F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished final novel The Last Tycoon was begun in 1939 in Encino, California. He worked on the novel during his tenure in Hollywood and up until the day he suffered a fatal heart attack on Dec. 21, 1940. The novel was published in 1941, and included Fitzgerald’s notes concerning the unfinished text. Also, the initial volume was published with The Great Gatsby and a collection of short stories that included “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” “The Rich Boy,” “May Day,” “Absolution,” and “Crazy Sunday” (Adams). The publication indicates the clearly infantile stage of the work, which was yet to be significantly revised and sharpened. The published draft “represents that point in the artist’s work where he has assembled and organized his material and acquired a firm grasp of his them, but has not yet brought it into focus” (Wilson 9).

The story itself “deals with one of the great men of the movies and how he was defeated by the hugeness of the industry and the smallness of the men who superseded him in power” (Maurer 1). Fitzgerald’s general attitude toward the material reflected his disappointment with his experience in Hollywood. The character of Monroe Stahr is a wildly successful Hollywood producer who occupies the center of the novel. He is based on Irving Thalberg, a Fitzgerald acquaintance who was an MGM producer. Thalberg rapidly ascended the Hollywood ladder yet died at the age of thirty-seven. Fitzgerald describes the influences for the model of Stahr while writing to Thalberg’s widow Norma:

I invented a tragic story and Irving’s life was, of course, not tragic except for his struggle against ill health…and though the story is pure...

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...cusing on the strength of Monroe Stahr’s characterization, many felt that The Last Tycoon could have been Fitzgerald’s best and most complete work of art.

Works Cited

Bruccoli, Matthew J. The Last of the Novelists: F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Last Tycoon. London: Feffer & Simons, 1977.

Bryer, Jackson R. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Critical Reception. New York: Burt Franklin &Co., 1978.

Maurer, Robert E. “F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Unfinished Novel, ‘The Last Tycoon.’” Bucknell University Studies Vol. 111, No. 3, May (1952): 139-56.

Wilson, Edmund. Foreword. The Last Tycoon. By F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Scribner, 1941.

http://partners.nytimes.com/books/00/12/24/specials/fitzgerald-tycoon.html 11/9/41, J. Donald Adams.

Online Literary Criticism Collection: F. Scott Fitzgerald http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/bin/litcrit.out.pl?au=fit-69