real people. Dick, for example, goes from solid citizen in the early and middle section (a large part of which is a flashback to an earlier period in his life) to dangerous drunk for no better reason it seems than a girl he pines for. Jimmy Buffett knew better than to lean on that excuse too hard, but it forms the spine of our story.

Fitzgerald seems more self-indulgent here, both in his writing (a lot of description gets troweled upon incidents of little or no importance to the larger story, like a visit to a World War I battlefield or the drunken antics of a doomed friend) and in what he writes about, with Dick reduced on account of allowing himself to be used by both his wife and his would-be mistress. It's not his fault he's so damn sexy! The drinking issue comes up as an afterthought, as if Fitzgerald felt lost without employing his trademark malady. But Dick's issues, like Nicole's, never seem very real. Neither, at their heart, do Dick and Nicole, however much they are being used here as stand-ins for Fitzgerald and his famously troubled wife Zelda.

What I enjoyed about "Tender Is The Night" is the wonderful sense of place one gets, right from the beginning when we see the coast of France from a hotel "and its bright tan prayer rug of a beach." Fitzgerald overloads on the adjectives and adverbs, it seems more than usual for him, but his amazing craft carries this off to solid and sometimes spectacular effect. There are a hundred perfect sentences buried in this book, sometimes attached to killer paragraphs: "In the dead white hours in Zurich staring into a stranger's pantry across the upshine of a street-lamp, he used to think that he wanted to be good, he wanted to be kind, he wanted to be brave and wise, but it was all pretty difficult. He wanted to be loved, too, if he could fit it in."

Reading prose like that made me hungry for the deeper experience of other Fitzgerald works, not only the impossibly perfect "Gatsby" but "The Beautiful And Damned," which like "Tender" is focused on a couple's travails within a social set but of a more engaging, visceral, humorously-alive kind. The problem with Fitzgerald is he's a good writer here, but looking rather lost in comparison to his younger self.

I and most of my contemporaries were smitten by novels even before we first encountered F. Scott Fitzgerald in our adolescence. And then most of those among us who didn't already adore good fiction became lifelong addicts when they first read The Great Gatsby or Tender is the Night. (The few remaining holdouts were those unlucky enough to have been cursed in their cradles by the Wicked Fairy VG -- the awful VIDEO GAMES, killer of brain cells and mistress of illiteracy). Why then the ensuing years of skimming Fitzgerald's books when we saw new editions and not feeling the thrill of our first encounter with the work? Had we just been deceived in the first place, perhaps by our youthful naivete? I was beginning to think that that was what had happened until I saw this edition -- and realized what an enormous difference a presentation can make. This quite wonderful new edition of Tender is the Night restored all the thrill of the first encounter. Buy this one, and you will perhaps recapture (as I did) that first fine careless rapture. And that sent me to the same source's edition of The Great Gatsby, which (I am happy to say) also thrilled me afresh and reminded me what a wonderful book can do. Buy both, and hope for more.

Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise was given a tentative thumbs-down by the literati of the day, most not understanding what Fitzgerald was trying to accomplish. And even today it's not a particularly easy read. From the standpoint of early twenty-first century, though, the book seems a precursor to postmodern literature, with its disjointed narrative, its social and political references, and above all, its overwhelming self-awareness. The book has been called a critique of humanity's attraction to glamour, but that hardly seems the complete story.
Amory Blaine is a well-to-do, bratty WASP - egoistic, handsome, with a glib mouth. Underlying all this is an insecurity that begins to show its teeth during Amory's Princeton days, as his mum dies and leaves him with nothing of value. He turns to girls for succor, but he quickly discovers, in the way of early twentieth-century life in the U.S., that his looks, his disarming way, have little truck without a serious jingle in his pocket.
So Amory enters into a series of promising but ultimately unfulfilling romances, joins the army during World War I, and returns to life as a menial ad copy writer. His conscience during this time is a Catholic priest, Thayer Darcy, who has had a dalliance with Amory's mum in days past. But Amory can't be corralled by faith and religion. He does, though, offer to sacrifice himself before the law in order to save a friend's reputation. Still, even this turns to spoiled milk.
In the book's final pages, Fitzgerald offers a clumsy, summarizing motif: Amory is given a ride by two well-off, conservative men, and they enter into an argument concerning what today would be Milton Friedman's capitalism versus socialism. I was stunned as I read these pages - how appropriate that argument seems to today's bare-knuckled conflicts over the same ideological ground!

Fitzgerald's writing here is brilliant in places, but his structure seems of the ad hoc variety. As with the argument mentioned above, many of the book's themes and situations are handled clumsily or are dropped unfinished as the author moves on to other ideas. At its basis it's a bildungsroman. But there's also Amory's fall from grace, which establishes his reinvention, something that was a religio-literary staple of the day. In the end, Fitzgerald leaves Amory disillusioned but hopeful. In the final paragraphs, Amory sums up thusly:

"It's all a poor substitute at best," he said sadly.
And he could not tell why the struggle was worth while, why he had determined to use to the utmost himself and his heritage from the personalities he had passed....
He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky.
"I know myself," he cried, "but that is all."
Still, that 's a start, as this supremely talented writer began a slow, awkward climb toward a never-achieved literary perfection.

The only Fitzgerald I had ever read was GATSBY. After seeing the new film version, I decided I'd like to read some more Fitzgerald. THIS SIDE OF PARADISE had been on my list for a long time. I have to confess that I was a little disappointed. It's a coming-of-age story set in the World War I era about a spoiled rich boy who goes to Princeton. It contains some keen observations on the lives of the American rich during that period that made it worth reading for me, but as a novel, is clumsily written and appears to have been cobbled together from several works set in the same milieu. The seams show. But as a sociological document I think it's quite valuable. I certainly wouldn't regard this as essential reading, but if one already has in interest in Fitzgerald, this is not a waste of time.

This particular edition is beautifully designed. Even if you have no intention of reading it, the gorgeous art-deco styled cover makes a splendid prop for the interior decorator trying to project an image of glamor and sophistication.

One of the best works of American literature ever, "Tender is the Night" is often overlooked due to the popularity of Fitzgerald's more well known work, "The Great Gatsby." In my opinion, great works of American literature simultaneously capture the time in which they are set, and perfectly arc these struggles and triumphs to wider, common themes. Somewhat reflective of his own life, Tender tells the story of a psychiatrist who pulls a reverse Florence Nightingale and falls for one his is patients before she's truly better. The resultant relationship is less than perfect, but he struggles with duty to his vows, and the longings of his heart when a new interest- scandalous in her own way- makes her way on his scene.

As always, reading Fitzgerald is like watching an author make slow, passionate love to the dictionary. He's brilliant with words, but not hifalutin like many of his contemporaries. What he tells is a captivating bittersweet tale of confusions and conflict, set against a beautiful backdrop of pain, joy and strife.

Tender Is the Night by legendary author F. Scott Fitzgerald chronicles the tragic fall from grace of Dick Diver, a brilliant American psychiatrist. Through most of the book's angst laden narrative, Dr. Diver has only one patient, Nicole Diver, his wealthy and beautiful wife.

The reader's introduction to the Divers is through the eyes of Rosemary Hoyt, an 18 year old silent screen starlet, as she meets the Divers and their entourage on the French Riviera. Rosemary falls madly in love with the charismatic doctor whose supremely confident demeanor makes him the focus of attention wherever he goes. As the story slowly unfolds, Rosemary is relegated to minor character status and Fitzgerald concentrates on describing the relationship between Dick and Nicole.

We learn how the two met while Nicole was hospitalized in a Swiss psychiatric facility and how it was they decided to marry. Nicole's wealth allows them to live like royalty as they make Europe their playground. But eventually Dick succumbs to alcoholism and his career and marriage suffer as a result.

Tender Is the Night had special meaning for F. Scott Fitzgerald, who reportedly worked on it over a 9 year period from 1925 to 1934. His wife, Zelda, was a diagnosed schizophrenic who was no stranger to Swiss psychiatric hospitals and Fitzgerald himself battled alcoholism. Unfortunately, whatever deep meaning the author intended this novel to convey is not at all apparent. Most readers will see this book as a disjointed collection of curious anecdotes about spoiled rich people.

Reading Tender Is the Night in its entirety is a tough slog. I'm not sure the story it has to tell justifies the effort.

The novel tells the story of the Nicole and Dick Diver, a wealthy, American couple living in Europe in the early 20th century. As the story opens they are introduced to a young movie actress, Rosemary, who is infatuated with Dick and with the lifestyle the Divers and their friends enjoy. Slowly Rosemary, and the reader, watches the Divers' marriage disintegrate, and Dick, in particular, descend into alcoholic despair.

There is no question that Fitzgerald could write brilliantly. It is a complex and thought-provoking look at human failing, at fear and weakness, and at self-destruction. However, I could not stand any of the characters, and really did not care what happened to them. Maybe it's his focus on this very hedonistic lifestyle. This is not the first work by Fitzgerald I've read and I've had a similar reaction in the past. I've also read books by other authors who shone a bright light on a wealthy class - Edith Wharton for example - without feeling that same disconnection with their characters or complete distaste for their lifestyle. I give it 4 stars based on the strength of Fitzgerald's writing; it is full of exquisitely crafted passages which simply took my breath away.

Trevor White does a wonderful job of performing the audio book. His pacing and voice inflection breathed life into the characters.

Part of the problem with Fitzgerald's being affiliated with a prized novel, The Great Gatsby, is that the author's other novels must be compared to it. I use this as an opening because, while the instances of early talent in the writer are here in his debut novel, the story, even though richly autobiographical, fell a little flat. Maybe this is part due to the fact that for a good deal of the book the protagonist, Amory Blaine, is pretty much synonymous with the shallow, aimless generation that Fitzgerald and other Lost Generation authors tried to depict. With the exception of minor moments of insight late in the novel, Amory is as superficial as the world seems around him.

Some have a problem with the experimental format of This Side of Paradise. It is written as a narrative, poem, drama, letter and journal. I didn't feel that way, and thought it gave a unique aspect to the novel. Fitzgerald's technique seems to coincide with the modern novel of experimenting with narrative. However, the story's subject itself clearly comes across as an author working into his craft, rather than having perfected it.

Within the story, Amory Blaine searches for identity and meaning of life amid outside influences--his mother, the world, the war, his acquaintances at school, his friendships, and his loves. While there were some moments of insight, the story comes across as a bit flat and meandering. In the final estimation, the characters were a bit too artificial.

Fitzgerald's movement towards perfecting his skill is evidenced, however. There are some valid insightful moments for the protagonist in the book's concluding pages, and Fitzgerald's style is evidenced in these brief snapshots. Fitzgerald's style would be perfected later in The Great Gatsby.

This pretty much takes me back to my original argument. The Great Gatsby is vastly superior in terms of depth, narrative and likability of main protagonist than This Side of Paradise. Not to say that there isn't a glimpse of talent here, and future higher achievements, but I'd rather be reading The Great Gatsby.

This is a complex coming of age tale about a young man that doesn't really come of age. The young protagonist, Amory Blaine, struggles to find and accept the real person he is as his "fundamental self" and his "conformist self" clash throughout. Amory has a few personality traits (an unreasonable sense of entitlement --possibly from overpampering-- and general lack of self-confidence masked by glibness) that also hinder him from attempting to find out who he is. I found him to be a very frustrating, yet real character that seems completely relatable. Amory has alot on his plate by society's views. He knows he's supposed to do what's necessary to achieve the American Dream, and even though he has been given all the comforts (good money, good schools) and advantages to better achieve that dream, it's not enough. He is confused by why these opportunities aren't just falling into his lap, since by society's views he's doing everything right. He goes through the motions, but finds nothing inspiring. He is constantly sizing himself up to his peers and is jealous that they seem to have something to stand for and he can't seem to feel anything but ambivalence for all situations he's in. His character is so young and naive that you can't help but feel sorry for him. He spends the whole book putting on airs when inside he's a confused and scared kid. While he is a wise-mouth, he is not a wise person. Even the end of the novel is as unsure as he is. I thought it was really humanizing and almost reassuring to see a character out there that is so flawed and realistic.

Published in 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel was wildly controversial, critically lauded, and an instant bestseller. Read today, it may be difficult to understand why; the story is a highly episodic "bildungroman" of a pampered, arrogant young man as he drifts with noticeable lack of appreciation through corridors of power and pleasure without absorbing much in the way of insight. But it is precisely because of that THIS SIDE OF PARADISE was felt to be such a shocker in its era: the very notion that any one would write a novel about such a slacker was controversial and new. Amory Blaine is among the first "anti-heroes" of the 20th Century, the opening salvo in a literary tradition that would eventually encompass everything from CATCHER IN THE RYE to ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST to CATCH-22.

In addition to its unexpected apathy, PARADISE was also considered shocking for its portrait of women. Certainly many writers, including numerous female authors, had written about women intelligently--but Fitzgerald stands astride the shift between what was and what is. A society belle of earlier generations would never admit to having been kissed before marriage; the "popular daughter" of the 1910s was not only kissed, she actively connived at it, and she didn't mind talking about it afterward. Fitzgerald's portraits of these seemingly new creatures, who had money and social background, who stayed out late and necked in strange apartments, and who didn't seem to give a damn about what people of thought of them, is at once tender and icy cold. To say that the portrait horrified the parents of teenage girls from New York to California would be a significant understatement.

