Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott Fitzgerald

🔵 If you've been following my latest blog posts, you'd notice that I had shrunk before from reading this short story collection for #JazzAgeJune2022. I was daunted, at first, by my bulky Penguin Classics copy - 643 pages and, uh, so many stories (it's pictured in this post; gorgeous, isn't it? Probably the most gorgeous book I've ever owned!) However, browsing on google I realised that my copy isn't the Flappers and Philosophers originally published in 1920, which contained only eight stories, 200-ish pages only! And of those eight, only three stories appeared in my copy. So, I decided to keep reading Flappers and Philosophers as I've originally planned, but reading it from the original version - for which I reluctantly bought another e-copy from Play Books.

🔵 Readers, it's totally worth it! The eight stories are all awesome, and I think this is the first time that I enjoyed a short story collection this much! Each story is memorable and worth reading (usually there will be at least one or two 'meh' stor(ies) in a collection that throws off the whole book).

🔵 I will discuss about each story here, so be prepared, 'cos this would be a long post... The first one, The Offshore Pirate reminds me a lot of The Great Gatsby. The prominent theme is the American Dream. Just like Jay Gatsby, Carlyle started off in the world as poor nobody, but he was obsessed with aristocracy. To obtain it, he becomes a pirate. Ardita, on the other hand, is a wealthy young girl who is bored and craved for excitement. She is on board of the yacht that Carlyle is about to rob. This story is about the young generation who was lazy, careless, egostic; whose monomania is to get rich instantly without caring of morality. It's also about the fading away of a dream... Overall, it's a delicious story to start a book! I enjoyed the ragtime and the adventurous sea journey vibes. And when a story begins with "a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-sky stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children's eyes"... why, I'm sold instantly! This is actually one of my favorites, the most adventurous one.

🔵 Still on quite similar theme, The Ice Palace tells about a young girl, Sally Carol, who, bored with stagnant and lazy air of the hot Southerner, but longed to get excitement, engaged to a Northern young man, who brought her to his hometown in the cold North. They visited the Ice Palace, where Sally Carol got lost and almost frozen to death. And that experience kinda open her eyes of what she really wanted. This story is the most thrilling of all eight.

🔵 The funniest story is definitely the third one: Head and Shoulders. Horace Tarbox is a young prodigy of Princeton. However, his much predicted bright future changed 180 degree after a dancer, Marcia Meadows, comes to visit him one evening. This one is extremely entertaining and hilarious, witty and ironic. And I believe, only Fitzgerald who could bring it so perfect.

🔵 Don't laugh too much, though, because right after the last sentence of the third story, Fitzgerald plunged you to the most serious and tragic story of the book: The Cut-Glass Bowl. A newlywed couple, Harold and Evylyn Piper, received a large cut-glass bowl as wedding present. Their marriage was hit by disaster after disaster, which somehow, were always connected with the cut-glass bowl. I think Fitzgerald has wonderfully portrayed marriage in the wedding presents metaphor. The chinas, punch bowls are all beautiful at first, but sooner or later things would happen that would defect them; just as marriage. "...even the dinner glasses disappeared one by one like the ten little niggers.." - hey, did Fitzgerald just borrowed the same nursery rhymes that Agatha Christie also used for And Then There Were None?

🔵 Bernice Bobs Her Hair is the most "feminine" story of the book (I think it's also appears in Tales of the Jazz Age). It tells the story of Bernice, a mixed-race rural young girl who visited her cousin, a popular girl in the city named Marjorie. Bernice isn't popular with the boys at first, but after successful lessons from Marjorie, she begins to be center of attention; however, not without consequences. Jealous of Bernice, who attracted even Marjorie's beau, Marjorie challenged her to bob her hair. Girls' hair is considered to make a girl feminine and innocence. Bobbing hair means that the girl will lose certain qualities that attract men. Now I understand why Daisy in The Great Gatsby wanted her daughter to be a fool, "a beautiful little fool", because that's a guarantee to get a good husband, and good husband means good future. This might be one of my least favorites of the collection.

