I think I've found a good reading combination with F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise and Joshua Zeitz's Flapper. When I called them two sides of the same coin I didn't realize just how spot on I was. I started reading both books last night and plan to read them in tandem. I'm finding Flapper to be eminently readable and flew right along through several chapters. I'm further along in it than in This Side of Paradise only because I had a hard time setting it aside and moving on to the next book (just one more chapter...you know how that goes).
Flapper seems to be a general overview of American women in the 1920s Jazz Age written in an anecdotal format. Compared to the eyebrow raising behavior of many contemporary young women, these flappers seem fairly tame, but Zeitz is quick to point out just how radical they were at the time.
"Until World War I, few women other than prostitutes ventured into saloons and barrooms. As late as 1904, a woman had been arrested on Fifth Avenue in New York City for lighting up a cigarette. It wasn't until 1929 that some railroad companies formally abolished their prohibition against women smokers in dining cars."
It seems that these young women were much debated and derided and many saw them as representing civilization's decline. In reality they were a sign of the changing times. As for where the term came from:
"It's not clear how or when the term flapper first wound its way into the American vernacular. The expression probably originated in prewar England. According to a 1920s fashion writer, "flapper" initially described the sort of teenage girl whose gawky frame and posture were 'supposed to need a certain type of clothing--long, straight lines to cover her awkwardness--and the stores advertised those gowns as 'flapper dresses'."
"Shortly after the closing shots of World War I, the word came to designate young women in their teens and twenties who subscribed to the libertine principles that writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and actresses like Clara Bow popularized in print and on the silver screen."
Zeitz seems to draw heavily on the life stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre (at least in the initial few chapters) who shared such a tumultuous relationship. Zeitz calls Zelda the 'archetypal' flapper who was a real beauty with legions of followers. Raised in Montgomery, Alabama she was only seventeen when she met Scott Fitzgerald in 1918, himself not yet twenty-one, an army lieutenant stationed at Camp Sheridan not far away.
At the time Scott Fitzgerald was fully expecting to be shipped off to the European battlefields, so had been working hard to complete his first novel, The Romantic Egoist. In reality, he wasn't much of a soldier and never saw any combat remaining stateside for the duration of the war. The Romantic Egoist was turned down, but he was given encouragement to revise the novel, which would eventually end up as This Side of Paradise and become the symbol of the Jazz Age.
Zeitz uses F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre as representative of the period, but fleshes things out with other stories and period details and has already mentioned This Side of Paradise and Amory Blaine. I've just barely made Amory's acquaintance and perhaps equally importantly Beatrice, his mother, who I believe is going to make quite an impression on him. I've read that This Side of Paradise is "a landmark in modernist fiction". Scott Fitzgerald only wrote five novels (the last one unfinished at the time of his death) and loads and loads of short stories (and Zelda wrote one herself, I believe). I'd like to eventually read all the novels (or reread in the case of The Great Gatsby) as well as more of his stories. But, first things first, back to Amory Blaine (and the flappers!).