The Equation
David Thomson on The Last Tycoon in The Guardian on 1/29/05:
“There’s a passage in the book, early on, where Cecilia’s narration says: ‘You can take Hollywood for granted like I did, or you can dismiss it with the contempt we reserve for what we don’t understand. It can be understood, too, but only dimly and in flashes. Not half a dozen men have ever been able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads.’….
That phrase stuck in my head: The Whole Equation was a title, waiting to have its book written. And the book might be all the more intriguing (and difficult to do) because Fitzgerald had never been able to give us the equation itself, a tidy little e=mc2. That equation was as elusive as magic: it was a vision, a power, a passion, a kind of perfection that could change the world.”
David Thomson’s book The Whole Equation was published recently.