This Side of Paradise

For other uses, see This Side of Paradise (disambiguation).

This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1920. It examines the lives and morality of carefree American youth at the dawn of the Jazz Age. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive middle-class student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature and engages in a series of romances with flappers. Exploring the theme of love warped by greed and taking its title from a line of Rupert Brooke's poem Tiare Tahiti, Fitzgerald spent years crafting the work prior to its publication.

This Side of Paradise

Dust jacket cover of the first edition
Author	F. Scott Fitzgerald
Cover artist	William E. Hill
Language	English
Genre	Bildungsroman
Published	March 26, 1920
Publisher	Charles Scribner's Sons
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardcover & paperback)
Followed by	The Beautiful and Damned (1922)
Text	This Side of Paradise at Wikisource

Within months of its publication, This Side of Paradise became a sensation in the United States, and reviewers hailed the work as an outstanding debut novel. The book went through twelve printings and sold 49,075 copies. It became popular among college students, and the national press depicted its 23-year-old author as the standard-bearer for "youth in revolt". Overnight, F. Scott Fitzgerald became a household name. Although the book did not make him wealthy, his newfound fame enabled him to earn higher rates for his short stories, and his improved financial prospects persuaded his fiancée Zelda Sayre to marry him.

With his debut novel, Fitzgerald became the first writer to turn the national spotlight upon the so-called Jazz Age generation. In contrast to the older Lost Generation to which Gertrude Stein posited that Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway belonged, the Jazz Age generation were those younger Americans who had been adolescents during World War I and were largely untouched by the conflict's psychological and material effects. Fitzgerald's novel riveted the nation's attention on the leisure activities of this hedonistic younger generation and sparked a societal debate over their perceived immorality.

As a result of this novel, Fitzgerald became known as "the outstanding aggressor in the little warfare which divided our middle classes in the twenties—warfare of moral emancipation against moral conceit, flaming youth against old guard". When he died in 1940, social conservatives celebrated his death. The New York World-Telegram critic Westbrook Pegler wrote that Fitzgerald's death recalled "memories of a queer bunch of undisciplined and self-indulgent brats.... A kick in the pants and a clout over the scalp were more like their needing." Due to such widespread perceptions, Catholic authorities later denied Fitzgerald both a Catholic burial and interment at St. Mary's Church in Rockville, Maryland.

Plot summary

I'm not sentimental—I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last—the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won't.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (1920)

Amory Blaine, a young Midwesterner, is convinced that he has an exceptionally promising future. He attends a posh college-preparatory school and later Princeton University. He grows estranged from his eccentric mother Beatrice and becomes the protégé of Monsignor Thayer Darcy, a Catholic priest. During his sophomore year at Princeton, he returns to Minneapolis over Christmas break and encounters Isabelle Borgé, a wealthy debutante whom he first met as a boy. They embark upon a romantic relationship.

While at Princeton, he deluges Isabelle with letters and poems, but she becomes disenchanted with him due to his incessant criticism. After his prom, they break up on Long Island. Following their separation, Amory graduates from his alma mater and enlists in the United States Army amid World War I. He is shipped overseas to serve in the trenches of the Western front. While overseas, he learns his mother Beatrice has died and most of his family's wealth has been lost due to a series of failed investments.

F. Scott Fitzgerald among junior classmen at Princeton University in 1917. Fitzgerald is pictured in the top row, third from the left.

After the armistice with Imperial Germany, Amory settles in New York City as it undergoes the birth pangs of the Jazz Age. He becomes infatuated with a cruel and narcissistic flapper named Rosalind Connage. Desperate for a job, Amory is hired by an advertising agency, but he detests the work. Due to his poverty, his relationship with Rosalind deteriorates as she prefers a rival suitor, Dawson Ryder, a man of wealth and status. A distraught Amory quits his job and goes on an alcoholic bender for three weeks until the start of prohibition in the United States.

When Amory travels to visit an uncle in Maryland, he meets Eleanor Savage, an 18-year-old atheist. Eleanor chafes under the religious conformity and gender limitations imposed on her by contemporary society in Wilsonian America. Amory and Eleanor spend a lazy summer conversing about their love. On their final night together before Amory must return to New York City, Eleanor attempts suicide in order to prove her disbelief in any deity, and Amory realizes that he does not love her.

Returning to New York, Amory learns that the fickle Rosalind is engaged to be married to his affluent rival Dawson Ryder. A devastated Amory is further dispirited to learn that his beloved mentor, Monsignor Darcy, has died. Homeless, Amory wanders from New York City to his alma mater Princeton and, accepting a car ride from a wealthy man driven by a resentful chauffeur, he speaks out in favor of socialism—although he admits he is still formulating his thoughts as he is talking.

Princeton's gothic towers which Amory glimpses in the final pages.

