The Diamond As Big As The Ritz: Short Story

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

John T. Unger makes a fair number of friends at boarding school, but Percy Washington is by far the strangest boy he has met. Percy invites John to stay at his house for the summer, and when John accepts, Percy boasts about his family’s wealth, claiming that his father has a diamond bigger than the Ritz Carlton Hotel. But Percy’s strange behaviour and outlandish claims are just the first in a mysterious chain of events, the start of which dates back all the way to the days of George Washington.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jan 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781443423236

F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota to Edward and Mary Fitzgerald, he was raised in Buffalo in a middle-class Catholic family. Fitzgerald excelled in school from a young age and was known as an active and curious student, primarily of literature. In 1908 the family returned to St. Paul, where Fitzgerald published his first work of fiction, a detective story, at the age of 13. He completed his high school education at the Newman School in New Jersey before enrolling at Princeton University. In 1917, reeling from an ill-fated relationship and waning in his academic pursuits, Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton to join the Army. While stationed in Alabama, he began a relationship with Zelda Sayre, a Montgomery socialite. In 1919, he moved to New York City, where he struggled to launch his career as a writer. His first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), was a resounding success, earning Fitzgerald a sustainable income and allowing him to marry Zelda. Following the birth of his daughter Scottie in 1921, Fitzgerald published his second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned (1922), and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), a collection of short stories. His rising reputation in New York’s social and literary scenes coincided with a growing struggle with alcoholism and the deterioration of Zelda’s mental health. Despite this, Fitzgerald managed to complete his masterpiece The Great Gatsby (1925), a withering portrait of corruption and decay at the heart of American society. After living for several years in France in Italy, the end of the decade marked the decline of Fitzgerald’s reputation as a writer, forcing him to move to Hollywood in pursuit of work as a screenwriter. His alcoholism accelerated in these last years, leading to severe heart problems and eventually his death at the age of 44. By this time, he was virtually forgotten by the public, but critical reappraisal and his influence on such writers as Ernest Hemingway, J.D. Salinger, and Richard Yates would ensure his status as one of the greatest figures in twentieth-century American fiction.

Book preview

Book Cover

THE DIAMOND AS BIG AS THE RITZ

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

About the Author

About the Series

Copyright

About the Publisher

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 pocketbook 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 motor-car. 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 summer visiting at fashionable resorts. While he was very fond of all the boys he visited, their fathers struck him as being much of a piece, and in his boyish way he often wondered at their exceeding sameness. When he told them where his home was they would ask jovially, Pretty hot down there? and John would muster a faint smile and answer, It certainly is. His response would have been heartier had they not all made this joke—at best varying it with, Is it hot enough for you down there? which he hated just as much.

In the middle of his second year at school, a quiet, handsome boy named Percy Washington had been put in John’s form. The newcomer was pleasant in his manner and exceedingly well dressed even for St. Midas’, but for some reason he kept aloof from the other boys. The only person with whom he was intimate was John T. Unger, but even to John he was entirely uncommunicative concerning his home or his family. That he

Reviews for The Diamond As Big As The Ritz

[madepercy-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fitzgerald's ability to present a theme based on stories that are almost pedestrian constantly amazes me. Each story leaves me to ponder the meaning of the mundane and his ability to moralise, empathise, sympathise and then switch to humour and back again makes me wonder how much was packed into his relatively short life. Certainly makes me a fan of the short story.

[drfp_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.