This Side of Paradise

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California


I didn't chose my major in college. There is a bit of a back story here, but to cut to the chase, my mother filled out my application when I transferred to a California University from a smaller college in my sophomore year. Shortly after my acceptance, I received a letter from the English department, welcoming me into their program. I wasn't happy about this at the time, as I'd wanted to tool along in the undecided department, with all my friends . But the truth is that I had loved my English classes in junior high and high school (except for when they made us read Silas Marner in tenth grade), and I had embraced college literature classes in my freshman year. I had a passion for F. Scott Fitzgerald, and quickly read all of his works (not truly an imposing endeavor as he only published four novels during his lifetime). I even took a course in my senior year of college which covered all and only F. Scott Fitzgerald, a night class to boot, which was a challenge for a college student working two jobs.


I still love Fitzgerald, and still ponder why his wondrous novels make such bad movies. I have a framed photograph of him on the wall in my red dining room, enabling me to integrate my two lifelines of writing and cooking into one space. And lately, I've been thinking about This Side of Paradise. It's not my favorite, nor his best. My favorite is Tender is the Night, and unarguably The Great Gatsby is his best. Nevertheless, it's Paradise I've been thinking about. I've always marveled at the popularity of it. It's a pastiche of stuff: lists; a play (if memory serves, as I don't have a copy here in Carmel); a pretty-much autobiographical story; all wrapped up within one work, bound, and published. I always thought it was so cool that he could get away with it. My notebooks throughout school and beyond were full of incongruous bits of writing contained in a variety of spirals. At one point in college I kept a calorie intake list (a la Bridget Jones, but way before her) in the margins of notes from classes like The Romantic Age and The Contemporary Novel. In high school, my best friend and I maintained our own comic strip about a Neanderthal couple who were dating, entitled Big Mark and Little Flower (we were both dating boys named Mark. Can't remember which of us was Little Flower). OK, where was I? Yes, This Side of Paradise. It's a blog -- right? I mean, obviously the internet did not exist when Fitzgerald wrote the book, just before the roaring twenties of the last century. But, if it had, Paradise would have been a blog. Because you can write anything here -- lists, recipes, critiques, erotica; the possibilities go on and on ad infinitum. So, while I was going for the Hemingway thing (see first post), I think I'll actually set the bar a little higher (I apologize to all those Hemingway aficionados -- don't write me about this, please!), and follow, in my own weak and meandering way, the path that Fitzgerald demonstrated to me when I was in college, reading his and all those other transfiguring works which continue to inspire me.


And, what would Sandra do? Sandra recommends that I read Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which is the next book in my nightstand stack. And, I think I'll do just that. Thanks for reading my blog.