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

Verna Kale (Penn State University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

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First circulation or publication 1922

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United States (Country of Origin)

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Story

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Published in

The Smart Set

in 1922 and collected in

Tales of the Jazz Age

that same year, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” is an interesting artifact of the “roaring twenties” with self-conscious roots in nineteenth-century Continental decadence. Fitzgerald – who pursued a somewhat lavish lifestyle himself, commanding thousands of dollars per short story – has said he began the story by trying to imagine the limits of material wealth in a playful daydream (“The Diamond”). The experiment revealed, however, that extreme wealth can be deadly.

The story describes the summer vacation of John T. Unger, a teenager from Hades, Mississippi, who is invited to spend the break at the home of his mysterious classmate, Percy Washington. The boys are

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900 words

Citation: Kale, Verna. "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 January 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1068, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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

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