TYF Column: What Are We Reading?

Recently, I watched Baz Luhrmann’s glorious adaptation of The Great Gatsby for the first time. The experience rekindled my old love for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work and inspired me to pick up a copy of Babylon Revisted and Other Stories from my local library. I am currently obsessed with it. Fitzgerald’s short stories are just as magical as his novels, full of palatial mansions, nonchalantly spoken metaphors, and starry-eyed young people stumbling through a variety of glamorous netherworlds. While all of his tales are enchanting, my favorite is the dark masterpiece “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.” Perhaps Fitzgerald’s most fantastical work, it explores themes of death and decadence through some truly larger-than-life symbols, including a mountain of buried treasure, a teenage boy who barely winces at the thought of murder, and a mad multi-billionaire whose least gruesome offense involves throwing innocents into a pit.