The last Taikun

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The love of the last tycoon (original title: The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western ) is an unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald , which was published posthumously in 1941 by Edmund Wilson under the title "The last Tycoon". The German first edition was published in 1962 under the title The Last Taikun .

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The novel follows the life of the Hollywood studio manager Monroe Stahr, who is clearly based on Irving Thalberg , the head of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film company , whom Fitzgerald had met several times. In a film adaptation directed by Elia Kazan and written by Harold Pinter , Robert De Niro played the role of Stahr; the film was released in 1976 (see The Last Tycoon ).

The novel begins with Cecilia Brady (first-person narrator), the daughter of the influential Hollywood producer Pat Brady, flying from her college in New York to her home in Los Angeles and, at the airport, surprisingly to a friend of her father's, the author Wylie White, meets. White is with a failed producer who is introduced as Mr. Schwartz. Because of a complication, their flight has to land in Nashville, so the three of them decide to make a spontaneous detour to the historic estate of former President Andrew Jackson. When you get there, the attraction is closed. Mr. Schwartz sleeps while Wylie flirts with Cecilia. When Schwartz wakes up, he tells them that he has changed his mind and will not travel to Los Angeles with them. He asks Wylie to convey a message to a friend, which he gladly accepts. - The next day, the two of them learn that Schwartz has committed suicide.

Cecilia learns that the message Schwarz gave Wylie was intended for Monroe Stahr, her father's partner. Cecilia has had a crush on Stahr since she was a child.

Cecilia drives to her father's film studio to take him home to a birthday party. A sudden earthquake brings Cecilia, her father, and his companions to Stahr's office. A water pipe bursts and in the floods on the film grounds Stahr discovers two women floating on the heads of a statue. In one of them, Stahr sees a great resemblance to his deceased wife.

The next day, Stahr instructs his secretary to identify the girls. So he gets a phone number and makes an appointment with one of the girls. But it's the wrong girl, she doesn't look like his wife. Stahr drives her home. The (wrong) girl insists that he now has to meet her friend (the young Irish girl Kathleen Moore). As soon as this friend opens the front door, he knows she is the woman he remembered from the night before.

Kathleen, meanwhile, steadfastly refuses to meet Stahr or even to reveal her name to him. It was only when Stahr happened to meet her again at a party that he could convince her to go and have a coffee with him the following day. He drives her to Santa Monica, where he has a new house built for himself. Kathleen seems very reluctant to be with Stahr, but they still become intimate with each other. A short time later, Stahr learns through a letter from Kathleen that she has been engaged to another man for some time and will also marry this other man. But it is clear that she doesn't really love this man, she loves Stahr.

Stahr now calls on Cecilia to arrange a meeting with a suspected communist who wants to set up a union organization in the film studio. Stahr and Cecilia arrange dinner with the communist. Stahr gets drunk and a violent conflict ensues. So Stahr and Cecilia get closer.

Cecilia's father, on the other hand, becomes increasingly unhappy with Stahr as a business partner. He wants to drive him out of the company, and all means are fine with him. Also blackmail, because Brady knows that Stahr is still having an affair with the now married Kathleen; Ultimately, he doesn't shy away from hiring a professional killer. In retaliation, of course, Stahr also appoints a man to have Brady killed. But Stahr doubts, and when he tries to whistle the killer back, he no longer succeeds because the plane with which he (Stahr) is on his way to New York crashes. Brady dies soon after Stahr, and Cecilia quickly loses the two men who meant most to her in the world: her father and her lover.

criticism

JB Priestley said: "I would rather have written this unfinished novel than the complete works of many a much-admired American novelist."

English editions

  • New York 1941 (... Together with: The Great Gatsby and Selected Stories, ed. E. Wilson).
  • New York 1953, ed. Ders. (In: Three Novels; Einl. M. Cowley).
  • London 1958 (in: The Bodley Head F., 6 vols., 1).
  • Harmondsworth 1960 u. ö. (Penguin).
  • New York / London 1979 (in: Three Novels).
  • New York 1983.
  • as: "The Love of the Last Tycoon", 1993 (Cambridge edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli) (Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-40231-X ).
  • as: "The Love of the Last Tycoon", 2003, (Charles Scribner's Sons, ISBN 0-02-019985-6 ).

