The Diamond as big as The Ritz - Softcover

Fitzgerald, F. Scott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1497426405 ISBN 13: 9781497426405

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014

Synopsis

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."

Here it is, Fitzgerald’s rarely talked about ‘gem’ of a short story, The Diamond as Big as The Ritz.

About this title

About the Author:

FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1896, the son of a salesman, and namesake of his distant relative, Francis Scott Key. While attending Princeton University, he wrote a novel that a Scribner's editor thought good enough to publish, if Fitzgerald would revise it. Fitzgerald, however, was in academic trouble and left school to join the army. Stationed in Alabama, he met and proposed marriage to Zelda Sayre, who refused to marry him until his rewritten novel, "This Side of Paradise," made him an irresistible success. Two years later, the Fitzgeralds were leading a furious, booze-fueled social life, and his story collection of 1922, "Tales of the Jazz Age, " gave the era its name. In 1925, while sojourning in France--where he befriended Ernest Hemingway--he wrote" The Great Gatsby." But his relationship with Zelda grew destructive, and by 1932 she was in a mental institution and he had descended into alcoholism. Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood to work as a scriptwriter, and died there of a heart attack in 1940.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1497426405
• ISBN 13: 9781497426405
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 44