Word: fitzgerald
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...cases, you will read to the end. In the first place he has a style which, however, careless it may be, moves, and in the second place he is by no means without a sense of humor. It may be a meaningless world but it has amusing aspects and Fitzgerald has a keen eye for them. Sometimes there is high comedy and sometimes farce but it is always entertaining...
...only when he is too evidently endeavoring to strike the tragic note that he falls a little--or even approaches absurdity. Since his first novel, Mr. Fitzgerald has joined the ranks of the "HaHa" school of ironists. He has made every effort, sometimes it seems through a natural perversity, to mock every one of the aspirations of his characters. Gloria desires above all to be thought clean and in the end she becomes unclean. The writer, Richard Carmel, does not intend to prostitute his art and finally he takes to writing best-sellers. Compared to the Fates of Mr. Fitzgerald...
When the reviewers were engaged in discussing the merits and defects of F. Scott Fitzgerald as a writer, after the publication of his first novel, it was the conventional thing to predict a great future for him and to hope that in his next work he would produce a really great novel. One of the things he must do to accomplish this, he was frequently advised, was to build his novel on a firmer foundation than the sands of a too clever cynicism. Although they carefully refrained from so expressing themselves, one gathered the impression that these reviewers were advising...
...Fitzgerald seems to have taken this advice seriously. For all its divergences and extraneous detail one can detect in this "The Beautiful and Damned" what looks suspiciously like a purpose. The author would probably not like to be accused of "teaching a lesson" but, whether intentionally or not he has so written his story that to many of his readers it will carry a very definite moral. Indeed "The Beautiful and Damned", if condensed a little, would make a very effective tract for a prohibition organization...
...will reach for a drink after reading "The Beautiful and Damned" at one sitting. The consumption of liquor in quarts per page is so tremendous that the reader sooner or later begins to sense the stale liquor smell and the motorman's glove taste of the morning after. Mr. Fitzgerald, to repeat, may have no such intention but he has succeeded in demonstrating pretty effectively that the pursuit of pleasure as the end of life may be at the beginning pretty delightful but is likely to prove less so as the highballs succeed one another...