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Finally limped to the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and the Damned, which chronicles Anthony Patch’s long, slow descent into alcoholism and penury (otherwise known as “a middle-class lifestyle”), and is super depressing. Even the parties are depressing. I’m actually not sure that anything un-depressing ever happens in this book, which is rather impressive in a way.
No, wait! There is the moment when Bloeckman the Jewish movie impresario punches Anthony in the face and knocks one of his teeth out! I really enjoyed that. It was the next best thing to being able to reach into the book and clobber Anthony myself.
I think I’m more interested in Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald as people than in Scott’s writing, because other than The Great Gatsby, which is comparatively hopeful, his work seems to be pretty soul-crushingly cynical.
And speaking of Fitzgeraldian fun! I recently saw Midnight in Paris, which is about a guy who goes to Paris with his fiancee - they’re stunningly ill-matched; I can only assume they were blinded by the vision of the adorable blonde children they would produce - only for him to wander back through time to Paris in the twenties when the clock strikes midnight.
It’s a rather slight movie, but it’s a ton of fun, not least because it features the Fitzgeralds being, well, themselves. (Although actually the Fitzgeralds are pretty minor, so probably you shouldn’t watch this just to get your Fitzgerald on.) Hemingway is rather flat; he’s just reciting his lines, he never sounds like he quite means them.
But Paris is beautiful and the twenties are beautiful and the brief bit where they slide back to the Belle Epoque is beautiful, and it’s a light and cheerful antidote to the misery that is true Fitzgerald.
No, wait! There is the moment when Bloeckman the Jewish movie impresario punches Anthony in the face and knocks one of his teeth out! I really enjoyed that. It was the next best thing to being able to reach into the book and clobber Anthony myself.
I think I’m more interested in Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald as people than in Scott’s writing, because other than The Great Gatsby, which is comparatively hopeful, his work seems to be pretty soul-crushingly cynical.
And speaking of Fitzgeraldian fun! I recently saw Midnight in Paris, which is about a guy who goes to Paris with his fiancee - they’re stunningly ill-matched; I can only assume they were blinded by the vision of the adorable blonde children they would produce - only for him to wander back through time to Paris in the twenties when the clock strikes midnight.
It’s a rather slight movie, but it’s a ton of fun, not least because it features the Fitzgeralds being, well, themselves. (Although actually the Fitzgeralds are pretty minor, so probably you shouldn’t watch this just to get your Fitzgerald on.) Hemingway is rather flat; he’s just reciting his lines, he never sounds like he quite means them.
But Paris is beautiful and the twenties are beautiful and the brief bit where they slide back to the Belle Epoque is beautiful, and it’s a light and cheerful antidote to the misery that is true Fitzgerald.