Translations

  • The last Taikun, W. Schürenberg, Ffm. 1962 (BS; ern. 1975).
  • Dass., Ders., Zurich 1977 (detebe).
  • Dass., Ders., Berlin / Weimar 1982 [Nachw. G. Klotz].
  • The last tycoon's love: a western; Roman / From the American. by Renate Orth-Guttmann. With an afterword by Verena Lueken. 2006 Zurich: Diogenes (Neuübers).

Adaptations

literature

  • SV Benét, F.'s Unfinished Symphony (in Saturday Review of Literature, December 6, 1941).
  • A. Mizener, The Maturity of SF (in SR, 68, 1959, pp. 658-675).
  • JE Hart, F.'s "Last Tycoon": A Search for Identity (in MFS, 8, 1961, p. 63 ff.).
  • M. Millgate, SF as Social Novelist: Statement and Technique in "The Last Tycoon" (in ES, 43, 1962, pp. 1 ff.).
  • BE Gross, Success and Failure in "The Last Tycoon" (in Univ. Of Kansas City Review, 31, 1965, pp. 273-276).
  • GC Millard, FSF "The Great Gatsby", "Tender Is the Night", "The Last Tycoon" (in English Studies in Africa, 8, 1965, pp. 5-30).
  • HG Schitter, The three last novels of the FSF, Bonn 1968, pp. 223-239.
  • DW Goodwin, SF's "The Last Tycoon": The Great American Novel? (in Arizona Quarterly, 26, 1970, pp. 197-216).
  • P. Rodda, "The Last Tycoon" (in English Studies in Afrika, 14, 1971, pp. 49-71).
  • E. Murray, FSF, Hollywood, and "The Last Tycoon" (in EM, The Cinematic Imagination: Writers and the Motion Pictures, NY 1972, pp. 179-205).
  • KW Moyer, F.'s Two Unfinished Novels: The Count and the Tycoon in Spenglerian Perspective (in ConL, 15, 1974, pp. 238-256).
  • N. Santilli, L'amore come salvezza: "The Last Tycoon" di FSF, Rome 1976. - MJ Bruccoli, "The Last of the Novelists": FSF and "The Last Tycoon", Carbondale / Ill. including 1977.
  • Ch. Silver et al. M. Corliss, Hollywood Under Water: Elia Kazan on "The Last Tycoon" (in Film Comment, 13, 1977, pp. 40-44).
  • W. Fairey, "The Last Tycoon": The Dilemma of Maturity for FSF (in F./Hemingway Annual, 11, 1979, pp. 65-78).
  • SB Girgus, Beyond the Diver Complex: The Dynamics of Modern Individualism in FSF (in SBG, The Law of the Heart, Austin 1979, pp. 108-128).
  • R. Roulston, Whistling "Dixie" in Encino: "The Last Tycoon" and FSF's Two Souths (in South Atlantic Quarterly, 79, 1980, pp. 355-363).
  • JL Michael, Auteurism, Creativity and Entropy in "The Last Tycoon" (in Literature / Film Quarterly, 10, 1982, pp. 110-118).
  • J. Cashill, The Keeper of the Faith: Mogul As Hero in "The Last Tycoon" (in Revue Française d'Études Américaines, 9, 1984, pp. 33-38).
  • G. Klotz, Power and Made Being of the Mass Effective Discourse in FSF's “The Last Tycoon” (in ZAA, 36, 1988, pp. 204-216).

Source of literature references: Kindler's new literature lexicon (c) CD-Rom 1999 Systhema Verlag GmbH, book edition Kindler Verlag GmbH

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ [1]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.fountaintheatre.com  
  2. ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01shqcf
  3. ↑ http://www.takawiki.com/tiki-index.php?page=The+Love+of+the+Last+Tycoon+%2F+Takarazuka+Mugen+%28Flower%2C+2014%29
  4. ↑ The Last Tycoon in the Internet Movie Database (English)