by Angie E.

As The Great Gatsby celebrates its 100^th anniversary, I cannot help but think of how I much prefer Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned. Anthony Patch, a Harvard-educated layabout with vague literary aspirations, lives off his expected inheritance from his wealthy grandfather. He falls in love with Gloria Gilbert, a dazzling, self-absorbed socialite whose beauty is everything. They marry, expecting a life of ease, but as the years stretch on and Anthony’s grandfather withholds his fortune, their glittering existence falls apart. 

The relationship between Anthony and Gloria Patch is troubled, a slow, mutual unraveling. Their love, filled with glamour, indulgence, and lofty dreams, gradually turns toxic, dragging both of them into emotional and moral decay. The novel explores how two people, when consumed by vanity and selfishness, can end up feeding each other’s worst impulses rather than lifting each other up. They drift through parties, affairs, and petty resentments, their youth and charm wearing away alongside their bank account. Anthony descends into alcoholism and bitterness; Gloria clings to her fading looks. When Anthony finally wins his inheritance through a legal battle, he is a broken man, physically and spiritually ruined. 

Maybe I’m wrong, but I see The Beautiful and Damned as something messier and more personal than The Great Gatsby. At 27, I saw Anthony and Gloria as victims of love gone wrong. At 55, I see them as victims of something much less romantic and whimsical: the delusion that youth and beauty are infinite, that happiness is something you receive or deserve rather than create. When I first read The Beautiful and Damned in the late 90s, on a rainy cozy Sunday (I remember this vividly, somehow), I fixated on the tragedy of what I saw as dramatic love and loss. Despite my not liking either character, I somehow still felt sad. Now, though I still love the writing and the gripping tale itself, Anthony and Gloria, both bright, attractive, and full of possibility, strike me as people who wait for life to happen to them, assuming wealth and happiness are entitlements rather than pursuits. 

Revisiting this novel decades later, I realize Fitzgerald wasn’t just writing about the Jazz Age or the idle rich. He was writing about the human condition, about how easily we mistake privilege for purpose, charm for character, and time for something we can outrun.   

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald is available in print and as an e-book and e-audiobook from Libby.

For more about The Great Gatsby, check out a previous blog post about the original and a variety of adaptations.

Angie is an Instructor & Research Specialist at Central Branch and is a co-facilitator for Reads of Acceptance, HCLS’ first LGBTQ-focused book club. Her ideal day is reading in her cozy armchair, with her cat Henry next to her.