The Pat Hobby Stories
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote these stories in the last two or three years of his life. They were cracked out on Saturday and Sunday afternoons to pay for his daughter's college education. Fitzgerald spent Monday through Friday writing shit for Hollywood. It was shit because that is the way Hollywood has always wanted it.
The Pat Hobby Stories are short, maybe 3,000 words each. And they are published in book form in the same order they orginally appeared in the men's journal. Fitzgerald put them in order. He put the best up front and the crap in the back. Knowing this made the book difficult to finish. I read them in one sitting and I just kept thinking "Fitzgerald was right. They are getting progressively less interesting."
The stories are about a washed-up screenwriter and his adventures in Hollywood. Pat Hobby is a loveable idiot who can't seem to get it together enough to write another script. He spends his days at the studios looking for a break. Turns out Pat Hobby, not unlike Fitzgerald, used up his mojo in his youth. Pat Hobby was the industry's genius until the first "talkies" were made. Orson Welles has nothing on Hobby, except a lot more money, booty and all-around-I-want-to-be-seen-with-that-hot-shot prestige.