Max Perkins: Editor of Genius
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15
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Average rating4
The National Book Award winner from Pulitzer Prize-winning author A. Scott Berg is now celebrating its 40th anniversary. The talents he nurtured were known worldwide: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and numerous others. But Maxwell Perkins remained a mystery, a backstage presence who served these authors not only as editor but also as critic, career manager, moneylender, psychoanalyst, father-confessor, and friend. This outstanding biography, a winner of the National Book Award, is the first to explore the fascinating life of this genius editor extraordinare—in both the professional and personal domains. It tells not only of Perkins’s stormy marriage, endearing eccentricities, and secret twenty-five-year romance with Elizabeth Lemmon, but also of his intensely intimate relationships with the leading literary lights of the twentieth century. It is, in the words of Newsweek, “an admirable biography of a wholly admirable man.” The basis for the Major Motion Picture Genius, Starring Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, and Jude Law.
Reviews with the most likes.
A fascinating look at what editing Fitzgerald and Hemingway was like. Strangely, my Ebook copy had typos, as if it hadn't been edited.
Sometimes the book seemed repetitive, and there were strange quirks, like using both a person's last name and other times their first name in the same section, making it hard to know it's only a single person being referred to.
Fitzgerald and Hemingway come across as sad immature creatures, and I kind of wonder how they were able to be this way for so long. Did fame mean they never had to grow up?
