A fascinating study in self-satire that brings to life the Hollywood years of F. Scott Fitzgerald
The setting: Hollywood: the character: Pat Hobby, a down-and-out screenwriter trying to break back into show business, but having better luck getting into bars. Written between 1939 and 1940, when F. Scott Fitzgerald was working for Universal Studios, the seventeen Pat Hobby stories were first published in
Esquire magazine and present a bitterly humorous portrait of a once-successful writer who becomes a forgotten hack on a Hollywood lot. "This was not art" Pat Hobby often said, "this was an industry" where whom "you sat with at lunch was more important than what you dictated in your office."
The Pat Hobby sequence, as Arnold Gingrich writes in his introduction, is Fitzgerald's "last word from his last home, for much of what he felt about Hollywood and about himself permeated these stories."
Written during F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Hollywood years, a witty collection of tales where humor and heartbreak collide through the eyes of a once-successful screenwriter—now with a new foreword by Fitzgerald’s great-granddaughter Blake Hazard and a bonus Pat Hobby story that has never before been published in print.
Literary legend F. Scott Fitzgerald pulls back the curtain on the glitz, chaos, and absurdity of the movie industry through the eyes of Pat Hobby, a screenwriter clinging to his faded dreams. Pat’s amusing misadventures offer a glimpse into the life of a man caught between the illusions of ambition and reality’s disappointments.
Set in 1930s Hollywood—a place where lunchroom gossip held as much power as the scripts themselves—Pat’s world is one of desperation and hustle. Once celebrated for his screenwriting, he’s now a relic, scraping by on odd jobs and his half-baked schemes to make a buck. Pat navigates town with a blend of cunning and futility. “This was not art, this was an industry,” he observes, capturing the soul of a system where creativity takes a back seat to profit.
Originally published in Esquire from 1939 to 1940, these stories were born from Fitzgerald’s own struggles to make it in Hollywood. The result is a darkly funny and brilliantly crafted portrait of an antihero writer who’s willing to go for broke.