At the time of its publication, THIS SIDE OF PARADISE was considered "an experimental novel," largely because Fitzgerald shifts between several different narrative styles as the book progresses. At the time it seemed very fresh and new, but in truth the effect was not so much designed as accidental: the novel was cobbled together from Fitzgerald's earlier, unpublished writings, and the contrasts and shifts that seemed fresh and new in 1920 quickly came to feel uneven afterward. Fitzgerald never made the same mistake. His later works would be planned, written and re-written, and polished to an almost superhuman degree. But in spite of the book's uneven narrative, it is very much what we think of when we think of Fitzgerald as a writer: sparks of poetry illuminating the psychology of slightly uncertain, often dubious characters, all interwoven with the hazards of careless wealth and incautious romance. Critics of the day hailed him as a major new talent, and his major works continue to stand the test of time.

Like most of Fitzgerald's novels, PARADISE is distinctly autobiographical in nature. The novel begins with a portrait Amory as a child, son of a non-descript father and the fabulously wealthy, wildly pretentious, and ridiculously eccentric Beatrice--whose influence is one of self-indulgent ennui. In a fit of social ambition, Amory decides to depart from his mother's pseudo-intellectualism and European pretensions and "go to school," enduring an unpleasant stint at an eastern prep school before entering Princeton. But although he rejects his mother's way of life, he is still very much her child; he is a superficial student at best, and he drifts through everything from superficial romances to philosophy class to The Great War without seeming to profit from the experience. An arrogant slacker, he arrives at the end of the novel to find himself without any personal resources, either tangible or internal. What is the point? In forcing the reader to that question, Fitzgerald effectively summed up the attitude of an entire generation. What was it all for? Why do we bother? Perhaps the best any of us can hope is a little comfort here and there and a good time along the way. It was an attitude that marked the beginning of the 1920s roar.

The novel is particularly distinguished by a sense of irony. Amory may not be a likeable person, but the follies of youth--most particularly its pretensions--have not changed significantly over years, and Fitzgerald plays them out with a dry sense of humor that makes the careful reader wince time and again. Amory is indeed insufferable, but so have most of us been at one time or another, and the effect is comic, embarrasing, ridiculous, and at times down right painful. It is also particularly memorable, as many have pointed out, for its brilliant portrait of Princeton during the 1910s; indeed, the school becomes a major character in the novel, and while Amory develops a romantic appreciation of it, his great failure is that he never bothers to scratch the romantic surface in search of the core values that support it. It is, as Fitzgerald himself might have said, the curse of the mother visited on the son, a wallow in luxury without an appreciation for the hard work that supports it.

THIS SIDE OF PARADISE is not really much read these days, and on the occasions that is read, it is usually read by those who are already fans of later Fitzgerald works such as THE GREAT GATSBY and TENDER IS THE NIGHT. It may well be that it is best left to such; I find it hard to believe that the typical reader, if there is such a thing, will be able to grasp what made it so unexpected in 1920. I do recommend it, flawed though it is, but this is really a novel that for all its beauties is probably best left to hardcore fans.

GFT, the store Reviewer

I love The Great Gatsby.

So, naturally I was really excited to read another one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels.

However, I am feeling very underwhelmed. I acknowledge that this was his first book, but it just wasn't near as good as Gatsby. I loved the romantic sections and the beautiful descriptive language, but I just couldn't get interested in the character of Amory Blaine. His endless search for himself amongst the social conventions of the 1920s just didn't seem very pressing and relevant, as opposed to the enduring themes of the corruption of the American Dream presented in Gatsby. This book did do a goo job of describing the era and the shifting roles of women. Over the course of the novel, Amory falls in love with three women. Two of which are very independent and free, which was unprecedented for the time period. With Rosalind, I saw a lot of the parallels to Gatsby as well as the actual life of Fitzgerald. The idea that if the woman didn't have access to a lot of money, she would cease to be the same woman seems to be a very common theme.

So, while I understand why this book was important as the work that established Fitzgerald as one of the biggest writers about the 1920s I wasn't particularly impressed with the characters or plot.

Dick Diver is at "a fine age for a man." At twenty nine Dr. Diver is a doctor who treats the mentally ill and writes respected tomes on the subject. Nicole is nineteen- a spry wisp of wealth and intelligence. Nicole's demented letters hint of a growing dependence and unnatural affection for the young doctor which blossoms into a marriage and family. The couple meet during the first horror of a pockmarked century as World War One scars Europe. Doctor Diver is a US Army doctor safely ensconced in Switzerland as Europe broils.

The clouds of war pass and reveal the Twenties with its false wealth and leisure class resting on an uncertain pedestal of nebulous wealth. Beach parties on the Riviera reveal the class fissures that were to split society ten years later. Life goes on as Fitzgerald's brave new world of Twenties leisure gives way to strife and affairs.
Nicole becomes involved with Tommy who never leaves the dark past of the trenches and challenges Dick with the primal reality of war remembered. In the end everything declines and tinsel gives way to the darkness that envelops our beginnings and ends as it must.

Published in 1933 the book was the product of ten years of constant revisions stored in six large archive boxes. The book outlived its time and became marooned in the grim world of economic crises and class struggle. Beached in a foreign land and no longer relevant to the time of its creation. A gaily festooned party boat mired in a dark swamp. The prose is descriptive and isolated...popping out like shafts of light on a foggy night.

A journey back to the ancestral graveyard in Virgina is Dick's brief flirtation with Faulkner's funeral trip in "As I Lay Dying"..."The souls made in the new earth in the forest heavy darkness of the seventeenth century."

Much dialog has a time capsule quality to it... "spent coon" or perhaps the provocative ..."Lucky Dick you big stiff" whispers Dick as he concludes "you hit it"... shades of Henry Miller perhaps. Has slang changed that much since 1933?

Interesting scenery passes and is richly described..."the fluorescent waters of the Riviera simmer in the moon." The newly restored trenches and excavated weapons of the Great War next to newly buried graves are described only ten years after the chaos. A grieving sister looks for a recent grave in vain after the War Department gives her a wrong registration number. The past was much closer in 1933.

Like a troubled patient this book meanders and wanders. The book expanded and contracted itself many times like a wheezing accordion... striking the wrong notes to perhaps serve some compulsive purpose in Fitzgerald's own troubled life. Perhaps. The preface, appendix and footnotes tell the tale of this meandering story. We are left to guess about the intent of Fitzgerald since time has dimmed much detail. The dialog is disorganized- perhaps appropriate for a tale about lunacy- but probably due to the large number of revisions.

In the end the Fall occurs as fate weaves its deadly teleos. After all ... Adam's fall cursed us all and the good doctor does not stand outside the cosmos as God does. Diver must out of necessity fall. Dick and Nicole reverse roles and the vitality once in the young doctor transfers as a mysterious process to the young woman. Obscurity envelopes Dick as he wanders through a myriad of small towns becoming increasingly tiny... very small indeed as sprinkles on a cupcake.

Perhaps colorful, but finally just disorganized sprinkles ...the prose and the ever diminished doctor.

The French Riviera. The American expatriate community. Beaches. Glamour. Wealth. No one else has the ability to portray the jazz age quite like F. Scott Fitzgerald, and in "Tender is the Night", he doesn't disappoint.

Rosemary Hoyt is a young movie actress who has been a sensation in exactly one film when she heads to the Riviera with her mother. While on the beach one day, she meets Nicole and Dick Divers, as well as some of their friends, and becomes an "in" with their set. Dick is a handsome, charming, psychiatrist, formerly employed in Zurich but now living on a permanent holiday; Nicole is his young wife, glamorous, beautiful, and nice to a fault.

Initially uncomfortable with those surrounding the Divers, Rosemary quickly develops a crush on Dick, feelings which might not exactly be unrequited. But he and his wife are solid, and their whirlwind life of parties and knowing the right people keeps them always busy. There is a secret, however - a secret so big that one who accidentally witnesses it is shocked beyond words.

If "The Great Gatsby" is the ultimate look at the American Dream, "Tender is the Night" is perhaps one of the ultimate looks at who we are as individuals, how much we influence each other, and how much those around us influence the people we become. Divided into three sections, the first focuses on the glamorous life of the Riviera, while the second goes deep into Dick and Nicole's past, their marriage, and their lives in the years following Part 1. The last section of the book is the result of the two previous parts, the consequences of actions and choices, and the rebirth and deterioration of human relationships.

My only disappointment in this book was that it wasn't entirely focused - while Part 1 sets it up to see as if the book will be told through Rosemary's eyes, the other two sections feature her as a side character (if she appears at all). I don't know if it would have been as strong being told through Dick and Nicole's point of view, but it would have made a bit more sense.

If you're expecting "The Great Gastby" Take 2, this book isn't it. But if you like Fitzgerald's writing and are eager to see what else he had to say about the extraordinary time he was living in, this is a great one to pick up.

Two things about 'This Side of Paradise' will leave a lifelong impression on me. I've only just finished the novel, but I already know that its marks will remain embedded in me like luminescent sparks fallen from the starry skies of literature. The first thing impressed on me, Amory Blaine. Never have I connected with a protagonist more than I have with him. I know his thoughts and musings well, for many of his notions and ideals mirror my own. For good or ill. Amory is my favorite character in literature. The second thing impressed on me from the reading of this book is the way that it was written. Reading of the escapades of Amory was like reading a journal of his that was stuffed with hidden folded letters and notes, scraps of poetry and fiction and even sections of a play. I've never read a novel written like this, and I am extremely impressed that it was F. Scott Fitzgerald's first published work. This is a groundbreaking work.
As always, Fitzgerald's writing was lyrical, descriptive, flowery, and composed of such outstanding memorable prose as to be set apart and above the work of Fitzgerald's contemporaries. Ernest Hemingway will remain my favorite writer, but I can say with assurance that Fitzgerald's talent with words is much more pronounced, though not as true and gripping. Fitzgerald's prose, though phenomenal, has a way of wandering aimlessly in a charming way.
This was a novel I'd started reading at some point last fall, stopped, and only recently started again. I'm not sure why it took me so long, pausing to finish other novels by other writers. What I can say is that I read this novel in they way that Fitzgerald wrote it: in scraps and tatters, half-remembered fragments, until today, in a feverish pace, I read 'This Side of Paradise' from somewhere around its middle to its end. This book, now completed, was absolutely astonishing, a marvel. I can easily see how this novel was instrumental in ushering in the Jazz Age.
I recommend starting Fitzgerald's collection with 'Tales of the Jazz Age' and maybe 'The Great Gatsby', but 'This Side of Paradise' should certainly be coming up next on the reading list. Amory Blaine doesn't disappoint, and you'll never read another book like it.

Oh, Brother !!! This book is just about nothing else but incoherent wordy rants. Fitzgerald pulls a Conztanza even when pulling a Conztanza wasn't even invented yet !!!!.
The main character is an unlikable , unrelatable annoying young man who goes around life expecting everything by doing next to nothing.
The story (if any) is complicated with a bunch of philosophies that makes the reader unable to understand what the author meant. To be honest , i am not sure what i did just read ...i started skipped entire sections in hopes that it will get interesting ,but never did. It is a total mess .Probably someone from that era could had related to this story ...but as today in 2016 just not !.

Before the decade of the Twenties became known for its flappers with bobbed hair and a general freedom for America's youth, F. Scott Fitzgerald advertised those possibilities in his first novel, "This Side of Paradise."

Fitzgerald wrote parts of the novel while a student at Princeton, based on his own experiences. He was a mediocre student at the Ivy League institution, but obtained an education nevertheless by performing with a college theatre group called the Triangle Club and reading literature, much like Amory Blaine, the main character of the novel. Just before he enlisted in the army for the Great War, Fitzgerald tried to get a first draft of his novel published. After the Armistice was signed, Fitzgerald worked as an artist for an advertising firm before quitting, moving to Minnesota, and reworking the novel.

Mass consumerism and mass marketing developed after the Second Industrial Revolution in America. Businesses found that a catchy slogan and well-constructed advertising sold their products. As others caught on, advertising became required. A popular political cartoon of the day reflected the importance of advertising. In the cartoon, an inventor fell asleep outside the door of his out-of-the-way cottage. The reader realizes that building a better mousetrap doesn't guarantee that people will buy the new product, especially if they do not know about it.

Advertising firms hired artists like Amory Blaine to construct the advertisements for these products. Advertisements were featured in newspapers and weekly publications, who hired talented writers to compose short stories to entice the public to read their journals and thus, improve their viability to advertisers. Prices fell as the journals made their profits on selling advertisement. Fitzgerald's short time as an artist with an advertising firm, and his subsequent career as an artist of short stories were as much a fabric of the Twenties as the hedonism in the novel that most readers responded to.

Two of the love interests of Amory Blaine, Isabelle Borgé and Rosalind Connage, were based on real-life loves of Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was able to get the girl in real life that Amory Blaine could not. The fame generated by his first novel improved Fitzgerald's earnings potential and made him a viable suitor. Thomas Parke D'Invilliers and Monsignor Darcy were also based on friends of Fitzgerald. Amory's mother, Beatrice Blaine, was based on a mother of a friend.

Critics loved the novel, citing it as the only adequate study of the contemporary American adolescent and young adult. Universities condemned Amory Blaine's impression of college life as a country-club atmosphere of snobbery even though colleges, at the time, were primarily composed of students of well-to-do families from prestigious high-school academies. American adolescents and young adults experimented with the drinking and casual kissing outlined in the novel, creating a new sea of morals for the Roaring Twenties. The mass-produced automobile, available to more customers because of its low price, brought mobility into the life of people. Young lovers could get away from judgmental eyes, and they did.