Concluding his long argument about their time's political and societal problems, Amory emphasizes his disillusionment with the current era. He announces his hope to stand alongside those bringing forth fundamental changes to the age. The men in the car denounce his views, but upon learning that one of them was the father to one of his old friends at Princeton and that the son had died in World War I, Amory and the man reconcile, acknowledging mutual respect. It dawns on Amory that his time as a young promising Princetonian man has all been but a wasted dream, and he parts ways with his travel mates amicably.

Continuing his lonesome walk towards Princeton, Amory gradually forsakes the final obsessions about times and people that once constituted fundamental ideologies of his old self. Standing alone and musing at the sight of Princeton's gothic towers, Amory ecstatically yet somberly concludes: "I know myself . . . but that is all."

Major characters

F. Scott Fitzgerald's (first) romance with Ginevra King (second) inspired the shallow character of Isabelle Borgé. Hobey Amory Baker (third), a Princeton football hero, inspired the protagonist's name "Amory" and the character of Allenby. Zelda Sayre (fourth) inspired the cruel and selfish character of Rosalind Connage.

Most of the characters are drawn directly from Fitzgerald's own life:

• Amory Blaine – a Princeton alumnus from the Midwest and later a World War I veteran who has a series of unfulfilling romances with young women. The character is based on Fitzgerald and his failed relationships. The name "Amory" is taken from Fitzgerald's football hero at Princeton, Hobart Amory Baker.
• Isabelle Borgé – a wealthy but shallow debutante who is Amory's first love. The character is based on Ginevra King, an heiress upon whom Fitzgerald developed a life-long romantic obsession. Like Isabelle and Amory, Fitzgerald met King on Christmas break during his sophomore year at Princeton, and their relationship ended in a similar fashion. "I was too thoughtless in those days," Ginevra recalled, "and too much in love with love to think of consequences." Fitzgerald remained forever in love with King and "could not think of her without tears coming to his eyes".
• Rosalind Connage – a cruel and selfish flapper with whom Amory has a romance. Rosalind is based on Zelda Sayre and, to a lesser extent, on the fictional character of Beatrice Normandy in H. G. Wells' novel Tono-Bungay (1909). Mirroring Rosalind's materialistic relationship with Amory, Sayre briefly ended her relationship with Fitzgerald due to his lack of financial prospects and his inability to support her privileged lifestyle as an idle Southern belle of Montgomery's country club set.
• Eleanor Savage – a beautiful 18-year-old atheist whom Amory meets in Maryland. Fitzgerald based Eleanor on Elizabeth Beckwith MacKie, a romantic interest whom he knew briefly. MacKie later commented that "the Eleanor he described only reminded me of how little he really knew me. His Eleanor loved to sit on a haystack in the rain reciting poetry. Forgive me, Scott: if that is the way you wanted it, then you missed the whole idea of what can happen atop a haystack." Fitzgerald also partly based Eleanor on a purported young love of his mentor Father Sigourney Fay.
• Thayer Darcy – a Catholic priest who serves as Amory's spiritual mentor. The character is based on Father Sigourney, a possibly gay Catholic priest with whom Fitzgerald had a close relationship. While writing This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald quoted verbatim entire letters sent to him by Fay. In addition to using Fay's correspondence, Fitzgerald drew on anecdotes that Fay had told him about his private life, including his purported failed romances with women. When reading This Side of Paradise, Fay wrote to Fitzgerald that the unapproved use of these experiences told in confidence to the young author "gave him a queer feeling."
• Beatrice Blaine – an aging and eccentric matron who is Amory's mother. Based on the mother of one of Fitzgerald's friends.
• Clara Page – a widowed older cousin for whom Amory has unrequited affection. Based on Fitzgerald's cousin Cecilia Delihant Taylor.
• Cecilia Connage – Rosalind's cynical younger sister who steals cigarettes and envies her sibling's popularity among young men.
• Allenby – a heroic football captain at Princeton based on Hobey Baker. A renowned American football and ice hockey player, Baker was universally hailed by the national press as one of the greatest athletes of his time and was idolized by Fitzgerald as everything he wished to be as a Princeton undergraduate. Fitzgerald once described Baker as "an ideal worthy of everything in my enthusiastic admiration, yet consummated and expressed in a human being who stood within ten feet of me." After matriculating from Princeton in 1914, Baker enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Service amid World War I and died in a plane crash in December 1918.
• Thomas Parke D'Invilliers – a Princeton classmate who has a gift for poetry. Fitzgerald based D'Invilliers on his friend, poet John Peale Bishop. D'Invilliers becomes Amory's close friend and confidante of various subjects, among which are literature, love for young beauties, politics and the meaning of the self. He becomes a journalist, developing his own perspectives as apart from that he shares with Amory. The character reappears as a fictitious poet in the opening of The Great Gatsby.

