Every now and then I take some time off from reading newspapers and getting worked up by political issues to write a column about F. Scott Fitzgerald, America's greatest novelist. Generally, I recommend reading The Great Gatsby once a year and I quote the stirring last lines, "So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past." It is a great line, isn't it?

I have to admit, I didn't recognize its power when I read it in high school, but my good friend and a fellow traveler through this realm of letters, Jon Enfield, pointed them out to me. He's always had a more advanced artistic sensibility than I have. That's fine, I rely on people with better taste and we all do, to varying degrees. That's why I waited so long to read The Beautiful and the Damned. In the Fitzgerald canon people are generally agreed that his first novel, This Side of Paradise is a wonderful bit of young writing and that his third novel, The Great Gatsby is almost flawless and his fourth novel, Tender is the Night is widely considered a lose second to Gatsby though some prefer it for its raw honesty. The unfinished The Last Tycoon, a novel about Hollywood might well have surpassed them all, but there's no way to tell. I prefer Gatsby but my new close second is Fitzgerald's much maligned sophomore novel The Beautiful and the Damned.

Writers are accused of going through a sophomore slump after they write a blockbuster and Fitzgerald's first novel and the book of short stories which followed it, were like hit movies are today. They defined the Jazz Age and made young girls want to grow up to be flappers. They inspired boozing and petting parties. They helped make the twenties roar. The Beautiful and the Damned is a more somber work. Where This Side of Paradise tells the story of an irrepressible young romantic at Princeton, and where it is light and airy, B&D is a heavier tale of self-destruction. Anthony Patch and the beautiful Gloria meet and fall in love and that's all wonderful. But neither of them actually does anything productive. They're fun loving but a bit useless and all they do is wait for Anthony's grandfather to die so they can collect a huge inheritance.

I won't give anything away, but things become less beautiful and damned as the book grows to its end. It's Fitzgerald's longest book, and it's been criticized for that -- he's known best for writing short and tightly focused novels. B&D is filled with all sorts of asides and portions of it are written as a play. There are moments of sheer burlesque, especially concerning Bounds, the English butler and Tana, the Japanese houseboy. It's divided into long chapters and the last three are called (amusingly): "A Matter of Civilization," "A Matter of Aesthetics" and "No Matter!" During one sequence where Anthony has the affection of two women he receives communiques on the same day where one tells him that if they could just have $50,000 they could live well forever and even have a car. His beloved Gloria writes that if they could just get their hands on $1 million, they might be all right but she does seem to need quite a bit more..." Yes, there are old themes in this book about how money, alcohol and a general sense of uselessness can simply destroy people, but it's a good message and poignantly told and the book is absorbing. What I love most about it, though, is its lack of relative prestige. Here is a thoroughly enjoyable novel, worth the time it takes to read it and worth weeks of afterthought, and it had been critically maligned by the people who I look to for tasteful guidance. This doesn't mean that critics aren't useful, only that they've missed out on a lot over the years.

Michael Maiello asks that people remember this if he ever gets a book published and a bad review.