Beautiful and the Damned, The Man Who Would Be King

On the flight home, I read F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned. It's hard to know what to think about it. On the plus side, some of the writing is really beautiful or mordantly funny. But the main characters are so unpleasant, and their problems so much of their own making, that it's hard to sympathize with their downfall.

But there's also the additional nuance that (to some extent), their marriage is a fictionalization of F. Scott and Zelda's own marriage. I think it's hard not to feel a sense that the author lived some of what he's writing. (I actually had no idea before I started reading the book that some of it was based on reality, but after I got this feeling, I looked up some biographical details, and it turned out my intuition was right). I think that sense of authenticity is really part of what makes the novel work.

Overall, I think it's a lesser work compared to The Great Gatsby. Because the Patches are so unpleasant, unredeemed by any self-awareness or wish to improve their situation, they don't have the tragic depth that Gatsby has in his chase after Daisy Buchanan.

I also read Kipling's The Man who Would be King on the flight. It was a bit of a surprise to me; I've always associated Kipling with the whole Britishers-bringing-civilization-to-the-natives thing, but this story was more nuanced than that. The three men who cross over the border carrying weapons into Afghanistan are not bringing civilization, they're bringing a more efficient way to make war. I'd write more, but I'm still jet-lagged from the trip -- maybe I'll continue when I tackle some of the other books I read recently