Background and composition

Love, war, and novel ambitions

Further information: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King

Fitzgerald circa 1920 when his novel was published, and socialite Ginevra King circa 1918

Since childhood, F. Scott Fitzgerald aspired to be a famous novelist. "Three months before I was born," he later wrote, "my mother lost her other two children... I think I started then to be a writer." While attending Princeton University, his passion for writing literature began to solidify into a career choice, and he wrote fiction as an undergraduate for the Princeton Triangle Club, the Princeton Tiger, and the Nassau Lit.

During his sophomore year at Princeton, Fitzgerald returned home to Saint Paul, Minnesota during Christmas break where the 18-year-old aspiring writer met and fell in love with 16-year-old Chicago debutante Ginevra King. They began a passionate romantic relationship spanning several years. Although Ginevra loved him, her upper-class family belittled Scott's courtship because of his lower-class status compared to her other wealthy suitors. Rejected by Ginevra as a suitable match, a suicidal Fitzgerald enlisted in the United States Army amid World War I.

Sir Shane Leslie, the first cousin of Sir Winston Churchill, enclosed a draft of Fitzgerald's manuscript in a letter to Scribner's. Leslie wrote that Fitzgerald was likely the next Rupert Brooke.

Hoping to have a novel published before his deployment to Europe and his anticipated death in the muddy trenches of World War I, Fitzgerald hastily wrote a 120,000-word manuscript entitled The Romantic Egotist. After obtaining a brief leave from the army in February 1918, Fitzgerald continued work on his unpublished manuscript at Princeton's University Cottage Club's library. Ultimately, eighty-one pages of this revised manuscript later appeared in the final version of This Side of Paradise.

In May 1918, Fitzgerald gave the revised manuscript to his British friend, Shane Leslie, to deliver to Max Perkins, an editor at Charles Scribner's Sons in New York City. Leslie asked Scribner's to retain the manuscript no matter what they thought of it. Although Scribner's rejected the manuscript, an impressed Perkins praised Fitzgerald's efforts and encouraged him to resubmit the manuscript after revisions. By June 1918, Fitzgerald was garrisoned with the 45th and 67th Infantry Regiments at Camp Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama.

Attempting to rebound from his rejection by Ginevra, a lonely Fitzgerald began dating Zelda Sayre, a Southern belle who reminded him of Ginevra. At their first meeting, Fitzgerald told Zelda that she reminded him of Isabelle, the free-spirited character based on Ginevra in his unpublished manuscript The Romantic Egotist. A romance blossomed, although Fitzgerald continued secretly writing to Ginevra and asking in vain if there was any chance of resuming their relationship. Three days after Ginevra's arranged marriage to a wealthy Chicago polo player and businessman, a heartbroken Fitzgerald professed his affection for Zelda in September 1918.

Despair and manuscript revisions

Editor Max Perkins threatened to resign from Scribner's if the company did not publish Fitzgerald's novel.

After his army discharge in February 1919, Fitzgerald moved to New York City. He then turned to writing advertising copy to sustain himself while seeking a breakthrough as an author of fiction. Although Fitzgerald had not intended to marry Zelda, he changed his mind by March 1919, and the two became engaged. As time passed, he continued living in poverty in New York City. As he could not convince Zelda that he could support her affluent lifestyle, she broke off their engagement in June.

In the wake of Fitzgerald's rejection by Ginevra two years prior, his subsequent rejection by Zelda further dispirited him. Unable to earn a successful living, Fitzgerald publicly threatened to jump to his death from a window ledge of the Yale Club, and he carried a revolver daily while contemplating suicide. Despite Zelda's rejection, Fitzgerald hoped that his success as an author might change her mind. He told a friend, "I wouldn't care if she died, but I couldn't stand to have anybody else marry her."

In July 1919, Fitzgerald quit his advertising job and returned to St. Paul. Returning to his hometown as a failure, Fitzgerald became a recluse and lived on the top floor of his parents' home at 599 Summit Avenue on Cathedral Hill. He decided to make one last attempt to become a novelist and to stake everything on the success or failure of a book. Abstaining from alcohol, he worked day and night in his parents' home to revise The Romantic Egotist as This Side of Paradise—an autobiographical account of his Princeton years and his romances with Ginevra, Zelda, and others. Fitzgerald chose the new title based on a line in Rupert Brooke's poem Tiare Tahiti, "Well this side of Paradise!... There's little comfort in the wise."

Limbs that gleam and shadowy hair,
Or floating lazy, half-asleep.
Dive and double and follow after,
Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call,
With lips that fade, and human laughter
And faces individual,
Well this side of Paradise! . . .
There's little comfort in the wise.

