This Side of Paradise

By: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

If the Roaring Twenties are remembered as the era of "flaming youth", it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who lit the fire. His semiautobiographical first novel, This Side of Paradise, became an instant best seller and established an image of seemingly carefree, party-mad young men and women out to create a new morality for a new, post-war America. It traces the early life of Amory Blaine from the end of prep school through Princeton to the start of an uncertain career in New York City.

Alternately self-confident and self-effacing, torn between ambition and idleness, the self-absorbed, immature Amory yearns to run with Princeton's rich, fast crowd and become one of the "gods" of the campus. Hopelessly romantic, he learns about love and sex from a series of beautiful young "flappers", women who leave him both exhilarated and devastated.

Fitzgerald describes it all in intensely lyrical prose that fills the novel with a heartbreaking sense of longing, as Amory comes to understand that the sweet-scented springtime of his life is fragile and fleeting, disappearing into memory even as he reaches for it.

Public Domain (P)2010 Tantor

Literature and Narcissism Combined?

No one can legitimately deny Fitzgerald can turn a phrase...and somehow make shallow people interesting...but this self-absorbed reflection tried my patience....
And envy.
Because (see above) he sure can write.

Beautiful

Helpful book
Cautionary tale about how not to fall in love with potential but make meaning with the time you’ve got

Essential American Literature

It’s truly a marvel to be able to relate so thoroughly to a character and an author from one hundred years ago.

This book made me proud to be an American again.

Perfect book for a trip to Princeton

It’s not The Great Gatsby, but clearly demonstrates F. Scott Fitzgerald’s gift as a writer.

A consummate experience for the seasoned American

The narrator heightened the brilliance of this first novel of Fitzgerald. Written in the early 1920s, the American experience of Fitzgerald upper middle-class realizes in prose his young creative years. It is no wonder his genius overwhelmed his passionate emotional mind. Fitzgerald died at 44 in a small apartment in Hollywood, sober but spent.