🔵 Benediction brings you yet another aspect of 1920s youths. I guess Fitzgerald's Catholic upbringing must have had influenced this story. On the way to a love tryst with a young man, Lois (not a devot Catholic) visits a seminary to meet her brother Kieth, who is to be ordained as priest. While attending a Benediction in the chapel, Lois experiences a kind of spiritual change. Not a very interesting plot for a story, perhaps, but it gives Fitzgerald opportunity to discuss the 1920s youths' views of religion.

🔵 Dalyrimple Goes Wrong is the opposite of its predecessor. It's about a war veteran, Dalyrimple, a lazy and immoral young man, who contemplated that to make ends meet, "cutting corners" or being "at the other side of the fence" is not wrong. It's just of "being hard" in order to have a better life. But is it so? This one, I think, is the most boring of the collection.

🔵 Now, I believe that to be a good short story collection, the last story must at least act as some sort of closure of the various themes presented through out. In this case, The Four Fists did a good job. Samuel Meredith comes from a wealthy family, and growing up, he always lives a comfortable life. Unconsciously, that quality can easily make a person to be arrogant and selfish - two characters that lead to evil. Samuel was nearly there too, but he's saved by the four punches he'd received during his life; in school, in college, when he's falling in love with a married woman, and the last, at work. Each of these punches wakes him up from selfishness, and steer him to be more considerate to others.

🔵 All in all, I felt that this is a beautifully written, cohesive short story collection, depicted the Flappers (careless youths) of its time, but also a reminder that youths also had choices to be "on the right side of the fence". Flappers and philosophers seems to be a yin and yang of the Jazz Age era.

Rating: 5 / 5

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

My writing mood still hasn't returned yet, but I need to get these thoughts out of my mind soon, so for the next couple of months (perhaps, hopefully shorter!) I would only jot down my random thoughts in a post after each reading. It might not be a proper review, but at least it summarizes the book/reading.

Here's my take on The Beautiful and Damned, which I've read in June (more to follow).

🔅 Anthony Patch is a self indulgent young man, an heir to a wealthy grandfather.
🔅 Irresponsible, lazy, and drunkard.
🔅 Gloria Gilbert is a self absorbed beauty.
🔅 Imagine the two combined in a marriage. The most unlikely couple who bring their own ego to the marriage.
🔅 Their only similarity is their decadent life of partying and excessive alcoholisn, seeking pleasures while waiting with assurances for Anthony's upcoming inheritance.
🔅 The story takes place before, during, and after the Great War in the early 1920s. Anthony even served briefly in the army during WWI.
🔅 It is considered to be based on Fitzgerald's marriage to Zelda.
🔅 Anthony has no idea what to do (all the time!) besides spending money.
🔅 Gloria's only concern was her own beauty (and spending money too).
🔅 In the midst of one of their craziest parties, the rigid-almost-puritant old Mr. Patch crashed the party, and the next morning disinherited Anthony.
🔅 The couple hired a lawyer to appeal against the testament for years, and meanwhile seemed to be paralyzed. Anthony only live for the future (with the money), and Gloria can't see a future when her beauty is fading.

A quite difficult reading, and not at all my favorite, though you'll get to see glimpses of Fitzgerald's beautiful narration here and there. If you feel like giving up mid story, just hang on patiently, for the final twist is worth the waiting!!

Rating: 3,5 / 5

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

If there's one good thing about year 2020 so far, it's perhaps the bicentennial of Fitzgerald's first published novel: This Side Of Paradise. Some people might regard the novel immature, or even babbling, but for me it's the epitome of the Jazz Age era. But, as there're always two different sides of everything, so, too, the 1920s - at the other side of the bling-bling of the flappers and the liberating of the Charleston dance, there's also the hollowness, confusion, disillusionment of the Lost Generation. And these two aspects are magnificently captured in these sketches collection which Fitzgerald has weaved into a beautiful novel.

