This Side of Paradise

<b>This Side of Paradise</b> is the book that established F. Scott Fitzgerald as the prophet and golden boy of the newly dawned Jazz Age. Published in 1920, when he was just twenty-three, the novel catapulted him to instant fame and financial success. The story of Amory Blaine, a privileged, aimless, and self-absorbed Princeton student, <b>This Side of Paradise</b> closely reflects Fitzgerald's own experiences as an undergraduate. Amory Blaine's journey from prep school to college to the First World War is an account of &quot;the lost generation.&quot; The young &quot;romantic egotist&quot; symbolizes what Fitzgerald so memorably described as &quot;a new generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.&quot; A pastiche of literary styles, this dazzling chronicle of youth remains bitingly relevant decades later.<br><br>&quot;<b>This Side of Paradise</b> commits almost every sin that a novel can possibly commit,&quot; wrote Edmund Wilson. &quot;But it does not commit the unpardonable sin: it does not fail to live. The whole preposterous farrago is animated with life.&quot;