Thursday, September 8, 2011

The Beautiful and Damned

I swear that last week I posted a review of this book, but I's be wrong. However, I don't have much motivation to re-review this book. What can I say? It was classic Fitzgerald; neurotic characters, tragic wealth, beautiful writing. Is that how you use a semicolon?

The hero of the story, Anthony, is a privileged brat. He's just waiting for his grandpa to kick it so he can take all his money. Then he meets Gloria, who is an even bigger brat. So, she decides to marry him and wait with him for the old geezer to croak. And she's got a mad spending problem. She's also incredibly vain.

You can see where this is going. They don't get the money. Woe is me ensues. My favorite part of the book is how Gloria is really obsessed with people being obsessed with her. So, she strings along this film executive, Bloeckman. Everytime he asks her to try out for the "talkies", (they actually don't call them "talkies", but I love calling old movies "talkies" like I walked straight out of the Roaring 20's) she declines. Fitzgerald perfectly writes that girl. You know her. The one who thrives on being told that she's perfect and beautiful and everything that people have ever wanted. I think today we call them contestants on The Bachelor.

Anyhow, the best is when Gloria finally realizes that she actually has to make some money and so goes to Bloeckman to try out for the talkies and she bombs. And they tell her she looks too old. It's awesome. You can hear the air whizzing right out of that big, old ego of hers.

I liked the book, but got tired of it at the end. That's what tragic wealth does to you. 4/5 or 7/10 stars.

2 comments:

Grace said...

I think that you wanted to use a colon there. I never know when to use a semi colon. The one thing I know about it is that before and after the semi colon is could be two separate sentences, but for some reason you decide they should be one with a semi colon.

Molly said...

I think you are right. Semicolons are the dumbest punctuation mark.