F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Beautiful and Damned"

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s second novel, The Beautiful and Damned , has frequently been dismissed as an outlier and curiosity in his oeuvre, a transitional work from the coming-of-age plot of This Side of Paradise to the masterful critique of American aspiration in The Great Gatsby . The Beautiful and Damned belongs to a genre that is widely misunderstood, the “bright young things” novel in which spoiled and wealthy characters succumb to decay because of their privilege and lack of purpose. Set betwe