The Sons of Maxwell Perkins: Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and Their Editor

In April 1938 F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his editor Maxwell Perkins, ""What a time you've had with your sons, Max - Ernest gone to Spain, me gone to Hollywood, Tom Wolfe reverting to an artistic hill-billy."" As the sole literary editor with name recognition among students of American literature, Perkins remains permanently linked to Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wolfe in literary history and literary myth. Their relationships, which were largely epistolary, play out in the 221 letters Matthew J. Bruccoli has assembled in this volume. The collection documents the extent of the fatherly forbearance, attention, and encouragement the legendary Scribners editor gave to his authorial sons. The correspondence portrays his ability to juggle the requirements of his three geniuses. Perkins wanted his stars to be close friends and wrote to each of them about the others. They responded in kind: Fitzgerald on Hemingway and Wolfe, Wolfe on Fitzgerald, Hemingway on Wolfe and Fitzgerald. The novelists also wrote to each other. But contrary to Perkins's hopes for a brotherhood among them, their letters express rivalry and suspicion rather than affinity. Perkins encouraged the writers professionally b