—Rupert Brooke, Tiare Tahiti (1914)

While revising the manuscript, Fitzgerald drew upon the correspondence of acquaintances. He quoted verbatim three letters and one poem by Father Sigourney Fay, a possibly gay Catholic priest with whom Fitzgerald had a close relationship. He also used a quote from Zelda's letters for a soliloquy by the narrator in the final pages. Zelda had written a letter eulogizing the Confederate soldiers who died during the American Civil War. "I've spent today in the graveyard," she wrote to Scott, "Isn't it funny how, out of a row of Confederate soldiers, two or three will make you think of dead lovers and dead loves—when they're exactly like the others, even to the yellowish moss." In the novel's final pages, Fitzgerald altered Zelda's neo-Confederate sentiments to refer to Union soldiers instead of Confederates.

Fitzgerald sent the revised manuscript to Scribner's on September 4, 1919. Although the manuscript again impressed editor Max Perkins who wished to publish the novel immediately, senior executives at the publishing house overruled Perkins and rejected the novel on the grounds of indecency. A frustrated Perkins threatened to resign from the company unless the work was published. On September 16, Scribner's accepted the novel for publication.

Publication and meteoric success

Upon learning of his first novel's impending publication, Fitzgerald became euphoric. "The postman rang, and that day I quit work and ran along the streets, stopping automobiles to tell friends and acquaintances about it⁠—my novel This Side of Paradise was accepted for publication," he recalled, "I paid off my terrible small debts, bought a suit, and woke up every morning with a world of ineffable top-loftiness and promise."

This Side of Paradise was published on March 26, 1920, with a first printing of 3,000 copies. The initial printing sold out in three days. Within months of its publication, the 23-year-old author's debut novel became a cultural sensation in the United States, and F. Scott Fitzgerald became a household name. The book went through twelve printings in 1920 and 1921 for a total of 49,075 copies. Initially, the novel did not provide a large income for Fitzgerald. Copies sold for $1.75, for which he earned 10% on the first 5,000 copies and 15% beyond that. In total, in 1920 he earned $6,200 (equivalent to $94,298 in 2023) from the book.

Although Fitzgerald complained to his friend Burton Rascoe that "the book didn't make me as rich as I thought it would", his new fame enabled him to earn much higher rates for his short stories, and he could now convince Zelda to marry him. Zelda resumed her engagement on the explicit condition that he could now afford her privileged lifestyle. By the time of their wedding in April 1920, however, Fitzgerald claimed neither he nor Zelda still loved each other, and the early years of their marriage proved a disappointment. Despite the disappointment of his marriage, Fitzgerald had achieved the peak of his fame and cultural salience, and he recalled traveling in a taxi one afternoon through the streets of New York City and weeping when he realized he that he would never be as happy again.

Critical reception

Literary critics

H. L. Mencken hailed This Side of Paradise as an outstanding debut novel.

Fitzgerald's debut novel garnered much praise. Burton Rascoe of the Chicago Tribune urged readers to "make a note of the name, F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is borne by a 23 year old novelist who will, unless I am much mistaken, be much heard of hereafter." Rascoe asserted that Fitzgerald's first novel bore "the impress, it seems to me, of genius. It is the only adequate study that we have had of the contemporary American in adolescence and young manhood." "The prize first novel of a decade is F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise," Fanny Butcher raved, "a book which... will have a serious and far reaching effect on American literature." In his influential review of the work in The Smart Set, critic H. L. Mencken described This Side of Paradise as "an amazing first novel" and heaped praise upon the young author:

"The best American novel that I have seen of late is also the product of a neophyte, to wit, F. Scott Fitzgerald... In This Side of Paradise he offers a truly amazing first novel—original in structure, extremely sophisticated in manner, and adorned with a brilliancy that is as rare in American writing as honesty is in American statecraft. The young American novelist usually reveals himself as a naive, sentimental and somewhat disgusting ignoramus—a believer in Great Causes, a snuffler and eye-roller, a spouter of stale philosophies out of Kensington drawing rooms, the doggeries of French hack-drivers, and the lower floor of the Munich Hofbräuhaus... Fitzgerald is nothing of the sort. On the contrary, he is... an artist—an apt and delicate weaver of words, a clever hand, a sound workman. The first half of the story is far better than the second half. It is not that Fitzgerald's manner runs thin, but that his hero begins to elude him. What, after such a youth, is to be done with the fellow? The author's solution is anything but felicitous. He simply drops his Amory Blaine as Mark Twain dropped Huckleberry Finn, but for a less cogent reason. But down to and including the episode of the love affair with Rosalind the thing is capital, especially the first chapters."

Whereas many praised the novel as highly original, others criticized its structure. Lillian C. Ford in the Los Angeles Times complained "the construction is odd and the book has two parts, the first with four chapters and the second with five. The chapters have unexpected topical divisions and when the author feels so inclined he throws his story into drama form and then again it jogs along as plain narrative."