Other notable authors produced stories on similar topics later in the decade. Sinclair Lewis wrote of a middle-aged George Babbitt catching the seven-year itch and going on a drunken spree of debauchery. Oil! of Upton Sinclair also explored the era's possibilities with Bunny Ross, the son of a wealthy oil mogul. These two heavy hitters of literature helped capture the spirit of The Roaring Twenties, but the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald defined the era. This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby are required reading for anyone looking to explore the changing cultural fabric of American society in the Twenties.

Comparisons between Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night and The Great Gatsby are inevitable. Both are viewed as his most complete artistic visions; and both are in the enviable position of being on the Modern Libraries list of the 100 best pieces of fiction of the twentieth century.

Gatsby is gorgeously written, and the language is expressive, nuanced, and multi-leveled. One can read and re-read Gatsby and find new things with each reading. A better definition of a classic I cannot find. Gatsby is also a radically economical novel. Coming in at just 50,000 words, it is nearly a novella. A short book, it seems long due to its reputation and genius. But in the end, it is petite, and Fitzgerald had to work within the confines of this short narrative structure.

Not so with Tender is the Night. At 108,000 words, the novel allows Fitzgerald to sprawl; in the course of the novel, we see far less compressed development of the characters than in Gatsby. There are far more graphic representations of scene, the flow of time, and the outcome of events. Tender shows the reader how good Fitzgerald could be in a longer form. He stretches his wings, and the results are astonishing. It is a moving and tragic novel of love and life gone astray.

Even with some of the novel's problems (does the text really give us enough of Nichole's insanity? Is Dick Diver's descent given enough grounding) Tender is the perfect accompaniment to Gatsby and Gatsby to Tender. For writers, it shows that if lighting does not exactly strike twice, similar results can be produced by and expressed by the same electric charge.

Tender is the Night describes the life and unraveling of a young doctor, Dick Diver, who lived in the 1930's in Paris. The book describes Dick's marriage to Nicole and Dick's love affair with Rosemary, a young actress. This novel is a touching story and a worthwhile read. However, it grapples with some very deep and complex themes, and therefore may leave the reader with more questions than answers.

Tender is the Night wrestles with the powers and limits of several different kinds of love - father, Healer, and Lover. I have written my review about these three kinds of love because I think these themes are central to the understanding of the novel.

For many women it is difficult to untangle between what they need from a man and what they still need from their daddy. Emotionally and psychologically, there can be a fair amount of overlap between the two roles. Physically, however, there is no overlap. Sex with a father is inappropriate and damaging. From the male's perspective, many men enjoy being the savior of the damsel in distress and find it empowering to become the daddy the girl never had. But again there comes a point when the man tires of being a savior/daddy figure and just wants to be a man who is loved for himself without it being predicated on his ability to save or heal. Many men try to give away too much of themselves, and then like Dick, they end up defeated and drained.

Tender is the Night deals with these complex relationships. The love between Dick Diver and Nicole is based on his ability to be her savior/healer. She is his life's work, Fitzgerald notes. The question posed by the book is, however, is this a healthy foundation for a marriage? It means Nicole has to remain sick to continue needing Dick, and he has to forbear on his dreams so he can concentrate on her needs only. How long can this last? The book seems to indicate that this cannot last long. Eventually, Dick tires of his role and becomes resentful of Nicole. Nicole, from her end, keeps her end of the bargain and her illness persists throughout the marriage. However, as soon as she decided to leave Dick and become her own healer, her illness improves. Did Dick and Nicole ever love each other? Maybe; it's an open question.

The theme continues with Rosemary who becomes famous by starring in a film called "Daddy's Girl." Rosemary too is looking for a daddy but for other reasons. She has not been abused by her father like Nicole but has never known her father. She adores Dick in a childish way and yearns to be sexually intimate with him for the wrong reasons; she just wants a daddy figure. Dick responded to her initially by being exactly what she needed him to be--a kind father figure who refused to be intimate with her. But then, just like with Nicole, he couldn't remain the heroic, idealized man for too long. Eventually, Dick gives in and becomes intimate with Rosemary. But Rosemary is disappointed; she liked him better when he was a daddy figure who stood on high moral ground. Was there ever any love between Rosemary and Dick? Again, it's an open question.

Who was Dick? Dick tried to be a hero and healer but eventually he couldn't keep up with the high standards he set for himself. He then began to unravel. He might have fared better had he set lower standards. Many commentators have noted that the events in this novel mirror the events in Fitzgerald's personal life. And this may explain why the Fitzgerald describes Dick Diver's descent into alcoholism without any sympathy. Fitzgerald was hard on his character (Dick Diver) because he was hard on himself - too hard. Dick Diver and men like him deserve sympathy. Dick Diver genuinely wanted to be the perfect man who healed all broken hearts and comforted all broken spirits. In the end, however, it was his heart and spirit that needed mending.

This is perhaps one of the best stories for a twenty-something year old to read during the recession, especially if they have had to set aside their dreams and currently search for something less than extraordinary in order to survive. It is amazing how relevant it is even so long after the emergence of the Jazz Age. Where the book was focused on the clash between old Victorian ideals and the emerging youth liberalization after the first World War, today we find ourselves just as lost. These wars that we've been fighting and this recession that we are suffering through will redefine our nation just as it was redefined after the conflict of WWI. The question is how?

Amory is caught in the very center of this clash between Victorian conservatism and youth liberalization. It is up to him and the other young men and women of the times to either create the new new, or stick with the old. I see the character of Amory Blaine in the face of all my college friends who had dreams of what their lives would be like after graduation, only to have those dreams dashed upon the rocks of this recession. Let us all pray that in the end we don't end up like Fitzgerald, who modeled his character Amory after himself. Let us hope that we don't follow in the path of Amory and are able to regain our aspirations when things improve, otherwise we might drown our hopelessness in bottles of alcohol until it kills us just like the famed U.S. author that wrote this book.

I remember my first experience reading it, back in 11th grade. It is not really the best book for high schoolers, but perhaps in that suburban milieu of doctors' kids and dissolving marriages, it was a good choice. Another reason I wanted to read it was that a Fitzgerald biography said this was pretty much FSF's take on his own, deeply troubled, marriage.

The book begins from the point of view of an innocent - Rosemary Hoyt, an American movie star (this was the 1920s) visiting some people on the Cote d'Azur, at a fictitious place on the shore between Cannes and St. Tropez. She quickly falls for an older man, an American doctor named Dick Diver who is married to a beautiful, and very rich, woman named Nicole. On the surface, everything is beautiful, glamorous, luxurious, and rich. But below there is trouble - quarrels, drunkenness, crazy behavior, homosexuality, and other ills. Rosemary doesn't see it though, and with the stubbornness of a beautiful, naïve girl, she goes after Dick. He resists, but begins to fall in love with her. There is a cast of supporting characters such as Abe North, a wacky drunk, and Tommy Barban, a hotheaded young Frenchman with a military career behind him. '

Rosemary is drawn in, as the reader is, and as the wealthy but mentally disturbed Nicole Warren was. Dick radiates calm, knowledge, success, strength, and joie de vivre. As the story turns to the Divers' marital history, the impressions alter, and the book becomes the tale of Dick's undoing. Diver was a young, hardworking, Yale educated doctor at a clinic in Switzerland. A young, but seriously troubled (probably schizophrenic, as Zelda Fitzgerald was, although this word is not used) gets the hots for him, and against everyone's advice, Dick marries her. She has a mindlessly arrogant rich girl sister, named Baby, who is portrayed superbly. Dick and Nicole have a couple of kids and some good times, but he is as much her medical caretaker as he is her husband, and it starts to wear him down. Things start unravelling. The whole book has a tragic, downward trajectory, a feeling of impending misery that no amount of sunlight and good wine and comfortable surroundings can dispel. '

The book is a downer, but it is a fascinating one, with moments of brilliant writing. Fitzgerald can string words together and juxtapose them with sparkle and casual elegance. The characters' conversations are real and believable, as are the depictions of gay people (ahead of its time, I should think) and the playful rich. It is a very good novel, and deserves to be remembered even if it is not the icon that The Great Gatsby is. No doubt there is some satisfaction in watching the Divers crumble, those people that had every advantage imaginable, but it is still a sad read, and the product of a great artist who was in a great deal of trouble.

As soon as I finished this book, I was ready to start all over and read it again. F. Scott Fitzgerald fills This Side of Paradise with his signature lyricism and beautiful phrasing, and combines it here with autobiographical elements and deep introspection. I love the maturity and wisdom with which Fitzgerald reflects on his own life through the story of Amory Blaine, and how it follows Blaine in times of extreme good and bad fortune, making it much more relatable than a standard tale that follows a hero's journey. I feel it is very descriptive and indicative of the time at which it was written, and I appreciate the way you can pick up on the overall feeling of the time without that explanation even being the focus of the story, which I believe is a nod to Fitzgerald's skill. Overall, I would highly recommend reading this book, ideally multiple times, so you can be sure to pick up on each layer of meaning and the motivation and thought behind each word. The story is one of much more than it might initially appear, and it goes much beyond just the life of Amory Blaine, delving into the pitfalls and feelings of the time period and of growing up in general. Readers can certainly draw parallels from this novel, relate them to their own lives, and even learn a little about how to approach their lives. I certainly did.

The first 40 pages is dull. So is the middle 100 pages. The ending is probably one of the most unsatisfying endings I've ever read as it ends not with not a bang but a sad whimper in diminuendo as if the author just didn't want to work on it anymore and dashed off a coda.

Fitzgerald's lyricism, in my opinion, is simply overrated. Granted, there are some breathtaking passages (which I took note of), but most of the writing was just dull, dull, dull. He would've benefited tremendously from studying storytelling as well since he makes the middle portion so deadly dull that it made me want to chuck it across the room, and butchers the last portion so badly that it came across as amateurish - choppy, rushed, and consequently ungraceful - which gives credence to his own remark about the book: "I would give anything if I hadn't had to write Part III of Tender Is the Night entirely on stimulant..."

He also makes tons of basic storytelling faux pas, such as redundant attributions (e.g. "I think so, too," he agreed), unnecessary and dull passages that add practically nothing to the story, a whole section (the middle section, more specifically from p.114 to 207) where we follow the main characters wander around without any specific objective except to kill time, and the last part that's haphazardly and painfully put together. The result is a very uneven book with deep pits of absolute boredom.

Didn't really like it

F. Scott Fitzgerald's second-highest regarded novel reveals the psyche of its tortured author. As a reading experience, it draws interest from the character of that author, equal parts eloquence and self-loathing. But it lacks the easy engagement and storycraft of Fitzgerald's other fiction.

Published in 1934, nine years after Fitzgerald's prior novel "The Great Gatsby" (and the only other novel after "Gatsby" Fitzgerald lived to complete), "Tender Is The Night" centers around a young, handsome couple who live as wealthy American expatriates on France's Mediterranean coast. Dick Diver is practical but somewhat frustrated, a situation exacerbated by the arrival of ingénue film actress Rosemary Hoyt. Encouraged by her mother, Rosemary takes a fancy to Dick and decides to lose her virginity to him. Dick's wife Nicole senses something is brewing, but her husband's fidelity is far from the only issue on her very full plate.

Two psychoanalytic profiles dominate this book. The first, of Nicole Diver, is shallow and unconvincing. The other, of the author himself, is far more engaging, if more a matter of connecting the dots between Fitzgerald and Dick than what the text itself affords. Dick, we come to learn, is a man of great potential, a leader in his chosen field who chooses to exile himself at the height of his success. As the book goes on, Dick descends deeper into alcohol and social-outcast status. While his profession is psychoanalysis, he is often found late in the novel working on a giant manuscript he never seems able to finish. The Fitzgerald parallels are obvious and will fascinate admirers.

But the novel feels thin at its core. I don't think I could put it any better than the title of Michael G.'s review from July 2011 - "Slender Is The Plot." Divided in three sections, each primarily seen through the lens of a different person - first Rosemary, then Dick, then Nicole - "Tender" is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about the continent, with people giving random voice to their concerns in the Age of Anxiety in-between squabbles and trysts. The characters seem more like narrative constructs than real people. Dick, for example, goes from solid citizen in the early and middle section (a large part of which is a flashback to an earlier period in his life) to dangerous drunk for no better reason it seems than a girl he pines for. Jimmy Buffett knew better than to lean on that excuse too hard, but it forms the spine of our story.

Fitzgerald seems more self-indulgent here, both in his writing (a lot of description gets troweled upon incidents of little or no importance to the larger story, like a visit to a World War I battlefield or the drunken antics of a doomed friend) and in what he writes about, with Dick reduced on account of allowing himself to be used by both his wife and his would-be mistress. It's not his fault he's so damn sexy! The drinking issue comes up as an afterthought, as if Fitzgerald felt lost without employing his trademark malady. But Dick's issues, like Nicole's, never seem very real. Neither, at their heart, do Dick and Nicole, however much they are being used here as stand-ins for Fitzgerald and his famously troubled wife Zelda.

What I enjoyed about "Tender Is The Night" is the wonderful sense of place one gets, right from the beginning when we see the coast of France from a hotel "and its bright tan prayer rug of a beach." Fitzgerald overloads on the adjectives and adverbs, it seems more than usual for him, but his amazing craft carries this off to solid and sometimes spectacular effect. There are a hundred perfect sentences buried in this book, sometimes attached to killer paragraphs: "In the dead white hours in Zurich staring into a stranger's pantry across the upshine of a street-lamp, he used to think that he wanted to be good, he wanted to be kind, he wanted to be brave and wise, but it was all pretty difficult. He wanted to be loved, too, if he could fit it in."

