The Sons of Maxwell Perkins
Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and Their Editor
Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli with Judith S. Baughman
 
Correspondence – Reading “The Sons of Maxwell Perkins” is like eavesdropping on multiple conversations over numerous years with four pillars in modernist American writing. There’s some “talk” about writing, but lots more chatter about each other – and money. I’ve read some of the previously published epistolary exchanges between the great editor Max Perkins and his larger-than-life literary clients; but, there is plenty to enjoy and learn from this volume of collected, corresponding letters – and it becomes a bit of a study in early-to-mid 20^th century male friendship and competitiveness. These days, so many readers (and rightly so) have had their fill of privileged male friendship and competitiveness, so this book will not be everyone’s cup of tea. What I find particularly fascinating? The final letters. Thomas Wolfe died at age 37 and his final letter to Perkins features Wolfe’s typical wordy, loopy sentences yet again proclaiming his passionate kinship with his father-figure editor. Wolfe: Always so needy. F. Scott Fitzgerald died at 44 and his final letter to Perkins speaks enthusiastically, optimistically about Fitzgerald’s progress on “The Last Tycoon,” mentions Hemingway and Wolfe, and includes a postscript: “How much will you sell the plates of ‘This Side of Paradise’ for? I think it has a chance for a new life.” Fitzgerald: A boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past, always. Perkins’ final letter to Hemingway is a personal note expressing warm concern for Hemingway’s son, Patrick, who had been dangerously ill in Cuba. It’s fascinating to see the chameleon editor write more like Papa in his letters to Hemingway: “I am mighty sorry about it. I know how horrifying such things are, but in my case they have been brief. I could not have taken it for the length of time you have. But you are always good that way. There is no sense in my saying all this, but it is impossible not to say something. It has been mighty rough, and I do greatly hope the situation is now better.” Maxwell Perkins died in 1947 at age 62. Hemingway would continue writing and publishing – and win the Nobel Prize – until his 1961 suicide at age 61.