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    The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
    The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
    The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
    Ebook78 pages1 hour

    The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

    By F. Scott Fitzgerald

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    First published in the June 1922 issue of The Smart Set magazine, The Diamond as big as The Ritz is one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s under-rated masterpieces.

    John T. Unger is a sixteen-year-old boy from an affluent family in Hades, Mississippi on his way to St. Midas' preparatory school in Boston, the most exclusive and expensive prep school in the world. There, he hobnobs with the wealthy and meets another student named Percy Washington. Percy invites John to spend the Summer with his family "out West," and John, who loves being with the super-wealthy, agrees.

    On the train wide West, Percy reveals that his father is the richest man in the world. He has a diamond the size of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. John soon discovers that Percy is telling the truth. Percy's father, Braddock T. Washington, has built an enormous château on a mountain that is literally one solid, flawless diamond. The diamond sits in the middle of five square miles in the woods of Montana – the only part of the country that has never been surveyed. The United States doesn't know that these five square miles exist at all, and the Washingtons plan on keeping it that way.

    The story was initially rejected by publishers because of its not-so-subtle satirical messages about American capitalism. The scenario criticizes Americans as obsessed with wealth, and considers exploitation inherent in building and expanding the country. American critics didn't react well to the story upon publication. After all, who likes being told they're greedy?

    But Fitzgerald didn't seem too fazed by these reactions. He said of the story: "[It] was designed utterly for my own amusement. I was in a mood characterized by a perfect craving for luxury, and the story began as an attempt to feed that craving on imaginary foods." (Jazz Age Stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald).

    Here it is, Fitzgerald’s rarely talked about ‘gem’ of a short story, fully remastered for the digital age and beautifully illustrated with vintage advertisement art from the early 1920s.

    *Includes link to free, full-length audio recording of The Diamond as big as The Ritz.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEnhanced Media Publishing
    Release dateNov 3, 2016
    ISBN9781365506383
    Author

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

    F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1896, attended Princeton University in 1913, and published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre, and he quickly became a central figure in the American expatriate circle in Paris that included Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. He died of a heart attack in 1940 at the age of forty-four.

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    • 4/5
      When John T. Unger is sent to the country's most expensive and exclusive boys' school, his parents are proud and he is thrilled. Does it mean to come out of Hades - "Yes, it's hot down there" - a small town on the Mississippi that can be considered nothing but provincial. At St. Midas School, everything is to John's taste: Surrounded by well-dressed, well-mannered rich boys - "The richer one is, the more I like him" - he finally gets over by the somewhat unapproachable Percy over the summer vacation invited home. The world opening up to him surpasses all his expectations. Room made of ebony and gold, sapphire hair ornaments, plates of wafer-thin diamonds. An undiscovered world in the midst of Montana. A paradise or a prison?This story is a kind of utopia and super-rich decadence. So it was not always to my taste, even though Fitzgerald's narrative style is great.
    • 3/5
      Oversold to me, I think, as a few people I know rate this as a favourite. A decent story about insane wealth and obsession with money, I thought, but not much more.
    • 3/5
      A selection of Fitzgerald's "best short work" (according to the blurb on the back of this old paperback) from across his short story collections published in the 1920s.All the stories herein are of good quality though, not to sound too harsh, that's all they are. Competent stories every one of them, but none of them excite the way the best shorts do (such as those produced by the likes of Chekhov or Carver). There's also a faint wiff of repetition with all the stories revolving around the problems suffered by privileged white people from the coasts of America. A little more variety would certainly have gone a long way.No one story especially stood out more than the rest for me. They're all decent little stories, but nothing more and nothing less.
    • 4/5
      I picked up this novella just based on its inclusion in Melville House's Art of the Novella series alone. I had almost no expectations of it, which helped, I think. It was very clear from the description that this would be nothing like The Great Gatsby.When it is is an exaggerated satire parable about just how fucking terrible the rich are. It reminded me a lot of the secret Arctic bunker in Mat Johnson's Pym, actually. It was a little slow at times, but it was just so ludicrous that I couldn't help but have fun.

    Book preview

    The Diamond as Big as the Ritz - F. Scott Fitzgerald

    THE DIAMOND AS BIG AS THE RITZ

    by 

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

    Copyright © 2014 Calibre Books

    All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

    may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

    without the express written permission of the publisher

    except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

    Printed in the United States of America

    First Printing, 2014

    Calibre Books

    The Diamond As Big As The Ritz by F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in 1922.

    © Calibre Books edition with period illustrations 2014.

    Also Available

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    Table of Contents

    The Diamond As Big As The Ritz

    I

    II

    III

    IV

    V

    VI

    VII

    VIII

    IX

    X

    XI

    Links to free audio recordings of The Diamond As Big As The Ritz

    F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1921

    The Diamond As Big As The Ritz

    I

    JOHN T. UNGER came from a family that had been well known in Hades--a small town on the Mississippi River--for several generations.

    John's father had held the amateur golf championship through many a heated contest; Mrs. Unger was known from hot-box to hot-bed, as the local phrase went, for her political addresses; and young John T. Unger, who had just turned sixteen, had danced all the latest dances from New York before he put on long trousers. And now, for a certain time, he was to be away from home. That respect for a New England education which is the bane of all provincial places, which drains them yearly of their most promising young men, had seized upon his parents. Nothing would suit them but that he should go to St. Midas' School near Boston-- Hades was too small to hold their darling and gifted son.

    Now in Hades--as you know if you ever have been there--the names of the more fashionable preparatory schools and colleges mean very little. The inhabitants have been so long out of the world that, though they make a show of keeping up to date in dress and manners and literature, they depend to a great extent on hearsay, and a function that in Hades would be considered elaborate would doubtless be hailed by a Chicago beef-princess as perhaps a little tacky.

    John T. Unger was on the eve of departure. Mrs. Unger, with maternal fatuity, packed his trunks full of linen suits and electric fans, and Mr. Unger presented his son with an asbestos pocket-book stuffed with money.

    Remember, you are always welcome here, he said. You can be sure boy, that we'll keep the home fires burning.

    I know, answered John huskily.

    Don't forget who you are and where you come from, continued his father proudly, and you can do nothing to harm you. You are an Unger--from Hades.

    So the old man and the young shook hands and John walked away with tears streaming from his eyes. Ten minutes later he had passed outside the city limits, and he stopped to glance back for the last time. Over the gates the old-fashioned Victorian motto seemed strangely attractive to him. His father had tried time and time again to have it changed to something with a little more push and verve about it, such as Hades--Your Opportunity, or else a plain Welcome sign set over a hearty handshake pricked out in electric lights. The old motto was a little depressing, Mr. Unger had thought--but now....

    So John took his look and then set his face resolutely toward his destination. And, as he turned away, the lights of Hades against the sky seemed full of a warm and passionate beauty.

    St. Midas' School is half an hour from Boston in a Rolls-Pierce motorcar. The actual distance will never be known, for no one, except John T. Unger, had ever arrived there save in a Rolls-Pierce and probably no one ever will again. St. Midas' is the most expensive and the most exclusive boys' preparatory school in the world.

    John's first two years there passed pleasantly. The fathers of all the boys were money-kings and John spent his summers visiting at fashionable resorts. While he was very fond of all the boys he visited, their fathers struck him as being much of

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