The Beautiful and Damned

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The work that signaled Fitzgerald's maturity as a storyteller and novelist, "The Beautiful and Damned" is a devastating portrait of the excesses of the Jazz Age. Anthony Comstock Patch is a Harvard-educated gallant who leisurely aspires to author a book as he awaits an enormous inheritance upon his grandfather's death. Not quite gorgeous, but considered handsome here and there, he thinks himself an exceptional young man -- sophisticated, well-adjusted, and destined to achieve some subtle accomplishment deemed worthy by the elect. Gloria is a sparkling young socialite and a rare beauty. Armed with an incisive wit, she's at once level and reckless. Patch's impassioned marriage to Gloria is fueled by alcohol and consumed by greed. The dazzling couple race through a series of alcohol-induced fiascoes -- first in hilarity, and later in despair. "The Beautiful and Damned" is a piercing and tragic depiction of New York nightlife, reckless ambition, squandered talent, and the faux aristocracy of the nouveaux riches. Published in 1922 on the heels of Fitzgerald's first novel, "This Side of Paradise, " it gives evidence to the sharp social insight and breathtaking lyricism of one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.