Reading prose like that made me hungry for the deeper experience of other Fitzgerald works, not only the impossibly perfect "Gatsby" but "The Beautiful And Damned," which like "Tender" is focused on a couple's travails within a social set but of a more engaging, visceral, humorously-alive kind. The problem with Fitzgerald is he's a good writer here, but looking rather lost in comparison to his younger self.

I and most of my contemporaries were smitten by novels even before we first encountered F. Scott Fitzgerald in our adolescence. And then most of those among us who didn't already adore good fiction became lifelong addicts when they first read The Great Gatsby or Tender is the Night. (The few remaining holdouts were those unlucky enough to have been cursed in their cradles by the Wicked Fairy VG -- the awful VIDEO GAMES, killer of brain cells and mistress of illiteracy). Why then the ensuing years of skimming Fitzgerald's books when we saw new editions and not feeling the thrill of our first encounter with the work? Had we just been deceived in the first place, perhaps by our youthful naivete? I was beginning to think that that was what had happened until I saw this edition -- and realized what an enormous difference a presentation can make. This quite wonderful new edition of Tender is the Night restored all the thrill of the first encounter. Buy this one, and you will perhaps recapture (as I did) that first fine careless rapture. And that sent me to the same source's edition of The Great Gatsby, which (I am happy to say) also thrilled me afresh and reminded me what a wonderful book can do. Buy both, and hope for more.

Scott Fitzgerald paints a perfect picture of how life and romance was around WWI. This Side of Paradise follows Amory Blaine. He’s described as handsome, very very intelligent but lazy when it comes to school, and he’s also born into his mother’s (Beatrice Blaine) wealth. He gets accepted into Princeton, and towards the end of his college days WWI begins and Amory enlists ditching his degree. His mother dies and oddly leaves him no money.  When he returns to America to mourn his mother, he falls in love with and gets engaged too Rosalind Connage, a debutante. However, because Amory is poor Rosalind called off the engagement. After that horrific heartache he drinks a lot and probably would’ve kept drinking if it wasn’t for the Prohibition. After the summer ends he walks back to Princeton and basically sums up the whole book in one sentence “I know myself but that is all-” (Fitzgerald p 261)
Overall, is you love romance and history this is the book for you. The Romance isn’t too heavy and neither his the history aspect. Fitzgerald has an amazing way of making a book based in a time so long ago relatable. “I want to go to Princeton,” said Amory. “I don’t know why, but I think of all Harvard men as sissies, like I used to be, and all Yale men as wearing big blue sweaters and smoking pipes.” (Fitzgerald p.24) We’ve all been in a situation where we’re trying to find a place where we’ll belong and Fitzgerald really captured Amory’s want to be someone different than what he was but still be him. I really think this book as something for everyone, and I would highly recommend this book.

Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise was given a tentative thumbs-down by the literati of the day, most not understanding what Fitzgerald was trying to accomplish. And even today it's not a particularly easy read. From the standpoint of early twenty-first century, though, the book seems a precursor to postmodern literature, with its disjointed narrative, its social and political references, and above all, its overwhelming self-awareness. The book has been called a critique of humanity's attraction to glamour, but that hardly seems the complete story.
Amory Blaine is a well-to-do, bratty WASP - egoistic, handsome, with a glib mouth. Underlying all this is an insecurity that begins to show its teeth during Amory's Princeton days, as his mum dies and leaves him with nothing of value. He turns to girls for succor, but he quickly discovers, in the way of early twentieth-century life in the U.S., that his looks, his disarming way, have little truck without a serious jingle in his pocket.
So Amory enters into a series of promising but ultimately unfulfilling romances, joins the army during World War I, and returns to life as a menial ad copy writer. His conscience during this time is a Catholic priest, Thayer Darcy, who has had a dalliance with Amory's mum in days past. But Amory can't be corralled by faith and religion. He does, though, offer to sacrifice himself before the law in order to save a friend's reputation. Still, even this turns to spoiled milk.
In the book's final pages, Fitzgerald offers a clumsy, summarizing motif: Amory is given a ride by two well-off, conservative men, and they enter into an argument concerning what today would be Milton Friedman's capitalism versus socialism. I was stunned as I read these pages - how appropriate that argument seems to today's bare-knuckled conflicts over the same ideological ground!

Fitzgerald's writing here is brilliant in places, but his structure seems of the ad hoc variety. As with the argument mentioned above, many of the book's themes and situations are handled clumsily or are dropped unfinished as the author moves on to other ideas. At its basis it's a bildungsroman. But there's also Amory's fall from grace, which establishes his reinvention, something that was a religio-literary staple of the day. In the end, Fitzgerald leaves Amory disillusioned but hopeful. In the final paragraphs, Amory sums up thusly:

"It's all a poor substitute at best," he said sadly.
And he could not tell why the struggle was worth while, why he had determined to use to the utmost himself and his heritage from the personalities he had passed....
He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky.
"I know myself," he cried, "but that is all."
Still, that 's a start, as this supremely talented writer began a slow, awkward climb toward a never-achieved literary perfection.

The only Fitzgerald I had ever read was GATSBY. After seeing the new film version, I decided I'd like to read some more Fitzgerald. THIS SIDE OF PARADISE had been on my list for a long time. I have to confess that I was a little disappointed. It's a coming-of-age story set in the World War I era about a spoiled rich boy who goes to Princeton. It contains some keen observations on the lives of the American rich during that period that made it worth reading for me, but as a novel, is clumsily written and appears to have been cobbled together from several works set in the same milieu. The seams show. But as a sociological document I think it's quite valuable. I certainly wouldn't regard this as essential reading, but if one already has in interest in Fitzgerald, this is not a waste of time.

This particular edition is beautifully designed. Even if you have no intention of reading it, the gorgeous art-deco styled cover makes a splendid prop for the interior decorator trying to project an image of glamor and sophistication.

One of the best works of American literature ever, "Tender is the Night" is often overlooked due to the popularity of Fitzgerald's more well known work, "The Great Gatsby." In my opinion, great works of American literature simultaneously capture the time in which they are set, and perfectly arc these struggles and triumphs to wider, common themes. Somewhat reflective of his own life, Tender tells the story of a psychiatrist who pulls a reverse Florence Nightingale and falls for one his is patients before she's truly better. The resultant relationship is less than perfect, but he struggles with duty to his vows, and the longings of his heart when a new interest- scandalous in her own way- makes her way on his scene.

As always, reading Fitzgerald is like watching an author make slow, passionate love to the dictionary. He's brilliant with words, but not hifalutin like many of his contemporaries. What he tells is a captivating bittersweet tale of confusions and conflict, set against a beautiful backdrop of pain, joy and strife.

I was very disappointed by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel. I found the story tedious and the characters tiresome. Reading through to the end was a chore. I wanted to throw the book in the trashcan.

There are many problems. At the top of the list is Fitzgerald’s main character, a psychiatrist named Dick Diver who marries one of his own patients. I found this unrealistic, like many other facets of the story. It certainly did not endear me to the protagonist. As a reader I had no sympathy for Diver, a obstacle which the author might easily have avoided by casting the story differently. Nor was I convinced by Diver’s psychiatric practice.

An author should write about what he knows. Fitzgerald obviously was writing about his wife’s mental issues which he knew very well. Fine. But his knowledge of the field of psychiatry and/or clinical psychology was not deep enough to bring off the story in a credible manner. A fictional story must be realistic to be believable.

The grander setting is the Parisian Lost Generation of the 1920s, the theme of people leading vacuous lives of quiet desperation, much the same as the backdrop for Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. However, in my opinion Hemingway did a more convincing job in his great novel, in part because he kept the proper distance from his characters. There are times in Tender in the Night when Fitzgerald interjects pearls of supposed wisdom, puts words in the mouths of his characters that clearly reflect his own views about the world, how things are, life, the nature of women, etc. So much better to let the lost souls be what they are, lost, and leave it at that. Distance.

Tender is the Night was written over a decade, and it shows. Characters grow, stop, we fast forward, and they change and mature without transition. Tempting is the correlations between Fitzgerald's companionship with mentally unhinged Zelda and Dick Diver's nurturing husband/psychotherapist to Nicole, an heiress and ex-schizoid in occasional relapse who was traumatized by her father at a tender age.
Tender is Dick's caressing but scientific approach to loving Nicole. When Rosemary Hoyt, a young starlet-to-be, pursues Dick with all due diligence, Dick loses the cool stability of his marriage experiment for the exciting, verily unscientific, if affected, opportunity to feel something new. Having committed himself to Nicole's love and care despite his better reason, Dick lives with the consequences he signed on to live with. His wife, recovering from her deep, despairing mental illness, sucks the life out of Dick, gaining strength with each drop of vigor he loses, fully aware of his inevitable failure.
Tender is the Night, where Fitzgerald starts to show the influence of Hollywood (not incidental, the Rosemary character, ey?) on his narrative composition, feels like a cast of actors playing their roles with converse dramatic irony. Nicole's and Dick's anticipation of the paths they are on, curves, divergences and all, perhaps account for the absence of dramatic tension and suspense in Tender is the Night. It is, instead, a journal of selected scenes catching the moods and musings of a doomed marriage, often striking poignancy at a perfect pitch.

I wonder why this was so unpopular, as reflected by sales after its first publication. It's a tragic depressive book, true, but then so were 'The Great Gatsby' and 'The Beautiful and Damned'. It features the same bright and beautiful people who, through fatal flaws in their characters, fall through the cracks and never clamber up. This is the only one of the novels, though, that focuses on Americans out of America - rich expatriates in Europe. It's rather Hemingway-ish, except that of course instead of bull-fighting and big-game-hunting they go to beaches and do a lot of shopping. :)
It is true, however, that this book is generally darker and grimmer than the others. The others started off with hope and excitement and wonder. Except for the first section, this is not the case here. Even when we view events through Rosemary's eyes, we are always aware and disturbed that things are not as they seem and people are falling apart. The prose is more muted, too - less of the lovingly lyrical imagery of TBAD, fewer descriptions of the wealth and opulence of TGG. There is a sense of concealed decay throughout this novel.
This has a lot of disturbing undercurrents under its bright and polished surface. The events of the novel, in fact, reflect the characters of Dick and Nicole Diver themselves (Nicole more obviously, with her schizophrenia). Perhaps there isn't the same sense of optimism and idealism that one senses from the protagonists in the other books - Amory Blaine in 'This Side of Paradise'; Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert in TBAD; Jay Gatsby, however deluded he is in his case, in TGG; even what's-his-name? in The Love of the Last Tycoon. The first fifth of the book shows Dick and Nicole young, but henceforth they are tired and jaded and struggling desperately to keep up appearances. Rosemary Hoyt is likeable when she first appears, but by the last two sections she is hopelessly corrupted as well. The characters all seem particularly depraved; or perhaps amoral. This is clearly exhibited through their adultery. Yet Anthony Patch had an affair as well; and Jay Gatsby was intent on breaking up a secure marriage.
Another aspect of it might have to do with the fall. Anthony and Gloria were played out by fate. He was the heir to a large fortune and he lost it due to a moment's folly. His error was constructed on a foundation of weakness and ignorance, true, but circumstances play a part. For Gatsby, one can't possibly blame him for not doing enough - if anything, it was that his vision was flawed in the first place and so whatever he did couldn't possibly have achieved him his desire. The reader feels sympathy for him. Yet Dick and Nicole don't have that luxury of blaming things on fate. They have money, they have attainable dreams, they have beauty and power. They foul it all up with no help from anyone else. To a certain extent the reader recoils from such characters.
Fitzgerald appears to have pinned Dick's fall on his need for approval, attention and affection - which fits quite well. It would explain why he married Nicole, who needed him so badly; why he chased after other women, to ascertain to himself that he was still attractive and desirable. Nicole is tougher. I get the impression Fitzgerald uses her schizophrenia as a cover for a lot of things, a one-size-fits-all explanation. Why is she like that? Oh, she's crazy. Why did she do that? Oh, she's crazy.
So what have we looked at? Theme - grimmer, but similar to other books. Characters - less likeable perhaps, but overall still similar. Setting - I can't see that it makes much of a difference. Timing plays a part too, of course. This book came out in the aftermath of the Great Depression, after the Jazz Age had blown past. People didn't want to be reminded of the glitzy parties of a past they couldn't return to; they were focused on hard work, picking up the pieces, moving forward in a steadier saner world. Poor Fitzgerald - he couldn't have helped that, after all.

Despite its sombre tone, I really enjoyed reading Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. At first, it appears that the novel will follow Rosemary Hoyt, a young American actress traveling abroad with her mother. Rosemary meets Dick and Nicole Diver, a young, affluent couple, on a beach in France, during her travels. She soon finds herself falling in love with Mr. Diver.

From there, however, the story takes an abrupt turn. We learn the history of the Diver couple. Dick is a psychoanalytic doctor, and his relationship with Nicole began as a clinical one. An impossibly rich young girl from America, she'd been committed to a mental facility in Europe after a disastrous turn in her relationship with her father. Dick happens upon her one day in the facility grounds, and the two begin talking and writing to one another. Later, Dick almost seems compelled to marry her in order to fully cure her of her illness.

At any rate, the remainder of the tale primarily follows Dick and Nicole (with brief re-appearances by Rosemary) as their marriage evolves and eventually disintegrates. It is a sad tale, indeed, and it definitely smacks of Fitzgerald's fascinations with social power and money. It also sadly rings with autobiographical elements in Fitzgerald's later life - adultery, mental illness, the feeling of failed potential.