Many reviewers commented that Fitzgerald's structural craftsmanship left much to be desired. He could write entertainingly, his critics conceded, but he gave scant attention to form and construction. Having read these criticisms of his debut novel, Fitzgerald sought to improve on his form and construction in his next work, The Beautiful and Damned, and to venture into a new genre of fiction altogether.

Princeton backlash

John Grier Hibben, the president of Princeton University, criticized the novel in a letter to Fitzgerald.

Despite its widespread success with critics and readers, Princeton's faculty and older alumni reacted with intense hostility towards This Side of Paradise. Although Christian Gauss, a Professor of French Literature at Princeton, publicly lauded This Side of Paradise as "a work of art," the Princeton faculty and alumni attacked the book in the pages of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, much to Fitzgerald's dismay.

Ralph Kent, a senior editor of the Nassau Literary Review, publicly disparaged the work as impugning Princeton's reputation due to its sordid depiction of undergraduate life. A recurrent criticism by Princeton faculty and alumni was that Fitzgerald's popular novel had fostered an unfavorable impression of their beloved alma mater as populated by hedonistic degenerates solely interested in idle pleasures.

In a private letter to Fitzgerald dated May 27, 1920, John Grier Hibben, the president of Princeton University from 1912–1932, politely but firmly criticized Fitzgerald's depiction of the university:

"It is because I appreciate so much all that is in you of artistic skill and [a] certain elemental power that I am taking the liberty of telling you very frankly that your characterization of Princeton has grieved me. I cannot bear to think that our young men are merely living for four years in a country club and spending their lives wholly in a spirit of calculation and snobbishness... From my undergraduate days I have always had a belief in Princeton and in what the place could do in the making of a strong vigorous manhood. It would be an overwhelming grief to me, in the midst of my work here and my love for Princeton’s young men, should I feel that we have nothing to offer but the outgrown symbols and shells of a past whose reality has long since disappeared."

These weeks in the clouds ended abruptly a week later when Princeton turned on the book—not undergraduate Princeton but the black mass of faculty and alumni. There was a kind but reproachful letter from President Hibben, and a room full of classmates who suddenly turned on me with condemnation... The Alumni Weekly got after my book and only Dean Gauss had a good word to say or me. The unctuousness and hypocrisy of the proceedings was exasperating and for seven years I didn't go to Princeton.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Early Success," October 1937

In response to Hibben's dispiriting correspondence, Fitzgerald wrote an apologetic letter that denied any attempt to disparage the school. "I have no fault to find with Princeton that I can't find with Oxford and Cambridge. I simply wrote out of my own impressions, wrote as honestly as I could a picture of its beauty. That the picture is cynical is the fault of my temperament," Fitzgerald explained. "I must admit however that This Side of Paradise does over accentuate the gaiety and country club atmosphere of Princeton. For the sake of the readers interest that part was much over-stressed, and of course the hero, not being average, reacted rather unhealthily I suppose to many perfectly normal phenomena. To that extent the book is inaccurate."

As a result of this growing backlash, Fitzgerald's initial giddiness at becoming a published novelist became short-lived. Although Princeton's undergraduates touted the novel as an accurate description of their experiences, the university faculty's and alumni continued to treat the young author with disdain. In one instance, Fitzgerald visited Princeton and faced a room full of former college classmates who suddenly condemned him for tarnishing their school's reputation. Exasperated by the reproachfulness and sanctimoniousness of Princeton's faculty and alumni, Fitzgerald did not return to his alma mater for many years.

Critical analysis

Innovative style

Fitzgerald used Tono-Bungay (1909) by H. G. Wells (first) and Sinister Street (1913) by Sir Compton Mackenzie (second) as templates for his novel.

For his first novel, Fitzgerald used as his literary templates H. G. Wells' 1909 realist work Tono-Bungay and Sir Compton Mackenzie's 1913 novel Sinister Street, which chronicles a young college student's coming of age at Oxford University.

Although Fitzgerald imitated the plot of these two novels, his debut work differed due to its experimental style. He discarded the traditional narrative of most novels and instead unspooled the plot in the form of intermingled textual fragments, letters, and poetry, including a passage written in a stream-of-consciousness style. This was a result of Fitzgerald's cobbling The Romantic Egotist, his earlier attempt at a novel, together with assorted short stories and poems that he had composed but never published.

This atonal blend of different fictive elements prompted cultural elites to fête the young author as a literary trailblazer whose work modernized a staid literature that had lagged "as far behind modern habits as behind modern history." Dorothy Parker recalled that "This Side of Paradise may not seem like much now, but in 1920 it was considered an experimental novel; it cut new ground."

