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    The Last Tycoon
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    The Last Tycoon
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    The Last Tycoon
    Ebook248 pages3 hours

    The Last Tycoon

    By F. Scott Fitzgerald

    3.5/5

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    Unavailable in your country

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    About this ebook

    HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.

    ‘They were smiling at each other as if this was the beginning of the world.’

    The lights of Hollywood do little to distract Cecelia as she watches Monroe Stahr, wunderkind studio executive and object of her desire, descend into a reckless and ardent love affair with an auspicious starlet – an affair that threatens to destroy his reign as the Silver Screen’s golden boy. In this tragic tale Fitzgerald exposes the corruption, sex and towering ambition at the dark heart of 1930s Hollywood.

    Unfinished at the time of his death, F. Scott Fitzgerald bids his own poignant farewell to the themes that inspired ‘The Great Gatsby’, ‘Tender is the Night’ and ‘The Beautiful and Damned’.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateMay 8, 2014
    ISBN9780007574919
    Unavailable
    The Last Tycoon
    Author

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

    F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) is regarded as one of the greatest American authors of the 20th century. His short stories and novels are set in the American ‘Jazz Age’ of the Roaring Twenties and include This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night, The Great Gatsby, The Last Tycoon, and Tales of the Jazz Age.

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    Reviews for The Last Tycoon

    3.5/5

    220 ratings10 reviews

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    • 1/5
      he Last Tycoon is F. Scott Fitzgerald's last novel. It was unfinished and published posthumously. This edition contains the full text as finished by the author + outlines, notes and correspondence about the novel which elucidates or helps understand the novel and how Scott Fitzgerald intended to finish it.Scott Fitzgerald was one of the top authors of his age, the best-paid short story writer of the 1920s. He is probably best known for those stories which are the ultimate expression of the 'Roaring Twenties'. After the Great Depression of 1929, the market for magazine-published stories collapsed, and his stories written and published in the 30s reflect this depressing period, almost like a hangover from the previous decade.Scott Fitzgerald's novels tend to be a bit more serious. They are set in the same milieu of the jet set, often featuring loose lifestyle morals with a tendency to flippancy. The Last Tycoon is a little bit more serious.The novel is set in Hollywood, but its main character is not a film star. She is the daughter of a wealthy director. Thus, the novel portrays the Hollywood life from within, but not directly from its glamorous side. Focus is rather on the writers and the makers of movies, perhaps one might say the unglamorous side of the film world.While Hollywood movies are all about the fulfillment of Romantic love, the novel is about unrequited love: She loves him. He loves someone else. The idea is simple, yet so true.Besides this main theme, the novel develops some sidelines about the less glamorous side of Hollywood.Personally, I find the novels of Scott Fitzgerald difficult to read. The writing is obviously very good, and in many places wonderful, creating great moments, however, the overall structure is loose and sometimes it is difficult to follow what's going on. With Fitzgerald, however, it's worth the effort, and on the whole The Last Tycoon is a satisfactory read.
    • 5/5
      If only I had read this work years ago... There is much to be learnt by reading an unfinished book, especially this with the author's chapter plan, character sketches, unedited rants and revisions. I expected Fitzgerald's colleagues to have attempted to finish the novel. Instead, however, the rawness of "The Last Tycoon" provides a window into the mind of an author in full swing. Yet if it were finished I doubt it would have had the same impact. On finishing reading the book I was at once melancholy - for the author, for the characters, for the friendship/comradeship/competition between Fitzgerald and Hemingway, for the thought processes that we would like to think are far too human, too prosaic for those who have written and written well. The scholarly care for the development of the piece is amplified precisely because of the scaffolding Fitzgerald left behind at his death, much like seeing the inner workings of a precision timepiece normally hidden from view. Fitzgerald's plot does the same to Hollywood. So much so that he couldn't have planned it better, or written truer at all, had he finished the story. "The Last Tycoon" immortalises Fitzgerald as a glorious death in battle for a warrior king. Only we are much the poorer for his early demise.
    • 4/5
      A beautifully,, believably written book that sadly was not completed due to the author's death. The characters are fully formed and complex. The environments that scenes take place are carefully crafted to set the mood and echo the events taking place.
    • 4/5
      I read this the way I read most Fitzgerald novels, over a weekend, in giant chunks. This one feels a little less like his work and a little more disjointed, and that is because it was compiled after he died, by editor Matthew Bruccoli.

      I have to say, as an unfinished work, Bruccoli does an incredible job of assembling the narrative. I also had issues with the narrative voice, at first. Although the main narrator was a woman, it still had a very masculine, Scott-like tone, but I grew accustomed to it.

      I don't think I am the ideal Fitzgerald reader. I'm a pretty lazy reader. I don't scrutinise every conversation for all his subtleties and mastery.

      I loved this. Scott writes some really, really beautiful passages. The scene at the drug store lunch counter? Perfection.

