Director Billy Wilder described Fitzgerald's foray into Hollywood as like that of "a great sculptor who is hired to do a plumbing job." Edmund Wilson and Aaron Latham later suggested that Hollywood sucked Fitzgerald's creativity like a vampire. His failure in Hollywood pushed him to return to drinking, imbibing nearly 40 beers a day in 1939. Beginning that year, Fitzgerald mocked himself as a Hollywood hack through the character of Pat Hobby in a sequence of 17 short stories, later collected as "The Pat Hobby Stories", which garnered many positive reviews. The Pat Hobby Stories were originally published in "Esquire" between January 1940 and July 1941, even after his death. In his final year of life, Fitzgerald wrote his daughter: "I wish now I'd never relaxed or looked back - but said at the end of 'The Great Gatsby': I've found my line - from now on this comes first. This is my immediate duty - without this I am nothing."