Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (Unabridged): A Tale of the Jazz Age by the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (Unabridged): A Tale of the Jazz Age by the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (Unabridged): A Tale of the Jazz Age by the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    Ebook63 pages1 hour

    The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (Unabridged): A Tale of the Jazz Age by the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

    By F. Scott Fitzgerald

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This carefully crafted ebook: "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (Unabridged)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents.
    "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" is a novella, included in Fitzgerald's collection Tales of the Jazz Age. Much of the story is set in Montana, a setting that may have been inspired by the summer that Fitzgerald spent near White Sulphur Springs, Montana in 1915. John T. Unger, a teenager from the Mississippi River town of Hades, is sent to a private boarding school near Boston. During the summer he visits the homes of his classmates, the majority of whom are from wealthy families. In the middle of his sophomore year, a young man named Percy Washington is placed in Unger's dorm. During the train ride Percy boasts that his father is "by far the richest man in the world", and, when challenged by Unger, boasts that his father "has a diamond bigger than the Ritz-Carlton Hotel."
    Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s.
    LanguageEnglish
    Publishere-artnow
    Release dateJun 20, 2015
    ISBN9788026838999
    The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (Unabridged): A Tale of the Jazz Age by the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    Author

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

    F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. He attended Princeton University, joined the United States Army during World War I, and published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre and for the next decade the couple lived in New York, Paris, and on the Riviera. Fitzgerald’s masterpieces include The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. He died at the age of forty-four while working on The Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald’s fiction has secured his reputation as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.

    Read more from F. Scott Fitzgerald

    Related to The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (Unabridged)

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Alpharetta

      Jun 1, 2020

      My brother William, 10 years old to my 13, visibly shook in the big feather bed and gave me his famous zombie gaze; he had a way of somehow flattening his face so that his dark brown eyes, science-fictionally wet at all times, nailed you—a look of di

      17 min read

    • Article

      'The Hazel Wood' Has Few Uses For Enchantment

      Jan 30, 2018

      In Melissa Albert's dark take on fairy tales, 17-year-old Alice has spent her entire life on the run from her family legacy: a terrifying mythical world created by her grandmother, a famous author.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Perfect Prose II

      May 15, 2020

      Perfect Prose II
      4 min read

    • Article

      Postcards from Fairyland

      Jun 15, 2023

      Postcards from Fairyland
      10 min read

    • Article

      There’s No Place Like Home – If You Can Afford Bay Area Prices

      Jun 28, 2021

      A woman leaves her philandering husband in France and returns to San Francisco to relaunch her career in ‘Lorna Mott Comes Home’ by Diane Johnson.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Animals And Origami

      Oct 10, 2021

      I miss the sea breeze mussing my hair and the feel of cold sand worming between my toes. Even now, in autumn, the shoreline has its charms, like the squeals of the oystercatchers and the rhythmic ebb and flow of the tide. My dreams are of swimming in

      11 min read

    • Article

      Favorite First Sentences

      Sep 1, 2021

      Favorite First Sentences
      1 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • Article

      FROM THE WD EDITORS: Our favourite Beginnings and Endings

      Jul 31, 2019

      The best beginnings toss readers into the whirlwind that is going to be your story right as the action begins, giving them no choice but to read further. The best endings stick with readers for years after they’ve closed the book. WD editors got toge

      1 min read

    • Article

      Beeline

      Mar 10, 2022

      Beeline
      3 min read

    • Article

      Mussel Memory

      Jun 3, 2021

      Mussel Memory
      14 min read

    • Article

      How to Read a Squiggle

      Jul 18, 2017

      How to Read a Squiggle
      6 min read

    • Article

      José Donoso Saw the Future of Latin American Literature

      Nov 21, 2023

      American readers have largely forgotten the single greatest writer to come from the Latin American Boom: Chilean novelist José Donoso. The post José Donoso Saw the Future of Latin American Literature appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Farida Ado

      May 28, 2018

      AS IN THE REGENCY-ERA ENGLAND OF JANE AUSTEN’S novels, women in the city of Kano in northern Nigeria are on the cusp of radical social changes, as globalized development pulls against conservative Islamic traditions. To help make sense of changing ti

      1 min read

    • Article

      For More Than 40 Years, André Leon Talley Has Influenced Fashion And Culture. But It Wasn't Easy

      Jun 1, 2018

      Early the morning Edward Enninful was announced as the new editor-in-chief of British Vogue in April 2017, he received an email applauding his historic appointment as the first black man to lead such a prestigious fashion imprint. "Congratulations! Y

      4 min read

    • Article

      I Am The Tooth Fairy

      Nov 1, 2020

      I Am The Tooth Fairy
      6 min read

    • Article

      Must an Author’s Wishes Be Honored After Death?

      Oct 24, 2017

      Authors once turned to fire to be rid of writing they didn’t want the world to read. Terry Pratchett took a slightly more creative – and modern – route. He ordered that his hard drive be crushed by a steamroller after his death.

      1 min read

    • Article

      Small Press Points

      Jun 14, 2023

      “Whose voices aren’t being heard right now, and why?” This question drove Florence Howe’s decision to establish the Feminist Press (feministpress.org) in Baltimore in 1970—and it continues to motivate the press today, says editorial director Lauren R

      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (Unabridged)

    3.5/5

    71 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      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.

    Book preview

    The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (Unabridged) - F. Scott Fitzgerald

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

    The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

    (Unabridged)

    Tale of the Jazz Age by the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other

    e-artnow, 2015

    Contact: info@e-artnow.org

    ISBN 978-80-268-3899-9

    Table of Contents

    I

    II

    III

    IV

    V

    VI

    VII

    VIII

    IX

    X

    XI

    I

    Table of Contents

    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’s 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’s 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’s 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

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1