The Beautiful and Damned

Exploring the decadence of Jazz Age New York through a fictionalised
version of his own marriage to Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald's
"The Beautiful and the Damned" includes an introduction by Geoff Dyer in
"Penguin Modern Classics". Anthony Patch and his wife Gloria are the
essence of Jazz Age glamour. A brilliant and magnetic couple, they fling
themselves at life with an energy that is thrilling. New York is a
playground where they dance and drink for days on end. Their marriage is
a passionate theatrical performance; they are young, rich, alive and
lovely and they intend to inherit the earth. But as money becomes tight,
their marriage becomes impossible. And with their inheritance still
distant, Anthony and Gloria must face reality; they may be beautiful -
but they are also damned. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) has acquired a
mythical status in American literary history, and his masterwork "The
Great Gatsby" is considered by many to be the 'great American novel'. In
1920 he married Zelda Sayre, dubbed 'the first American Flapper', and
their traumatic marriage and Zelda's gradual descent into insanity
became the leading influence on his writing. As well as many short
stories, Fitzgerald wrote five novels "This Side of Paradise", "The
Great Gatsby", "The Beautiful and the Damned", "Tender is the Night"
and, incomplete at the time of his death, "The Last Tycoon". After his
death "The New York Times" said of him that 'in fact and in the literary
sense he created a "generation"'. If you enjoyed "The Beautiful and the
Damned", you might like John Dos Passos' "Manhattan Transfer", also
available in "Penguin Classics". "A prose that has the tough delicacy of
a garnet". ("New York Review of Books").