The Beautiful and Damned

F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Editore: Scribner
• Anno: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781476733432
• Argomento: Literature
• Categoria: Literature General

The Beautiful and Damned is the story of Anthony Patch and his wife, Gloria. Harvard-educated and an aspiring aesthete, Patch is waiting for his inheritance upon his grandfather's death. His reckless marriage to Gloria is fueled by alcohol and destroyed by greed. The Patches race through a series of alcohol-induced fiascoes——first in hilarity, then in despair. The Beautiful and Damned, a devastating portrait of the nouveaux riches, New York nightlife, reckless ambition, and squandered talent, was published in 1922 on the heels of Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise. It signaled his maturity as a storyteller and confirmed his enormous talent as a novelist.

Appendix 1

ALTERNATE ENDINGS

Fitzgerald had difficulty with the ending for The Beautiful and Damned. Two alternate endings survive—one from the manuscript and another from the Metropolitan serial. The ending in the manuscript is meant to echo the early sub-chapter “A Flash-Back in Paradise,” in which Gloria’s quasi-divine origins are revealed. It is a graceful if rather airy piece of writing.

For the serial text Fitzgerald provided a different ending, heavily didactic, similar to the codas that conclude many naturalistic novels of the period. Zelda called this second ending “a piece of morality,” and Fitzgerald came to agree with her. He cut this text from the serial and allowed the novel to conclude (in book form) with Anthony’s ironic comment from the previous paragraph: “It was a hard fight, but I didn’t give up and I came through!” The two rejected endings are given below. The pointing from the manuscript has been preserved.

ENDING IN THE MANUSCRIPT

That exquisite heavenly irony which has tabulated the demise of many generations of sparrows doubtless recorded the subtlest verbal inflection made upon such a ship as the Imperator. And unquestionably the allseeing Eyes must have been present at a certain place in Paradise something over a year before—when Beauty, who was born anew every hundred years, came back from earth into a sort of outdoor waiting room through which blew gusts of white wind and occasionally a breathless hurried star. The stars greeted her intimately as they went by and the winds made a soft welcoming flurry in her hair. Sighing, she began a conversation with a voice that was in the white wind.

“Back again,” the voice whispered.

“Yes.”

“After fifteen years.”

“Yes.”

The voice hesitated.

“How remote you are,” it said. “Unstirred . . . You seem to have no heart. How about the little girl? The glory of her eyes is gone—”

But Beauty had forgotten long ago.

ENDING IN THE METROPOLITAN SERIAL

That exquisite heavenly irony which has tabulated the demise of many generations of sparrows seems to us to be content with the moral judgments of man upon fellow man. If there is a subtler and yet more nebulous ethic somewhere in the mind, one might believe that beneath the sordid dress and near the bruised heart of this transaction there was a motive which was not weak but only futile and sad. In the search for happiness, which search is the greatest and possibly the only crime of which we in our petty misery are capable, these two people were marked as guilty chiefly by the freshness and fullness of their desire. Their disillusion was always a comparative thing—they had sought glamour and color through their respective worlds with steadfast loyalty—sought it and it alone in kisses and in wine, sought it with the same ingenuousness in the wanton moonlight as under the cold sun of inviolate chastity. Their fault was not that they had doubted but that they had believed.

The exquisite perfection of their boredom, the delicacy of their inattention, the inexhaustibility of their discontent—were disastrous extremes—that was all. And if, before Gloria yielded up her gift of beauty, she shed one bright feather of light so that someone, gazing up from the grey earth, might say, “Look! There is an angel’s wing!” perhaps she had given more than enough in exchange for her tinsel joys.

. . . The story ends here.

Appendix 2

ZELDA’S REVIEW

Zelda was invited to write about The Beautiful and Damned by the New York Tribune. Her spoof review, reprinted below, appeared in the April 2 issue of the newspaper.

FRIEND HUSBAND’S LATEST

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

I note on the table beside my bed this morning a new book with an orange jacket entitled The Beautiful and Damned. It is a strange book, which has for me an uncanny fascination. It has been lying on that table for two years. I have been asked to analyze it carefully in the light of my brilliant critical insight, my tremendous erudition, and my vast impressive partiality. Here I go!

To begin with, everyone must buy this book for the following aesthetic reasons: first, because I know where there is the cutest cloth-of-gold dress for only three hundred dollars in a store on Forty-second Street, and also, if enough people buy it, where there is a platinum ring with a complete circlet, and also, if loads of people buy it, my husband needs a new winter overcoat, although the one he has has done well enough for the last three years.

Now, as to the other advantages of the book—its value as a manual of etiquette is incalculable. Where could you get a better example of how not to behave than from the adventures of Gloria? And as a handy cocktail mixer nothing better has been said or written since John Roach Straton’s last sermon.¹

It is a wonderful book to have around in case of emergency. No one should ever set out in pursuit of unholy excitement without a special vest pocket edition dangling from a string around the neck.

For this book tells exactly, and with compelling lucidity, just what to do when cast off by a grandfather or when sitting around a station platform at 4 a.m., or when spilling champagne in a fashionable restaurant, or when told that one is too old for the movies. Any of these things might come into anyone’s life at any minute.

Just turn the pages of the book slowly at any of the above-mentioned trying times until your own case strikes your eye and proceed according to directions. Then for the ladies of the family there are such helpful lines as: “I like gray because then you have to wear a lot of paint.” Also what to do with your husband’s old shoes—Gloria takes Anthony’s shoes to bed with her and finds it a very satisfactory way of disposing of them. The dietary suggestion, “tomato sandwiches and lemonade for breakfast” will be found an excellent cure for obesity.

Now, let us turn to the interior decorating department of the book. Therein can be observed complete directions for remodeling your bathroom along modern and more interesting lines, with plans for a book-rack by the tub, and a detailed description of what pictures have been found suitable for bathroom walls after years of careful research by Mr. Fitzgerald.

The book itself, with its plain green back, is admirably constructed for being read in a tub—wetting will not spoil the pages; in fact, if one finds it growing dry, simply dip the book briskly in warm water. The bright yellow jacket is particularly adapted to being carried on Fifth Avenue while wearing a blue- or henna-colored suit, and the size is adaptable to being read in hotel lobbies while waiting to keep dates for luncheon.

It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and also scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald—I believe that is how he spells his name—seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.

I find myself completely fascinated by the character of the heroine. She is a girl approximately ten years older than I am, for she seems to have been born about 1890—though I regret to remark on finishing the book I feel no confidence as to her age, since her birthday is in one place given as occurring in February and in another place May and in the third place in September. But there is a certain inconsistency in this quite in accord with the lady’s character.

What I was about to remark is that I would like to meet the lady. There seems to have been a certain rouge she used which had a quite remarkable effect. And the strange variations in the color of her hair from ...