This side of paradise

Book Description

3 Reviews

• 

  "Good-morning, Fool...
  Three times a week
  You hold us helpless while you speak,
  Teasing our thirsty souls with the
  Sleek 'yeas' of your philosophy...
  Well, here we are, your hundred sheep,
  Tune up, play on, pour forth ... we sleep...
  You are a student, so they say;
  You hamm ... (continue)

  "Good-morning, Fool...
  Three times a week
  You hold us helpless while you speak,
  Teasing our thirsty souls with the
  Sleek 'yeas' of your philosophy...
  Well, here we are, your hundred sheep,
  Tune up, play on, pour forth ... we sleep...
  You are a student, so they say;
  You hammered out the other day
  A syllabus, from what we know
  Of some forgotten folio;
  You'd sniffled through an era's must,
  Filling your nostrils up with dust,
  And then, arising from your knees,
  Published, in one gigantic sneeze...
  But here's a neighbor on my right,
  An Eager Ass, considered bright;
  Asker of questions.... How he'll stand,
  With earnest air and fidgy hand,
  After this hour, telling you
  He sat all night and burrowed through
  Your book.... Oh, you'll be coy and he
  Will simulate precosity,
  And pedants both, you'll smile and smirk,
  And leer, and hasten back to work....

  'Twas this day week, sir, you returned
  A theme of mine, from which I learned
  (Through various comment on the side
  Which you had scrawled) that I defied
  The highest rules of criticism
  For cheap and careless witticism....
  'Are you quite sure that this could be?'
  And
  'Shaw is no authority!'
  But Eager Ass, with what he's sent,
  Plays havoc with your best per cent.

  Still—still I meet you here and there...
  When Shakespeare's played you hold a chair,
  And some defunct, moth-eaten star
  Enchants the mental prig you are...
  A radical comes down and shocks
  The atheistic orthodox?—
  You're representing Common Sense,
  Mouth open, in the audience.
  And, sometimes, even chapel lures
  That conscious tolerance of yours,
  That broad and beaming view of truth
  (Including Kant and General Booth...)
  And so from shock to shock you live,
  A hollow, pale affirmative...

  The hour's up ... and roused from rest
  One hundred children of the blest
  Cheat you a word or two with feet
  That down the noisy aisle-ways beat...
  Forget on narrow-minded earth
  The Mighty Yawn that gave you birth."

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  Vanessaʚϊɞ said on Dec 27, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

• Critical comment(s)/introduction:

  ...a timeless autobiographical novel of youth and alienation. It moves from tenderness to cynicism to hope with the grace and power that stamp [the author] as one of the greatest of American writers.

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  Your Sources said on Jul 31, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

• Critical comment(s)/introduction:

  Fitzgerald's first novel, [this book] (1920) was an immediate, spectacular success and established his literary reputation. Perhaps the definitive novel of the "Lost Generation,"...the young men and women of the 20s, described by [the author] as "a new generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all ... (continue)

  Fitzgerald's first novel, [this book] (1920) was an immediate, spectacular success and established his literary reputation. Perhaps the definitive novel of the "Lost Generation,"...the young men and women of the 20s, described by [the author] as "a new generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken."

  Is this helpful?

  Your Sources said on Jul 31, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Book Details

• Rating:
  (46)
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• English Books
• Others 255 Pages
• ISBN-10: 1440044252
• ISBN-13: 9781440044250
• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Pub date: Jan 01, 1948
• Also available as: Mass Market Paperback, Paperback, Hardcover, Audio CD, Audio Cassette, Leather Bound, Library Binding and eBook
• In other languages: other languages Livres Français, Deutsche Bücher, Libros en Español, Livros em Português, Libri Italiani, Svenska böcker

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