The new movie with Leonardo di Caprio is very close to the the plot of the book; the book lives of the used language though. Phrases like something is "quivering on the horizon" instead of "about to happen" are making this a great book of the English language. Furthermore the destructive character of Gatsby's love is clearer reading the book than watching the movie. That said if you want to know what the book is about just watch the movie. If you love elaborate sentences and some more depth of the characters then read the book.

The quality of the book itself is typical Easton Press standard and makes a great addition to any bookshelf.

This Side of Paradise is a paean to that special period in a young man's life when he forges the principles, flirts with his talents, find and loses love.
Fitzgerald's story is a bit more convoluted as he nurtures his hero from strangeness of childhood (a Portrait of the American Artist, to some extent), through the vanity of teens, through the confusion of college. He captures some of the ubiquitous sensations of being a college student - of the effervescent but ephemeral experience that feels like it will last forever; of friendships, and the general experimentation of finding and losing.
The book is also notable for a protofeminist (albeit from a male perspective) subtext that seems to play out in the background. When women enter into Emory Blaine's Life, it is as if the narrator yields the floor to the object of his affections so that she can write her own part, and by providing differentiation and individuation for the female characters, Fitzgerald validates them as living, breathing, self-willing entities.
By its end, This Side of Paradise seems like an incomplete story whose only outcome is melancholy. It is the gateway to FSF's biggest works, as the pathos of graduation from college leads to our most consequential decisions and ambitious acttions. Yet something is missing - the carefree, unadulterated moments of certainty that we will do something great, that the world is great, and that anything is possible as long as we don't attempt it.

"Tender is the Night" is obviously a more complex novel than "The Great Gatsby" and more difficult to read. I picked this book up twice. The first time I gave up after reading only half. The second time I got bogged down then hopped onto the store.com to read the customer reviews. Here someone wrote that you should spend sufficient time with the novel and read it with careful concentration. That was good advice indeed, because the novel then rolled along and became a pleasure to read once I gave it sufficient attention.
The first part of the novel is a little annoying. The unmarried Rosemary pursues the married Dick Diver with complicity from her mother. Why would her mother encourage her daughter to get involved with a married man? That part I found frustrating.
I was also confused as to what motivated Dick to marry Nicole. Some characters in the novel said it was money. One reviewer here at the store.com, whose opinion seems learned, says he did so out of pity for her schizophrenic state. The novel circles back from the beaches of Cannes and streets of Paris to the mountain hospital where the two characters first met. At first I found myself backing up and rereading parts of this because the change in venue was so abrupt that it left me somewhat lost. It was a major shift from the breezy momentum of the early chapters. But this part of the novel is where the real drama in the story begins to unfold. So it was a necessary detour.
Other reviewers have noted that this novel varies in style from Fitzgerald's other novels. I read "The Great Gatsby" for the second time in one sitting. That novel is more lyrical and rolls along more easily than this one. There are certain sentences here in "Tender is the Night" that I wondered how they escaped the careful editing of Maxwell Perkins (editor at Charles Scriber and Sons).
Finally fans of Fitzgerald who long to read about rich American expatriates living in Europe will find plenty to entertain them here. The scenery is the beaches of Cannes, the streets of Paris, and the spas of France. Nicole and Dick Divers go from one gathering of glitterati to the next. Fitzgerald drops you squarely into the lives of the idle rich as he did in "The Great Gatsby". But here he also reveals a lot about their miseries and heir drunkenness. Maybe that is the chief difference between the two novels (if you ignore that crimes in Gatsby).

After finishing this book I was reminded of a beautiful grand house - if you take it in its entirety, you can't help but admire it. Within, there may be some rooms that leave something to be desired, but the overall effect is breathtaking. So it is with this book. Fitzgerald manages to write a story about a relationship that manages to be acerbicand tender at the same time. Like the other traditional inheritor of the `Great American Novelist' title, Hemmingway. Fitzgerald combines a genius for writing wonderful character insights with great `background painting' - some of his descriptions of settings are truly masterpieces. Even the `extras' - they don't have anything to do with the story so it is hard to call them characters - get wonderfully drawn descriptions. I feel that this book truly captures its age and place.
And the added bonus - this is a wonderful insight into a relationship built on the worst of foundations slowly but surely heading to its end, told to us from various viewpoints. I don't know much about Fitzgerald's life, but if this is semi-autobiographical as literary critics say, you have to feel sorry for all that were involved in the real life events. Dick and Nicole are really caricatures of the Americans of their generation that lived the high life in Europe, and yet could never quite put their finger on what is was that they were actually meant to be doing.

This Side Of Paradise is absolutely one of the finest pieces of literature of its time. I liked it better than Fitzgerald's most popular classic The Great Gatsby. And I think J.D. Salinger was influenced by this novel when he wrote The Catcher In The Rye because there are so many parallels that it just seems obvious. I always laugh when I see or hear people listing their favorite novel is The Catcher In The Rye because I thought This Side Of Paradise was so similar but way better and written decades before. Amory Blaine is an interesting character and I enjoyed every minute of this book. It's been probably 20+ years since I read it but I remember not being able to put it down. The same for one of my other favorite novels, East Of Eden by John Steinbeck. Anyway, if you are a fan of Salinger, then give this novel a chance- it's so worth it!

F. Scott Fitzgerald is an author that represents the 20s in the US, this period where everything was crazy and rich before the Great Depression. This novel is the story of a love affair and of a career, that of Doctor Dick Diver. He is promised to a bright future as a psychiatric doctor. He marries one of the richest heiresses of America who was a patient first of all and became his wife. This love affair is described in the smallest and tiniest details. But Dick Diver comes to the point where he needs to distanciate himself from this ex-neurotic if not schizophrenic wife who was raped by her own father. Dick Diver is also extremely sollicited by many women because he is handsome and charming. He has a short-lived affair with a young Hollywood actress, Rosemary. But his wife Nicole is absolutely dependent on her love for him and cannot survive without his love.
The story leads us among the circles of rich Americans and English people who mostly roams the highlighted areas of Europe, spending the money they have and that is always more than they can spend. But a breaking point builds up slowly and explodes sometime in 1927-28. He gets more and more aloof as for his job, if not frankly sloppy and finally gets out of it due to alcoholism. He gets also more and more distant from Nicole. But the real breaking point is when Nicole conquers her freedom through a liaison with another man. Then the end is inevitable : divorce and going back to America to have a general practitioner's office in the state of New York.
But the book is a lot more interesting than just this picture. It shows how the very rich are living a complete dream life with caprices, good manners and civility, but no touch with the real world and how they get so far from the real world that they have to develop some kind of a screen to be protected from the fall this distance may represent : alcoholism, an artificial lifestyle and environment, spending as a daily occupation. This is in full contradiction with working to earn a living, which Dick Diver is always doing and a collapse is always at hand and it finally happens. One cannot live the contradiction between a real professional life and an artificial lifestyle. What's more interesting is that the fall comes from this very artificial lifestyle. Alcoholism is a coping strategy that dooms a professional life. Good manners and nicely controled love affairs are also in contradiction with a family life (the doctor has two children) and a professional life. So one day it has to break.
Thus the night of the title has many meanings : the nightlife of this detached society, the shadow of all the little affairs and liaisons that remain unrealised or hardly realised, the night of the movie theater since the cinema is always in the background, the night of the end of a love affair, a passion, the night of a lost career. And Doctor Dick Diver submits to this gentle slope going down slowly, to this coming night as if it were a liberation from the obligations of this artificial life. He goes back to reality and gets lost in the night of the unknown, unknown at least for the members of this artificial society of over-rich kids who never grow up. Finally it is a style in the book : every detail is always draped in some kind of shadow, in some kind of night that helps any contradiction and evolution to exist and to survive any kind of crisis.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this book is the freshness of its language: except for a few slang words used in speech, the prose is so cutting and modern that it reads like a recent creation.
Much of the discussion surrounding this book has to do with its semi-autobiographical nature, at least to the extent the Divers' marriage and Dick's personal unraveling mirrors the effect Zelda's mental illness had on Fitzgerald. Yet knowing too much about the parallels between a writer's life and his work can be distracting, and this is a good enough story to stand on its own without recourse to voyeurism. Fitzgerald shows the effects of insanity on a marriage and on its (initially) stronger member, but is discreetly circumspect as regards his inner feelings. We can see Dick working to create a sphere of normalcy around Nicole, yet his motivation is not entirely clear. In fact, Dick Diver is ultimately the least fully explored of the bunch: we never really learn what makes Dick tick. Why does he have this compulsion to make himself liked, to briefly be the life of the party then move on before his charm wears thin? In this behavior Dick displays a restless sociopathy worthy of a Bret Easton Ellis character - which also, again, proves the essential freshness of this novel written a lifetime ago.

Other reviewers and critiques have pointed to Fitzgerald�s criticism of the Catholic church and his frustration with capitalism in �This Side of Paradise�. Yet there is another poignant theme�Fitzgerald�s frustration with women�that will resonate deeply with men who are currently dating.
Amory, the main character in the novel who is, of course, Fitzgerald himself, complains that women are quick to jettison real love for a man with real money. Moreover, he complains of those glittering beauties, their callousness toward men, and the heartbreak they cause.
Of one character he writes �She is one of those girls who never make the slightest effort to have men fall in love with them. Two types seldom do: dull men are usually afraid of her cleverness�intellectual men are usually afraid of her beauty.�
The same character is said to ��[she] treats men terribly. She abuses them and cuts them and breaks dates with them and yawns in their faces---and they come back for more�. Of course, as a male reader we know both of these ideas to be absolutely true of so many girls and men�s behavior too.
Writing of his broken relationships and his failure to find a proper muse, Fitzgerland writes �Women�of whom he had expected so much; whose beauty he had hoped to transmute into modes of art; whose unfathomable instincts...were all removed by their very beauty, around which men swarmed, from the possibility of contributing anything but a sick heart and a page of puzzled words to write.� The emotional upheaval from broken relations could be the cause of much writer�s block.
The careful reader need not walk away from this lyric prose a misogynist. Rather Fitzgerald�s first novel can be considered a primer on dating for the college-aged man or the divorcee recently reentering the dating market.

In “Tender Is the Night,” Fitzgerald provides us with a harsh look at human nature and relationships through the lives of three unforgettable characters. The story is told from these three different characters, the Divers, Dick and Nicole and Rosemary. The story shifts between the three persons to slowly reveal the surreal relationship between Dick and Nicole and their sad lives. “Tender Is the Night” is less dramatic and much slower than “The Great Gatsby,” but eventually much more satisfying. The characters are more alive, realistic and some scenes are truly haunting. It’s a sobering, harsh and disturbing look at human nature along with the downfall of a man into despair.

Like everything Fitzgerald wrote this has that burnished by the morning sun feel to it. Certainly there are real themes in it that make this a substantial first novel but the lasting appeal is that romanticism that Fitzgerald himself seemed to have created with his own hands. Forged in that prep school fire though that romanticism isn't made of the toughest stuff and perhaps since Scott never really had any difficulties along the way to becoming a young succesful novelist he was never really forced to become more than that, a young success. His great theme is romance itself, he brings it to everything from football to war to young ladies to writing, he just has the gift to touch and make golden. Not many people will be immune to the contagion of such a disease. Amory is the perfect name for this amourous and ardent young east coaster, a character who was immediately embraced with the publication of this book as the spokesmen for the new up and coming generation, not yet named the lost generation. This book was full of promise and that feeling was infectious and equally attractive was the rather free libertine approach to sex. With Fitzgerald the twenties were born. Amory's affairs are just that, his romances mere flirtations, but he has the ability to make all seem of utter importance because all outcomes effect the state of our heros grace. An egotist, yes! But at that age, college age, what else is there to be. His egotism fuels his romantic ideas about life, and the fire builds and builds slow and burns as bright as life can burn in youth.....at least on this side of paradise.

Written when F. Scott was a mere 23 years of age, This Side of Paradise elevates itself as a seminal and ground-breaking semi-autobiographical novel that inexplicably remains vastly underappreciated as of today. Amory Blaine manifests himself as a veritable study of egotism, romanticism, idealism, and intense disillusionment. Amory proves to be an endearing and highly affable young protagonist. The prep school and Princeton years of supercilious and pretentious egotist hedonism abound immensely in energy, innocence, and vitality.
Through the despair of his failed love with Rosalind et al, his disenchantment with his advertsing job, and the inseparable gloom and despair of WWI, Amory enters into a reproachful state of disillusionment and cynicism subsequent to "The Great War". Fitzgerald, the acclaimed golden boy of his aptly named Jazz Age, emodies in Amory "a new generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken."
Amory undergoes a catharsis of sorts in purging his tragic loss of innocence due to the war with his heavy drinking and nihilistic behavior. Nonetheless, he regains a semblance of his former confidence and intensity at the conclusion of the book, "yet the waters of disillusion had left a deposit on his soul." Is Amory the same romantic egotist that we witnessed at the onset of this powerful work? Not by any stretch of the imagination. However, through his despondent adversity, his intellectualism survives as well as his somewhat frayed, yet repaired sense of hopeful idealisism for the future - whatever it may bring. A strikingly similar ending to Hemingway's later masterpiece The Sun Also Rises, n'est-ce pas?

