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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780020199854
ISBN: 0020199856
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 192
Publication Date: 1995-04-14
Publisher: Scribner
Studio: Scribner

The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by the preeminent Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli, is a restoration of the author's phrases, words, and images that were excised from the 1940 edition, giving new luster to an unfinished literary masterpiece. It is the story of the young Hollywood mogul Monroe Stahr, who was inspired by the life of boy-genius Irving Thalberg, and is an exposé of the studio system in its heyday. The Love of the Last Tycoon is now available for the first time in paperback.

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: All the Hollywood hypocrites
Review: The book edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli is a work in progress, left with various kinds of incompletion at F. Scott Fitzgerald's death. The narrator, Cecilia Brady, is on planes frequently. She attends Bennington. She is the daughter of a producer. Monroe Stahr is someone who was born sleepless. He has no talent for rest. Pat Brady, Cecilia's father, and Monroe Stahr are partners. Wylie White, one of the travelers on the plane, is a writer.

There is never a time when the studio is absolutely quiet. There are always technicians present. There is an earthquake and a small water main bursts. Stahr's work is secret in part, devious, slow. He seems ready to shelve a work the writers have labored over to bring to the screen. He notes that when he wants a Eugene O'Neill play he will buy one. If a director disagrees with Stahr he does not advertise it. The writers are people who are employed because they accept the system and manage to stay sober.

Stahr sees a girl who resembles his deceased wife. He has her found in order to see her. He has difficulty explaining his interest to her and she is troubled by people fawning for reason of his power and, in general, the notoriety of being seen in his company. Sustained effort is difficult in California it is asserted. It is Monroe Stahr's ability in this area that accounts for his success.

F. Scott Fitzgerlad chased ghosts, evanescence. Stahr pursues a girl, Kathleen Moore, because she is the image of his dead wife. The author pursued the following idea obsessively--when did his life derail. The Kathleen Moore character shares some of the attributes of Sheila Graham. She lived in England previously and was tutored in classical literature by her live-in companion.

It is reported that Fitzgerald had a life-long capacity to hero-worship. A writer character in the novel compares Monroe Stahr to Lincoln carrying on a long war on many fronts. At the end of the volume there are working notes and a brief biography. Revisiting the bright, shining world of F. Scott Fitzgerald, even with the melancholy features, is lots of fun.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Incomplete is incomplete
Review: I have no doubt that The Last Tycoon would have warranted at least one more star if Fitzgerald had lived to finish it. But like it or not, we have no way of knowing what he would have written and can only judge the merits of what he did write. And that, in any case, is still pretty good. It is definitely a departure from his earlier works, and a tantalizing taste of what he might have continued to do with his talent later on. The images of Southern California back when it was a nice place to live are wonderful, as is the behind-the-scenes look at the movie industry during its golden era.

This is also the only Fitzgerald work I know of in which the narrator is a woman, and it's defnitely fascinating to see how he went about that exercize. Cecilia Brady is just about as egotistical and cynical as most of his other protagonists, but her innocence is refreshing. Also, telling the story through the eyes of one just outside the loop of the movie industry (she's the daughter of one producer, and hopelessly in love with another) was a very clever move. It allowed the plot to develop around the personal life of Cecilia's crush, Monroe Stahr, with only a bit of the bitterness from his work-related troubles seeping through.

But the sad truth is that that plot had only begun to develop. We know far more about Monroe Stahr from the notes and sketches Fitzgerald never intended for publication than we do from the "finished" part of the novel (which wasn't entirely finished either). If nothing else, though, this was a great start. As long as you don't expect more than that, it's worth reading.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Betrayal of a Demigod
Review: Fitzgerald's last novel--left unfinished due to his heart attack--presents darker themes than his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. Told by Cecelia, the 18-year-old daughter of a studio hotshot,and alternately by an omniscient narrator, this story depicts the glory days of the Hollywood studio system, where producers were America's new royalty. Egos collide, budgets quail and the earth quakes at the dawn of the Forties, when the country was threatened by the red menace of Communism. Not even Hollywood was immune from the birth pangs of unionism and pre- McCarthy era political paranoia over the secret revolution of the masses.

The protagonist is 44-year-old Monroe Stahr, a successful and powerful producer whose insight re movie-going America usually proves correct. Having a hopeless crush on this associate of her father's Cecelia gradually realizes that her workaholic idol has fallen in love with a mysterious lady--a British Cinderella raised completely outside the glittering purviews of starlets and gossip columnists. The tragic affair between the mogul and the lovely Kathleen (who resembles his beloved dead wife) is doomed by her prior commitment to an American man, her humble past and Stahr's own failure to take decisive action at critical moments in their poignant relationship.

