Produced by David Reed, Ken Reeder, and David Widger [Illustration] THIS SIDE OF PARADISE By F. Scott Fitzgerald ... Well this side of Paradise!... There’s little comfort in the wise. —Rupert Brooke. Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes. —Oscar Wilde. To SIGOURNEY FAY CONTENTS BOOK ONE—The Romantic Egotist CHAPTER 1. Amory, Son of Beatrice CHAPTER 2. Spires and Gargoyles CHAPTER 3. The Egotist Considers CHAPTER 4. Narcissus Off Duty INTERLUDE BOOK TWO—The Education of a Personage CHAPTER 1. The Debutante CHAPTER 2. Experiments in Convalescence CHAPTER 3. Young Irony CHAPTER 4. The Supercilious Sacrifice CHAPTER 5. The Egotist Becomes a Personage BOOK ONE—The Romantic Egotist CHAPTER 1. Amory, Son of Beatrice Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while. His father, an ineffectual, inarticulate man with a taste for Byron and a habit of drowsing over the Encyclopedia Britannica, grew wealthy at thirty through the death of two elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers, and in the first flush of feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harbor and met Beatrice O’Hara. In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down to posterity his height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver at crucial moments, these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory. For many years he hovered in the background of his family’s life, an unassertive figure with a face half-obliterated by lifeless, silky hair, continually occupied in “taking care” of his wife, continually harassed by the idea that he didn’t and couldn’t understand her.