The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and Other Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Published 1997 · 176 pages · 48,400 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Short Fiction, Literary Fiction, Satire & Humor
How hard is The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and Other Stories to read?
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and Other Stories scores 47 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 45 out of 100
- Fitzgerald's prose is ornate in places, with lush descriptions of the diamond château and Jazz Age parties, but it stays clear. It sits close to The Great Gatsby in accessibility.
- Sentence structure: 48 out of 100
- Sentences are balanced and rhythmic, with occasional long descriptive runs. The syntax is closer to The Great Gatsby than to anything experimental.
- Abstraction: 50 out of 100
- The stories are anchored in concrete events: a diamond mountain, a haircut, a man aging backward. Ideas about wealth and time emerge through fable rather than argument.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Short stories move quickly through incident with little digression. The density is compressed but clear, like Gatsby.
- Narrative indirection: 42 out of 100
- Narration is mostly direct, and the fable stories state their situations plainly. Readers infer the social criticism beneath the glitter, but little is concealed.
- Symbolic density: 60 out of 100
- The diamond mountain is a big, openly allegorical symbol of wealth and its isolation. Benjamin Button's reversed aging and Bernice's hair carry smaller symbolic loads, with a Gatsby-like glitter of motifs.
- Ironic distance: 62 out of 100
- Fitzgerald is both seduced by and critical of wealth and youth. Satire runs through the title novella and Bernice Bobs Her Hair, with sympathy and critique working at once, as in Gatsby.
- Resolution withholding: 38 out of 100
- Most stories close their plots decisively, often with a sting or a shrug. Some, like the title novella, end on a note of loss rather than neat answers.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- The book is a gathering of separate, mostly linear stories. May Day juggles several interlocking storylines, but nothing approaches formal experiment.
How The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and Other Stories is regarded
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and Other Stories holds a literary regard score of 66 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.
Where the story of The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and Other Stories takes place
- USA, Jazz Age 1917–1922 (1917 to 1922), the main setting