Fitzgerald tried to compensate for Zelda’s absence, but he was under great personal and professional strain; moreover, his somewhat arbitrary strictness generated father-daughter conflict. In 1939, when he was working on The Last Tycoon, he explained to Scottie: “And I think when you read this book, which will encompass the time when you knew me as an adult, you will understand how intensively I knew your world—not extensively because I was so ill and unable to get about.”