The Beautiful and Damned Read online

  Table of Contents

  FROM THE PAGES OF THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

  THE WORLD OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD AND THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED

  Introduction

  Praise

  Dedication

  BOOK ONE

  CHAPTER I - ANTHONY PATCH

  A Worthy Man and His Gifted Son

  Past and Person of the Hero

  The Reproachless Apartment

  Nor Does He Spin

  Afternoon

  Three Men

  Night

  A Flash-Back in Paradise

  CHAPTER II - PORTRAIT OF A SIREN

  A Lady's Legs

  Turbulence

  The Beautiful Lady

  Dissatisfaction

  Admiration

  CHAPTER III - THE CONNOISSEUR OF KISSES

  Two Young Women

  Deplorable End of the Chevalier O'Keefe

  Signlight and Moonlight

  Magic

  Black Magic

  Panic

  Wisdom

  The Interval

  Two Encounters

  Weakness

  Serenade

  BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER I - THE RADIANT HOUR

  Heyday

  Three Disgressions

  The Diary

  Breath of the Cave

  Morning

  The Ushers

  Anthony

  Gloria

  "Con Amore"

  Gloria and General Lee

  Sentiment

  The Gray House

  The Soul of Gloria

  The End of a Chapter

  CHAPTER II - SYMPOSIUM

  Nietzschean Incident

  The Practical Men

  The Triumph of Lethargy

  Winter

  Destiny

  The Sinister Summer

  In Darkness

  CHAPTER III - THE BROKEN LUTE

  Retrospect

  Panic

  The Apartment

  The Kitten

  The Passing of an American Moralist

  Next Day

  The Winter of Discontent

  The Broken Lute

  BOOK THREE

  CHAPTER I - A MATTER OF CIVILIZATION

  Dot

  The Man-at-Arms

  An Impressive Occasion

  Defeat

  The Catastrophe

  Nightmare

  The False Armistice

  CHAPTER II - A MATTER OF AESTHETICS

  The Wiles of Captain Collins

  Gallantry

  Gloria Alone

  Discomfiture of the Generals

  Another Winter

  Furtber Adventures with "Heart Talks"

  "Odi Profanum Vulgus"

  The Movies

  The Test

  CHAPTER III - No MATTER!

  Richard Caramel

  The Beating

  The Encounter

  Together with the Sparrows

  ENDNOTES

  INSPIRED BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD AND THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED

  COMMENTS & QUESTIONS

  FOR FURTHER READING

  FROM THE PAGES OF

  THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED

  In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"--yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage.

  (page 7)

  He found his way slowly over the jostled evening mass of Times Square, which the chariot-race and its thousand satellites made rarely beautiful and bright and intimate with carnival. Faces swirled about him, a kaleidoscope of girls, ugly, ugly as sin--too fat, too lean, yet floating upon this autumn air as upon their own warm and passionate breaths poured out into the night. Here, for all their vulgarity, he thought, they were faintly and subtly mysterious. He inhaled carefully, swallowing into his lungs perfume and the not unpleasant scent of many cigarettes.

  (page 24)

  "Here I sit, young Anthony, as I'll sit for a generation or more and watch such gay souls as you and Dick and Gloria Gilbert go past me, dancing and singing and loving and hating one another and being moved, being eternally moved. And I am moved only by my lack of emotion."

  (page 44)

  People invariably chose inimitable people to imitate.

  (page 71)

  Between kisses Anthony and this golden girl quarrelled incessantly.

  (page 110)

  "Don't let the victor belong to the spoils."

  (page 154)

  Listlessly Anthony dropped into a chair, his mind tired--tired with nothing, tired with everything, with the world's weight he had never chosen to bear. He was ineffectual and vaguely helpless here as he had always been. One of those personalities who, in spite of all their words, are inarticulate, he seemed to have inherited only the vast tradition of human failure--that, and the sense of death.

  (pages 177-178)

  "They damned the books I read and the things I thought by calling them immoral; later the fashion changed, and they damned things by calling them 'clever.'"

  (page 205)

  That spring, that summer, they had speculated upon future happiness--how they were to travel from summer land to summer land, returning eventually to a gorgeous estate and possible idyllic children, then entering diplomacy or politics, to accomplish, for a while, beautiful and important things, until finally as a white-haired (beautifully, silkily, white-haired) couple they were to loll about in serene glory, worshipped by the bourgeoisie of the land.

  (page 225)

  "Education's a great thing, but don't let it go to your head. Keep on the way you're doing and you'll be a good soldier."

  (page 271)

  "Do you think I'm particularly happy?" he continued, ignoring her question. "Do you think I don't know we're not living as we ought to?"

  (page 303)

  He turned his blood-shot eyes on her reproachfully--eyes that had once been a deep, clear blue, that were weak now, strained, and half-ruined from reading when he was drunk.

