Yesterday I read This Side of Paradise, F.Scott's first novel (1920). From the first pages it was awash in alcohol and impotence and deep disturbance. This was of course the War's impact but even more so a reflection of the mental disposition of the writer. Not nearly as profound a statement of the lost generation as Sun Also Rises.

His picture of Lake Geneva fascinating: I spent many a summer there in the 90s and always wondered what sorts built those mansions. Today the "resort" is hobbled and shabby like so many of the dreams of the early 20th century. The Revenge of Democracy.

Thank God FS stopped playing with an experimental form of the novel after this rather clumsy first attempt, but what a literary feast. It reads like a history of the great novels and ideas that influenced him, and through my father, me. (I had read all Walter Pater and Huysman before I set off to college). Today I would have gone intellectually armed with Maid in Manhattan so profound is the peer group influence.

See that some society "writer" in Quest uses the name Tanaduke Wylie.....ou sont les neiges again!