On September 16, eight days before Fitzgerald’s 23rd birthday, Scribner’s accepted the novel for publication. Now able to express their opinions, lower-ranking editors at Scribner’s opined that they believed Fitzgerald’s novel represented the «voice of a new age». Soon after Scribner’s decision, Perkins wrote a congratulatory letter to Fitzgerald: «I am very glad, personally, to be able to write to you that we are all for publishing your book This Side of Paradise… I think that you have improved it enormously… The book is so different that it is hard to prophesy how it will sell but we are all for taking a chance and supporting it with vigor.»
Publication and meteoric success
Upon receiving Perkin’s letter and learning of his first novel’s impending publication, Fitzgerald became euphoric. «The postman rang, and that day I quit work and ran along the streets, stopping automobiles to tell friends and acquaintances about it—my novel This Side of Paradise was accepted for publication,» he recalled, «I paid off my terrible small debts, bought a suit, and woke up every morning with a world of ineffable top-loftiness and promise.» After Scott informed Zelda of his novel’s upcoming publication, a shocked Zelda replied contritely: «I hate to say this, but I don’t think I had much confidence in you at first…. It’s so nice to know you really can do things».
This Side of Paradise debuted on March 26, 1920. Advertised in newspapers with the slogan, «A Novel About Flappers Written For Philosophers,» the initial printing of 3,000 copies sold out in three days. Although not among the ten best-selling novels of the year, the 23-year-old F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel proved to be his most popular work and became a cultural sensation across the United States, making him a household name. The book went through twelve printings in 1920 and 1921, totaling 49,075 copies. Despite this success, the novel provided only modest income for Fitzgerald. Copies sold for $1.75 (equivalent to $27 in 2023), and he earned 10% on the first 5,000 copies and 15% thereafter, totaling $6,200 in 1920 (equivalent to $94,298 in 2023).
Although Fitzgerald complained to his friend Burton Rascoe that «the book didn’t make me as rich as I thought it would», his new fame enabled him to earn much higher rates for his short stories, and he could now convince Zelda to marry him. Zelda resumed her engagement on the condition that he could now afford her privileged lifestyle. By the time of their wedding in April 1920, Fitzgerald claimed neither he nor Zelda still loved each other, and the early years of their marriage proved a disappointment. Despite the disappointment of his marriage, Fitzgerald had achieved the peak of his fame and cultural salience, and he recalled traveling in a taxi one afternoon through the streets of New York City and weeping when he realized he that he would never be as happy again.
Reception
Cultural sensation
Upon its publication, Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise caused a cultural sensation that sparked societal debate, and overnight, he became a national figure. He riveted the public’s attention on the promiscuous activities of their sons and daughters cavorting in the rumble seats of Bearcat roadsters and prompted a national conversation over the perceived immorality of this hedonistic younger generation. Despite the fact that Fitzgerald had composed the work nearly half a decade earlier and his novel chronicled the restrained pre-war 1910s social milieu at Princeton, the work nevertheless became popularly and inaccurately associated with the wild collegiate atmosphere of post-war 1920s America immortalized in John Held, Jr.’s satirical drawings.
With this debut novel, critics touted Fitzgerald as the first writer to turn the national spotlight upon the so-called Jazz Age generation, especially the flappers. In contrast to the older Lost Generation to which Gertrude Stein posited that Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway belonged, the Jazz Age generation were those Americans younger than Fitzgerald who had been adolescents during World War I and largely untouched by the conflict’s psychological horrors. Fitzgerald later described this younger generation as brusquely shouldering himself and his contemporaries out of the way and dancing with wild abandon into the national spotlight: «This was the generation whose girls dramatized themselves as flappers».
Due to its focus on liberated flappers and college life, Fitzgerald’s novel became a cultural phenomenon among young Americans. According to writer John O’Hara, half a million young men and women «fell in love with the book,» and, according to essayist Glenway Wescott, Fitgerald’s novel became the rallying banner of the «youth movement». The novel’s immense popularity among American youth stemmed from its frank portrayal of their chafing under the outdated social mores of Wilsonian America. Although earlier works about collegiate life had been published such as Owen Johnson’s Stover at Yale (1912), Fitzgerald’s work became heralded as «the first realistic American college novel», and young Americans viewed the novel as a guide for social conduct. Newspapers reported that young American women read the novel as a guide for their rebellious behavior, and some writers miscredited Fitzgerald’s novel with creating the cultural archetype of the flapper.
