F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Beautiful and Damned"

New Critical Essays

William Blazek, David W. Ullrich, Kirk Curnutt, William Blazek, David W. Ullrich, Kirk Curnutt

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2022
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780807178607
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism History & Theory
• Index: Literature

F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, has frequently been dismissed as an outlier and curiosity in his oeuvre, a transitional work from the coming-of-age plot of This Side of Paradise to the masterful critique of American aspiration in The Great Gatsby. The Beautiful and Damned belongs to a genre that is widely misunderstood, the "bright young things" novel in which spoiled and wealthy characters succumb to decay because of their privilege and lack of purpose. Set between 1913 and 1922, Fitzgerald's longest novel touches on many of the decisive issues that mark the passage from the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era into the Jazz Age: conspicuous consumption, income inequality, yellow journalism, the Great War, the rise of the movie industry, automobile travel, Wall Street stock scams, immigration and xenophobia, and the fixation with youth and aging. Published to coincide with the novel's centennial in 2022, this collection approaches The Beautiful and Damned for its insights more than its faults. Prominent Fitzgerald scholars analyze major themes and reveal unappreciated issues with attention to history, biography, literary influence, gender studies, and narratology. While acknowledging the novel's shortcomings, the essayists illustrate that The Beautiful and Damned has much more to say about its milieu than previously recognized. This collection provides a guide for understanding Fitzgerald's aims while demonstrating the richness of ideas that this novel explores, alongside the anxieties and ambitions that reverberate within it.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Redeeming the Sophomore Slump
• The Critical Reception of The Beautiful and Damned, 1922–2022
• Crossing the “Shadow-Line”: Toward the “Sombre Pattern” of The Beautiful and Damned
• The Periodical World of The Beautiful and Damned
• Fitzgerald among the Smart Set
• “That Damned Beautiful Summer”: The Fitzgeralds in Westport
• Fatherly Designs and Childish Behaviors, Or Anthony Comstock vs. Tanalahaka in The Beautiful and Damned
• Fitzgerald’s Pas de Deux: The Dynamics of Romance and Economy in The Beautiful and Damned
• Trouble on the Home Front: Militarism, Masculinity, and Marriage in The Beautiful and Damned
• The Beautiful and Damned and the Jewish People
• A Matter of Overcivilization: Fitzgerald’s Critique of Modernity in The Beautiful and Damned
• “No Matter!”: Work and the Empty Spaces of The Beautiful and Damned
• Contributors
• Works Cited
• Index