Email this article
Printable version
Fitzgerald's 'Last Tycoon' brilliant
Charlie Langdon
Charlie Langdon
Many of our finest writers are not really understood. Take, for example the celebrated author F. Scott Fitzgerald.
When he came onto the scene with his novel, This Side of Paradise, he found instant success. Soon he married Zelda and they were perceived as models for the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties.
While residing in Paris, they ran with the smart set crowd, which included another young writer and World War I veteran, Ernest Hemingway. Reading Hemingway's short story, "Big Two-Hearted River," Fitzgerald contacted Max Perkins, Scribners main editor, urging Perkins to look over Hemingway's stories, plus some pages of Hemingway's first novel, The Sun Also Rises. Perkins was impressed and, of course, Hemingway was soon another young author with a legion of readers.
Fitzgerald's next novel The Great Gatsby was the classic of the Jazz Age.
It chronicled the rather pointless lives of young, wealthy people living in spacious homes on Long Island, who drank too much and had clandestine affairs with other men's wives.
Gatsby never fit into this crowd because he had grown up poor, but had made a fortune trading in bootleg booze.
Tender is the Night was Fitzgerald's next novel. A long, brilliantly written work, it took several years to write, and when it was published, America was in the midst of the Great Depression. It didn't sell well, and the author was considered out of date and irrelevant.
In the meantime, Zelda had become an alcoholic and was later sent to an insane asylum, where she remained for the rest of her life.
Fitzgerald was not well himself, but he had an outlet in his writing. The result was a memoir, The Crack-Up. His readers pitied him. He had hit bottom and soon was considered washed up.
Oddly enough, his best work was ahead. During his time of troubles, he had done a good deal of screen writing in Hollywood.
It was not surprising that a man with his brilliance and creativity soon would write the one and only classic work on Hollywood as seen by the insiders. He titled it The Last Tycoon.
Recently, I reread Tycoon, and once again found it to be a compelling story. The tycoon is Monroe Stahr, not only a Hollywood producer, he was the Hollywood producer. No project on his lot went into production without his approval. His office often was the place sought by out-of-work actors, as well as actors down on their luck.
Stahr always was welcoming, and would chat with each of them. But after a while, he would usher them out with "That's all I have for you today. Come back soon and we'll see if I have something then." Business often took Stahr to New York. He flew coast to coast on commercial flights.
While chronicling one of those flights, F. Scott Fitzgerald suffered a heart attack and died in December 1940.
He left a partial outline of the story. Enough to know that it ended in a plane crash.
Everyone on board was killed.
Charlie Langdon is the Herald's senior critic. He can be reached at langdons@gobrainstorm.net.
advertisement
Live in the high pines of Durango West II, just 7 miles from downtown.
Price: $299,900
Minimum Down Payment: $11,547
APR: 5.786% (as of 9-14-09)
Monthly Payment: $2098.78
Durango Herald Calendar of Events
