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Summary: the prequel to great gatsby
Review: Ever wonder how a person like Gatsby could end up in the situation he is in, having unmeasurable wealth. Well, This Side shows the thoughts of a youth like Gatsby and their major endeavors as members of the lost generation. We learn Gatsby takes a ride with Meyer Wilhelm to lead him to his wealth, well This Side leaves off at that point bearing an eeeerry similarity to the Great Gatsby. Find out about the mysterious Gatsby and his alter ego Amory Blaine today.
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Summary: A flawed first book of the master of American Prose
Review: If you can only read one F. Scott Fiztgerald book, read The Great Gatsby. If you can only read two, read Tender is the Night as well. But if you are interested to view the development of Fitzgerald's prose and themes, read his first opus, This Side of Paradise. The book chronicals the rather indifferent life of Armory Blaine, a wealthy young man who drifts from boarding school, to Princeton, to World War I, to adult life characterized by emptiness and uncertainty. Thousands of young flappers embraced the novel, and through it Fiztgerald became the spokesman for the "lost generation."
The prose is occasionally brilliant, but the novel rambles and frequently becomes as lost as the generation it depicts. This is somewhat a novel about nothing, and the shallowness and listlessness of Armory becomes annoying and rather pathetic. The book is hard to finish, and is ultimately unsatisfying. For Fitzgerald buffs This Side of Paradise completes the rather limited Fitzgerald cannon, but the only people who are likely to truly enjoy this book are first year Princeton students with nothing better to do than compare themselves to the young Armory Blaine.
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Summary: More Egotist than Paradise
Review: Fitzgerald's first novel deserves attention for two reasons: first, it is the first novel by the author of a future masterpiece, The Great Gatsby; second, it is a faithful first hashing out of Fitzgerald's major themes: American class structure, the flaws of capitalism, and the American Dream as beautiful, unattainble woman. Compared to Fitzgerald's masterpiece, however, it is an artistic failure. Unlike Gatsy's vigorous narrative, This Side of Paradise is more egotistical philosophy than riveting drama. Like his protagonist Armory Blaine, Fitzgerald indulges too much in his own precocious posturings as intellectual and social commentator. No forward moving action propels the plot; instead, the reader must endure bland, inconsequential poetry, pompous dialogue among collegiate males who think they are Princeton gods, and silly, vapid romances that lead to no meaningful destination. Nothing is more pretentious than Armory's final comment--that he knows himself, since there is no real substance to know. Readers will get to know him, too, and find very little in him to admire. Throughout most of the book he is peevish, carping, and morally spongy. In spite of its many flaws, This Side of Paradise does possess some hints of Fitzgerald's future greatness. Some of his descriptions, always on the verge of utter melancholy, anticipate the September somberness of Gatsby. The book deserves two stars only because of its place in literary history. It shows the development of a master writer capable later of transcending his own weaknesses and over-indulgences.
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Summary: Well Done
Review: I like this book. It is an interesting story. I can't help but compare this novel to _Catcher in the Rye_. Both novels are about the main characters disillusionment and their coming to terms with how they feel about the world and how other people feel about it. At times I felt like F. Scott Fitzgerald's prose was a bit loquacious, however, with the engaging plot he was able to keep my interest. This book is made even more impressive when you consider that this was Fitzgerald's first novel (He was only 24 when the book was published!). _This Side of Paradise_ is a quick read, and never gets to be frustrating. If you are interested in the "Jazz Age," or would like a nice introduction to one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, then this would be a nice place to start.
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Summary: First time reader of Fitzgerald
Review: This Side is just as much of a page-turner as Fitzgerald's (more popular) The Great Gatsby. The story of Armory Blaine is well told...the content is deep, but not overdone. There are many themes layered in this book, but they are prominent and to the point. It is an overall great read for anyone in high school or beyond.
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Summary: Growing Up
Review: In "This Side of Paradise," Fitzgerald recounts Amory Blaine's journey from childhood to adulthood, a journey that he himself was just starting in the writing arena. "This Side of Paradise" has moments of brilliance that rival some seen in his later works but it is missing something that makes the later works truly memorable and classic. I recomend this book if you are trying to gain a complete understanding of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his life, but if you only read occasionally, one of his other books or his short stories would be more enjoyable.
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Summary: Abounding in energy and vigor!
Review: 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?
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Summary: Enjoyable Read
Review: This Side of Paradise is the first F. Scott Fitzgerald book I have ever read. I know this is somewhat sad, as he is one of the most important writers in American literary history. If this is an example of his work, then this will certainly not be the last F. Scott Fitzgerald book that I read. The protagonist, Amory Blaine, is easy to identify with (at least for me), and his story fits in perfectly with the time period in which this novel was written. Most of the "classics" are portrayed as dry and boring; this one is not, and you should not hesitate to read it.
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Summary: The more things change...
Review: After 80 years, what can be said about Fitzgerald's first novel that hasn't already been said? The first thing that struck me on reading this was the timelessness of its subject matter, no matter how dated the setting is. The Ivy League of Fitzgerald's indifferent hero, Amory Blaine, is a thing of the past, with only the faintest reminders of its aura of American royalty remaining today. Reading about Amory's days at Princeton is a bit like looking at the ancient photographs of 19th century football teams that every university seems to have on display in some corner of the campus, with the added twist that most of those long-ago jocks were presumably the sons of bankers and senators. And yet, 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. So like all the best fiction, the story works both on a historical and a contemporary level. Amory isn't the most sympathetic of protagonists. Coming from a non-aristocratic but quite cushy background, he's all you would expect from a Fitzgerald hero: full of himself, indifferent to the less fortunate, somewhat lazy, and at once condescending to and inept with women. But this is a story of young adulthood in the last gasps of the pre-World War I upper-crust, and Amory is the perfect vehicle for illustrating the youth of that time and place. Although the relative lack of details provided about Amory's experience in the war is odd, it adds to his Everyman quality for the generations since his, all of which have had their own reasons for a bleak outlook at some point even if few could match the sheer trauma of 1917-18. The one real flaw in the story is an inconsistent, and often unconvincing, quality when it comes to how and why Amory falls for the several women he endures romantic misadventures with. For all the heartbreak he endures, the reader is often left wondering where his attraction stemmed from in the first place - an odd shortcoming considering how good Fitzgerald was at illustrating that issue in later works. But the romantic episodes that do work are vivid enough to forgive the weaker ones. Also, as usual, Fitzgerald's narrative style is somewhat purple; but he's so good at it that it usually doesn't strike the reader as a problem. Bleak as it may be, this is a great book for anyone who has survived young adulthood and remembers it honestly. Just try not to laugh or cringe next time somebody wants to talk about "the good old days."
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Summary: Not Gatsby, but Brilliant and Witty
Review: Fitzgerald is best known for The Great Gastby, his later work, but the earlier This Side of Paradise is nearly writing perfection(it is not hard at all to see how this novel catapulted Fitzgerald into superstardom). Amory Blaine is incredibly believable. Pompous, concieted, talented and sensitive, Fitzgerald's semi-autobiographical novel is intelligently written, not condesending like so many later writers tend to act. The unique way the novel is structured only adds to its feel of reality. Word to the wise: if a this-week bestseller is your idea of a good read, stay away from this insightful and clever story of a young man's coming of age in the dramatically quickly changing 1920s.
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