Fitzgerald's first novel, reprinted in the handsome Everyman's Library series of literary classic, uses numerous formal experiments to tell the story of Amory Blaine, as he grows up during the crazy years following the First World War. It also contains a new introduction by Craig Raine that describes critical and popular reception of the book when it came out in 1920.


From Publishers Weekly
Fitzgerald's first novel, about a coterie of Princeton socialites, appears in a 75th anniversary edition. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Fitzgerald is having a big year (see News, LJ, November 1, p. 16). Not only were three scholarly titles published to celebrate his recent centenary (LJ 9/1/96), but this, his first novel, has now entered into public domain. Publishers are quick to take advantage of the opportunity, and two other editions of This Side have already appeared (Classic Returns, LJ 4/15/96). Though the most no-frills of the bunch, this version is also by far the cheapest.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
F. Scott Fitzgerald's first big hit appealed to the hedonistic youth of The Jazz Age, its immaturity aiding its popularity. Sorely dated, it nonetheless contains vigorous writing and strong characterization. It's a romantic self-portrait of a time in which the hero enters Princeton as a spoiled brat and, after several love affairs, instructive friendships and intellectual awakenings, matures, if that's the right word, into a penniless and sadder but wiser copywriter. Energetic Dick Hill has a good time with this formless novel. In so doing, he chews up a lot of scenery, but the grandiloquent author would probably approve. Indeed, he manages to take the edge off of the "romantic egoists" who so charmed one generation while seeming obnoxious to the current one. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

FROM OUR EDITORS

This story of a privileged but aimless young man traces his formative years in the Midwest and at Princeton, then follows him as he is dumped unceremoniously into WWI and an everyday world at complete odds with his lofty aspirations.

ANNOTATION

The story of Amory Blaine's adolescence and undergraduate days at Princeton, This Side of Paradise captures the essence of an American generation struggling to define itself in the aftermath of World War I and the destruction of "the old order."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Published in 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise, became the novel that defined an era and launched his literary career. This is the story of Amory Blaine, "romantic egotist," and his journey from prep school to Princeton to the First World War. This dazzling chronicle of youth and the Jazz Age remains bitingly relevant decades later.

SYNOPSIS

First published in 1920, This Side of Paradise marks the beginning of the career of one of the greatest writers of the first half of the twentieth century. In this remarkable achievement, F. Scott Fitzgerald displays his unparalleled wit and keen social insight in his portrayal of college life through the struggles and doubts of Amory Blaine, a self-proclaimed genius with a love of knowledge and a penchant for the romantic. As Amory journeys into adulthood and leaves the aristocratic egotism of his youth behind, he becomes painfully aware of his lost innocence and the new sense of responsibility and regret that has taken its place.
Clever and wonderfully written, This Side of Paradise is a fascinating novel about the changes of the Jazz Age and their effects on the individual. It is a complex portrait of a versatile mind in a restless generation that reveals rich ideas crucial to an understanding of the 1920s and timeless truths about the human need for--and fear of--change.
"A very enlivening book indeed, a book really brilliant and glamorous, making as agreeable reading as could be asked . . . There are clever things, keen and searching things, amusingly young and mistaken things, beautiful things and pretty things . . . and truly inspired and elevated things, an astonishing abundance of each, in THIS SIDE OF PARADISE. You could call it the youthful Byronism that is normal in a man of the author's type, working out through a well-furnished intellect of unusual critical force."
--The Evening Post, 1920
"An astonishing and refreshing book . . . Mr. Fitzgerald has recorded with a good deal of felicity and a disarming frankness the adventures and developmentsof a curious and fortunate American youth. . . . [It is] delightful and encouraging to find a novel which gives us in the accurate terms of intellectual honesty a reflection of American undergraduate life. At last the revelation has come. We have the constant young American occupation--the 'petting party'--frankly and humorously in our literature."
--The New Republic, 1920

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly