As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than anyone else he knows.
Not exactly the opening sentence of the novel, but close enough for grenades or horseshoes. Besides, it is the sentence occurring in the first paragraph which divulges the most useful information about the novel’s protagonist, Anthony Patch. Read on to discover what happens, but nothing which comes after comes even close to describing Anthony’s personality so incisively. If the word “narcissist” is for some reason jumping around inside your mind, it is not without reason.
A FLASH-BACK IN PARADISE
Beauty, who was born anew every hundred years, sat in a sort of outdoor waiting room through which blew gusts of white wind and occasionally a breathless hurried star. The stars winked at her intimately as they went by and the winds made a soft incessant flurry in her hair. She was incomprehensible, for, in her, soul and spirit were one--the beauty of her body was the essence of her soul. She was that unity sought for by philosophers through many centuries. In this outdoor waiting room of winds and stars she had been sitting for a hundred years, at peace in the contemplation of herself.
Fitzgerald’s second novel appears, in retrospect, to be an experiment of some kind. Certain small sections are presented in the form of a snatch of dialogue in the form of a play. An introduction, stage directions, character names in all caps and block dialogue. This is the introduction to a dialogue taking place between The Perfect Form of Beauty and a character identified only as The Voice who informs Beauty that once-a-century resurrection is going to take the strangely alien form of a flapper, a vamp, a jazz-baby.
What finally drove Anthony post-haste up to Tarrytown was an announcement in several New York papers that Adam Patch, the multimillionaire, the philanthropist, the venerable uplifter, was seriously ill and not expected to recover.
Much of the novel—more than half, most assuredly—is spent in wait of this news. For it is with the arrival of this news that the beginning of the real life—the good part—of the man described in that opening paragraph can really commence. Or so he is counting on. Meanwhile, college, marriage and everything else associated with daily existence become little more than coming attractions that must be suffered through before the main attraction finally begins. Unfortunately for the grandson of Adam Patch—multimillionaire—his is one of those cases where the previews were much more memorable than the movie.
"Don't let the victor belong to the spoils."
Anthony fancies himself a literary man, but possesses neither the talent nor ambition to prove it. The closest he really ever comes to revealing any sort of capacity which could be put to productive use as a writer, in fact, is this response to his successful writer friend Dick Caramel’s admission that following acceptance of his first novel, he was able to also publish a short story which had originally been rejected. This quite atypical demonstration of Anthony’s ability to turn a phrase is taken by his friend as a warning (ironic as it turns out) to avoid the temptation of giving in too much in pursuit of success. Dick avows that he will not reduce himself to writing trash in order to maintain success, but that is exactly what happens. And so critics have leapt upon this phrase to offer as evidence that Anthony actually is a rebel of some sort instead of just lazy. Other critics remain firmly unconvinced.
He became a reformer among reformers. Emulating the magnificent efforts of Anthony Comstock, after whom his grandson was named, he levelled a varied assortment of uppercuts and body-blows at liquor, literature, vice, art, patent medicines, and Sunday theatres. His mind, under the influence of that insidious mildew which eventually forms on all but the few, gave itself up furiously to every indignation of the age.
By the time Anthony Patch comes into the world, the only grandfather he’s ever known is the Adam Patch described here. After losing both parents when he was still quite young, his grandfather becomes the only living relative Anthony ever knows. By the time he leaves Harvard and marries his beautiful bride and commences a life of waiting for the old man to die, one would have thought he knew the keeper of his inheritance well enough to know better. Events prove otherwise.
