The New York herald. [volume], March 05, 1922, SECTION EIGHT, Image 91

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THE NEW YORK HERALD
COPYRIGHT. 1?2S, BY TIE SUK-HERALD COKPORATION
SECTION EIGHT
Mr. Fitzgerald Sees the Flapper Through
THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMMED.
By 1\ Scott Fitzgerald. Cliarlos
Worilmers Sens.
HOWEVER barren may liav<
been the wise and their old
wisdoms, Scott Fitzgerald, at
the time when he was writing "This
Side of Paradise," found amplo com
fort in the doings of feck'.css and
bravo hearted young. Amory
Blaine, lite another Playboy, went
romancing through a foolish world,
kissing innumerable girls between
? o'clock and midnight, drinking
wittily with his fellows from mid
night until the milkman brought up
the dawn, discarding old lores and
dead l*Iiefs like a brisk young
snake, who every month might
slough off his dry shell for a new
shining green skin. Bren the
breaking of his heart was a sound
to be listened to and enjoyed tike
the re?t. Mr. Fitzgerald has in the
meanwhile lost none of his alertness
in observing the manners and
speech of his contemporaries, but
he no longer linds any great pleas
ure in the American scene. Life
it seems is now meaningless; the
beautiful are damned: the glamour
he once saw was only a gauze cur
tain lowered before the stage to
? onceal the fact that those twilight
nymphs were, after all, ouly middle
aged chorus ladies.
Anthony Patch, who succeeds
Amory Blaine as a figure through
whom Mr. Fitzgerald may write of
himself, is when "The Beautiful
and Damned" opens 2,"?, and it is
already two years "since irony, the
Holy Ghost of this later day," has,
theoretically at least, descended
upon him. Irony was the tinal
polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab
of the clothes brush, a sort of in
tellectual 'There!'?yet at the brink
of this story he has as yet gone no
further than the conscious stage."
Since the younger generation, as
they are commonly called, began
finding publishers and appearing on
lecture platforms, this word irony
lias been heard with such frequency
that I have begun to wonder just
what these young men mean by it.
Mr. Fitzgerald invokes it, and
Stephen Vincent Benet inscribes it
on all his gay banners, and even
Oonald Ogden Stewart is frequently
heard to murmur it between whacks
with his buffoon's bladder. And I
am a litNe confused, for clearly they
do not mean that faculty which al
lows one to smile appreciatively
when Tragedy enters wearing a pro
pitious mask rnd speaking equivo
cal phrases. Their irony is not that
good counsellor of Anatolc France,
who, in smiling, renders life a
thing to be loved the more, who
rails neither at love nor beauty,
who teaches us to mock Uris and
fools, which we should, without her,
ho feeble enough to bate. As I say,
I am a little uncertain just what
these young men mean when they
hold themselves to speak ironically.
For they have not that superb de
tachment which would allow them
to expose the littleness of their char
acters without ever seeming them
selves to rush in with a measuring
rod, their mockery is not dispas
sionately gay, they cannot allow
circumstances to slaughter their
heroes without applying a dagger
or two with their own hands.
II.
With Mr. Fitzgerald, if one is to
judge by his latest book, he means
to say that Anthony has found out
that life is purposeless, beauty in
ro way allied with the truth, all
effort, even of the intellect, unrea
sonable. Anthony is, when he is
presented to us, a man "aware that
there could be no honor and yet had
honor, who knew the sophistry of
courage and yet was brave." Later,
it is true, he turns out to be an ar
rant coward on Occasion and dis
ports himself "most dishonorably, i
Of irony he never either in the be- j
ginning nor at the end achieves
more than a passing glimpse.
As a matter of fact, Anthony
Comstock Patch is a rather futile
young man with u
pallid skin and
dark polished hair,
shy enough in bin
extreme youth to
hare spent his tune
among many book*
without deriving
from them either
erudition or rich
ness of mind. It is
his inherent lazi- ,
ness rather than a
fine skepticism y
which prevents him
from ever acconi- :?
plishing more than
a single precious
essay toward his
volume on the
Renaissance Popes.