This is a brilliant work that many categorize in the "male coming of age" genre. It is correctly placed there and is on par with, if not better than, "Great Expectations." This novel shows the zest of a young writer already in greatness on his way to perfection. The radical structure of this novel shows the creativity and non-conformity that Fitzgerald set as the mode for the modern day contemporary novel. His incorporation of poetry, music, and, and then sudden shift to play-writing, in his prose, to get his point across are brilliant in his execution of "showing rather than telling."
Amory (wordplay on amorous) is looking for truth and sense in his life. He seeks it in intellectual pursuits, riotous living, and love. Love is what makes him most vulnerable.
His general liking for the arts rather than the sciences mirror the ambitions of so many young males, males who would be reading this novel. He can't dwell in what is known or scientifically documented, his heart lies in the arts and history: the former a place an outlet to seek truth and the latter a point of reference by which he categorizes himself. He believes love to be something tangible like the music he hears, the poetry he reads and writes, but love is chaos. He makes lists to categorize and make sense of elements of the social world around him, but life (especially in the shift from adolesence to young-adulthood) and people are so incongruent that none of it is able to be categorized. The use of the shift to play-writing is not used gratuitously. Amory believes that life and love fall into place once one is done with school and sets out for the world. He is acting/living out a love story in the real world, but nothing in life is structured like the story line to a dramatic romance.
Fitzgerald's narrative is a lyrical, yet chaotic whirlwind, it perfectly coincides with the life of a person coming into adulthood during a time of drastic social change and the disillusionment from the atrocities of The Great War.
The last quarter of the novel shows the roots of what would grow to Fitzgerald's literary perfection. Reading the ending to this book keeps the reader in a state of awe.
There is a beautiful array of one-liners gracing the pages during Amory's conversation with the Goggled Man and his partner. Everyone I discuss this novel with has a favorite line or two from this section. The words that have been turning over in my mind ever since the first time I read this novel are:
"'I'm restless. My whole generation is restless. I'm sick of a system where the richest man gets the most beautiful girl if he wants her, where the artist without an income has to sell his talents to a button manufacturer.'"
The last line of the book is a lesson in itself. Fitzgerald entertains the reader from the soft and subtle beginning, to the chaotic yet, settling end:
"I know myself," he cried, "but that is all."
After all the people he had come in contact with during his journey for truth and love, and all the low and high points that Amory has had, he feels his efforts were worthwhile, but doesn't know why.
Mapping life is a futile effort. Mapping and knowing yourself is an amazing feat in and of itself that few achieve. And knowing yourself is "all," everything that you would ever need to know in life...
This novel is a must read for all young men. ENTER THE LABYRINTH.

I had mixed feelings about Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I enjoyed reading about the romance between Nicole and Dick, and then between Rosemary and Dick, and I found that I cared deeply for the characters. I was involved in their lives and felt concern and sorrow for them. Despite these aspects which I enjoyed, there was much of the novel which I felt to be irrelevant and uninteresting. I didn't understand the significance of the story of Abe North's difficulty with the law, the problems between the Divers and a remarried Mary North, and the arrest of Mary North and Lady Sibly-Biers. I was also disappointed in the way Fitzgerald chose to resolve the story. Dick was my favorite character throughout the novel but it seemed in the end that he was sucked dry by Nicole, used and abandoned by Rosemary, and made an outcast by all his friends. I felt that Tender is the Night was weak in terms of historical content. There was little discussion of World War I and the novel didn't create a clear picture of its aftermath. I also had a mixed reaction with regard to Fitzgerald's style of writing. His description was interesting and creative but I was often confused as to the character speaking, the passage of time, and the exact aspects of an event. I finished the novel uncertain about whether or not events had actually occurred and not completely understanding the motivation behind much of the story. Overall I found Tender is the Night to be entertaining to read but at times difficult to understand.

When I read this novel, I felt as if everything else I'd ever read was garbage. This is because Scott Fitzgerald had a way with words that was beyond compare. I would stop myself and reread pages because I couldn't believe that what I'd just read was so beautifully written. I never do this with novels! Beyond that, this is an incredible story involving breaking a taboo that has a frightful attraction rate. Dick Driver is a psychiatrist. Nicole is his wealthy, beautiful, younger patient.

This is not a story about Dick's abusing Nicole as her therapist. Dick saves Nicole and marries her even though he is warned by his own mentor that such a relationship never works. It becomes quite clear as the story continues to unfold that Dick is the one paying an exorbitant price from his marrying Nicole whereas Nicole is thriving. The alcohol and parties among the jet set abound as they usually do in a Fitzgerald novel, set in the 1920s. By all means read this novel. I can guarantee that you will hold onto it for the rest of your life.

Visit my blog with link given on my profile page here or use this phonetically given URL (livingasseniors dot blogspot dot com). Friday's entry will always be weekend entertainment recs from my 5 star the store reviews in film, tv, books and music. These are very heavy on buried treasures and hidden gems. My blogspot is published on Monday, Wednesday & Friday.

The renowned success of The Great Gatsby (also an exceptional book) often overshadows the brilliance of Tender is the Night. The later being Fitzgerald's semi-autobiographical masterpiece that gives the reader a glimpse into the writer's frame of mind and personal struggles. "Tender" is a true testament to the author's talent and arguably is his most important literary effort.
Dick Diver is a young psychiatrist; a follower of Freud and Jung who is working his way up in the field of mental health medicine. He is intelligent, handsome, altruistic, and an overachiever. Dick falls in love and marries the beautiful, wealthy Nicole Warren who also happens to be his patient. Dick and Nicole start out living the high life. They travel to exotic locations and mingle with aristocrats. All the while Dick establishes a successful private practice with the help of Nicole's money and becomes a well-respected and sought-after physician. But soon the happy front the Diver's display to the world crumbles. Nicole's mental problems begin to resurface and Dick becomes involved with a young Hollywood starlet. These events trigger a domino of disappointments and downfalls.
Anyone who has studied F. Scott Fitzgerald the man will no doubt see that Tender is the Night mirrors his own life with his wife Zelda. Fitzgerald, a perfectionist in his own career worked tirelessly to establish himself. Meanwhile, he and Zelda traveled the globe, attended parties, consumed alcohol, lived extravagantly, and carelessly spent all their money before Zelda slipped into insanity leaving Scott to pick up the scattered pieces of his broken life. The character of Dick Diver grows to become cynical and is left feeling he is a failure. Sadly, six years after the publication of this book, Fitzgerald himself died prematurely believing he was a failure and destined for literary obscurity.
It would be impossible for me to do justice in describing the splendor of Fitzgerald's prose. His passages are emotionally sweeping and his words strum along as rhythmically as fine music. If you have time for only one book this year, make a wise choice and consider Tender is the Night.

It's an enormous comfort to find that the 24 year old Fitzgerald did not produce a perfect novel. It's not as comforting to know that the 29 year old Fitzgerald did. Ah well, the Beatles were done being the Beatles before they were 30.

This book is no pleasure to read unless you're interested in seeing FSF develop, and this is his start. This is an interesting lens on Gatsby and reveals some of the more subtle techniques by being used crudely here. The primary similarity is the use of satire in the real old Satyricon sense. In both novels, there's a devoted attempt to meticulously record his surrounding in order to hold their trappings up to ridicule.

The problem with This Side of Paradise is that it's a bildungsroman and a fairly autobiographical one at that. The self-criticism and self-knowledge that is necessary to declare one's own quest for adulthood as absurd isn't available to one immediately upon entering it (See Stephen in Ulysses for a successful version - decades older). That's sort of the problem with the whole work. F keeps falling in and out of admiration for Amory, and consequently, Amory is never a reliable lens on his world. It's kind of a wreck.

This book made Maxwell Perkins's career at Scribner, and so TSOP could be said to have been crucial to the development of Hemingway, Wolfe, et al. What made Perkins think that this was so revolutionary? Perhaps some was scandalous - She's been kissed many times! - it's not so shocking now. Perhaps it showed a world not seen before, St. Paul's, Princeton. Perhaps he was the first voice of a generation. Maybe Perkins just had an unbelievable eye for talent. The evidence is there if you look hard enough. It's up to the duly warned potential reader to decide whether they want to.

However, as an inspiration to young writers out there. Get going. Write a bad book. Write another bad book. Then write a great one.

In many ways this books is less complicated and easier to understand if we go back and look at Fitzgerald's own notes that he recorded in his famous ledger pror to writing the novel. The biographer Mathew Bruccoli does an excellent job of pulling together many of the details surrounding the life and the works of Fitzgerald (FSF).

The present novel was written more thatn 10 years after his breakthrough novel "This Side of Paradise." His marriage had soured, his wife Zelda was hosplitized with mental ilness, and he was living in Baltimore. He needed a novel to demonstrate that he was still a force and he wrote this two part book with the time flashback as that vehicle.

The novel opens in 1925, set on the Riviera, and is narrated by a young actress Rosemary who deveops and attraction to a married Dick Diver. In his notes, he says that Dick looks like him, FSF; Dick's wife looks like Marlene Dietrich; Rosemary looks like the young actress Lois Moran. He had met the latter in Hollywood while screenwriting and had developed an attachment to her. He was 30 while Moran was just 18, ages similar to Dick and Rosemary in the novel. Although nothing happened, this caused quite a stir with his real wife Zelda who started a fire in their apartment in protest. The Dick Diver character is based on a Baltimore doctor that was treating FSF for his alcoholism. Those are the people that create a framework for the novel.

The novel reflects the complexities of FSF's own life, the failure of his marriage, his driking, the decline of his career, and his attraction to, or distraction by, Lois Moran.

The novel is divided into two parts. Part I opens on a beach on the Riviera in 1925 and describes the chance meeting between the Divers (a married couple Dick and Nicole) and the young actress Rosemary. She is attracted to Dick, but nothing happens. In part II, the story re-starts in 1917 without Rosemary and we trace the meeting and marriage of the Diver couple. One reson for the two parts is to introduce the time fahsback, that FSF thought would make the novel a lot more sophisticated, and it would quiet down some of his critics that thought that his writing ideas were too simple.

Rosemary's role is primarily to throw the weak Dick off his marriage, get him frustrated since they never consumate, make him think of other women, so he starts to have these side affairs and ruin his marriage, independent of whether or not she comes back into the story.

The core of the story is about a weak man distracted by drink and women, as perhaps FSF was as well. In real life his wife never recovers from her mental illness, and died in a fire in a home in the early 1940s.

The story is a bit backwards compared to FSF's real life. In real life FSF went into seclusion on the Riviera to finish Gatsby. Zelda had the affair, not him, while he was writing. So it is a slight role reversal here. Her affair opened the door I suppose for him to have an affiar, and since he went to Hollywood often as a screen writer, there might have been something going on there but probably not with the original distraction, Lois.

"Tender is the Night" from Keat's "Ode to a Nightingale". This is a poem that wouldmake FSF cry, every time he read it.

Excellent novel, and highly recommend.

I read F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night" (1934) following a recent online discussion on the store's discussion board in which a number of good the store reviewers offered their thoughts on the book. I am please to note many fine reviews on this site as well.

"Tender is the Night" is a story of part of America's "Lost Generation" in the period following WW I. Most of the story is set on the French Riviera in the 1920s with a large cast of wealthy, dissipated and idle Americans with little to do with themselves. The book tells of the fall of Dick Diver, a promising and idealistic young American psychiatrist. As an intern in Zurich, Dick had married a beautiful wealthy young American woman, Nichole Warren, who had been his patient. Nichole had severe and lasting psychiatric issues resulting from sexual abuse by her father. While on the Riviera, several years into the marriage, Dick is attracted to a callow 18-year old American movie actress, Rosemary Hoyt. Although he resists Rosemary's advances at the time, her memory stays with him. She and Dick have a brief affair a few years later. Dick ultimately sees her as shallow. By that time, his life has dissipated through drink, idleness, problems with Nichole, and the corrupting effect of Nichole's money. Nichole leaves Dick, and he returns to the States for a lonely, wasted life. It is all very sad.

I found the story effectively organized and told. The opening scenes take place on the French Riviera with Dick seemingly at the height of his powers as a socialite and budding medical writer. After an extended opening, the story doubles back to Dick's life in Zurich and has fateful courtship of Nichole. We then witness Dick Diver's inexorable deterioration, alcoholism, and degeneracy, and the break-up of his marriage. The writing is eloquent and spare, with good characterizations of mostly unappealing people and pictures of places. We see the rootlessness of a class of Americans after the great War and the corrupting effects of money and idleness. Dick Diver's story, I thought was sad and sentimental rather than tragic. There is little of the hero about him.

"Tender is the Night" is the story of wandering lives, lost innocence, and the waste of human potential. In some ways, the book reminded me of the writings of the Beats, following WW II. It is a 20th Century American book, well worth knowing.

Robin Friedman

High flying, fast living F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) attained great commercial and critical fame early in life--and then began a rapid fall into a ferocious alcoholism. In 1925 THE GREAT GATSBY, now regarded as his masterpiece and often described as "the great American novel," was published to only mildly enthusiastic reviews and sold poorly; in order to fund the lifestyle to which he had grown accustomed, Fitzgerald set aside his next book length project and turned to short stories and the occasional bout of "writing for Hollywood."

Although Fitzgerald began to formulate ideas for TENDER IS THE NIGHT as early as 1925, the project was slow to take form and was not published until 1934--by which time it had become a reflection of Fitzgerald's stormy marriage to the equally high flying, fast living Zelda Sayre, who gradually sank into insanity and was permanently institutionalized by the early 1930s. Originally published in serial form in Scribner's Magazine, it received mixed reviews, and when it was published as a novel it did not prove the great commercial success Fitzgerald hoped. It was the last novel he completed before his 1940 death.

