Any day is a good day to re-read The Diamond As Big as the Ritz. And today, after four days fighting a vicious cough that I thought was going to choke the life out of me, seemed a perfect one. Mild skies, happy life, good work flow, happiness. And this book!.
First, I love how it portrays what might as well be today’s one percenters. Here is a description of the blithe children of the richest man in the world:
“A chaste and consistent selfishness ran like a pattern through their every idea.”
Doesn’t that just sound like some people you have read about on the news lately? Oh yes, it does. Face it. Read it again. A chaste and consistent selfishness ran like a pattern through their every idea. Fantastic.
Then, there is the delicious pure language, like water falling in the sun. Fitzgerald was just so good when he was good, and he was usually good:
The Montana sunset lay between two mountains like a gigantic bruise from which dark arteries spread themselves over a poisoned sky.
It sounds overdone, but in context it is just beautiful. AND I think I might have found in these short pages a title for short story: “The Gaudy Valley.” Oh, yes.