[.ca] F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western (ISBN 052140231X)

There will never be another F. Scott Fitzgerald:
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

The Last Achievement:
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."

Luminous and Fresh:
It's really a shame that Fitzgerald never had the chance to finish this novel. Or, for that matter, to have written just a chapter or two more. In Monroe Stahr, the hero and last tycoon, Fitzgerald has created a character to rival Gatsby's charisma--in fact, if Stahr had been more fully developed, as the working notes included with text hinted that he would have been, it's very possible that he would have exceeded Gatsby in that regard. Stahr is ultimately a compelling man of mixed personas, and because of such you care about him, you wonder at him, and you're almost happy that Fitzgerald was never able to doom him to the tragic ending that he had in mind. The most wonderful aspect of this novel is that it seems to me as though Fitzgerald was taking some kind of risk with it. I cannot put my finger on exactly what makes this so, but there is a different mood, a different energy to it. It's like we're seeing what Fitzgerald could have been like, unburdened of care and freshly in love with writing and life. It's a side of this superb writer that I would have dearly liked to have seen more of. I thoroughly enjoyed *The Love of the Last Tycoon*--I realized, perhaps even moreso than after reading Gatsby, that Fitzgerald's romanticism shines in everything that he does, adding a luminous quality to his prose that proved ellusive to a great number of his peers.

Better than Gatsby:
This is the greatest unfinished work in all of American literature, and also the best book on filmmaking ever written. So much compassion and wisdom.

A promising start, but not much substance to this novel:
I was disappointed there was not more substance to this novel. Fitzgerald was less than halfway finished when he died, and the seventeen "completed" episodes were in obvious need of re-editing. Judging from the author's notes, they would have been revised extensively anyway to fit his shifting vision of how the plot would evolve. There are moments of clever satire on the Hollywood Industry (and especially its writers) that would probably have made the finished product well worth reading, but Fitzgerald was still struggling to balance the satirical tone of his novel with the love story of its protagonists. The editor's notes were very helpful, though, inasmuch as they showed what direction Fitzgerald wanted to take and the alternate endings he had in mind.