Thursday, July 8, 2010

Slow Going?

The book club is a tad idle. I myself have found reading this novel tortuous at times, and once I finished Book One I decided to take a little break. Funny, when "Blockhead" in the book discusses how psychological novels with thin or absent plots are useless to the film industry, I realized Fitzgerald was trying to get me to laugh at him when all I wanted to do was slap him on the back and congratulate him for trying to get The Beautiful and Damned moving a bit!

Please take your time with Book One. There really are some interesting insights into what it means to be a writer, what it means to be an American, what it means to be beautiful (if not damned, yet). Please add your comments to the Book One discussion below. We won't start on Book Two until we've seen a little action on Book One.

Grace

1 comment:

  1. I agree. I have not enjoyed this one nearly as much as other Fitzgerald novels. At least, it takes a lot more work with less obvious reward. I can see why it's just not that famous.

    On the other hand, a sentence or paragraph comes up once in a while that is just wonderful. I do love the chapter about Anthony's loneliness -- Turbulence. The conversations between him and Gloria are so very self-centered and shallow.

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