The completed storyline may be deduced from Fitzgerald's extensive notes for each chapter,plus his conversations with associates. Health concerns plagued both Stahr and ultimately Cecelia--presaging the author's own private medical battle. How frustrating for him (and his alter-ego) to be snuffed out while yet so productive and mentally alert. It would be curious to see how contemporary Hollywood might finish this story if made into a movie. Like rats caught in a maze of their own devising, the characters are trapped by weakness and vanity, while naively convinced of their own personal or business power. As evil schemes corrupt backstage Hollywood, filth and crime trickle down to ultimately contaminate even the once idealistic Stahr. Tragically he did not live long enough to impress the man on the beach: that movies Were worth attending. THE LAST TYCOON proves a starkly grim but gripping tale of searing emotions at the end of the Depression era.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: There will never be another F. Scott Fitzgerald
Review: No other author in history has so astutely penned such profound and sublime novels with such amazing social insight as has Scottie(as his contemporaries called him) - all the while doing it with such amazing and unparalleled grace and lucidity. While The Love of the Last Tycoon may not be finished, I can easily discern that F. Scott was well on his way to achieving his goal -penning a novel on the level of The Great Gatsby and not as "depressing" as Tender is the Night.

What makes this so amazing, yet so painful, is the extraordinary potential that this work exudes. The Last Tycoon does seem to be like Gatsby moreso than any other Fitzgerald work in its endearing and sympathetic characters such as the self-made Monroe Stahr, the young Cecilia, & tragic Kathleen. As usual, Fitzgerald recreates and tells of his life experiences - this time of his tumultuous years in Hollywood as a screen writer. Although hardened somewhat at this stage of his career, Fitzgerald, like his hero Stahr, still purveys his characteristic idealism laced with a latent hint of foreboding tragedy inevitably awaiting on the horizon. Stahr, like Fitzgerald, is forever viewed as a boy wonder, despite being a seasoned veteran at this stage of his career, due to his overnight success at age 23. So, Fitzgerald, who had the splendid This Side of Paradise published at age 23, and who also was known for his propensity to turn a sickly pale white just as Stahr does, ingeniously incorporates himself into his work one last time.

The incredibly insightful notes, outlines, and revisions written by Fitzgerald shown at the conclusion of the book open an amazing new world of intropection to the reader. I give it 5 stars not for what it is, but for what it would have been. I just finished reading all of his works chronologically and I must say, unequivocally, that this very well could have eclipsed his other works of fiction, all of which are truly sublime.

"It is an escape into a lavish, romantic past that perhaps will not come again into our time." - F. Scott on The Last Tycoon

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Last Achievement
Review: This work derives part of its importance from what it says about Fitzgerald at the untimely end of his career: fans of his earlier work will be pleased to see that this final tome showed all the hallmarks of becoming another masterpiece. By 1940, when "Tycoon" was written, FSF hadn't written a book in six years. But the familiar voice, though muted, had not been lost.

The lapse provides welcome proof of the endurance of Fitzgerald's talent over time. We can only imagine what biting, incisive insights he would have come up with if magically sent to chronicle the 1990s.

Fitzgerald's "Unfinished Symphony" is presented in this Scribner paperback edition in a way that will appeal to both casual readers and serious students. Leading Fitzgerald expert Matthew Bruccoli has assembled the fragments of this book into a gripping and highly readable narrative, and the publisher has included a detailed preface exploring FSF's thoughts at the genesis of the work, as well as a selection of working notes which will delight writing students looking for some insight into the workings of a great mind.

This book tells the story of Monroe Stahr, an early Hollywood producer who makes his mark on the industry almost at its very inception. Stahr's word is law within his studio, and a single order from him is enough to reshape, delay or outright kill a film in process. Since the death of his wife, actress Minna Davis, Stahr's job is his life - a life that illness and overwork threaten to cut short. But a chance sighting of englishwoman Kathleen Moore brings back a flood of old memories and new desires. Stahr's pursuit of Moore leads him briefly into the world outside the studio, and then her actions leave him reeling from the blows just when his rivals gang up against him.

The book is truncated at a very unfortunate point, Episode 17 of 30 - the precise point at which events begin to turn against Stahr. To finish the book in our minds, we can visualize the ending put forth in Fitzgerald's surviving notes, though we have not his words to shape it for us. But even in unfinished form, this book is still worth reading, if only to revisit one last time the mind that produced phrases such as this, in describing loops of unedited film hanging in a projection room: "Dreams hung in fragments at the far end of the room, suffered analysis, passed --- to be dreamed in crowds, or else discarded."

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