People regard this novel as immature not without reason. It's a semi-biographical account of Fitzgerald himself, following the self discovery journey of an upper-middle class Midwestern young man called Amory Blaine. What an appropriate name for the era! It sounds sentimental, but the person is way from it. Amory is a spoiled kid, shaped and idolised by his eccentric mother: Beatrice, who seems to have raised him for her "delightful companion".

The story starts with one of Beatrice's nervous breakdowns, which forced Amory to live with his aunt and uncle in Minneapolis. He's thirteen, and soon found himself "unconventional" compared to his peers. Here, and throughout the book, the sense of being out of place always haunts Amory. He proposes to take a prep school in St. Regis - previously having been privately tutored by Beatrice and a tutor along their nomadic lives - in order to shake off Beatrice's influence. There he finds himself superior, but his friends thinks him conceited, his teachers, he's lazy and undisciplined.

Next, college life. He goes to Princeton, believing himself would be liked and praised by his friends - he's intelligent and feels himself capable of doing some great things, anyway. But, again, setbacks. He joins the football club (for popular gain, not for sport), but an injury cut his short career. Next, literary field; he joins The Daily Princeronian - the college newspaper, then resigns as he still isn't belonged to the elites. At Princeton it is where he starts learning about social classifications, and struggles to fit himself to anyone of the classes - a theme later on matured in Fitzgerald's masterpiece: The Great Gatsby.

If academics doesn't seem to educate Amory, even a bit, it's because he is, instead, shaped by his friends and lovers. Amory is like a blank canvas who doesn't have any idea what kind of painting he would become, or even, he would like to be. He needs different painters to paint on him. He seems to be satisfied with the first painter, but comes the second, painting differently on him, then he would be like: Yeah, I might like it better. Until the third painter paints on him, and so on. He keeps drifting on..

Two most influential relationships Amory has attached himself with, are with Monsignor Darcy, a Catholic bishop, who was an ex lover of Beatrice, and becomes a friend and spiritual counselor to Amory. Second is Amory's true love: Rosalind, a New York debutante whom Amory met after he served in the WWI as bayonet instructor. In spite of her love for Amory, and in spite of Amory's efforts to work as copy writer for an advertising agency to steal her heart, Rosalind chose to marry another wealthy young man (out of love) because she can't live with poverty. In real life, Zelda Sayre (rich debutante herself) only agreed to marry young Fitzgerald after he successfully published his first novel - THIS novel (ironical, eh?)

And so, this book is like a compilation of incoherent snatches of Amory's daily life in his journey to adulthood. The style is jumping from prose to poems, to dramatically dialogue, to letters. The reading effect is... confusing, but at the same time, strangely enough, amusing and entertaining. If Amory's journey is in quest of his self, Fitzgerald's is of his unique writing style.

There's many themes here which you'd also find in The Great Gatsby. The longing for social recognition is one, then there's the car's accident, money vs honors, and wealth vs morality. But I have my personal favorite points. First is the "devil" that Amory sees when he and his friends goes to a girl's place for.. uh.. a little "party". Nobody else sees it but Amory. I wonder if it's not a scrap of his conscience to not taking part in the debauchery? Nevertheless, he has been brought up as Catholic, and a bishop is one of his important friends. I just think that, it's not his money or social background, which would make him unconventional; it is his moral principle and unique personality, which he doesn't realize he possesses. Fitzgerald later used this little conscience theme in The Great Gatsby.

Another favorite of mine is the last paragraph. The scene of Amory's nostalgic walk to Princeton, and his famous closing line: "I know myself... but that is all." while "stretching out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky". Isn't it a symbol of reconnecting with the past, so that you could learn from your flaws and errors, to really identify yourself - good and bad - and then, only then, that you could strive in life?

This Side of Paradise is the true depiction of the lost generation. Young men who lost their youths at war; who, when the war was coming, regarded it as heroic battles they've read in history, but instead, they witnessed brutality and terrifying deaths. It's being the first war which used modern weapons added to the horrible experience they must have dealt with. And so, they lost their faith to life, love, and the purpose of life. They were disilusioned and confused of what or who they were, and what to do next. The Lost Generation.