The story is set in Europe, where the Fitzgeralds themselves lived through much of the 1920s, and begins with Rosemary, a very young woman who has recently jolted to fame and fortune as an actress in silent film. Beautiful but in many respects innocent, Rosemary vacations on the Riviera--where she makes the acquaintance of Dick and Nicole Diver, an incredibly wealthy, exceptionally attractive couple who seem to be the height of all the modern era has to offer. Rosemary quickly subcums to Dick Diver's immeasurable charm and falls in love with him, but Nick is determinedly bound to Nicole, as much from responsibility as love. Nicole's apparent flawlessness is a facade. Dick is a psychiatrist; his wife, Nicole, is also his patient. She is insane.

Fitzgerald was often accused of writing about rich and pretty but trivial people. In one sense this is true, but in Fitzgerald's work the shiny surface is precisely that, a false front that the characters present to the world in order to maintain both their social standing and self-image. As the novel moves back and forward in time, we see how Dick has been "bought" by Nicole's family and how he is repeatedly torn between love for Nicole as a husband and care for her as a patient so that--even as Nicole begins a final recovery--he begins his own destruction, sucked dry by the endless personal and professional compromises required of him. Increasingly dark in tone, TENDER IS THE NIGHT is not so much disillusioning as it is ultimately, painfully nhilistic.

Fitzgerald seemed to regard TENDER IS THE NIGHT as both his most personal and his favorite work, and there are few who would not regard it as a masterpiece. Even so, it is very much a flawed masterpiece, occasionally problematic to a point at which it snaps the reader out of the very reality it attempts to create, most often due to Fitzgerald's own authorial self-indulgence. That said, the characters and their situations are not always as convincing as one could wish and the structure of the novel is occasionally muddy. And yet--

Even with these glaring issues running throughout the novel, TENDER IS THE NIGHT is the sort of book that you think you will not finish and then suddenly find yourself on the last page. Whereas THE GREAT GATSBY tended to focus on the mask, TENDER IS THE NIGHT focuses on the face beneath it, and the result is uniquely powerful. You care about the Divers and even though you sense their ultimate fate you, like they themselves, fight against it. It has moments of brilliance as powerful and often more so than any other novel of the first half of the 20th Century. Strongly recommended.

GFT, the store Reviewer

Some novels are great stories. Some novels are stories greatly written or told. And, in rare instances, some novels are greatly written great stories. This is one of those rare novels.

This novel closely follows the prepubescent Amory Blaine through his 20's. In the beginning, he is a spoiled boy whose father is distant and mother is a great but disturbed woman. With cash in their pockets, Amory and his mother, Beatrice, enjoy one another as best of friends. Home schooled, he is little boy Fauntleroy during the turn of the century America.

Things change, step by step, with Amory's character increasing while his bank account is decreasing. Fitzgerald calls Amory the Egotist in Book One, and then dons the title "Personage" for that same, but now grown, Amory in Book Two.

This is very autobiographical. Amory, an Irish Catholic (like Fitzgerald), lives his high school years in St. Paul (like Fitzgerald) then attends prep school (like Fitzgerald) as he is a privileged youth (like Fitzgerald) and later attends Princeton (like Fitzgerald) where he becomes part of Princeton's Triangle Club (like Fitzgerald) and follows Princeton for the Army (like Fitzgerald). Book One, in fact, was written while Fitzgerald was attending Princeton.

What makes this novel more interesting than other Fitzgerald novels are the different - and somewhat raw - items within it pages. Scribner initially rejected the book because of it being raw. The rawness is evidenced by numerous poems tossed about within it - great stuff. There are added poems from girls he adored - more great stuff. The letters are also great and pithy. And, in the "Debutante" chapter of Book Two, he writes in playwright form the Amory wooing of beautiful Rosalind. In his short novel there is poetry, prose and a play. Although somewhat disjointed, it works. And, works magnificently.

The ending really shows you something about the young man. He preaches Russia's Socialism to a fat capitalist who kindly gives the Princetonian a ride. Ayn Rand (the Russian born writer who immigrated to America) almost rebuts this portion of the book with her 1957 "Atlas Shrugged." Remember, Stalin and the ugly head of Soviet Socialism did not exist at the time of "This Side of Paradise." Rand, and her people, lived through some of the Red Terror and by 1957 had learned much more about how Russian implementation of Socialism seriously deviated from the ideology espoused by Marx and his peers.

Fitzgerald is a great writer. Maybe America's greatest of the 20th century. And, this close-to-home rendition of thought and emotion, may be the most poignant depiction of what the author felt and feared. If you have any interest in Fitzgerald, this novel is for you.

I never knew much about Fitzgerald or his work until I read This Side of Paradise. The beginning at first consisted of boring details; however, it did help for later in the story as Amory Blaine grew. The book centers around Amory Blaine, a smart, handsome, and egotistical young teen who thinks too highly of himself. I read with much enthusiasm and an idea of where the book might lead. As I predicted, Amory Blaine headed in the wrong direction in life and education. This substantiates the fact that Amory, from an early age, focused more on petty things than on the important things. He never had much guidance during his childhood until he met Monisgnor Darcy who turned out to be the most influential person on his life. Amory traveled through life with neither much guidance nor any love. He was exposed to the high class of American society which only clouded his mind, impeding on his development and realization of who he is and where he belongs. This, unfortunately, carried over into his college and adult years which eventually brought him to his demise. This turnout of events came to be what described the very stereotypical teen in America today. The lesson from this book is that one must focus on what is more important and live for the self, not impress or transcend others. In the end, it doesn't matter what parties you have attended or what social group you belonged to. This Side of Paradise came to be one of the most influential and provocative books I've read in the last year and has broaden my views on life and its' problems. This book will come to be very helpful for teens approaching their adulthood.

This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald's semi-autobiographical coming of age novel, celebrates the intensely felt victories and defeats of a privileged young man. The son of rich wastrels, Amory Blaine is convinced of his physical and intellectual superiority from a young age. He attends prep school in Connecticut, where he meets others of his class and learns how to impress them. He then moves on to Princeton, and here Fitzgerald shares with the reader a lengthy appreciation of what the school offers: tradition, a challenge, and the company of other talented young men from the ruling class. The story takes a brief hiatus when Blaine goes to war, which characteristically he interprets in terms of how it affects him. On returning home, he has a painful love affair that helps mature him.

Blaine is not a very sympathetic protagonist - he is selfish and unkind - but to his credit he doesn't pretend to be anything other than what he is. Also to his credit, he is sensitive to beauty everywhere, and he can see merit in others. Through his eyes, we meet a number of friends and lovers, and there are some remarkable characters among them.

Fitzgerald is a wonderful writer, and in this, his first novel, he seems at pains to prove it by extensively using poetry, letters between his characters, and the dramatic form to help tell his story. He does indeed seem very comfortable in all of these forms. Fitzgerald went on to write great books, and this one shows the impressive skills he had even as a young man of 24.

Fitzgerald never grows old, whether I'm revisiting THE GREAT GATSBY or reading another of his novels for the first time, in this instance, TENDER IS THE NIGHT. His ability to deliver on big themes and his use of the elements of imaginative writing--symbolism, character, conflict, setting, dialogue, narrative and plot--improves every time I read him.

NIGHT is a rangy novel depicting a time, place and its people: the expatriot ("Europeanized") Americans who habituated Europe after World War I, trying to come to grips with the turbulent speed of modernity and an escalating sense that life has lost meaning. Fitzgerald's community clings to exclusive French beaches and cliff-top villas, spinning around its own royalty, Dick and Nicole Divers, whose parties are to die for. This crowd lives for the night when everything is fun and the liquor flows. The bright light of day and what it can reveal is not always so kind. Fitzgerald charges the novel with melodrama and tragedy, but he also gives free reign to the wry wit, pranks and mores of this desperate crowd. Someone else might abridge some of that, but it would be a loss. It is an important statement on the early 20th century American experience and throws the role of the individual into remarkable relief.

Charles Scribner III, descendant of the book's original publisher, offers a brief but engaging historical introduction that speaks of Fitzgerald's long commitment to producing this work as Zelda fell deeper into mental illness, his own conviction that it was his best and how his peers reacted to it. It's a non-spoiler of an introduction and should not be overlooked.

This is only my second foray into the world of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I had read "The Great Gadsby" years ago, as part of a college reading assigment. I also had seen the movie starring Robert Redford.

So, over the past few weeks I approached this other great Fitzgerald work with a sense of anticipation, and maybe a little hesitation. Gadbsy had left me flat and drained. I expected Paradise to do the same.

Yet, in the life meanderings of protagonist Amory Blaine, I found not a pointless pursuit of nothing much, ending in quiet tragedy. Rather, there is a sense of ultimate success on the part of Blaine, as the narrative closes. Here is a person that seemed to have no real purpose in life, other than a continuation of the first two shallow fraternity years in an Ivy League college.

But Amory is no typical Ivy-Leaguer. His wealth comes from some nouveau riche earnings of his late father's smart investments. Tragedy seems to loom on every page, as his inheritance dries up and he is left with nothing. He has not even a healthy ambition to drive him.

As a romancer, he can seduce, but never truly win, the most beautiful women crossing his path. They all approach their liaisons with him, fully aware that it is going nowhere. He is a rake without pretense.

Blaine's frustrations with the ladies are part of his character development, in his sysiphusian forward-and-back-again career path to nowhere. But in this there is nothing really unique about the character. There is not a man alive, who wouldn't love to have the same romantic experiences as Amory. Eventually the smart ones realize that the best women are the nice ones. The most alluring ones are the ones along the edge of society, not the ones that place themselves front and center, as Amory's love interests always manage to do.

So the story ends, somewhere around the year 1930, with Amory at around thirty years of age.

In the final chapters, Fitzgerald wraps it up with some prescient social commentary, which seem even to point to reforms in our society that may yet be a hallmark of the Obama era. Fitzgerald pleads - why does our society not more highly value those with creative gifts? Why do we stress a liberal education, and then cast to the gutter those that excel in the liberal arts?

Fitzgerald says, no wonder socialism has such an allure to the intelligentsia! If the business and monied classes cared more about letters, music, and the arts, then there would be a place for those so gifted! Yet any advanced civilization needs to celebrate those gifts! Fitzgerald has written this book as a commentary on America's need to put its money where its mouth is. If you can write and create - then it is in society's best interest to take good care of you. The failure to do so may be an overturning of our free market system (one needs only to look at people like Bill Ayers to see how it all may come topsy turvy, even in our generation).

But, one wonders about Mr. Blaine at the age of fifty and beyond. I can easily envision him as a respected adademic, with a wife that is also a professor. In his late middle years he has one or two young children, that bring him great joy. He has served on several local boards by this time.

And, at long last, he is happy.

In a Swiss sanatorium above lake Zürich, Dr Richard (Dick) Diver meets a fascinating young patient, Nicole Warren. Nicole suffers from Divided Personality at its acute down-hill phase which translates in her fear of men because she was the victim of incest after her mother's death.

Nicole's state improves after some time at the clinic and Richard marries her. They move to the French Riviera where they live in the glamour provided by Nicole's family money but soon their luck runs out.

This novel is Fitzgerald's most personal one if one considers that his own wife Zelda became increasingly troubled with mental illness in the 1930s and so the story of Dick Diver and his schizophrenic wife Nicole shows the pain that the author went through himself. It is the moving account of the collapse of a marriage and an attempt to diagnose the sickness and destruction that money breeds. Dick's final loneliness in the novel reflects Fitzgerald's own dive into drink and despair.

I read "Gatsby" and was awed by Fitzgerald's ability to both describe the 1920's and to draw his readers into that postwar period. His characters felt real to me. So, I couldn't wait to read Tender is the Night. "Tender" seems to reveal more about Fitzgerald personal pain than anything else. His novel elaborately blames Nicole for Dick's emotional decay. To me, this story line just doesn't bear close scrutiny. Dick's behavior is controlling,habitually deceitful and at times misogynistic. Time after time Dick control's Nicole's actions and refuses to allow her to even discuss her viewpoint. Nicole's behavior is unbalanced but is it schizophrenic?
It's very revealing that a 28 year old man would fall in love with a 16 year old girl. Later, when Nicole has grown up a bit, Dick falls in and out of love with Rosemary, a very child-like 18 year old.
Granted, women's rights were along way off in 1925 the year Fitzgerald began writing Tender is the Night, but Dick seems more in charge of Nicole's life than seems warranted by either the prevailing culture or by Nicole's illness.
I'd say that Fitzgerald unconsciously revealed his own role in his decaying marriage and like most folks tried to point the finger elsewhere.

Fitzgerald was a supreme talent, and he showed what he was capable of with The Great Gatsby...but Tender is the Night lacks direction and inspiration. (I read the restored version, so my chronology may differ from other readers'.)

The plot is a bit scatter-shot and uneven, with a very sweaty ending (for a slice-of-lifer, many developments come across as factitious rather than organic), but the writing is still unmistakably that of a master. Numerous sentences stick with the reader, and Fitzgerald's facility with the phrase causes me no end of admiration.

However, the air-tight perfection of Gatsby is noticeably lacking. (I know: they can't all be as good as Gatsby...but the comparison is natural, and leaves Night far behind.)

Tender is the Night is ranked #28 on the MLA 100, which puts it ahead of some better stuff, but I can't quibble too much with the novel's placement. It's virtuoso writing by a literary titan, and definitely should be read.

