The Project Gutenberg EBook of This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Title: This Side of Paradise

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Posting Date: August 6, 2008 [EBook #805]
Release Date: February, 1997

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THIS SIDE OF PARADISE ***

Produced by David Reed, and Ken Reeder

THIS SIDE OF PARADISE

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

... Well this side of Paradise!...
There's little comfort in the wise.
--Rupert Brooke.

Experience is the name so many people
give to their mistakes.
--Oscar Wilde.

To SIGOURNEY FAY

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE: The Romantic Egotist
1. AMORY, SON OF BEATRICE
2. SPIRES AND GARGOYLES
3. THE EGOTIST CONSIDERS
4. NARCISSUS OFF DUTY

[INTERLUDE: MAY, 1917-FEBRUARY, 1919. ]

BOOK TWO: The Education of a Personage
1. THE DEBUTANTE
2. EXPERIMENTS IN CONVALESCENCE
3. YOUNG IRONY
4. THE SUPERCILIOUS SACRIFICE
5. THE EGOTIST BECOMES A PERSONAGE

BOOK ONE--The Romantic Egotist

CHAPTER 1. Amory, Son of Beatrice

Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the
stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while. His father, an
ineffectual, inarticulate man with a taste for Byron and a habit of
drowsing over the Encyclopedia Britannica, grew wealthy at thirty
through the death of two elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers, and
in the first flush of feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harbor
and met Beatrice O'Hara. In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down to
posterity his height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver at
crucial moments, these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory.
For many years he hovered in the background of his family's life, an
unassertive figure with a face half-obliterated by lifeless, silky hair,
continually occupied in "taking care" of his wife, continually harassed
by the idea that he didn't and couldn't understand her.

But Beatrice Blaine! There was a woman!