F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald) [Hardcover]

F. Scott Fitzgerald (Author), Matthew J. Bruccoli (Editor)

Book Description

Series: The Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald | Publication Date: December 24, 1993

Cecilia Brady, the daughter of a great motion-picture producer, reminisces about events that began five years earlier when she was an undergraduate at Bennington College, starting with a flight home to Hollywood on a plane whose other passengers included Wylie White, a script writer down on his luck, Manny Schwartz, once an influential producer, and Monroe Stahr, another producer and partner of Cecilia's father, Pat Brady. Cecilia is attracted to Stahr, and he turns to her at the very time that he has a falling out with her father. Each of the partners conceives the idea of murdering the other. On the way to New York to establish an alibi, Stahr repents and decides to revoke his orders that will result in Brady's death, but his plane crashes before he can carry out his new plan and Cecilia loses both her father and the man she loves. Even in its incomplete form, The Love of The Last Tycoon: A Western has achieved a reputation as the best Hollywood novel. When F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940 he had written seventeen of thirty projected episodes. In 1941 the "unfinished novel" was published in a text for general readers by Edmund Wilson under the title The Last Tycoon. For more than fifty years this edition has been the only one available. This critical edition of The Love of the Last Tycoon utilizes Fitzgerald's manuscript drafts, revised typescripts, and working notes to establish the first authoritative text of the work. This volume includes a detailed history of the gestation, composition, and publication of the novel; full textual apparatus with editorial notes; facsimiles of the drafts; and explanatory notes on topical allusions and historical references for contemporary readers. The reconstruction of Fitzgerald's plan for the thirteen unwritten episodes is particularly useful. F. Scott Fitzgerald's incomplete masterpiece is restored to its 1940 state, and thus made fully accessible for the first time.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Literary detective Bruccoli has produced a remarkable feat of scholarship in this welcome critical edition of the novel Fitzgerald began during his final year (1940) while working in Hollywood as a screenwriter. Generally considered a roman a clef, the story charts the power struggle of self-made, overworked producer Monroe Stahr (modeled on MGM producer Irving Thalberg) with rival executive Pat Brady (a stand-in for MGM head Louis B. Mayer). It is also the story of Stahr's love affair with young widow Kathleen Moore and is (partly at least) narrated by Cecelia, Brady's cynical daughter who is hopelessly in love with Stahr. After Fitzgerald's death in December, his conflicting drafts for the novel were reworked by Edmund Wilson, who spliced episodes, moved around scenes and altered words and punctuation. Bruccoli, Fitzgerald biographer and editor of Cambridge's critical edition of The Great Gatsby , has restored Fitzgerald's original version and has also restored the narrative's ostensible working title, one that implies that Hollywood is the last American frontier where immigrants and their progeny remake themselves. Equally significant are other entries in this volume: Bruccoli's informative introduction; letters by Fitzgerald, Wilson and Maxwell Perkins; facsimiles of Fitzgerald's notes and drafts; and textual commentary, including helpful explanations of the novel's numerous topical references.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Based loosely on the life of movie mogul Irving Thalberg, this novel was left unfinished in rough form at the time of Fitzgerald's death. Soon after, a flawed version was hastily released under the makeshift title The Last Tycoon , which has been the only available edition. Now, however, in this second installment in Cambridge's series of critical editions of Fitzgerald's works (Classic Returns, LJ 9/15/91), renowned Fitzgerald scholar Bruccoli has reassembled the 17 existing--out of 31 planned--episodes, according to Fitzgerald's intentions. The volume also includes an introduction by Bruccoli providing insight into the book's inception and history plus extensive information on the text, including facsimiles of the original manuscript pages, and a list of Fitzgerald's intended corrections and working notes. Though there are snatches of brilliance throughout, the text is not polished to the fine luster readers expect of an author of this caliber, but, coupled with Scott's notes, it provides a significant glimpse into the creative faculties of one of literature's preeminent minds. The Cambridge edition of The Love of the Last Tycoon is a superlative literary Christmas present. Essential for all serious literature collections.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; Unexpurgated Ed edition (December 24, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 052140231X
• ISBN-13: 978-0521402316
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,362,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the major American writers of the twentieth century -- a figure whose life and works embodied powerful myths about our national dreams and aspirations. Fitzgerald was talented and perceptive, gifted with a lyrical style and a pitch-perfect ear for language. He lived his life as a romantic, equally capable of great dedication to his craft and reckless squandering of his artistic capital. He left us one sure masterpiece, The Great Gatsby; a near-masterpiece, Tender Is the Night; and a gathering of stories and essays that together capture the essence of the American experience. His writings are insightful and stylistically brilliant; today he is admired both as a social chronicler and a remarkably gifted artist.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Luminous and Fresh, May 21, 2002

By 

Chelle "Chelle" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Love of the Last Tycoon (Paperback)

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.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Recommended Reading, April 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Love of the Last Tycoon (Paperback)

Don't be mislead by the three-star rating. This was clearly going to be a four- or five-star book, except that Fitzgerald died after completing only the first 17 of 30 intended "episodes." The writing is his most economical since Gatsby, and the setting of Hollywood provides good fodder for Fitzgerald's recurring theme of scandal among the wealthy or celebrated. The story is related, for the most part, by a woman, the daughter of a well-known producer, about events that occurred five years ealier, when she was in college and in love with a dynamic young producer named Monroe Stahr. Though she loves him from a distance, her somewhat obsessive interest in the man is a useful way to relate his story. The writing was at times vintage Fitzgerald, sometimes recognizably unfinished, but always worth the experience. The notes, letters and outlines included in the version I read were extremely interesting and worth their inclusion. This is a book that I don't think anyone can read without saying, "I wish he had finished this." This is also a book that I recommend to anyone who appreciates and enjoys the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "great book", March 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Love of the Last Tycoon (Paperback)

This is a fantastic book! Though unfinished, THE LAST TYCOON lives up to the supreme writing style of Fitzgerald's which was set forth in THE GREAT GATSBY. Judging from Fitzgerald's notes, published at the end of the novel, Fitzgerald had hoped for THE LAST TYCOON to be his master work. I really liked this book and I recomend it to other fans of F. Scout Fitzgerald.