  (pages 328-329)

  "Out in--the shimmee sanitarium

  The jazz-mad nuts reside.

  Out in--the shimmee sanitarium

  I left my blushing bride.

  She went and shook herself insane,

  So let her shiver back again--"

  (page 351)

  BARNES & NOBLE CLASSICS

  NEW YORK

  Published by Barnes & Noble Books

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  New York, NY 10011

  www.barnesandnoble.com/classics

  The Beautiful and Damned was first published in 1922.

  Published in 2005 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction, Notes,

  Biography, Chronology, Inspired By, Comments & Questions,

  and For Further Reading.

  Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading

  Copyright (c) 2005 by Pagan Harleman.

  Note on F. Scott Fitzgerald, The World of F. Scott Fitzgerald and

  The Beautiful and Damned, Inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald and

  The Beautiful and Damned, and Comments & Questions

  Copyright (c) 2005 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and

  retrieva
l system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Barnes & Noble Classics and the Barnes & Noble Classics

  colophon are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc.

  The Beautiful and Damned

  ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-245-2 ISBN-10: 1-59308-245-2

  eISBN : 978-1-41143182-9

  LC Control Number 2005929201

  Produced and published in conjunction with:

  Fine Creative Media, Inc.

  322 Eighth Avenue

  New York, NY 10001

  Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher

  Printed in the United States of America

  QM

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  FIRST PRINTING

  F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

  Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896, to Edward and Mollie McQuillan Fitzgerald. His father was an unsuccessful businessman who came from an old family with roots in Maryland. His mother was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who built a successful wholesale grocery business in St. Paul. Scott was named after his father's distant cousin, the author of the "Star-Spangled Banner," and his mother was proud of the family connection to the Keys. Before Scott reached school age his father's wicker furniture factory had failed, and the family moved to upstate New York to follow Edward's sales job with Proctor and Gamble. In 1908 Edward lost his position, and the family moved back to St. Paul; from that point on McQuillan money supported them.

  At a young age, Scott showed a talent for writing: At thirteen he published his first story in his school journal. In 1911 he transferred to an elite Catholic prep school in New Jersey, where he published three stories in the school's literary magazine and wrote several plays. Fitzgerald enrolled in Princeton University in 1913, where he contributed to campus magazines and wrote scripts and lyrics for campus musicals. His devotion to extracurricular activities forced him to leave Princeton because of poor grades, although the reason recorded in official records was poor health. After the United States entered World War I, he enlisted in the army; while stationed at a military camp in Kansas, he began writing The Romantic Egotist, his first novel.

  After the war, Fitzgerald was discharged from the army, never having seen active service. He revised his novel and renamed it This Side of Paradise; Charles Scribner's Sons published it in 1920. That same year Scott married the willful, unpredictable Zelda Sayre, whom he had met several years earlier while stationed at an army base in Alabama. Fitzgerald's first novel--immensely popular with the war generation--brought him instant fame, although many critics of the day debated its literary merits. He quickly developed notoriety as a carouser and a playboy--impressions he did little to diminish--but his reputation for heavy drinking and continual partying belied his writerly discipline, as evidenced by meticulous revisions of his novels and the numerous short stories he wrote throughout his life. In 1922 he followed his successful debut as a novelist with The Beautiful and Damned, a tale about a couple whose lives end in dissipation while they sue for a large inheritance. In his early works Fitzgerald explored a theme he would return to repeatedly: the effects of wealth and power on the people who possess them.

  After the birth of their daughter, Scottie, the Fitzgeralds lived a peripatetic life for many years, settling in Europe for periods and then residing in America. In Paris Fitzgerald met Ernest Hemingway and other American expatriate writers, whom Gertrude Stein was to dub the "lost generation."

  In 1925 Fitzgerald published his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. Written while the author was living in the French Riviera, the story of the parvenu Jay Gatsby was more a critical success than a financial one, and Fitzgerald continued to support his extravagant lifestyle through frequent, and well-paid, magazine contributions. But his literary fortunes changed following publication of The Great Gatsby. Although he published a collection of short stories in 1926, he did not produce another book until 1934, when Tender Is the Night, on which he had labored for years, was published. Meanwhile, his domestic life deteriorated as he sank deeper into alcoholism and Zelda became increasingly unstable. Zelda's emotional collapse in 1930 was precipitated by maniacally intense ballet studies; the remaining years of her life were spent in and out of hospitals.

  Tender Is the Night was a commercial failure and received mixed reviews from the critics. Fitzgerald spent the years following its publication drunk and dissolute; he chronicled this period in the "Crack-Up" essays. As his literary fame diminished, he worked as a Hollywood scriptwriter and wrote short stories; in 1939 he began work on his final novel, The Last Tycoon, which detailed Hollywood life. By then he was living with Sheilah Graham, a Hollywood gossip columnist, with whom he would spend the rest of his life. On December 21, 1940, before The Last Tycoon was completed, F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four. The Last Tycoon was published in 1941; its writing style is considered as fine as the best of Fitzgerald's other work.