Thematic content

I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (1920)

The underlying themes of narcissism in the novel have been examined in a variety of scholarly essays. Scholar Saori Tanaka's argues that "Amory comes to know himself through Beatrice and his four lovers, which are like five sheets of glass. They are his reflectors... reflecting his narcissism and the inner side."

The first three women in the book allow Amory to dream in a narcissistic way. After participating in the war and losing his financial foundation, the last two women he meets, Rosalind and Eleanor, "make him not dream but awake" in postwar America. "With Beatrice and Isabelle, Amory activates the grandiose self," Tanaka states, "with Clara and Rosalind, he restricts narcissism, and with Eleanor, he gains a realistic conception of the self."

Others have analyzed feminist themes in the work. Scholar Andrew Riccardo views several characters to be feminist templates. Eleanor's character serves as a "love interest, therapeutic friend, and conversational other". Highly educated in discussing poetry and philosophy, "Eleanor not only posits her desires in juxtaposition to the lingering expectations of women in her day but also serves as soothsayer to the demands which would be placed on females".

Prose anomalies

More so than most contemporary writers of his era, Fitzgerald's authorial voice evolved and matured over time, and each of his novels represented a discernible progression in literary quality. Although he was eventually regarded as possessing "the best narrative gift of the century," this narrative gift was not perceived as immediately evident in This Side of Paradise. Believing that prose had a basis in lyric verse, Fitzgerald initially crafted his sentences entirely by ear and, consequently, This Side of Paradise contains numerous malapropisms and descriptive non sequiturs which irritated readers and reviewers. Reflecting on these copious defects, critic Edmund Wilson later remarked that Fitzgerald's first novel exhibited nearly every possible fault and weakness a novel can possess.

Legacy and influence

See also: Echoes of the Jazz Age

Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (1920)

The impact of Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise on societal mores at the time of its publication has been extensively discussed by scholars and critics. With his debut novel, Fitzgerald became the first writer to turn the national spotlight upon the so-called Jazz Age generation. In contrast to the older Lost Generation to which Gertrude Stein posited that Fitzgerald and Hemingway belonged, the Jazz Age generation were those younger Americans who had been adolescents during World War I and were largely untouched by the conflict's psychological and material horrors. Fitzgerald focused on this brash younger generation which had "brusquely shouldered my contemporaries out of the way and danced into the limelight. This was the generation whose girls dramatized themselves as flappers".

Fitzgerald's novel riveted the American public's attention on the hedonistic activities of their sons and daughters cavorting in the rumble seats of Bearcat roadsters and sparked a societal debate over the perceived immorality of this younger generation. Due to this thematic focus, his novel became a sensation among American college students, and the national press depicted him as the standard-bearer for youth in revolt. "No generation of Americans has had a chronicler so persuasive and unmaudlin" as Fitzgerald, critic Burke Van Allen wrote, and no author was so identified with the generation recorded.

Gertrude Stein (first), Edmund Wilson (second), and others argued that Fitzgerald's novel essentially created a new generation in the public's mind—the so-called Jazz Age generation—and imbued this generation with the gift of self-consciousness.

Remarking upon the popular association between Fitzgerald and the flaming youth of the Jazz Age, Stein wrote in her memoir The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas that the author's fiction essentially created this new generation in the public's mind. Echoing this assertion, critics John V. A. Weaver and Edmund Wilson insisted that Fitzgerald imbued the Jazz Age generation with the gift of self-consciousness while simultaneously making the public aware of them as a distinctive cohort.

The perception of Fitzgerald as the chronicler of carefree youth and proselytizer of Jazz Age hedonism led many reactionary American societal figures to denounce his writings. Social conservatives such as Heywood Broun decried his use of modern slang and went so far as to claim that Fitzgerald wholly fabricated his depiction of young people engaging in drunken sprees and premarital sex. Fitzgerald publicly ridiculed such allegations, and he opined that many critics wished to discredit his novel in order to retain their outdated conceptions of American society.

As a result of This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald became regarded as "the outstanding aggressor in the little warfare which divided our middle classes in the twenties—warfare of moral emancipation against moral conceit, flaming youth against old guard". When he died in 1940, social conservatives rejoiced over his death. In a The New York World-Telegram column, journalist Westbrook Pegler wrote that Fitzgerald's death a few weeks prior reawakened "memories of a queer bunch of undisciplined and self-indulgent brats who were determined not to pull their weight in the boat and wanted the world to drop everything and sit down and bawl with them. A kick in the pants and a clout over the scalp were more like their needing." Due to this widespread perception of Fitzgerald's libertinism, the Baltimore Diocese denied him a Catholic burial and refused his family permission to bury him at St. Mary's Church in Rockville, Maryland.

