Snobbery as baggage
"Yes," he agreed, "you're right. I wouldn't have liked it. Still, it's hard to be made a cynic at twenty."
"I was born one," Amory murmured. "I'm a cynical idealist." He paused and wondered if that meant anything.
I don't know why, but I never bothered to read any of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books until last week. I'm 19, for christ's sake, and I still haven't touched The Great Gatsby. (Or Salinger, or Bradbury, or...) Did I even have a childhood?
It's that kind of elitist attitude that's robbed me of a lot of really good books throughout my teenage years. This Side of Paradise is one of them. I decided to go from Faith's house into the city with her during one of her class days, so we could meet up afterwards and see the new exhibits at ICP together. I didn't have any books with me, and since this trip required me to lounge around in Manhattan for 4-5 hours with nothing to do, I grabbed the Fitzgerald off her shelf and hit the road.
I was pretty miserable that day -- I couldn't sleep and only managed to get a measly 3 hours before I had to wake up. But even while I sat in Bryant Park in the unbearable heat, I had Fitzgerald's prose to keep me from going insane. Really, it's a wonderful book, and anyone who puts down Fitzgerald as an author is probably an out-and-out snob.
I think what makes it immediately likable is the humor and lightning-speed story, but what I found most fascinating was the style: it's the height of artifice. Almost every page seems to be some kind of play on or parody of previous literary styles -- from romanticism to modernism to symbolism (and as Bakhtin would say, it takes us from the realm of an original style to the mere "image" of a style). It reminds me of what a film critic once called "termite art," an art that's never stable, always eating away at its own boundaries.
On top of that, you can't take any of it seriously -- even when tragedy strikes, the tragic episodes are headed with titles like "Crescendo!" or "A Damp Symbolic Interlude." There are certain scenes involving Amory's true love, Rosalind, but even those are arranged in a kind of pseudo-play format:
HE: But will you--kiss me? Or are you afraid?
SHE: I'm never afraid--but your reasons are so poor.
HE: Rosalind, I really want to kiss you.
SHE: So do I.
(They kiss--definitely and thoroughly.)
HE: (After a breathless second) Well, is your curiosity satisfied?
SHE: Is yours?
HE: No, it's only aroused.
As much as you want to believe in the great romance, it feels like it's being acted out on a giant stage, and its author always seems to be laughing at you. In an era of burgeoning modernism, when books and poems are supposed to literally "be" the objects they describe (not a description of the thing but the thing itself), it's a pretty bold statement for an author to make. And to create such an amalgamation of styles, a style as gaudy and plastic as the Jazz Age it was written in, is a beautiful thing.
"I was born one," Amory murmured. "I'm a cynical idealist." He paused and wondered if that meant anything.
I don't know why, but I never bothered to read any of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books until last week. I'm 19, for christ's sake, and I still haven't touched The Great Gatsby. (Or Salinger, or Bradbury, or...) Did I even have a childhood?
It's that kind of elitist attitude that's robbed me of a lot of really good books throughout my teenage years. This Side of Paradise is one of them. I decided to go from Faith's house into the city with her during one of her class days, so we could meet up afterwards and see the new exhibits at ICP together. I didn't have any books with me, and since this trip required me to lounge around in Manhattan for 4-5 hours with nothing to do, I grabbed the Fitzgerald off her shelf and hit the road.
I was pretty miserable that day -- I couldn't sleep and only managed to get a measly 3 hours before I had to wake up. But even while I sat in Bryant Park in the unbearable heat, I had Fitzgerald's prose to keep me from going insane. Really, it's a wonderful book, and anyone who puts down Fitzgerald as an author is probably an out-and-out snob.
I think what makes it immediately likable is the humor and lightning-speed story, but what I found most fascinating was the style: it's the height of artifice. Almost every page seems to be some kind of play on or parody of previous literary styles -- from romanticism to modernism to symbolism (and as Bakhtin would say, it takes us from the realm of an original style to the mere "image" of a style). It reminds me of what a film critic once called "termite art," an art that's never stable, always eating away at its own boundaries.
On top of that, you can't take any of it seriously -- even when tragedy strikes, the tragic episodes are headed with titles like "Crescendo!" or "A Damp Symbolic Interlude." There are certain scenes involving Amory's true love, Rosalind, but even those are arranged in a kind of pseudo-play format:
HE: But will you--kiss me? Or are you afraid?
SHE: I'm never afraid--but your reasons are so poor.
HE: Rosalind, I really want to kiss you.
SHE: So do I.
(They kiss--definitely and thoroughly.)
HE: (After a breathless second) Well, is your curiosity satisfied?
SHE: Is yours?
HE: No, it's only aroused.
As much as you want to believe in the great romance, it feels like it's being acted out on a giant stage, and its author always seems to be laughing at you. In an era of burgeoning modernism, when books and poems are supposed to literally "be" the objects they describe (not a description of the thing but the thing itself), it's a pretty bold statement for an author to make. And to create such an amalgamation of styles, a style as gaudy and plastic as the Jazz Age it was written in, is a beautiful thing.