F. Scott Fitzgerald

Kevin Macdonald

The Love of the Last Tycoon was originally published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon. The novel was inspired by the life of film producer Irving Thalberg, on whom its rotagonist Monroe Stahr was based. The story follows Stahr's rise to power in Hollywood, and his conflicts with rival Pat Brady, a fictionalised version of Louis B. Mayer. A 1976 film version was adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter, starring Robert De Niro as Monroe Stahr. The New York Times called the book 'the best piece of creative writing that we have about one phase of American life - Hollywood and the movies.' Fitgerald's essay The Crack-up, was one of three originally published in Esquire and put together in a book under that title by Edmund Wilson, after Fitzgerald's death. It tells the story of the author's sudden descent at the age of thirty-nine from a life of success and glamour to one of emptiness and despair, and his determined recovery.

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