It is his uxorious
ness which makes
of him a pathetic
adjunct to the more
vivid Gloria, the
thinness of his
zest for life which
makes him turn,
more a n d m o r e
thirstily, toward al
cohol. Sophisticat
ed, he is constantly
under the illusion
that he is rather
superior ill intellect
and character to
the persons about
him; disillusioned.
he is at the mercy
of circumstances.
In 1913 he is
living in an apart
, ment in the Fifties of New Yurk
| trying to prove that ail American
; can live idly and gracefully on
j seven thousand a year. He is awak
ened each morning by a frayed
' English servant with the exquis
itely appropriate name of Bounds;
he arises to hathe in his mirrored
and crimson carpeted bathroom; lie
arranges his impeccable toilet and
saunters forth to savor life effort
j lessly. He pays hasty and unwilling
i visits to his grandfather, Adam J.
j Patch, once known as a financier
j who had risen by none too credit-1
| able means, now us a reformer em
| ploying a retinue of paid moralists.
He loafs and invites his soul with
.two friends?Maury Noble, iniper
turbably feline, self-consciously su
; perior, animated1 by an undisguised
boredom, ami Richard Caramel, a
bulgy young novelist, with oue
brown and one topaz eye, who is
destined before he is 30 to have
written a number of utterly srlly
novels which he will believe to be
wise.
Comes then into bis life one
Gloria?as Mr. Fitzgerald with a
recently acquired fondness for the
D. W. Griffith order of words might
well say?"Coast to Coast Gloria,"
she of the bobbed hair and the
many sounding kisses, with lips ear
F. Scott Fitzgerald.
mined and sweetly profane. with an
; enduring taste tor gumdrops and
| swiftly passing fancies for attrac
; tive young men. She in Rosalind
of "This Side of Paradise" seen
| through slightly older and less ro
mantic eyes; she is the girl of the
Off Shore l'irate portrayed at full
length with a more careful treat
ment of light and shade and more
conscious accumulation of detail.
Born in Kansas City, Mo., of a Jiil
phist mother and father engaged in
the celluloid business, she has been
[ brought to her twenty third year in
| surroundings of inescapable vul
garity. She has the wit to perceive
that there is something tawdry in
her prettiness; she has not the in
' nate perception of form which
> would have allowed her to become
beautiful. It has obviously been i
witbiu Mr. Fitzgerald's intention to
give her a touch of that immemorial
loveliness which is in Donna Rita '
despite her peasant origin, a sug-?
gestion of that power to drive young ?
men wild which was Zuleika Dob j
son's for all her rococo vulgarity.'
He has allowed her a sensitiveness j
to sensuous impressions, a more j
delicate perception tliau might be
eipected from a flapper with a past
so monotonous in its promiscuity,
(ilrtrik lias the hard and solitary
will of a child and
a child's petulance
and vanity. Spoiled,
contemptuous, will
tnl, she feels pa
t b e t i c a 11 y th:.t
somewhere her
beauty might have
had its due; here
she mast take,
whatever adulatiou
> conies her way, nor!
psj* as if the admirer
be second rate or
worse. The book
belongs to her as
the earlier volume
belonged to Amory
Blaine. Not be
cause she is the
more vivid charac
ter than Anthony
but because she is
more vividly imag
ined. more coiisist
e n 11 y presented.
There is something
about him that sug
gests that be has
been made out of
too many and too
discordant bits of
observation, like
the philosophy of
W i 11 i a m Rlake,
which, as T. S.
Eliot says, was
made out of the
odds and ends he
happened to lind in
his Docket.
At their first
contact Anthony is
stirred from his carefully composed
calm and l'or i while Mr. Fitzgerald
return* to his earlier moods to man
age their meetings with romance.
"OIj, for him there was no
doubt. He had arisen and paced
the floor in sheer ecstasy. That
such a girl should be; should
poise curled in a corner of the
couch like a swallow newly
landed from a clean, swift flight,
watching him with inscrutable
eyes. He would stop his pacing
and, half shy each time at first,
drop his arm around her and find
her kiss.
"She was fascinating, he told
her. He had never met any one
like her before. He besought her
jauntily but earnestly to send him
away; lie didn't want to fall in
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Mr. Fitzgerald Sees the Flapper Through.
