F. Scott Fitzgerald

Edmund Wilson

These sumptuous new hardback editions mark the 70th anniversary of Fitzgerald's death. Their eyes 'met and tangled. For an instant they made love as no one ever dares to do after. Their glance was slower than an embrace, more urgent than a call'. A novel of the glittering decadence of Hollywood in its heyday, this was Fitzgerald's last work and he died without completing it. The novel's tragic tycoon hero is Stahr. Caught in the crossfire of his own effortless cynicism and his silent, secret vulnerability, Stahr inhabits a world dominated by business, alcohol and promiscuity. If there is a moral or social necessity to film-making in this West Coast never-never land, Stahr does not always believe in it. If there is love he does not always see it. The sharpness of Fitzgerald's prose, the steely simplicity of his style, give a cutting edge to this study of Hollywood in the thirties, from which Fitzgerald draws a painfully bitter-sweet love affair and bids his own poignant farewell to the Great American Dream.

The Last Tycoon

Depicts the inner-workings of the Hollywood movie industry and its impact on the fabric of American life.

The Authorized Text

The Love of the Last Tycoon

Keila Rico 

trash - this was literally painful to finish

Jeff Brown 

Have you ever started something knowing that you will feel dissatisfied, be it a meal or an event, or a book -- only that you felt even worse about it the end?

That is how I felt at the end of "Tycoon". I can't give it five stars because it is not a finished work. I can give it one star because it's not the writer's fault that it is not finished, and I shouldn't demean the work that he did provide. So I gave it three as a default.

There is plenty of content in the book that makes it an interesting read, but not enough that I would give a strong recommendation to the casual reader.

For a Fitzgerald completest, or for those that are writers or would like to delve into the mind of one of the top 20th-Century writers, it is a must-read. It is captivating from that point of view.

1930s Hollywood. The depression has receded, the studios are booming, and the glitz and glamour are bewitching. But for Cecilia Brady, this is just life. That is, until she meets Monroe Stahr... Stahr is at the centre of it all. A genius production chief in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Cecilia is mesmerised. But Stahr's attentions are caught elsewhere - in the arms of a mysterious woman - and Cecilia watches as a passionate but doomed love affair unfolds. Little by little, Stahr loses his grasp on this fickle world. Fighting with his writers and declaring war on the Union bosses, he is saved from tragedy only by Fitzgerald's own death. Although THE LAST TYCOON will forever remain unfinished, it is a work of unrivalled potential, exposing a Hollywood we no longer know. One of stars in ascension, and the great picture men in free fall.

Sara

It’s hard to talk about a book when it enchanted and amazed you; you aren’t just talking about a few well written pages your eyes have run through, you’re talking about something bigger that you feel like you’ve actually joined, as if it really happened.

Well, it really happened that, while reading “The Love of the Last Tycoon” by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, I followed Monroe Stahr first at the Hollywood film studios, and then up and down through the winding streets where a pleasant breeze always blows, and where the bungalows of the stars rise along and are lighted by the blazing night, or in his car on our way to Santa Monica and Malibu, where a yellow strand twists irregularly along the cliffs of Southern California recognizable by their shades of color making you think of life that is born again. I saw Monroe Stahr pining away for love, his heart cringing at the sight of so much beauty, the beauty of Kathleen Moore with her soft skin, clear face, much more fair than all the Hollywood stars made out of powder, golden dust in the wind, while Kathleen is a sort of enduring beauty that stands up against the sky and lasts while the ticking time passes over Monroe’s heart and stains his face with tears as blue as the Pacific. I felt all the pain of a man crushed by an impossible love and if that anguish and emotional harm could have made noise, it would have been the roar of the ocean from below coming to the shore as a fleet of white fists, which die on the foreshore in the silent memory of those who make peace with their past. But Monroe doesn’t want to. He is a romantic, a nostalgic, a lover of the beauty that hides beyond the set, the stage. Monroe, Monroe… I can still see him as he grasps the nickel and leaves it on the desk, and once he turns to me I finally know that I am the person in the room watching every move he makes, like the the public at the movies, and a reader in a book.

Destiny J Tamayo

I was not a fan of this one. Fitzgerald really knows how to create an atmosphere though.

Kimberly

Can definitely tell it's unfinished. However, there were some lines that were zingers and loved. Other parts of the story dragged on a bit. Not as good as The Great Gatsby but got some americana and money vibes, but the characters were not as developed as in The Beautiful and Damned. Has re-read potential.

Niki Sotiropoulou-Nassika

rhea 

Lexie 

Lola

an unfinished novel. The great Gatsby. by F. Sott Fitzgerald

The last Tycoon

Nick Gracilla

Caitlin Bohannon

Christine

lauren carla

A mysterious woman stands and smiles at Monroe Stahr, the last of the great Hollywood princes. Enchanted by one another, they begin a passionate but hopeless love affair.

The Last Tycoon

Reviews

Highlights