References

Works cited

• "A Disciple of Fitzgerald", The Daily Princetonian, vol. 42, no. 185, Princeton, New Jersey, p. 2, February 11, 1922, retrieved October 26, 2022 – via Princeton University Library
• Berg, A. Scott (1978), Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, New York: Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-671-82719-7 – via Internet Archive
• Bernstein, Mark F. (2009), Princeton Football, Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, ISBN 978-0-7385-6584-2 – via Google Books
• Brooke, Rupert (1918), "Tiare Tahiti", The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, p. 15 – via Internet Archive
• Broun, Heywood (April 14, 1920), "Books", New York Tribune (Wednesday ed.), New York City, p. 14, retrieved December 7, 2021 – via Newspapers.com
• Bruccoli, Matthew J. (1981), Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1st ed.), New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, ISBN 0-15-183242-0 – via Internet Archive
• Buller, Richard (2005), "F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lois Moran, and the Mystery of Mariposa Street", The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, 4, University Park, Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press: 3–19, doi:10.1111/j.1755-6333.2005.tb00013.x, JSTOR 41583088 – via JSTOR
• Butcher, Fanny (April 18, 1925), "New Fitzgerald Book Proves He's Really a Writer", Chicago Tribune (Saturday ed.), Chicago, Illinois, p. 11, retrieved December 7, 2021 – via Newspapers.com
• —————— (June 13, 1920), "Tabloid Book Review", Chicago Tribune (Sunday ed.), Chicago, Illinois, p. 33, retrieved December 8, 2021 – via Newspapers.com
• Campus Critic (April 16, 1920), "Diogenes' Lamp", The Daily Princetonian, vol. 41, no. 38, Princeton, New Jersey, p. 2, retrieved October 26, 2022 – via Princeton University Library
• Coghlan, Ralph (April 25, 1925), "F. Scott Fitzgerald", St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Saturday ed.), St. Louis, Missouri, p. 11, retrieved December 7, 2021 – via Newspapers.com
• Davis, Susan Lawrence (1924), Authentic History Ku Klux Klan, 1865–1877, New York: Anonymous Publisher, ISBN 978-1-258-01465-0 – via Internet Archive
• "Died in Farewell Flight. 'Hobey' Baker Was on the Eve of Leaving for America" (PDF). New York Times. New York City. January 23, 1919. Retrieved October 8, 2024.
• Eble, Kenneth E. (1963), F. Scott Fitzgerald, Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers, LCCN 63-10953 – via Internet Archive
• Donaldson, Scott (1983), Fool for Love: F. Scott Fitzgerald, New York: Congdon & Weed, ISBN 0-312-92209-4 – via Internet Archive
• Fessenden, Tracy (2005), "F. Scott Fitzgerald's Catholic Closet", U.S. Catholic Historian, 23 (3), Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press: 19–40, JSTOR 25154963
• Fitzgerald, F. Scott (2004), Bruccoli, Matthew J.; Baughman, Judith (eds.), Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jackson, Mississippi: University of Mississippi Press, ISBN 1-57806-604-2 – via Google Books
• ———————— (1945), Wilson, Edmund (ed.), The Crack-Up, New York: New Directions, ISBN 0-8112-0051-5 – via Internet Archive
• ———————— (July 1966) [January 1940], Turnbull, Andrew (ed.), The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons – via Internet Archive
• ———————— (April 1920), This Side of Paradise, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons – via Internet Archive
• ————————; Fitzgerald, Zelda (2002) [1985], Bryer, Jackson R.; Barks, Cathy W. (eds.), Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, New York: St. Martin's Press, ISBN 978-1-9821-1713-9 – via Internet Archive
• Ford, Lillian C. (May 9, 1920), "Sheaf of Fiction", The Los Angeles Times (Sunday ed.), Los Angeles, California, p. 52, retrieved September 23, 2022 – via Newspapers.com
• Gray, James (1946), On Second Thought, Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press – via Internet Archive
• Kent, Ralph (April 15, 1920), "Undergraduate Frowns on 'This Side of Paradise'", The Daily Princetonian, vol. 41, no. 37, Princeton, New Jersey, p. 3, retrieved October 26, 2022 – via Princeton University Library
• MacKie, Elizabeth Beckwith (1970), Bruccoli, Matthew J. (ed.), "My Friend Scott Fitzgerald", Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual, Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, pp. 16–27, retrieved September 30, 2022 – via Internet Archive
• McCardell, Lee (March 13, 1926), "Short Stories From the Maturing Pen of Scott Fitzgerald", The Evening Sun (Saturday ed.), Baltimore, Maryland, p. 6, retrieved December 7, 2021 – via Newspapers.com
• Mencken, H. L. (August 1, 1920), "Books More or Less Amusing", The Smart Set, vol. 62, no. 4, New York, p. 140, archived from the original on September 28, 2022, retrieved September 25, 2022 – via Modernist Journals Project
