Throughout the winter and spring of 1921–22, Fitzgerald wrote and rewrote various drafts of The Beautiful and Damned. Fitzgerald modeled the spoiled characters of Anthony Patch on himself and Gloria Patch on—in his words—the chill-minded selfishness of his wife. The novel draws circumstantially upon the early years of Fitzgeralds’ tempestuous marriage following the meteoric success of the author’s first novel This Side of Paradise. Fitzgerald divided the work in pre-publication into three major parts: «The Pleasant Absurdity of Things», «The Romantic Bitterness of Things», and «The Ironic Tragedy of Things». In the final book form, however, the novel consists of untitled «books» of three chapters each.
Having digested criticisms of his debut novel This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald sought to improve upon the form and construction of his prose and to venture into a new genre of fiction altogether. Consequently, he revised The Beautiful and Damned based on editorial suggestions from his friend Edmund Wilson and his editor Max Perkins. While reviewing the manuscript, Perkins praised the noticeable development of Fitzgerald’s literary skill. Fitzgerald dedicated the novel to the Anglo-Irish writer Shane Leslie, drama critic George Jean Nathan, and his editor Perkins «in appreciation of much literary help and encouragement».
While finalizing the novel, Fitzgerald traveled with his wife to Europe, and his agent Harold Ober sold the serialization rights for The Beautiful and Damned to Metropolitan Magazine for $7,000. The chapters were serialized by Metropolitan from September 1921 to March 1922. Shortly before the novel’s publication in book form by Charles Scribner’s Sons, Zelda Fitzgerald made a sketch in which she envisioned the dust-jacket for her husband’s novel. Her sketch depicted a naked flapper sitting in a cocktail glass. Ultimately, the publisher would use an illustration by William E. Hill for the dust-jacket. On March 4, 1922, the book was published by Scribner’s. The publisher prepared an initial print run of approximately 20,000 copies, and The Beautiful and Damned sold well enough to warrant additional print runs reaching 50,000 copies.
Critical reception
With his second work, The Beautiful and Damned, Fitzgerald discarded the trappings of collegiate bildungsromans as epitomized in his preceding novel This Side of Paradise and crafted an «ironical-pessimistic» sic novel in the style of Thomas Hardy’s oeuvre. The relentless pessimism of the novel would become a point of contention with many critics. Louise Field of The New York Times found the novel showed Fitzgerald to be talented but too pessimistic. Likewise, critic Fanny Butcher lamented that Fitzgerald had traded the bubbly giddiness of This Side of Paradise for a sequel which plumbed «the bitter dregs of reality.»
With the publication of this sophomore effort, critics promptly noticed an evolution in the artistry and quality of Fitzgerald’s prose. Whereas This Side of Paradise had been universally castigated by critics for its chaotic prose, The Beautiful and Damned displayed greater form and construction as well as an awakened literary consciousness. Paul Rosenfeld commented that certain passages easily rivaled D. H. Lawrence in their artistry. Remarking upon Fitzgerald’s improved craftsmanship, literary critic H. L. Mencken wrote in his The Smart Set review: «There are a hundred signs in it of serious purpose and unquestionable skill. Even in its defects there is proof of hard striving. Fitzgerald ceases to be a wunderkind, and begins to come into his maturity».
Despite this significant improvement in form and construction over This Side of Paradise, critics deemed The Beautiful and Damned to be far less ground-breaking than his debut work. Whereas critics felt that This Side of Paradise had pulsed with originality, they were less ecstatic over The Beautiful and Damned. Fanny Butcher feared that «Fitzgerald had a brilliant future ahead of him in 1920» but, «unless he does something better… it will be behind him in 1923.»
Other reviewers such as John V. A. Weaver recognized that the vast improvement in literary form and construction between his first and second novels augured great prospects for Fitzgerald’s future. Weaver predicted that, as Fitzgerald matured into a better writer, he would become regarded as one of the greatest authors of American literature. Consequently, expectations arose that Fitzgerald would significantly improve with his third work, The Great Gatsby.
Over a century later, many literary critics typically consider The Beautiful and Damned to be among Fitzgerald’s weaker novels. During the final decade of his life, Fitzgerald remarked upon the novel’s lack of quality in a letter to his wife: «I wish The Beautiful and Damned had been a maturely written book because it was all true. We ruined ourselves—I have never honestly thought that we ruined each other.»
Critical analysis
Critics have analyzed The Beautiful and Damned as a morality tale, a meditation on love, money and decadence, and a social documentary. Such analyses often focus upon the characters’ disproportionate absorption on their past—a fixation which tends to consume them in the present. The theme of absorption in the past also continues through much of Fitzgerald’s later works, perhaps best summarized in the final line of his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby: «So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past», which is inscribed on Fitzgerald’s tombstone shared with Zelda in Maryland.
According to Fitzgerald scholar James L. W. West III, The Beautiful and Damned is concerned with the question of ‘vocation’: ‘What does one do with oneself when one has nothing to do?’ According to West, «Fitzgerald applied the question of vocation largely to his male characters, but he saw that women too needed meaningful roles in life.» Fitzgerald presents Gloria as a woman whose vocation is nothing more than to catch a husband. After her marriage to Anthony, Gloria’s sole vocation is to slide into indulgence and indolence, while her husband’s sole vocation is to wait for his inheritance, during which time he slides into depression and alcoholism.
Publicity stunt
In April 1922, one month after the book’s publication, Zelda Fitzgerald was asked by Scott’s friend, humorist Burton Rascoe, to review the book for The New-York Tribune as a publicity stunt. Rascoe asked Zelda to pretend to review it and to insert deliberately «a rub here and there» in order to «cause a great deal of comment.» Per Rascoe’s instructions, Zelda titled her review «Friend Husband’s Latest» and wrote «partly as a joke» that Fitzgerald had purloined a page of her diary:
«It also seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and also scraps of letters, which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. Mr. Fitzgerald—I believe that is how he spells his name—seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.»
As a consequence of this statement written in a satirical review by Zelda, various individuals such as Penelope Green have speculated that Zelda was perhaps a co-author of the novel, but most Fitzgerald scholars such as Matthew J. Bruccoli stated there is no evidence whatsoever to support this claim. Bruccoli states:
«Zelda does not say she collaborated on The Beautiful and Damned: only that Fitzgerald incorporated a portion of her diary ‘on one page’ and that he revised ‘scraps’ of her letters. None of Fitzgerald’s surviving manuscripts shows her hand».
Adaptations
A film adaptation in 1922, directed by William A. Seiter, starred Kenneth Harlan as Anthony Patch and Marie Prevost as Gloria. The film did well at the box office, and the critical reception was generally favorable. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald disliked the film, and he later wrote to a friend: «It’s by far the worst movie I’ve ever seen in my life-cheap, vulgar, ill-constructed and shoddy. We were utterly ashamed of it.»