A Survey by John Peale Bishop. . , i
Col. Repington in Modified Indiscretion.
A Survey by Louis A. Springer . . 2
The New York That Was: Seen Through a
Great Store. By Arthur Bartlett Maurice.. 3
What Are the Great Detective Stories, and
Why? By Arthur B. Keeve, creator of
"Craig Kennedy" 4
The Americanization of Edwin Bjorkman.
By Richard Burton.. 5 !
Knut Hamsun Returns. By Edwin Bjorkman. 6 '
Page
The Whispering Gallery. By Donald Adams. 7
Chronicle and Comment 8
Authors' Works and Their Ways 8
The World of Letters as Others See It 9
The Book Factory. By Edward Anthony. ... 9
New Fiction in Varied Forms 10-11-12
Industry and Welfare 13
Literary Pilgrimages at Home and Abroad.
II. Embankment Chambers, where Kipling
Lived as "The Man From Nowhere" 14
Books of the Week 14
Various Currents of Religious Thought 15
! love. He wasn't coining to see her
any more ? already 6he haa
haunted too many of his ways.
"What delicious romance! Ifi?
true reaction was neither fear nor
sorrow -only this deep delight ta
being with her that colored tba
banality of his words and mad*
the mawkish teem sad antf
po*turing seem wise "
III.
They marry and Mr. Fitzgerald
takes up his theme in earnest. H*
la prepared to show that this die
integration of a young man vho>,
? for all his lack of illusion, cannot
bear the contact with life, of u giri
who for all her hardness of hearl
cannot gracefully survive the pas#
; iiiR of her flrst youth.
The middle portions of the book
are at ont o too long and too har
ried. That is, incidents are pre
sented diverting in themselve#
which hare no bearing on the
theme. And in those places where
the material presented is essential
to the story, the deductions made
are too violeut. tl.e transitions to?
abrupt. One is hardly prepared
that Anthony should, even under
the influence of Gloria, his own idle
! ness and a diminishing income
turn po quickly from his pleasant
nonchalance to so consistent a dip
soman ia. Gloria's beauty fades out
and her nerves wear thin at a
'strangely early age.
Yet, taken as a whole, it seems to
me that the book represents botli
i in plan and execution an advance
on "This Side of Paradise." If.
stylistically speaking, it is not rc
well written, neither is it so care
lessly written. The minor charac
ters are admirably foreshortened:
the criticism applied to them seeui?
at times unfortunately Menckeniao.
the art through which they are
i shown often comes too close to bur
lesque. The alcoholic interlude5"
are. if frequent, agreeably beady.
The humor with which the quarrels
of Gloria and Anthony are touched
the satiric description of army lif*
in a Southern conscript camp, An
thony's adventures iu bond selling
are excellently done, with skill ana
a fine zest and whips adroitly a<>
J plied.
In order to arrive at those qua*
ities in Scott Fitzgerald which are
I valuable it may not he unprofitable
I to compare him with an Englifih
I man like Aldous Huxley. Both ar?
' of an age and both have a gift of
! wit and phautasy, an eye for th*
I absurdities of their contemporaries.
1 Huxley has erudition, a rich knowl
' edge of contemporary literature,
j taste even when dealing with the
indecencies of lire, the attitude of
the philosopher even iu contemplat
ing a sow and her litter of pig?.
But he is exceedingly weary, hia
j grace is that of a man well bred but
j tired. Whereas Fitzgerald is at
the moment of announcing the
i meaninglessness of life magnifi
cently alive. His ideas are too
I often treated like paper crackers,
things to make a gay and prettr
noise with and then be cast aside:
j he is frequently at the mercy or
' words with which he has only a
nodding acquaintance; his aesthe
tics arc faulty; his literary taste is
at times extremely bad. The chap
ter labeled "Symposium," pictori
ally good, does not seem clearly
thought out or burdened with wis
dom. The episode entitled "Flaah
Back in Paradise" might, except for
j its wit, have been conceived in the
mind of a scenario writer. But
j these are flaws of vulgarity iu o:<4
; who ?e awkward with hi- o?|
' vigor. JOHN PEA!.1*1