Both writers, to each of whom Montblanc has dedicated a Writers Edition, thought very differently about wealth. A brief exchange has been handed down: Fitzgerald remarked to Hemingway that the rich were different from other people, to which Hemingway drily replied that they simply had more money.
Hemingway considered rich people dull; they drank too much, played too much backgammon and repeated themselves constantly. Fitzgerald, by contrast, himself lived generously in his best years, had comparatively large sums of money at his disposal and drank too much gin. From this period comes his light-hearted piece “How to Live on $36,000 a Year” – a sum which, by the standards of 2004, corresponded to around 360,000 dollars. In the nineteen-thirties he fell into debt, succumbed increasingly to alcohol and died at the age of only 44.