I don't really have any explanation for why it took me so long to read This Side of Paradise. It wasn't necessarily that long, but it was just the kind of book that I found myself reading in stops and spurts. When I would get into the story, I would motor through 50-100 pages, and then not pick it up again for 3 weeks. I dunno. I guess it just didn't grab me enough to make it a page-turner that I couldn't put down.
This Side of Paradise, the title taken from a line in the poem Tiare Tahiti by Rupert Brooke, is about Amory Blaine, a young man born and raised in Wisconsin and Minnesota in the early 1900s to a slightly eccentric mother. Amory attends a private school out east and eventually Princeton for college. Amory is incredibly good-looking and very witty and charming; he is very aware of this and the novel acknowledges him to be an egoist. I think even Amory uses this word to describe himself. But Amory is continually conflicted. He's very intellectual but doesn't want to just fall into the trappings that every educated man falls into. He is close friends with Monsignor Darcy who knew his mother, and is conflicted about religion in his many talks with him. In spite of his passion for knowledge, he struggles at school. He doesn't seem to want to conform, but he also isn't a rule-breaker either. The central crux of the novel is Amory attempting to truly discover who he is.
The book has an interlude in the middle, during which Amory goes off to fight in World War I. His experiences there are not described in the book, and the second half of the novel picks up when he returns. It certainly seems that Amory has been affected by the war, as his behavior is a little more reckless, but this isn't explicitly stated. He falls passionately in love with Rosalind, his roommate's sister, but she breaks it off with him, stating that she needs a wealthy man (most of Amory's inheritance is now gone) and knowing that they will only destroy each other and their love in the long run. This wrecks Amory and he swings into a self-destructive phase, going on a bender and quitting his job. Once he sobers up (forced upon him by prohibition), Amory wanders a little aimlessly, staying with various relatives. During this time, he meets Eleanor, a woman very much his intellectual equal. They certainly seem to be very well-matched for each other (even though Eleanor might have a little bit of a mental health issue), but Amory still abandons her and abandons all hope for love. The novel ends with Amory continuing to try find himself since he seems to have nothing of value left.
I think the main reason that I wasn't swept away by this book was because I didn't have a lot of sympathy for the character of Amory. He always felt himself to be superior - to his classmates, to all of the women he had trysts with, to his mother. The only person that may have avoided this fate was Monsignor Darcy, but Amory even looked down on him for his abiding to organized religion. So his whole personal quest of discovery seemed so self-absorbed and narcissistic, it just annoyed the hell out of me. He had this bitter view of the world, but all of the negative impacts in his life were of his own doing, yet he never seems to take responsibility for his own actions and decisions.
While Fitzgerald's writing is quite lovely, I just didn't grasp on to the subject matter that much. I had read somewhere that people felt this novel was a little autobiographical about Fitzgerald, and I could see that. But curious if Amory Blaine was a portrait of himself or if he wrote the character as a more cynical version of himself.
Anywho, onward and forward. Next up, I'm taking a big departure for myself and starting The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott. Narrative poems are DEFINITELY not my jam, so I fully anticipate being on the struggle bus with this one. But I'll have to just soldier through. 209 to go.
On a completely unrelated side note, I discovered at the beginning of the year that I'll be let go from my job (I either move to NJ or get "severed"). I'm secretly delighting in having nothing but free time to read unabashedly before I actively start looking for another job. So brace yourself for a flurry of posts come mid-March!