Tender is the Night is a somewhat lengthy, meandering sort of novel. Its facination comes from this very obscurity; a tightly written mystery-murder(The Great Gatsby) it is not. I highly recommend this book for its vivid portrayal of Diver's complexly layered relationships; with Nicole his wife, and with the budding starlet, Rosemary.
The author skillfully shuffles in the minor characters as well. FitzGerald's observations about the psychology between women and men /Americans and Europeans is ultra keen. His father's death, Abe North's death, his and Rosemary's quick but temporary liason, the fight with the Police in Rome, the illness of Mr. Warren, his parting with Franz and Kaethe, the antagonism between Baby and himself, the mental and emotional drain of Nicole's affliction, and his drinking... portray the minor tragedies that constitute life.
FitzGerald tells his story to us better than any other 20th Century American writer could hope to, and in a lyrical style that keeps the reader spellbound.

Run or click, but don't walk to grab yourself a copy of THIS SIDE OF PARADISE. F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel (published when he was twenty-three) is so glitteringly brilliant you might--I say MIGHT--just like it more than THE GREAT GATSBY. By the Gatsby masterpiece Fitzgerald was cutting back deliberately on his flourishing prose--read THIS SIDE OF PARADISE to see him let it all hang out.
Fitzgerald's protagonist Amory Blaine inherits from his mother exquisite manners, a European sensibility, and a dangerous superiority complex. It is to Amory's credit then, that throughout his prep school and Princeton years he regains the respect his attitude loses for him through talent and hard work. His stunning good looks (a point repeatedly established) position Amory well to lose his innocence as a variety of beautiful girls fall for him throughout his adolescence. Looking back nostalgically later on, Amory is honest enough with himself to realize that he doesn't really want to "repeat" his innocence, but merely "want[s] the pleasure of losing it again."
When I first read this book almost four years ago I shook my head after a few pages and said, "there's no accounting for genius." Much later I read E. M. Forster's ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL where he points out what I said as characteristic of the "pseudo-scholar." Yikes! The truth is that there is accounting for Fitzgerald's genius: it lies in his depth of insight, sharpness of wit and overall "will to bigness," as his narrator puts it for Amory. GATSBY is certainly the book that crowned Fitzgerald an immortal, but THIS SIDE OF PARADISE is a must-read for those who want to know what first made him a star.

Tender Is The Night is the second novel I have read by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I thought that after The Great Gatsby that I would continue experiencing such excellence by this novel. I am so glad I did. This novel made me feel like I was watching a silent film. I could just see Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. walking along a veranda along the Mediterranean Sea. I could feel the sea breeze and smell the air. What's is more is that I felt like I was there along with the characters as if I were in with their group of devil may care expatriates. I could truly see the strength of the title in the story. I could also see the parallel of Zelda's mental instability in this novel. I loved it and wholly recommend it if you want to feel transported to the early twentieth century or if you just want to know that even the rich have problems too.

It is presumptuous of me to try to "review" F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the premiere authors in American Literature. But, having recently read an eye-opening biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, wherein I learned that F. Scott had purloined many of Zelda's writings verbatim to use in his own novels, I felt compelled to reread this work.
I always considered "Tender Is the Night" to be Fitzgerald's finest work, unlike most Fitzgerald scholars, who lean toward "The Great Gatsby." I am no scholar, nor do I pretend to be, but to me, "Tender Is the Night" was always the most mature and most tragic--and showed a greater insight into Fitzgerald's psyche than perhaps he meant to show.
The thinly veiled story of his tragic marriage to Zelda, the story takes place in all their real-life stomping grounds, from the Riviera to Paris to Switzerland--with a few side trips to the United States. In the story, Dick Diver, a prominent psychiatrist, is the protagonist. His wife, the beautiful, fey and often mad Nicole, is Zelda. As they aimlessly flit from place to place (the Fitzgeralds, and thus the fictional Divers, were the original "beautiful people"), the scholarly and noble (oh, so noble!) Dr. Diver begins to disintegrate under the weight of caring for a mentally ill but outwardly quite normal wife. In the end,it is he, not her, who is destroyed.
There is a lot of anger in this book, and still more, almost unbearable pathos. I still think it is brilliant--a work of art in words. And I found, as I was reading, that I didn't really care which words were Zelda's and which were Scott's. As in real life, they formed a tragic whole--bent on destroying themselves and each other--and this book shows Scott's clear-eyed insight into that fact.
The art is the tragedy--and the tragedy is the art. My admiration of F. Scott Fitzerald, and the lovely and lost Zelda, remains intact.

'Tender is the Night' is one of F Scott Fitzgeralds better known books and the first one of his I read. It is a powerful story of two people (Dick and Nicole) loving each other for the wrong reasons and whose love takes a course neither truly wants, but can't seem to move away from. This is set in the roaring twenties amidst the hedonistic lifestyles of the aristocracy and you can imagine the times and places perfectly. Told in a deceptively simple style, it has great depth in it's story telling and a way of making you feel as deeply as the characters. It may not have the most positive of endings, but I like it all the more for this reason, as it is truer to real life. A beautifully written book to be enjoyed again and again.

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Ahhhh Mr. Fitzgerald. How you woo me with your lyrical prose and bore me with your philosophical shpeel.

There were times during This Side of Paradise where I was overcome by what I was reading because it was just that amazing. And then there were times where I glazed over the philosophy with dry eyes and an annoying buzz in my ears. But looking beyond those parts, I have to acknowledge Paradise as Fitz's first novel, and therefore the good parts were made that much better since he had nothing Gatsby-like to live up to. The bits of genius were effortless and beautiful because they were the first of their kind, pure and innocent. Paradise seems like it was easy for Fitz. Fun. I feel like I can tell this is his first novel because it wouldn't be until later that the pressure of being a "good writer" would hit him. For that reason, I enjoyed this novel tremendously.

This Side of Paradise revolves around Amory Blaine. There are many words to describe Amory: self-involved, self-indulgent, self-conscious. Overly dramatic, lost, found, curious, lonely, broken, bruised. Affected. Amory is a character. He's full of life but completely lost. He's a dreamer and an idealist and a realist all at the same time; he is one big hypocritical oxymoron, and he's completely overwhelmingly tragic.

We begin Amory's life from whence all his issues started: Beatrice. Beatrice is dear old mother with her delicacy and indulgences, and her personality makes Amory into the person he is because of her eccentricities and failures. We follow Amory through school and his younger years (where he's disliked by his classmates because they don't get him), through his college years (where he's liked by classmates because they don't get him), vaguely through World War I, and always through his women, until we meet Rosalind - the beginning, end, and in-between of everything Amory wanted and could never have.

Amory is always looking for himself, and never finding the person he wants. He loses himself in whatever he likes at the time, whether it be school, an idea, a place, or a person. He's never happy and never content for long. He wants to be remembered, but never sticks to anything long enough to be cause for remembrance. He's lost, and I feel sad for him. He never quite finds what he's looking for.

The best description of Amory can be found on the twelfth page of the book:

"It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being."

Fitzgerald's first novel is a profound and insightful coming of age story that reads like my deepest thoughts. Amory Blaine, who was raised by an eccentric mother and a sensible aunt, attends boarding school and eventually enters Princeton in 1913. He goes to the war for a bit and returns to a fairly aimless life in NYC.

Amory is an eccentric and utterly self-obsessed and egotistic. He is clever in almost all ways and knows that he is in some ways a genius - but the type that has no channel for his potential. Amory is at times brutally honest with himself and painfully self-aware. He knows he is vain and knows that - like a superman - he id detached from morality. He wonders if he is a "good man" and admits he is not. He wonders if any "great man" can be "good." He also lacks self-awareness at times - or at least the discipline or motivation to change his self-defeating attitude. The book ends with Amory's iconic lament "I know myself, but that is all-"

He sees things too clearly to ignore the baseness of life, and just short of clear enough to know how to live and how to be happy. He is for one day or one week or one month overwhelmed by the beauty and possibility of life and by the way in which 2 people can connect with each other. He knows that he is special for fully appreciating these times. . . . Then, he is struck by the way in which "life" and "society" distanace and disconnect individuals from this beauty and from their ability to feel this beauty. The young Amory Blaine is in touch with and cultivates his ability to feel the grandeur of life; his life at Princeton allows him free time and few worries. As Amory ages, he cannot figure out how to live in the real world - with all of its boringness and convention, and his own desire to impress others (the latter of which also features big at Princeton). Amory flip-flops between a conviction that he must stay true to his youthful state of mind and a conviction that he must recognize the inescapability of responsibility and the limitations of society. He searches endlessly for a book which offers the answer. The irony is that Amory's magnificent mind and heart which see so clearly the beauty of life also see the tragedy that society as a whole operates outside this fold. Knowing that society is so flawed, Ammory doesn't know how to participate in it and he fears he will lose himself if he does. Amory's gift is his downfall.

Things that had been the merest commonplaces of his life then, deep sleep, the sense of beauty all around him, all desire, had flown away and the gaps they left were filled only with the great listlessness of his disillusion." Amory Blaine looking back on the way he was in boarding school and in univ. From F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1st novel "This Side of Paradise."

On a completely different note, the life of young privileged men in early 20th century society is interesting. Princeton is a "right" of these men. There is such a sense of entitlement and empowerment, as well as a separation from the constricts of responsibility. Princeton boys do what they want. They have crazy outings to NYC and Boston. They miss class and don't blink an eye. In fact, class matters little although reading, cleverness, and talents matter a lot. There are a dozen clubs and even more posts to which students belong and prestige is everything. Fitzgerald's depiction of a whirlwind of exhilaration, alienation, eagerness for the future and a sense that it should all be more meaningful is still all too recognizable to those of us who are just a few years out of college.

I wish a bit more was said about Amory's time in WWI and it also seems odd that he doesn't hugely react to it although it must affect him. The repetition of Amory's thoughts is sometimes a bit annoyin but accurate to the character. The story also lags a bit at the end and I wasn't convinced that Amory had come closer to his "answer," as so many times before he had epiphanies and then abandoned them.

Finally, the prose is at times so gorgeous - so melodic - that I've consciously slowed down my reading speed to fully appreciate the beauty of Fitzgerald's song. Fitzgerals is also an amazing poet - "Amory" and his friends pen many beautiful pieces. I would absolutely read this book again - perhaps even slower. There is so much insight and philosophy to chew on, and so much beauty in the prose, that one could never tire of this superb novel. The writing is, admittingly, a hodge podge of different styles (80 pages of it taken from an earlier scrapped novel, other bits from poems and short stories) but I like that.

i read The Great Gatsby 7 years ago when i was eighteen and thought it flat and completely uninteresting. So i decided to read Tender is the Night and was not expecting much. But seriously, I had no idea Fitzgeral could write with such depth and beaty. Almost every paragraph in this book is enjoyable, and some of the writing is just as breathtaking, and as origianl and pure as basically anyone...
Interesting to me was the fact that this book reminded me of some of Nabokov's books that were also written in the 20's and 30's (particularly King, Queen, Knave and Glory). Perhaps it is the priviledged, European feel that Tender has, or maybe the painful lyricism of some of the passages, but either way he has earned the highest compliment by being compared to Nabokov. I believe I am the first to make this observation.
This book, like On the Road, will have moments of energetic optimism and loveoflife while at the same time harboring a sense of impending doom and finality. This book will break your heart. It is just beautiful and sad and everything a book should be.

Mention the roaring twenties in literature and one name comes to mind!
F. Scott Fitzgerald the Midwest Roman Catholic middle class lad who went to Princeton; served in the World War I US Army and married Zelda Sayre the lovely but confused southern belle from Alabama. Fitzgerald is known for his great short stories and classic novels such as "The Great Gatsby,"; "Tender is the Night": "The Beautiful and Damnned" and "The Last Tycoon."
This Side of Paradise is his first novel published in 1920. He began writing it while in army training camp in Fort Leavenworth Kansas in 1917. It is a "bildungsroman" meaning a novel of character development and maturation of the hero. Amory Blaine is the spoiled hero. He is a scion of the upper class with an eccentric mother named Beatrice. His family is wealthy allowing him to board at a prestigious Catholic prep school and attend Princeton. Blaine is a terrible student who drops out of school to serve in the military. He does not go overseas. After the war he finds employment in an ad agency while beginning his writing career. Blaine falls in and out of love with several women but at novel's end is still seeking a mate. He is disillusioned by the war and failed romances. TSOP is one of the first literary productions by a young author who was part of what Gertrude Stein labelled as "The Lost Generation."
The women with whom he becomes infatuated include the flapper Isabella, the spoiled mankiller Rosalind, the suicidal inclining Eleanor Savage and back in Philadelphia a young widow named Clara. All of these women are interesting, beautifully seductive and will fascinate the reader. The two major loves are Rosalind the vamp and Eleanor who loves poetry, men, sex, youth and for a brief summer Mr. Amory Blaine.
We also meet several of his college chums and Father Darcy a Roman Catholic priest who mentors young Blaine. We see Princeton in the early years of the twentieth century. It is obvious that Fitzgerald loved Princeton as he describes it in beautifully poetic and evocative language.
This autobiographical novel takes its title from a Rupert Brooke poem. It is episodic and contains much poetry and analysis of literary classics being read by Amory Blaine and his chums. It is one of the best serious college novels ever authored by an American. Blaine, like Fitzgerald, is shown as a heavy drinker who wrestled with alcoholism.
The novel became a bestseller with the flaming youth of the age of flappers. Money earned from it allowed Fitzgerald to leave his advertising agency job and marry the fetching Zelda. He then devoted himself to life as a professional author of novels, short stories and screenplay work in Hollywood.
This is a flawed but always well worth reading classic by one of America's greatest twentieth century authors. Well worth reading!