This Side of Paradise

This Side of Paradise is the debut novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The book examines the lives and morality of post-World War I youth. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive Princeton University student who dabbles in literature. The novel explores the theme of love warped by greed and status-seeking. This Side of Paradise blends different styles of writing: at times a fictional narrative, at times free verse, sometimes narrative drama, interspersed with letters and poems from Amory. In fact the novel's odd blend of styles was the result of Fitzgerald cobbling his earlier attempt at a novel The Romantic Egotist together with assorted short stories and poems that he composed, but never published. Burton Rascoe of the Chicago Tribune wrote that "it bears 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." H. L. Mencken wrote that This Side of Paradise was the "best American novel that I have seen of late."