Riassunto
Riassunto di Belli e dannati
A chi è rivolto
For readers who love character studies, city life in the 1920s, and stories of love under pressure. A good next step after The Great Gatsby, it explores wealth, glamour and a marriage under strain.
Che cos’è questo libro
The Beautiful and Damned is a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1922. It was his second novel, written after the success of This Side of Paradise and in the first loud years of his marriage to Zelda. It follows one married couple in New York across about a decade, from 1913 into the years after the First World War. They are young, handsome, charming and sure that a fortune is waiting for them.
Anthony Patch is a Harvard graduate with taste and no job. Gloria Gilbert is a girl from the Midwest whose beauty is her whole confidence. He is the heir to a grandfather who has made a vast fortune. They fall in love, marry and settle into a life of parties, drinks, dinners and travel, all paid for by money they have not yet received. Fitzgerald asks a plain question. What happens to people who do nothing but wait?
The book gives you a sharp picture of the Jazz Age at its start, with its restaurants, theatres, train rides and country houses. It also gives you a study of how two bright people wear themselves down. You will meet a small circle of friends who help and hurt them. Let us begin where Anthony begins, in a Manhattan apartment, certain that his life will start tomorrow.
In questo riassunto
- 1Anthony Patch waits for his grandfather's fortuneFree
- 2Friends who watch and shape the hero
- 3Gloria Gilbert enters, and wins him quickly
- 4A marriage built on pleasure and a promise
- 5Marietta, wild parties and the drift of drink
- 6Adam Patch pays a visit that changes everything
- 7War, strain and the fading of love
- 8What the novel says about idleness and vanity
- 9How Fitzgerald builds and tells the story
Punto chiave 1 di 9
Anthony Patch waits for his grandfather's fortune
The novel opens in 1913, when Anthony Patch is twenty-five. He has finished at Harvard, he has a small income, and he lives in a comfortable New York apartment. He thinks of himself as a serious man of taste. He talks of writing a history of the Middle Ages, and he reads and sketches ideas, but he never quite begins.
His whole future rests on one person, his grandfather Adam Patch. Adam is a rich old man who made his money in business and has since turned to public causes. He is a reformer who lectures on morals and campaigns against drink and vice. Anthony is his only close heir, and the old man's money hangs over the young man like weather.
This is the key to Anthony. He is not poor, and he is not lazy in a loud way. He simply believes that effort is vulgar when a fortune is coming anyway. Why should he sell bonds or take a job he despises, when thirty or forty years of ease are almost in his hands? He lets his days run on, and he thinks that is a kind of wisdom.
Fitzgerald does not make him a villain. Anthony is gentle, witty and often kind, and he has fine feelings about beauty and the meaning of life. But he is also vain and nervous, and he hides his fear of failure behind irony. Early scenes show him with his friends at dinners and in train cars, talking with great ease about nothing in particular.
The point of this first stretch is the setup. A young man has everything except a purpose, and the book will watch what that lack costs him. Notice how often Anthony says he will do something soon. Listen for the way the word soon grows heavier as the years pass. Then a girl comes into his life, and the waiting starts to include her.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
- Nothing to pay today · Renews every year
- We email you before you pay
- Cancel online in two clicks
Who’s who
- Anthony Patch
- A Harvard graduate and Adam Patch's grandson, Anthony lives comfortably while waiting for an inheritance rather than pursuing work.
- Gloria Gilbert
- Dick Caramel's beautiful cousin, Gloria attracts Anthony with her daring manner and fierce attachment to pleasure and admiration.
- Adam Patch
- Anthony's wealthy grandfather controls the family fortune and campaigns sternly against drinking, idleness, and loose living.
- Maury Noble
- Anthony's witty, detached friend treats ambition and belief with polished mockery rather than taking either seriously.
- Dick Caramel
- Anthony's friend and Gloria's cousin, Dick is a working writer who introduces the two to each other.
- Joseph Bloeckman
- An ambitious man in the film business, Joseph takes an interest in Gloria and moves within her social circle.
- Edward Shuttleworth
- Adam Patch's eager secretary serves Anthony's grandfather and enjoys his position close to the family's wealth.
- Dorothy Raycroft
- Known as Dot, Dorothy is a young Southern woman whom Anthony meets during his military service.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 129,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 8 h 35 min
- Listening time14 h 15 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 14 other languages