THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED ***
E-text prepared by Stan Goodman, Audrey Longhurst, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED
BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
1922
_Novels_
THE LAST TYCOON (Unfinished) _With a foreword by Edmund Wilson and notes by the author_
TENDER IS THE NIGHT
THE GREAT GATSBY
THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE
_Stories_
THE PAT HOBBY STORIES _With an introduction by Arnold Gingrich_
TAPS AT REVEILLE
SIX TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE AND OTHER STORIES _With an introduction by Frances Fitzgerald Lanahan_
FLAPPERS AND PHILOSOPHERS _With an introduction by Arthur Mizener_
THE STORIES OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD _A selection of 28 stories, with an introduction by Malcolm Cowley_
_Stories and Essays_
AFTERNOON OF AN AUTHOR _With an introduction and notes by Arthur Mizener_
THE FITZGERALD READER: A Selection _Edited and with an introduction by Arthur Mizener_
The victor belongs to the spoils. --ANTHONY PATCH
TO SHANE LESLIE, GEORGE JEAN NATHAN AND MAXWELL PERKINS
IN APPRECIATION OF MUCH LITERARY HELP AND ENCOURAGEMENT
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE
I. ANTHONY PATCH
II. PORTRAIT OF A SIREN
III. THE CONNOISSEUR OF KISSES
BOOK TWO
I. THE RADIANT HOUR
II. SYMPOSIUM
III. THE BROKEN LUTE
BOOK THREE
I. A MATTER OF CIVILIZATION
II. A MATTER OF AESTHETICS
III. NO MATTER!
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER I
ANTHONY PATCH
In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"--yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.
This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch--not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward--a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.