With his photograph appearing in many newspapers, the national press depicted Fitzgerald as the standard-bearer for «youth in revolt». «‘Behold a new prophet is risen, who speaketh for Youth in Revolt!» wrote The Montgomery Advertiser, describing the reaction to Fitzgerald’s novel. «All things formerly held to be beautiful, good and true are now become futile, fatuous and fabulous, and worthy of respect no more. The bob-haired girl and the mop topped boy shall teach you the Facts of Life. Go to, ye elders, hearken unto them!'» The author became identified as leading the revolt against traditional social mores of Wilsonian America and regarded as «the outstanding aggressor» in the rebellion of «flaming youth» against the «old guard».
Capitalizing on his new standing as a celebrated author with his finger on the pulse of young America, Fitzgerald gave interviews discoursing on youth culture. Declaring that World War I «had little or nothing to do» with the change in morals among young Americans and did not leave «any real lasting effect,» Fitzgerald attributed the sexual revolution among youth to a combination of popular literature by H. G. Wells and other intellectuals criticizing repressive social norms, Sigmund Freud’s sexual theories gaining salience, and the invention of the automobile allowing youths to escape parental surveillance in order to engage in premarital sex.
As a result of Fitzgerald’s new fame as a celebrated author chronicling «youth in revolt» against traditional values, social conservatives attacked the young author in the press. Heywood Broun decried Fitzgerald’s use of modern slang and attempted to discredit Fitzgerald by claiming the young author wholly fabricated his novel’s depiction of young people engaging in drunken sprees and premarital sex. An amused Fitzgerald publicly ridiculed such allegations, and he opined that such critics wished to discredit his work in order to retain their outdated conceptions of American society.
Critical reaction
The majority of critics lauded Fitzgerald’s debut novel with «wild enthusiasm», and the most enthusiastic reviewers went so far as to hail the young Midwestern writer as a literary genius. In his April 1920 review, critic Burton Rascoe of The Chicago Tribune urged his readers to «make a note of the name, F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is borne by a 23 year old novelist who will, unless I am much mistaken, be much heard of hereafter.» Rascoe asserted that Fitzgerald’s first novel bore «the impress, it seems to me, of genius. It is the only adequate study that we have had of the contemporary American in adolescence and young manhood.»
«The prize first novel of a decade is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise,» critic Fanny Butcher raved in her June 1920 column for The Chicago Tribune, singling out Fitzgerald for particular praise amid other competitors that included the U.S. publication of Virginia Woolf’s first novel The Voyage Out and Zane Grey’s novel A Man for the Ages. Butcher declared Fitzgerald’s book to be «the living, palpitant being of the youth of the hour, a book which, I haven’t a doubt in the world, will have a serious and far reaching effect on American literature.»
Perhaps the most influential review of Fitzgerald’s novel came from critic H. L. Mencken, the notoriously acerbic editor of the influential literary magazine The Smart Set. Mencken’s authoritative opinions on the latest literary endeavors often lifted their authors upward toward greater success or cast them down into cultural oblivion. In his August 1920 review of This Side of Paradise, Mencken described Fitzgerald’s work as an amazing debut and lavished praise on its author:
The best American novel that I have seen of late is also the product of a neophyte, to wit, F. Scott Fitzgerald… He offers a truly amazing first novel—original in structure, extremely sophisticated in manner, and adorned with a brilliancy that is as rare in American writing… The young American novelist usually reveals himself as a naive, sentimental and somewhat disgusting ignoramus—a believer in Great Causes, a snuffler and eye-roller, a spouter of stale philosophies out of Kensington drawing rooms, the doggeries of French hack-drivers, and the lower floor of the Munich Hofbräuhaus… Fitzgerald is nothing of
