Intro to F. Scott Fitzgerald

1. “This Side of Paradise,” 1920

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s debut novel describes life at Princeton among its “lost generation”—the glittering, young, and disillusioned. “This Side of Paradise” is split into three sections – in Book One, the novel centers around Amory Blaine, who attends boarding school and later Princeton; in “Interlude”, Amory is shipped to serve in World War I (but this is never described); in Book Two, Amory falls in love with a New York debutante, but this relationship is crushed as well.

2. “Tender is the Night”, 1934

The last novel completed by F. Scott Fitzgerald, this is the story of the rise and fall of the glamorous couple Dick and Nicole Diver. Set primarily in the South of France, the Divers surround themselves with expatriate friends. However, various witnesses to the Diver’s life suspect that something is wrong; and throughout the novel the history of the Diver’s trouble marriage emerges. At the time, Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, was hospitalized in an institution in Switzerland, and there seems to be much in common between the Divers’ marriage and that of the Fitzgeralds.

1. “The Great Gatsby”, 1925

A portrait of the “Jazz Age”, young Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner, comes to the North East to stay at an inexpensive cottage in West Egg, a patrician community. There, he watches and narrates a shattering sequence of events. Nick’s extremely wealthy cousin, Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom live there, as does Jay Gatsby who is self-made, self-invented millionaire. Gatsby’s love for Daisy (they fell in love five years before the novel began) has led him in a relentless pursuit of money, as a way to win her love. When Daisy finally appears at one of Gatsby's extravagant parties, a chain of events is set in motion that leave those who were emotionally destitute unchanged– and others seriously injured. Ending with the famous lines, "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--", this is a beautiful, heartbreaking narrative.

Commentary: All three novels provide access to the outwardly glittering world that F. Scott Fitzgerald inhabited. “This Side of Paradise” has a young Fitzgerald writing wonderfully about a lost generation, one that was presently floating into the world. Both “Tender is the Night” and “The Great Gatsby” take up this theme, but in darker and more developed novels. While “The Great Gatsby” was written first, it is arguably Fitzgerald’s most perfect work, so it is recommended third. A primary difference between “Gatsby” and “Tender is the Night” is that in “Gatsby”, Nick Carraway separates the reader from the narrative—the reader identifies with Carraway rather than the other players, and therefore is allowed more distance. “Tender is the Night” could be argued to be the greater novel – rawer, more emotional, and often more compelling.