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nickynickynicky's review against another edition
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
trin's review against another edition
2.0
Oh, yikes. This is really, really unfinished: much more so than I had thought, for whatever reason? And what's there -- less than six chapters -- is honestly quite a mess. There are a few startlingly vivid moments -- the reveal of in the first chapter, for example -- but for the most part this is lacking the precise imagery and depth of emotion that pervade Gatsby. The Hollywood stuff reads like inside baseball, and Fitzgerald seems muddled and lost. It's sad.
Poor book. Poor Scott.
Spoiler
Schwartz's suicidePoor book. Poor Scott.
kaelynputnam's review against another edition
4.0
It's a shame he wasn't able to finish this one. Interesting characters and premise!
elinormarie's review against another edition
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
marta_s05's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
deepikamineni's review against another edition
4.0
I just loved this book......why did it have to be half done
I have so many questions on how it all ends ...and they weren't satisfied by Fitzgeralds notes :(
To think that this is the last of a great author is truly saddening
I have so many questions on how it all ends ...and they weren't satisfied by Fitzgeralds notes :(
To think that this is the last of a great author is truly saddening
acacia_happy_hour's review against another edition
5.0
I'm not sure there's an emotional equivalent to reading an unfinished novel. It hurts in a way I can't really specify. The uncertainty of future events and the knowledge that the author passed away before its completion leave the reader unsatisfied and empty. But what was completed of The Last Tycoon is as beautiful as Fitzgerald's other writings and well worth the time it took to read. Just have a happy book ready to mop up your tears.
joannaautumn's review against another edition
5.0
There is something about this man's writing that does it for me.
“There’s nothing that worries me in the novel, nothing that seems uncertain.
Unlike “Tender is the night” it is not a story of deterioration – it is not depressive and not morbid in spite of the tragic ending. If one could ever be more “like” another I should say it is more “like” The Great Gatsby than any other of my books.
But I hope it will be entirely different – I hope it will be something new, arouse new emotions, perhaps even a new way of looking at a certain phenomena.
I have set is safely in the period of five years ago to obtain detachment, but now that Europe is tumbling about our ears, this also seems to be for the best.
It is an escape into the lavish, romantic past that perhaps will not come again into our time. It is certainly a novel I would like to read. Shall I write it? “
- Fitzgerald in his letter concerning the book.
He was writing this novel until his death so it is unfinished, comparing it to The Great Gatsby but this one is more complex than Gatsby, starting with the narration.
Cecilia as a narrator can be parallel to Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, but as Fitzgerald evolved as the years went by so had his writing.
Cecilia is both subjective and distanced from the narration. Subjective as she was in love with Stahr and through her eyes at times, we see him as she sees him. Distanced as she is telling us a story that already unfolded as five years have passed since then. She also unlike Nick plays a direct role in the characters' life as she did tell her father, Stahr's antagonist, that he had been seeing someone and gave him a ground for blackmail. With Cecilia, a reader is getting insight and foreshadowing and can speculate how the events unfold as if he/she is an actor in the story. In contrast to Nick, where during the more important chapters he is absent and feels as though he is a commentator not a participant of the events.
“What I wanted to know “He told me ruefully “is how he ever got to be Mr.Stahr?”
“He had flown up very high to see, on strong wings, when he was young. And while he was up there he had looked on all the kingdoms, with the kind of eyes that can stare straight into the sun….he had stayed up there longer than most of us, and then, remembering all that he had seen from his great height of how things were, he had settled gradually to earth."
Stahr as the last Tycoon / Romantic elements in the book
He is at the forefront of the moviemaker business but at the same time being on his personal descent. The symbol for his descent is given in both opening scene (plane landing) and in the drafts that Fitzgerald had made for the ending (his tragic death in a plane crash). To understand this we must go back in the time the book takes place, Hollywood of the 1930s after The Great Depression and the turn of the economy it caused. The movie industry was growing and the fight for power and money had started in it.
This book deals in details with the profession, showing us a daily life of Monroe Stahr who is consumed by his work, taking no breaks from it except the time he spent with Kathleen Moore and their affair. This newfound feeling has him feeling confused but unable to resist the pull that Moore has over him, which could have been even more intensified by his health condition.
“If he was going to die soon, like the two doctors said, he wanted to stop being Stahr for a while and hunt for love like men who had no gifts to give, like young nameless men who looked around the streets in the dark."
The portrait of the relationship developing between them is lovely and also doomed to fail – being that she is already engaged. But reading it felt awfully real.
“They were smiling at each other as if this was the beginning of the world.”
* * *
“They sat on high stools and had tomato broth and hot sandwiches. It was more intimate than anything they had done and they both felt a dangerous sort of loneliness, and felt it in each other.”
* * *
“There’s no reason for feeling like a fool.” She said. “You’re too good a man to feel like a fool. But you should see this for what it is.”
“What is it?”
“You’ve fallen for me – completely. You’ve got me in your dreams.”
“I’d forgotten you” he declared “Till the moment I walked in that door.”
Interesting thing to notice is another comparison to The Great Gatsby where Stahr is associated with the West while Brady (Cecilia's father) is associated with the East, one being an artist concerned with the production of the films (Stahr) and the other being the merchant, concerned about the selling aspect and the income it will bring (Brady). Though the thing that is holding all the crew is the art aspect of it – Stahr. And chapters 3 and 4 go in great detail to describe his work in action.
“The oracle had spoken. There was nothing to question or argue. Stahr must be right always, not most of the time but always – or the structure would melt down like gradual butter.”
He is inspired by Conradian heroes – a great man whose fall is compounded by his internal weakness and the machinations of those immediately around him. His death is an end of an Era. Stahr is a hero that belongs to an age that has no demands for heroes beyond the ones they create on-screen. His plane crash is ironically excluding him from the crash of his the film empire he worked so hard on.
