The Beautiful and Damned is F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel. Like The Great Gatsby, it's short on plot and heavy on characters. Anthony Patch is a rich kid in 1910s America, and Gloria Gilbert is his wife. Initially living on a trust fund, they find themselves totally incapable of living on their own once Anthony's grandfather, Andy Patch, disinherits him. While Gloria totally fails as an actress, Anthony fails as a soldier, a salesman, and a general drunk.
I like to compare the Fitzgerald novel to the "Impressionist" era of music. Before Debussy and Ravel, classical music followed rigid rules and conventions. These two composers wouldn't build up to a chord in the normal way; they'd just play it and let it sit. For Debussy and Ravel, chords - as for Fitzgerald, characters - just existed to please the audience. And Fitzgerald, like Debussy and Ravel, created his own rules and conventions to create the modern novel.
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