Love of the Last Tycoon
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The unfinished work, The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is very simply, a novel written about the movies. Based in Los Angeles, circa 1935, the story is told from two points of view, one is a character from the story, Celia Brady, and the other is an omniscient, didactic voice. The purported reason for these two different narrators was to give the reader a full access to the hero, Monroe Stahr. This technique is unrefined and at times confusing, but is none the less capable of conveying the imagery needed to describe him. Stahr is portrayed as the most powerful of all of Hollywood's major players. He is a widower, a workaholic, and terminally ill- because of those work habits. Despite these traits, Stahr is a most agreeable leading man who is exceedingly successful as a motion picture producer and as a human being. From a literary standpoint, Stahr is the archetypical American businessman hero: stern, exacting, successful, controlling, and compassionate. However, he is a man without a home until his short love affair with Kathleen Moore at his unfinished beach house...