• ——————— (May 2, 1925), "Fitzgerald, the Stylist, Challenges Fitzgerald, the Social Historian", The Evening Sun (Saturday ed.), Baltimore, Maryland, p. 9, retrieved December 7, 2021 – via Newspapers.com
• Milford, Nancy (1970), Zelda: A Biography, New York: Harper & Row, LCCN 66-20742 – via Internet Archive
• Mizener, Arthur (1972), Scott Fitzgerald and His World, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, ISBN 978-0-500-13040-7 – via Internet Archive
• ——————— (1951), The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin – via Internet Archive
• Noden, Merrell (November 5, 2003), "Fitzgerald's First Love: A Young Debutante Who Became the Model for Gatsby's Daisy", Princeton Alumni Weekly, Princeton, New Jersey, archived from the original on January 4, 2020, retrieved September 2, 2021
• Piper, Henry Dan (1965), F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Critical Portrait, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, LCCN 65-14435 – via Internet Archive
• Prigozy, Ruth, ed. (2002), The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-62447-3 – via Google Books
• Rascoe, Burton (April 3, 1920), "A Youth in the Saddle", Chicago Tribune (Saturday ed.), Chicago, Illinois, p. 11, retrieved September 25, 2022 – via Newspapers.com
• Riccardo, Andrew (January 1, 2012), "Anticipative Feminism in F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise and Flappers and Philosophers", The Oswald Review, 14 (1), Aiken, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Aiken: 26–57
• Salvini, Emil R. (April 2005), Hobey Baker: American Legend, St. Paul, Minnesota: Hobey Baker Memorial Foundation, ISBN 0-9763453-0-7, LCCN 2005921385 – via Google Books
• Shinn, Charles H. (May 23, 1920), "Weekly Comments", The Fresno Morning Republican (Sunday ed.), Fresno, California, p. 8A, retrieved September 23, 2022 – via Newspapers.com
• Smith, Dinitia (September 8, 2003), "Love Notes Drenched In Moonlight: Hints of Future Novels In Letters to Fitzgerald", The New York Times, New York City, retrieved December 7, 2021
• Stagg, Hunter (April 18, 1925), "Scott Fitzgerald's Latest Novel is Heralded As His Best", The Evening Sun (Saturday ed.), Baltimore, Maryland, p. 9, retrieved December 7, 2021 – via Newspapers.com
• Stein, Gertrude (1933), The Autobiography Of Alice B. Toklas, Rahway, New Jersey: Quinn & Boden Company – via Internet Archive
• Stern, Milton R. (1970), The Golden Moment: The Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, ISBN 978-0-252-00107-9 – via Internet Archive
• Stevens, Ruth (September 7, 2003), "Before Zelda, There Was Ginevra", Princeton Alumni Weekly, Princeton, New Jersey, archived from the original on August 1, 2020, retrieved December 17, 2022
• Svrluga, Susan (February 22, 2016), "Calls to change U. of Alabama building name to honor Harper Lee instead of KKK leader", The Washington Post, Washington, D.C., retrieved December 21, 2021
• Tanaka, Saori (December 24, 2004), "Mirror Images Reflecting Self: Narcissism in F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise" (PDF), Osaka Literary Review, 43, Osaka, Japan: Osaka University: 123–140, doi:10.18910/25224, hdl:11094/25224
• Tate, Mary Jo (1998) [1997], F. Scott Fitzgerald A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work, New York: Facts On File, ISBN 0-8160-3150-9 – via Internet Archive
• Turnbull, Andrew (1962) [1954], Scott Fitzgerald, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, LCCN 62-9315 – via Internet Archive
• Van Allen, Burke (April 22, 1934), "Almost a Masterpiece: Scott Fitzgerald Produces a Brilliant Successor to 'The Great Gatsby'", The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Sunday ed.), Brooklyn, New York, p. 83, retrieved December 7, 2021 – via Newspapers.com
• Wagner-Martin, Linda (Summer 2004), "Zelda Sayre, Belle", Southern Cultures, 10 (2), Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press: 19–49, doi:10.1353/scu.2004.0029, JSTOR 26390953, S2CID 143270051 – via JSTOR
• Weaver, John V. A. (March 4, 1922), "Better Than 'This Side of Paradise'", The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Saturday ed.), Brooklyn, New York, p. 3, retrieved December 7, 2021 – via Newspapers.com
• West, James L. W. III (2005), The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King, His First Love, New York: Random House, ISBN 978-1-4000-6308-6 – via Internet Archive
• Wilson, Edmund (1952), The Shores of Light: A Literary Chronicle of the Twenties and Thirties, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Young – via Internet Archive

External links

• This Side of Paradise at Standard Ebooks
• This Side of Paradise at Project Gutenberg
• This Side of Paradise at Internet Archive
• This Side of Paradise public domain audiobook at LibriVox