“Every author ought to write every book as if he were going to be beheaded the day he finished it.”

This Side of Paradise certainly adheres to this theme. Fitzgerald puts all of himself in it, whether or not everything fit. There were some passages so beautiful that my jaw dropped open--which almost never happens to me. I love reading debut novels, in part because I believe that they capture the novel at his most giving and ambitious. This book certainly has many structural flaws, and Amory's loss of innocence doesn't feel quite earned. However Fitzgerald is such a genius and this book is so earnest that I'm giving it five stars in any case.