Three Lives Of The Last Tycoon

F. Scott Fitzgerald is a giant in modern American literature. His last work The Last Tycoon, unfinished as it is, is commonly regarded as the best Hollywood novel ever written. It has also played a vital role in resurrecting Fitzgerald's critical reputation. There have been three versions of the novel, including two novel editions and one film edition. This thesis attempts to present a comprehensive analysis of The Last Tycoon in its three different versions.Apart from the introduction and conclusion, this thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter one focuses on analyzing the themes and structure of the novel. It first examines the differences between this novel and other two novels about Hollywood. While other novelists saw only the ugly reality of Hollywood in the 1930, Fitzgerald wrote an epic tragedy of the early Hollywood. This chapter then continues to discuss the dramatic structure of the novel, the new theme and the new hero in the novel in comparison with Fitzgerald's other novels, and Fitzgerald's unbiased racial attitude as shown in this novel. In writing it, Fitzgerald created his first flawless hero Monroe Stalir and seamlessly combined two themes together for the first time. Being an unfinished masterpiece, this novel demonstrates Fitzgerald's maturity as a writer and as a man.Edmund Wilson's 1941 version The Last Tycoon and Matthew Broccoli's 1993 version The love of the Last Tycoon, A Western are two novel editions. Chapter two provides a comparison between the two novel editions. In general, Wilson's edition is a popular edition that presents the novel in a more finished form whereas Bruccoli's edition is a critical edition that restores the novel to its latest shape that remained on Fitzgerald's mind at the point of his death. The comparison starts with a discussion of editorial theory and is made from three aspects: textual differences resulting from the different editorial methods that the two editors adopt, the differences in the selection of the title and the differences in the selection of the notes.The 1974 film version of The Last Tycoon is not viewed as a success in usual terms. But it can be seen as an artistic success if we regard it as a new collective workrather than the story Fitzgerald intended to tell. Together, Harold Pinter and Elia Kazan produced a film as a fable of film and filmmaking. Chapter three analyzes the film adaptation of The Last Tycoon in particular, while discussing in general the practice of translating novels into films.