The Illusion of Myth

Hollywood in “The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western”

Abstract

The title that Matthew Bruccoli considers more appropriate to Fitzgerald's novel in progress suggests that the primordial myth of Eros and the modern myth of Hollywood, illusory and deceptive yet harbingers of renewed vitality, are intertwined in Fitzgerald's text. In the wake of Roland Barthes' analysis of modern mythology, this essay explores the polysemic fertility of the Hollywood myth and narrative strategies used by Fitzgerald to present it.