Friday, April 25, 2014

This side of paradise-Scott F Fitzgerald

Magnificent work of literary art. Not much of a plot, the whole story revolved around Amory Blaine- his weaknesses, insanity, love affairs.... The language used is just so poetic and "ornamented"... It gives one pure pleasure in reading it. What I loved most is his little summer love affair with Eleanor (a name I incidentally used in my story a few days ago before getting to the part where Eleanor appeared in "this side", talk about coincidences). I guess I liked their chemistry more than the one with Rosalind, even though at the time of reading I had thought to myself that the Rosalind part was quite the climax in the story; Eleanor one-upped Rosalind eventually.
however, at the end of the story, we knew that Amory never got over Rosalind. The story ended rather blandly with him arguing with two men about socialism and with him crying out for Rosalind and finally declaring that his greatest accomplishment in life was knowing himself very well, that's all.
If I am not wrong, Fitzgerald probably threw things he liked into this story- poetries, plays, books, etc. The Rosalind part was written much like a play, with commentaries(?) such as [exits Alec, enters Rosalind]. There were some really nice poems in there, that were supposedly written by Eleanor, Amory, and Burne(?).
Would want to re-read this another day, probably in hard copy form rather than electronically.




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