| F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were not | | | | characteristic of The Diamond as Big as the Ritz is |
| only best friends, bitter rivals, and fellow members of | | | | the same thing that makes Hemingway's 1927 classic |
| the Lost Generation literary movement, they also | | | | American crime story The Killers tick. The story |
| helped redefine American identity in a post-world-war | | | | starts with two badly dressed men named Max and |
| world. Rather than simply construct a new sense of | | | | Al entering a restaurant and attempting to order |
| nationalism, however, they actively dissected and | | | | dinner. Since it isn't six o'clock yet, however, they're |
| deflated American archetypes such as the self-made | | | | restricted to lunch menu items only. They bicker with |
| man and the hardened gangster. And what better | | | | the manager for a few pages, harass the patrons, |
| time to question people's sense of reality than in the | | | | and then lead everyone to the back room and take |
| 1920s, when everyone was simultaneously depressed | | | | over the restaurant for about two hours. Turns out |
| about WWI, filthy rich from the stock market, and | | | | they're both hitmen on the mission to kill some |
| illegally drunk for an entire decade? | | | | boxer, who presumably didn't cooperate in a rigged |
| Published in 1922, just after the postwar recession | | | | fight. Yes, this sounds remarkably like the plot of Pulp |
| ended, Fitzgerald's "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" | | | | Fiction. |
| is a sharp criticism of the lavish 1920s lifestyle | | | | The totally surreal mood of the story comes not |
| Fitzgerald would later become all too acquainted with. | | | | only from the fact that Max and Al are two trained |
| John Unger, a boarding school kid, is spending the | | | | killers who spend the first quarter of the story |
| summer at his friend Percy Washington's estate in | | | | arguing over ginger ale and egg salad sandwiches, but |
| the middle of nowhere, Montana. More specifically, it's | | | | also from the strange setup of the restaurant itself. |
| located "where the United States ends" - figuratively | | | | The clock, for example, is said to be twenty minutes |
| speaking, anyway, as the US government has no | | | | fast - and since Hemingway doesn't always specify |
| knowledge of its existence. (And since the chateau | | | | whether times mentioned are restaurant time or real |
| sits on a flawless diamond the size of a small | | | | time, both the readers and the killers are equally |
| mountain, the Washington family intends to keep it | | | | disoriented by it. (Not to mention, the only thing |
| that way.) | | | | more surreal than an incorrect clock is a melting one.) |
| The family's opulence is "beyond human wish, or | | | | Weirder still is the fact that Max spends his whole |
| dream," and John is so overwhelmed that he can | | | | evening sitting directly facing the manager, but |
| barely stay conscious. The fact that the estate is | | | | conducts all their conversations via the mirror behind |
| named "El Dorado" after a mythical Amazonian city of | | | | the counter. If that isn't reality in reverse, consider |
| gold not only heightens the undiscoverable unreality | | | | the fact that Max gets so bored waiting to make his |
| of the place, but also hints at the Spanish | | | | kill that he actually drops the ol,' see any good |
| conquistadors' exploitative pursuit of riches; creepily, | | | | movies lately? What's more, when Nick, one of the |
| the Washingtons house some 250 slaves, whom they | | | | restaurant patrons, finally tracks down the boxer to |
| have tricked into believing that the North lost the Civil | | | | warn him about the assassins, the guy can't be |
| War. This universe is so tightly controlled, in fact, that | | | | bothered to defend himself. So much for fighting |
| when a landscaper, gardener, architect, designer, and | | | | spirit. Or the glorification the American gangster, for |
| poet try to "agree upon the location of a fountain" | | | | that matter. |
| together, they lose their minds and are all sent to an | | | | By juxtaposing wild situations with totally apathetic |
| asylum. | | | | characters, Fitzgerald and Hemingway create |
| What really makes the situation absurd, however, is | | | | scenarios that feel impossible but are all too real; |
| not its otherworldliness, but the fact that everyone | | | | what sticks in the readers' throats is not that crimes |
| living there is so blasé about it. The family | | | | are committed, but that they're committed by totally |
| considers some of their nicest things "old junk." | | | | ordinary characters. The zillionaires are accustomed to |
| Jasmine is so spoiled that she pushed her father | | | | their family routines. The hitmen don't want cold |
| down the stairs as a child and no one batted an eye. | | | | sandwiches for dinner. Under any other |
| The men try to keep killing outsiders to a minimum | | | | circumstances, these behaviors wouldn't give us a |
| because it "upsets" the women. Mr. Washington | | | | moment's pause, but against the backdrop of murder |
| refers to the incident where he murdered his own | | | | and destruction, it hits uncomfortably close to home. |
| brother as "unfortunate." Captured soldiers are kept | | | | There's a reason we like our movie villains with |
| imprisoned on the grounds because it's the practical | | | | eyepatches and evil cackles, or dissect our serial |
| thing to do. The list goes on. | | | | killers hoping to find brain deformations: the last thing |
| The complete emotional compartmentalization | | | | we want to see in these situations is ourselves. |