2. What brings Anthony and Gloria to ruin? Is it the society in which they live, or the times? Divine retribution? Poor values? Irresistible fleshly desires? Money?
3. A critic for the Literary Digest complained that Fitzgerald writes only about “the worthless and the immaterial,” and that his characters “exist in each generation as the dregs and mistakes, the cripples and the morons, exist.” Do you agree? Can you sympathize with Anthony and Gloria?
4. Is it a uniquely American act to come into a fortune by means of litigation, as Anthony and Gloria do? Does Fitzgerald comment on this in the novel?
5. Do we have now in America an equivalent to Fitzgerald’s beautiful and damned?
FOR FURTHER READING
Selected Other Works by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Afternoon of an Author: A Selection of Uncollected Stories and Essays. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957.
The Basil and Josephine Stories. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,1973.
The Crack-Up, with Other Pieces and Stories. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1965.
The Great Gatsby. 1925. With notes and a preface by Matthew J. Bruccoli. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Edited by Andrew Turnbull. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963.
A Life in Letters. Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, with the assistance of Judith S. Baughman. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
Tender Is the Night. 1934. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
This Side of Paradise. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920.
Biography
Bruccoli, Matthew. Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1994.
—. Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. With a genealogical afterword by Scottie Fitzgerald Smith. Second revised edition. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002.
Bruccoli, Matthew, ed. The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1978.
Douglas, Ann. Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995.
Latham, Aaron. Crazy Sundays: F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood. New York: Viking Press, 1970.
Mizener, Arthur. The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.
—. Scott Fitzgerald and His World. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972.
Turnbull, Andrew. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962.
Literary Criticism/Biography
Hook, Andrew. F. Scott Fitzgerald.- A Literary Life. New York: Pal-grave Macmillan, 2002.
Kazin, Alfred, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Man and His Work. New York: World, 1951.
Le Vot, André. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography. Translated from the French by William Byron. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983.
Mizener, Arthur. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963.
Prigozy, Ruth, ed. The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
a Follower of Bilphism, a fictitious religion.
b French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).
c Samuel Butler (1835-1902), an English writer best known for his satire Erewhon and his novel The Way of All Flesh; his notebooks were published posthumously.
d Charles de Talleyrand (1754-1838), a French diplomat skilled at political survival.
e More commonly known as Francis Bacon (1561-1626), he was an adept philosopher and statesman.
f Character in the Bible who lived to be 969 years old; see Genesis 5:27.
g Literally, reduction to absurdity (Latin); refutation of a theory by showing that it leads to absurd conclusions.
h Star of the silent movie era and the first screen vamp (c.1885-1955).
i Muriel is muddling the lyrics from a popular tune by Irving Berlin (1888-1989).
j Fictional or historical sirens.
k In Greek mythology, a beautiful youth kidnapped by the gods to serve as a cup-bearer and, according to some versions, as a lover.
l Gustave Flaubert’s classic novel, published in 1869, about a young man’s unrequited love for a married woman.
m Reference to a theory that German zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) promulgated ; it hypothesized that the embryonic development (ontogeny) of an animal repeats the evolutionary development of its ancestors (phylogeny).
n Stylized drawings of young women that illustrator Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944) created for many popular magazines at the turn of the century.
o Secret clubs at Harvard and Yale, respectively.
p Silent film star Mary Pickford (1893-1979) was dubbed America’s first sweetheart ; she also produced many of her own films and helped found the motion picture production corporation United Artists.
q Mathematical theorem.
r From “A Forsaken Garden,” by British poet Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909).
s Although he wrote “Celt” and “Irishman,” Fitzgerald most likely meant instead to refer to the “Sicilian” who appears on pages 255 and 267.
t Poem by Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909).
u Fictitious social club.
v Heavyweight champion prizefighters during the 1910s and 1920s.
w From Odes 3.1, by first century B.C. Roman poet Horace. The full Latin phrase odi profanum vulgus et arceo, meaning “I hate the vulgar rabble and keep them at a distance.”
x Fictitious movie stars.
y Fitzgerald’s first novel, a best-seller.
z Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) was Fitzgerald’s favorite writer.
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