Symposium

Fitzgerald is excellent in "The Beautiful and Damned". His prose has a wonderful rhythm and brilliant intensity. But his theme is what I found to be astounding. For the storyline is very depressing. Coming on half of the novel one feels despair and the faintest hope that the characters will achieve some sort of rebirth. That Anthony would just learn to suffer in the smallest of ways, through a days work, and thereby start a life set on discipline and advancement. But contrary to the back cover description; the novel is not a good satire if it is meant to be one, in fact it is lousy. For Anthony falls to ruins, everything is right on track for a good moral satire, then right when you think hes done--he gets everything he was fighting for and succeeds in staying firm to his vision of life. It is a beautiful and damned vision, but as an up lifter of the values of a working existence, it was not. For the key to this is the Symposium not of love but of self and self futility.