  THE WORLD OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD AND THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED

  1896 Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald is born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, the only son of Edward, a genteel, unsuccessful factory owner, and Mary ("Mollie") McQuillan, the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became a successful wholesale grocer in St. Paul. He is named after his father's distant cousin, the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

  1898 Commercial failures force Edward to move his family to Buffalo, New York, where he takes a sales job with Proctor and Gamble.

  1899 Sigmund Freud publishes Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams); the first edition carries the publication date 1900.

  1901 Edward Fitzgerald is relocated with his family to Syracuse, New York.

  1905 Albert Einstein publishes significant physics papers, including one on the special theory of relativity.

  1907 Artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque begin to develop cubism, an important new visual arts style.

  1908 Edward Fitzgerald loses his job at Procter and Gamble, and the family returns to St. Paul, where they are supported by Mollie's inheritance. F. Scott Fitzgerald enters St. Paul's Academy.

  1909 Scott's first published story, "The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage," appears in his school journal.

  1911 Scott enters the Newman School, an elite Catholic prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey. During his three years at Newman, he publishes three stories in the school literary magazine and writes and produces several plays.

  1912 Scott meets Father Sigourney Fay and the Anglo-Irish

  writer Shane Leslie, who both recognize and encourage his talents. C.G. Jung publishes Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (The Psychology of the Unconscious).

  1913 Fitzgerald graduates from the Newman School and is accepted at Princeton University, despite an unexceptional academic record. In August, a production of his play Coward sells out at the St. Paul Y.W.C.A. Auditorium. At Princeton, he befriends Edmund Wilson, who will become a critic and author, and John Peale Bishop, who will become a poet and novelist. Fitzgerald spends much of his time in extracurricularlishes activities, including writing scripts and lyrics for the Triangle Club, Princeton's drama club. D. H. Lawrence pub- Sons and Lovers.

  1914 World War I begins.

  1915 Fitzgerald meets and falls in love with Ginevra King, a young girl from a wealthy Chicago family. His affair with Ginevra, who is possibly a model for some of his fictional characters, amounts to several dates and a ream of passionate letters. His extracurricular activities take a toll on his grades, and he leaves Princeton, ostensibly because of illness. Europe is engulfed by war.

  1916 Fitzgerald returns to Princeton.

  1917 His relationship with Ginevra dies down. In January, Fitzgerald publishes The Debutante, a play inspired by his affair with her, in the Nassau Literary Magazine. America declares war against Germany, and Fitzgerald enlists in the army as a second lieutenant. He is stationed in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and begins writing a novel, The Romantic Egotist. T. S. Eliot publishes Prufrock a
nd Other Observations.

  1918 On leave from the army, Fitzgerald returns to Princeton and completes his novel. His mentor, author Shane Leslie, recommends it to Scribner's. Fitzgerald is stationed first in Kentucky, then Georgia, and then near Montgomery, Alabama, where he meets Zelda Sayre, the wayward daughter of an Alabama state Supreme Court judge. Although editor Maxwell Perkins rejects Fitzgerald's novel, his letter contains praise for the work. World War I ends; Fitzgerald never sees active service.

  1919 Fitzgerald is discharged from the army and becomes engaged to Zelda. Although he finds work at a New York advertising agency, Zelda breaks off their engagement, worried about his financial prospects. Fitzgerald returns to his parents' house, where he rewrites his novel; now titled This Side of Paradise, it is accepted for publication by Scribner's. Fitzgerald also sells his first story: "Babes in the Woods" is accepted for publication in The Smart Set. Prohibition begins.

  1920 Fitzgerald and Zelda renew their engagement. He publishes stories in the Saturday Evening Post and The Smart Set. This Side of Paradise is published and goes through nine printings in its first year. Scott and Zelda are married in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. The newlyweds move to Westport, Connecticut, where Fitzgerald works on The Beautiful and Damned, and then to New York. Flappers and Philosophers, Fitzgerald's first collection of short stories, is published. Following the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, women gain the right to vote.

  1921 Scott and Zelda spend months traveling in England, France, and Italy. They return in August to Minnesota, where Zelda gives birth to a daughter, Frances Scott ("Scottie").

  1922 The Beautiful and Damned, about the dissipated life of an artist and his wife, is published. Another collection of short stories, Tales of the Jazz Age, is published in September. The family moves to Great Neck, Long Island (New York). Fitzgerald's drinking habit grows. T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and James Joyce's Ulysses are published.

  1923 The Vegetable, a play the Fitzgeralds thought would make them wealthy, is published but fails at an Atlantic City tryout. Jazz musician Duke Ellington first plays in New York.