“You do what you are born to do” he said gently “About once a month somebody tries to reform me, tells me what a barren old age I’ll have when I can’t work anymore. But it’s not so simple.”
* * *
“When I was young I wanted to be chief clerk. The one that knew where everything was.”
“That’s odd. And now you’re much more than that.”
“No, I’m still a chief clerk. Thats my gift, if I have one. Only when I got to be it, I found out that no one knew where anything was. And I found out that you have to know why it was where it was, and whether it should be left there.”
In conclusion, this would have been a masterpiece along with The Great Gatsby had Fitzgerald lived a little longer. All of these unanswered questions are always going to float in the air. Nonetheless, this unfinished work is more worth than hundreds of finished ones.
“There’s nothing that worries me in the novel, nothing that seems uncertain.
Unlike “Tender is the night” it is not a story of deterioration – it is not depressive and not morbid in spite of the tragic ending. If one could ever be more “like” another I should say it is more “like” The Great Gatsby than any other of my books.
But I hope it will be entirely different – I hope it will be something new, arouse new emotions, perhaps even a new way of looking at a certain phenomena.
I have set is safely in the period of five years ago to obtain detachment, but now that Europe is tumbling about our ears, this also seems to be for the best.
It is an escape into the lavish, romantic past that perhaps will not come again into our time. It is certainly a novel I would like to read. Shall I write it? “
- Fitzgerald in his letter concerning the book.
He was writing this novel until his death so it is unfinished, comparing it to The Great Gatsby but this one is more complex than Gatsby, starting with the narration.
Cecilia as a narrator can be parallel to Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, but as Fitzgerald evolved as the years went by so had his writing.
Cecilia is both subjective and distanced from the narration. Subjective as she was in love with Stahr and through her eyes at times, we see him as she sees him. Distanced as she is telling us a story that already unfolded as five years have passed since then. She also unlike Nick plays a direct role in the characters' life as she did tell her father, Stahr's antagonist, that he had been seeing someone and gave him a ground for blackmail. With Cecilia, a reader is getting insight and foreshadowing and can speculate how the events unfold as if he/she is an actor in the story. In contrast to Nick, where during the more important chapters he is absent and feels as though he is a commentator not a participant of the events.
“What I wanted to know “He told me ruefully “is how he ever got to be Mr.Stahr?”
“He had flown up very high to see, on strong wings, when he was young. And while he was up there he had looked on all the kingdoms, with the kind of eyes that can stare straight into the sun….he had stayed up there longer than most of us, and then, remembering all that he had seen from his great height of how things were, he had settled gradually to earth."
Stahr as the last Tycoon / Romantic elements in the book
He is at the forefront of the moviemaker business but at the same time being on his personal descent. The symbol for his descent is given in both opening scene (plane landing) and in the drafts that Fitzgerald had made for the ending (his tragic death in a plane crash). To understand this we must go back in the time the book takes place, Hollywood of the 1930s after The Great Depression and the turn of the economy it caused. The movie industry was growing and the fight for power and money had started in it.
This book deals in details with the profession, showing us a daily life of Monroe Stahr who is consumed by his work, taking no breaks from it except the time he spent with Kathleen Moore and their affair. This newfound feeling has him feeling confused but unable to resist the pull that Moore has over him, which could have been even more intensified by his health condition.
“If he was going to die soon, like the two doctors said, he wanted to stop being Stahr for a while and hunt for love like men who had no gifts to give, like young nameless men who looked around the streets in the dark."
The portrait of the relationship developing between them is lovely and also doomed to fail – being that she is already engaged. But reading it felt awfully real.
“They were smiling at each other as if this was the beginning of the world.”
* * *
“They sat on high stools and had tomato broth and hot sandwiches. It was more intimate than anything they had done and they both felt a dangerous sort of loneliness, and felt it in each other.”
* * *
“There’s no reason for feeling like a fool.” She said. “You’re too good a man to feel like a fool. But you should see this for what it is.”
“What is it?”
“You’ve fallen for me – completely. You’ve got me in your dreams.”
“I’d forgotten you” he declared “Till the moment I walked in that door.”
Interesting thing to notice is another comparison to The Great Gatsby where Stahr is associated with the West while Brady (Cecilia's father) is associated with the East, one being an artist concerned with the production of the films (Stahr) and the other being the merchant, concerned about the selling aspect and the income it will bring (Brady). Though the thing that is holding all the crew is the art aspect of it – Stahr. And chapters 3 and 4 go in great detail to describe his work in action.
“The oracle had spoken. There was nothing to question or argue. Stahr must be right always, not most of the time but always – or the structure would melt down like gradual butter.”
He is inspired by Conradian heroes – a great man whose fall is compounded by his internal weakness and the machinations of those immediately around him. His death is an end of an Era. Stahr is a hero that belongs to an age that has no demands for heroes beyond the ones they create on-screen. His plane crash is ironically excluding him from the crash of his the film empire he worked so hard on.
“You do what you are born to do” he said gently “About once a month somebody tries to reform me, tells me what a barren old age I’ll have when I can’t work anymore. But it’s not so simple.”
* * *
“When I was young I wanted to be chief clerk. The one that knew where everything was.”
“That’s odd. And now you’re much more than that.”
“No, I’m still a chief clerk. Thats my gift, if I have one. Only when I got to be it, I found out that no one knew where anything was. And I found out that you have to know why it was where it was, and whether it should be left there.”
In conclusion, this would have been a masterpiece along with The Great Gatsby had Fitzgerald lived a little longer. All of these unanswered questions are always going to float in the air. Nonetheless, this unfinished work is more worth than hundreds of finished ones.