This Side of Paradise

In This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald gives us Amory Blaine, who, from boyhood through his early 20s, is on a quest for his identity, his philosophy, and his sense of place in a world never quite his own, a world in which he moves with barely concealed ego-fueled disgust and contempt. Fitzgerald's breakthrough novel, written in 1920 when the author was 23, manages to be both a thinly veiled autobiography and a sincere attempt by Fitzgerald to get into the head of the young, privileged personages of his time. This Side of Paradise follows the arc of Amory's life from a shakily moneyed Midwestern childhood through a tortuous tenancy at St. Regis prep school, on to the almost mystical grounds of Princeton, finally arriving in the real world of labor and responsibility. Along the way Amory must come to terms with that great irritant in his life: women. Neither as a boy nor as a young man does Amory come fully to grips with his bipolar reactions to the schoolgirls, starry-eyed debut