I picked up this novella just based on its inclusion in Melville House's Art of the Novella series alone. I had almost no expectations of it, which helped, I think. It was very clear from the description that this would be nothing like The Great Gatsby.

When it is is an exaggerated satire parable about just how fucking terrible the rich are. It reminded me a lot of the secret Arctic bunker in Mat Johnson's Pym, actually. It was a little slow at times, but it was just so ludicrous that I couldn't help but have fun. ( )

Scott Fitzgerald's extraordinary fantasy was written in the winter of 1921-1922. John T. Unger, a middle class American boy from a small town on the Mississippi River goes, for his summer holiday, to stay for the first time with an enigmatic school friend, Percy Washington. On the journey out Percy confides with an abrupt remark: "My father is by far the richest man in the world." "The Schnlitzer Murphys had diamonds as big as walnuts - " "That's nothing," Percy had leaned forward and dropped his voice to a low whisper. "That's nothing at all. My father has a diamond bigger than the Ritz-Carlton Hotel."

When John T. Unger is sent to the country's most expensive and exclusive boys' school, his parents are proud and he is thrilled. Does it mean to come out of Hades - "Yes, it's hot down there" - a small town on the Mississippi that can be considered nothing but provincial. At St. Midas School, everything is to John's taste: Surrounded by well-dressed, well-mannered rich boys - "The richer one is, the more I like him" - he finally gets over by the somewhat unapproachable Percy over the summer vacation invited home. The world opening up to him surpasses all his expectations. Room made of ebony and gold, sapphire hair ornaments, plates of wafer-thin diamonds. An undiscovered world in the midst of Montana. A paradise or a prison?
This story is a kind of utopia and super-rich decadence. So it was not always to my taste, even though Fitzgerald's narrative style is great. ( )

In this strange little novella, published in 1922, John T. Unger leaves his well-to-do family in Hades, Mississippi to attend a prestigious men's boarding school in Boston. While there, he befriends a fellow student named Percy Washington. John knows that Percy, a keep-to-himself kind of guy, is very wealthy, but he has no idea just how right he is until he is invited to summer with Percy at his family's home in Montana.

On the train from Chicago to Montana, Percy explains very matter-of-factly that his father is the richest man in the world, although nobody else would know it because the family fortune is kept hidden. In fact, it's in a mountaintop. Due to a strange set of events involving Percy's grandfather Fitz-Norman Culpepper Washington and a squirrel, the grandfather stumbles upon an entire Montana mountain that is one solid diamond - a diamond as big as the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York City. Fitz-Norman, who hailed from Virginia, had his large group of African slaves brought to Montana with him, telling them that the South had won the Civil War so that they wouldn't try to escape. Once there, they build him a palatial home, with all kinds of mechanized amenities like beds that roll the sleeper directly into the bath.

The Washington family goes to tremendous lengths to keep their fortune a secret, including shooting down any airmen who happen to fly over their land. They also entertain very few visitors; those who come to their property either are kidnapped and stay there forever, are kept in a jail on the grounds, or are killed. In addition to Percy, there are two Washington daughters, Jasmine and Kismine, one of whom John falls in love with, and who tells him that her family plans to kill him so that he can't tell anyone about the diamond. On the very day that John is supposed to be murdered, a battalion of airplanes fly over the property and begin to bomb it. It is revealed that an Italian tutor had recently escaped from their jail, and he was assumed to be the one to reveal the secret.

John and the Washington daughters were able to find a hiding spot in the woods, where they could watch what was happening. At one point, they hear the sounds of someone walking, and discover that it's Percy's father and two slaves, who are carrying a massive diamond. Mr. Washington pleads out loud for God to accept his bribe of the giant diamond, in exchange for keeping his fortune safe. When it becomes obvious that nothing is going to happen, Mr. Washington returns to the house and attempt to hide in a special cellar that they built for just such an attack. When the airplanes drop bombs on the home and obliterate it, John assumes that everyone is lost. He, Jasmine, and Kismine decide to go on living as poor people. ( )

A selection of Fitzgerald's "best short work" (according to the blurb on the back of this old paperback) from across his short story collections published in the 1920s.

All the stories herein are of good quality though, not to sound too harsh, that's all they are. Competent stories every one of them, but none of them excite the way the best shorts do (such as those produced by the likes of Chekhov or Carver). There's also a faint wiff of repetition with all the stories revolving around the problems suffered by privileged white people from the coasts of America. A little more variety would certainly have gone a long way.

No one story especially stood out more than the rest for me. They're all decent little stories, but nothing more and nothing less. ( )