Rating: 4,5 / 5

Tender is the Night

Once or twice a year you would have stumbled upon a book that leaves your soul troubled. This year Tender is the Night was it for me. This book is the last completed novel from F. Scott Fitzgerald; he was in the writing process of The Last Tycoon when he died in 1940. I am not quite sure whether Fitzgerald has intended this book to be his semi-autobiographical story, but the characters and the conflicts have a lot of similarities with the writer’s private life. Doctor Richard “Dick” and Nicole Diver was a lovely couple among the upper-middle class of Americans, who, in the 1920s had great interest in travelling to Europe to learn the culture and expand their businesses.

Although it seems, at first, that the story would be narrated by an adolescent Hollywood actress, Rosemary Hoyt; it would turn out on the second and third book, that it was all actually about the Divers. Dick Diver was a psychiatric, while Nicole was his wife as well as his patient. She was a patient in a psychiatry clinic when Dick first met her; a very pretty young girl with schizophrenia. She was very in love with Dick, and though he first declined, Dick finally agreed to marry her after she was released from the clinic. It was easy to assume that Nicole represented Zelda, Fitzgerald’s schizophrenic wife; while Dick’s faith in this story was how Fitzgerald saw Zelda’s mental disorder which has ruined their marriage and, at certain point, the writer’s personal life and career.

Apart from her beauty, Dick married Nicole also for her money. Witnessing his father’s life in poverty apparently encouraged young Dick to pursue his ambition as a famous medical doctor. He might have been successful, and his marriage might have been a happy one, if their course did not accidentally cross with that of Rosemary Hoyt. Young, innocent, beautiful; she had just the perfect combination to corrupt a reserved man (son of a Reverend) who was struggling with his schizophrenic wife. After the short affair, Dick seemed to lose balance of his life. He fell to alcoholism and neglected his career; he became bitter and cynical to others, that his friends excluded him. On the contrary, as he was weaker, Nicole became stronger. She found that she could slowly detach herself from her husband’s influence, and found another love from her longtime suitor.

Nicole is like a parasite to her husband, although she did not do it on purpose, as it was because of her mental illness and instability. But I think the struggles to protect and to balance his wife for more than ten years of marriage have absorbed Dick’s vitality and morality. Nicole’s mental illness was triggered by the incest committed by her father. Maybe this had something to do in Dick’s fall, like a poison that never completely vanishes from the air once it is polluted. In the end what Dick has done to Nicole is a sacrifice; no matter whether he has done it purely for love, or innocently for his ambitions. Whichever it was, I think Dick, or (if this story truly represents the writer’s feeling) Fitzgerald, has done a goodness in bringing a schizophrenic person to reach her fullness of life at last. Sometimes, great deeds demand greater sacrifice….

It was really heart-wrenching to follow Dick’s struggle after Nicole left him. I kept asking myself, how Nicole could be so selfish towards her husband after what he has given her. But to expect an unbalanced woman to guide her husband back to the right path is impossible. So I guess, in the end, I could not blame any of the two. Their faith is inevitable. I think Fitzgerald himself only wanted to express his feeling to the world by this story.

Just like in The Great Gatsby, I think Fitzgerald used a lot of metaphors in this book. Things which I thought were irrelevant to the plot, might have been these metaphors. I felt there were a lot more than what I could grab now. Compared to Gatsby, Tender is the Night is slower and sometimes rather flat, but maybe it’s me who still cannot find the deeper meanings; I don’t think Fitzgerald has ever wasted sentences to no purpose. I think it’s a good excuse to read the book again in the future; then, perhaps, I might find it more beautiful than what I think now.

Nevertheless, I give four stars for Tender is the Night in this first reading.