      I wouldn't recommend starting on this book if this is your first Fitzgerald but as always, any time I read him I'm left wondering why I waited so long to start.
    • 5/5
      It's too bad this was never finished. I think this would have been my favorite Fitzgerald book. Even incomplete, I like it better than anything else I have read. This is a simple yet complicated story about love. She loves him. He loves someone else. That someone else is set to marry anyone else but him. Classic love square. You have to feel sorry for Monroe Stahr. He is lovestruck by a woman who strongly resembles his deceased wife. As a man in the movie business he has the money and the power to woo Kathleen into a brief relationship, even despite the fact she is engaged to be married to someone else. Meanwhile, there is young Cecilia, a junior at Bennington College, just willing Stahr to look at her, to notice her. It is her voice that tells the entire story. Fitzgerald explains the first and third person narrative. What Cecilia is not witness to, she imagines. "Thus, I hope to get the verisimilitude of a first person narrative, combined with a Godlike knowledge of all events that happen to my characters" (p 164).
    • 5/5
      A great pity that it is unfinished.
    • 3/5
      This book, which Fitzgerald was still writing when he died, is the last of a great author's life works.The story revolves around Monroe Stahr, a powerful force in the world of Hollywood movies. Despite his name, Stahr prefers to stay out of the limelight and behind the scenes as a producer. He meets and falls in love with a younger girl who resembles his late wife, though he has recently discovered that is dying of a terminal illness.Though I am glad that I finally read this, as Fitzgerald is one of my favorite authors, I can't say that I actually enjoyed it all that much. I know that he is typically dry, but this book just seemed uninteresting to me. The beginning chapters were narrated by Cecilia Brady, the daughter of Stahr's business partner. She gives us an overview of Stahr, and is able to convincingly focus on his life rather than her own story due to the fact that she is secretly in love with him. At this point, I thought that Stahr sounded like an interesting character. However, when the narrative switched to Stahr's voice, I found that he wasn't really interesting at all. Funnily enough, I noticed that Cecilia now sounded more interesting in Stahr's passing notices of her, making me want to hear more. But when she was telling us the story, she was pretty bland.I suppose that the true romance of this book hadn't taken off yet, or perhaps it had. Whichever way, I simply couldn't feel anything for Kathleen and Stahr. It just didn't feel believable to me, and Kathleen annoyed me anyways, with her swiftly changing mind and boggling love triangles. She seemed insincere, or confused at best.With all of that, I do feel compelled to note to myself that Fitzgerald never finished the book. Undoubtedly he would have gone back and edited it, so I am not taking this one into any account in terms of his skill as a writer. Who knows, maybe in the finished product, Stahr would have remained fascinating both in Cecilia's and his own voice, the love story would have become more real, and I would have been interested.There was a guide in the back of my book with Fitzgerald's notes in it, planning out the rest of the story, so if the interested reader likes, they can find out what happens to the characters in the end. However, the notes were quite long, and I skimmed through quite a few of them without having anything catch my eye. So, I put the book down. I just didn't like it enough to go into an in depth study of it.I would recommend this to fans of Fitzgerald and perhaps to those who are very interested in the golden age of Hollywood. To anyone else, though, I'd have to advise them to pass.
    • 4/5
      I was a little skeptical to read an unfinished novel. But, I enjoyed The Great Gatsby too much to pass this up. It was clear that this novel could have been even better than Gatsby. I enjoyed reading the novel. The editors added a section to explain what may have happened next. I found this pointless. The story stands alone quite well and there is no need to figure out what happens next. The beauty is in the writing and story telling. It can end where it ends.
    • 4/5
      Fitzgerald's unfinished novel of Hollywood in the 1930s centres on Monroe Stahr a workaholic film producer who falls for a young girl who reminds him of his dead wife. The novel is narrated by the young daughter of the studio head who has a crush on Starr. Had he lived this could have been a novel that would have revived his fortunes. An intriguing but sad read.
    • 5/5
      Clearly his unfinished masterpiece - full of Scott's usual skill at conveying those little essences of life for which there really is no word. Also his best of all works in terms of describing a situation so vividly with so little verbiage. The notes are published at the end of this copy, showing other phrases and concepts he intended to include but had not yet integrated. His notes reveal that the plot would get somewhat more harsh, bringing in plots of murder, communism, unions, and a plane crash. The telling through both Cecilia and from the third person allows some very interesting perspective. She is a dynamic character in this story, but more because she sees her past through her now more mature (or jaded?) eyes. Her early wisdom: "It's not a slam at you when people are rude -- it's a slam at a people they've met before." Monroe Stahr has both reserve and spitfire moments. He is perfectly portrayed as the last of his kind of totalitarian, but fatherly tycoon's of that time. The overall work is very well integrated with the current history and parallels of Fitgzeral's time (and sickness, and comments about film and writing). He is especially clever for using the relationship between screenwriting and movies to make meaning within the story and about the arts themselves.