F. Scott Fitzgerald's, The Last Tycoon
Explorating the Writing Process Through the Unfinished Novel
May 28, 2009
Among the contributions for which Fitzgerald is best known are works such as, Tender is the Night, The Great Gatsby, and multitudes of short stories written for publications like, The Saturday Evening Post, and, The Smart Set. Works such as these are appreciated for their deliberate and finely polished affect.
Fitzgerald’s ability to do this so well during the course of his (roughly) thirty year writing career has become something of a trademark to his talent. However, his unique ability to rapidly produce so many pieces of both quality and substance should not over score the rare value to be found in his final achievement.
The Love of the Last Tycoon: An Unfinished Novel
Far from being anywhere near completion, the fate of this work as unfinished masterpiece became finite on December 20 of 1940, when Fitzgerald died at the apartment of his lover; Sheilah Graham, having suffered a heart attack only a month earlier. An edited version of the recovered manuscripts was published in sequential order almost a year later, as part of a collection including, The Great Gatsby, and a selection of his short stories.
Fitzgerald's Undecided Ending and Title
The skeleton of this novel could scarcely be called a rough draft, since only 17 of the 30 intended episodes were ever developed, even in draft form. Luckily, some sketchy plot treatments for the remaining episodes were left behind as well, enabling a framework of Fitzgerald’s probable intentions to be mapped out. These reveal that Fitzgerald had not made a final decision about how the novel would end at the time of his death.
The author had also not decided on his title. According to the Scribner Edition, he had originally been calling the novel, Stahr: a Romance, after the novel’s hero, Monroe Stahr—the last tycoon of the movie industry. He later toyed with the title, The Love of the Last Tycoon: a Western (which popular opinion later deemed to be more in keeping with his style), but had not formally proposed the idea to his editor.
Fitzgerald's Goals for the Finished Novel
Originally, Fitzgerald’s intentions for the finished novel were 60,000 words as carefully constructed as, The Great Gatsby, but at 70,000 words and a self imposed cutting margin of 10,000 words, Fitzgerald was only a little more than half way through writing the early drafts. It seems that despite much unrealized refinement, the finished version would have been substantially longer than his proposed length.
Fitzgerald's Autobiographic Characters
Autobiographic tendencies are apparent as well—many of which can be found in the character of Stahr, who suffers from stress induced heart problems relating to his work. Further overshadowing this association is the influence of real life movie director; Irving Thalberg, whom Fitzgerald first met and began working with in 1927, upon arriving in Hollywood to try his hand at screenwriting.
This time, Fitzgerald did not meet his objective with a high level of success, and it could further be assumed that the novel’s relationship between Stahr and the washed up screenplay writer; Wylie White, forms a parallel to the relationship between Thalberg and Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald's Unresolved Problems with Narration and Plot
Also worthy of mention is the bizarre, unannounced presence of an omniscient, third person narrator co-mingling with the first person narrative of Cecelia Brady—a producer’s daughter who is in love with Stahr. Both narratives are highly useful in plot facilitation, and it would be of interest to know how Fitzgerald might have streamlined this problem in order to make the finished novel as flawless as he intended.
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