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I read Penguin Classics hardback edition

This book is counted as:

79^th book for The Classics Club Project

6^th book for Back to the Classics 2014 (American Classic)

78^th book for 1001 Books You Must Read Before YouDie

The Great Gatsby [Final Review]

If there are books I would love to read over and over again, The Great Gatsby must be one of them. This was my second read and I gained much more than my first one, and I have a feeling I would still find more in the future reads. Reading The Great Gatsby is really like peeling an onion, you must peel layer by layer to get what is inside. This book is full of metaphors, and Fitzgerald does not always reveal everything straight forward; he likes to speak his ideas in broken sentences, challenging the readers to catch the hidden meanings. And that is why this book provides never-ending debates and discussions, which make me love it more.

As I have done many chapter posts and tasks for WEM, I won’t waste time by writing what Gatsby is about. In short, it’s about Gatsby’s false dream—how a poor man fights persistently to win his dream lover, becomes wealthy by disrespectable businesses and ready to snatch the woman from his husband; but after an accident that has killed a woman, he finds that she is only an empty idea, and that lavish prosperity in the end only leaves traces of moral corruption [taken from my first level inquiry post].

I have also peeled many aspect of the story in my three levels inquiries, that I have almost nothing left now to make a decent review (LOL). But instead, I have challenged myself earlier to ask one important question, which I also invited others with whom I read this along to answer.

Do you think Gatsby is really ‘Great’? If yes, why? If no, why did Fitzgerald put it in the title?

--My answer--

First I must think about the criteria of ‘Great’; what do people usually mean when they say that someone is great? Success would be the answer. Great people are they who succeed in their fields. Now let’s apply this to Gatsby—does he succeed? A big no; he worked hard to reach his dream, not knowing that it has vanished. It’s not only failure; I can say he’s pathetic. So Gatsby must be far away from being great—although in a way, I admire his discipline, focus, and persistency to reach his dream. If we want to label him as ‘Great’, he is certainly great in accomplishing a personal target. Nonetheless, he is failed in the end; and one’s greatness is always defined by the result, right? Yeah, we are result-based generation. I can talk about this forever, but for now, let’s get to the second part of the question.

If Gatsby is not great, why is the book given The Great Gatsby as its title? What did Fitzgerald want to say to us? It came to me that maybe Fitzgerald wanted to emphasize that our way of defining greatness has been wrong. Maybe one’s greatness should not be valued only from the visible quality of success; it is merely the outer aspect of men; our old concept of success. I think Fitzgerald wanted us to look deeper into the inside of humanity. From the beginning Nick has been writing about morality: “A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.” –(Chapter 1); so it makes sense that that is what Fitzgerald wanted to say to us through The Great Gatsby: morality. Morality is far more important than physical achievement.

American first dream was about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness [from Sparknotes]. However, the rise of stock market post-war had created a sudden euphoria, where people started to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. With that, unfortunately, morality started also to decay and corrupted. In Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald wanted to show two different things.

First, the empty pursuit of dream; in Gatsby, American people should see that their first original dream had been vanished, and replaced by the moral corruption (Daisy is no longer the fresh-innocent girl Gatsby used to know, she had been…you know what). Second, the good morality; although Gatsby gained his wealth in disrespectable ways, he still have pure conscience in him (he stood up to take the blame of Myrtle Wilson’s murder although he did not do it). Between the two, while the empty pursuit of dream won’t make one great, I believe the good morality will.

At the end I think, Fitzgerald wanted to say that it is great of Gatsby to do what he did at the end of the story. It is also what has made Nick complimenting him: “They’re a rotten crowd; you’re worth the whole damn bunch put together”.

But most of all, I think, The Great Gatsby itself is a great literary work by Fitzgerald; maybe not the greatest one, but obviously one of the greatest… ;)

Five whole stars for The Great Gatsby, a novel I will certainly read and read again in the future.

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I read the Penguin Classics hardback edition

This book is counted for:

6^th book for Turn of The Century Salon

4^th book for Back to the Classics 2013

10^th book for What’s in A Name Reading Challenge 2013

43^rd book for The Classics Club

6^th book for The Well-Educated Mind Self-Project