This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Page: 1
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE
By F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
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 DIBUTANTE
2. EXPERIMENTS IN CONVALESCENCE
3. YOUNG IRONY
4. THE SUPERCILIOUS SACRIFICE
5. THE EGOTIST BECOMES A PERSONAGE
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 Bl