Books like The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and Other Stories

F. Scott Fitzgerald was a brilliant satirist: sharp-eyed and sharp-witted…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.Hades… St. Midas… Does it ring a bell? Any tale beginning like this can’t fail.“Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.” It is probably the most known quote of F. Scott Fitzgerald.Youth and riches are two cherished treasures. And if one can open doors to riches any time, one’s youth never can be revisited…“How pleasant then to be insane!”“So I’m told,” said John gloomily. “I don’t know any longer. At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That’s a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion.The young and the rich live in the worlds of their own device.