Dear Scott, dear Max: The Fitzgerald-Perkins correspondence; - Hardcover

Kuehl, John And Bryer, Jackson (Editors)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0304291501 ISBN 13: 9780304291502

Publisher: Cassell & Company, 1973

About this title

Review:

Many writers profited from Maxwell Perkins's ministrations. Most famously, the saintly editor hacked almost 300 pages out of Look Homeward, Angel, reducing Thomas Wolfe's debut to a (relatively) readable form. F. Scott Fitzgerald's work required much less in the way of major surgery. Yet as these letters reveal, the novelist and his editor had a highly productive correspondence, allowing Fitzgerald to bounce big-picture ideas off Perkins and exchange reams of literary gossip. Fitzgerald tends toward the earnest and apologetic: "If I ever win the right to any liesure [sic] again I will assuredly not waste it as I wasted this past time. Please believe me when I say that now I'm doing the best I can." And Perkins tends toward the downright prescient: "At any rate, one thing I think, we can be sure of: that when the tumult and shouting of the rabble of reviewers and gossipers dies, 'The Great Gatsby' will stand out as a very extraordinary book."

About this edition

• Publisher: Cassell & Company
• Publication date: 1973
• ISBN 10: 0304291501
• ISBN 13: 9780304291502
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 282