This Side of Paradise

First published in 1920, 'This Side of Paradise' is the debut novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, an American novelist, essayist, short story writer, and screenwriter. The novel explores many themes of love, wealth, and disillusionment, in a diverse style, integrating letters and poems into the chronology. Protagonist Armory Blaine, an unmotivated student at Princeton enrolls for service in World War I. When he returns to the States, he finds that his mother has passed away, and left him little money. He falls in love with a stunning society girl, Rosalind, and endeavors to earn her hand in marriage by working for an advertising agency; but she rejects him for a more affluent man. Overwhelmed, Armory drinks until Prohibition cuts him off, and then takes to wandering. Fitzgerald foresees a century of youthful angst with his first work of fiction.