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Title: Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg ISBN: 1-57322-621-1 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: June, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.82 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: great man/great bio
Comment: Scott Berg has written a wonderful biography on one of the most important men in American literature, Max Perkins. Berg's book is well-written and very entertaining. It is more than a biography of Perkins, it is also a biography of Hemingway, Scott Fiztgerald, and Thomas Wolfe, and a portrait of America during the first half of the 20th century. This is one of those books that I could go on and on about. It is a book that everyone should read.
Rating: 4
Summary: Good biographer - good subject
Comment: I'm a Scott Berg fan, and I bought this book as a vehicle to learn about an important editor and his famous authors. It was what I expected from a Berg book, after reading "Lindbergh." It contains excellent research and writing and gives an objective telling, although a few too many details for my taste. Scott Berg is my role model as a biographer. What amazed me about the story was how much Max Perkins had to baby his famous writers. I gained respect for him, but not them. There didn't seem to be much happiness in any of these lives.
Rating: 5
Summary: A. Scott Berg: Author of Genius
Comment: Max Perkins: Editor of Genius is one of the best non-fiction titles I've read in a long time, and will likely be one of the best books I'll ever read. Berg (with the help of his own editor) truly is a genius: he pulls us directly into the story, introducing us to Scribner's Max Perkins at the zenith of his editorial career, then plunges us into his first acquisition -- F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned -- before taking us, methodically, through Perkins's life. An intrepid biographer, Berg tells us only what we need to know about Perkins's early life, getting to the good stuff: his discovery of Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe and his work with Ernest Hemingway. We also find out about Perkins's work with other remarkable authors, including Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (The Yearling), S.S. Van Dine (the Philo Vance mysteries), and Arthur Train, creator of the mythical DA Ephraim Tutt. I laughed out loud at the story about how many believed that Tutt existed after the publication of his "autobiograhpy," complete with photos.
We learn of Perkins's patient relationship with the frustrating Thomas Wolfe, a mammoth talent and physical specimen who could not contain his own enthusiasm. Berg suggests that, as Perkins discovered, Wolfe wasn't writing "books," he was writing one book, which would have encompassed thousands of pages if he had not died early -- a profound insight into the heart and soul of a dynamic author.
We learn much of Papa Hemingway as well, including some insights into the macho author's home life. Elements of Hemingway's unpublished fiction suggest that the bullfighting fan, fisherman, and big game hunter might have enjoyed switching gender roles in bed with one of his wives.
Fitzgerald comes off as one who excelled in being pathetic, a man who suffered desperately with his wife, Zelda, alcohol, and simply living large. Berg gives us a tender portrait of Perkins's greatest find.
As with all excellent biographies, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius examines only what made Perkins who he was: the editor of the twentieth century. Perkins preferred to sit on the sidelines, championing his authors. Often, he sits on the sidelines in this book as well, but this only makes sense: he was famous for his work with his more famous authors. It wasn't Max, it was his interaction with these great authors that made him all great.
As some reviewers have pointed out, Max would have enjoyed thsi book.
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Title: Goldwyn: A Biography by A. Scott Berg ISBN: 1573227234 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg ISBN: 0425170411 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Kate Remembered by A. Scott Berg ISBN: 0399151648 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 11 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: The Only Thing That Counts: The Ernest Hemingway/Maxwell Perkins Correspondence 1925-1947 by Matthew Joseph Bruccoli, Ernest Hemingway, Max Perkins ISBN: 1570032858 Publisher: University of South Carolina Press Pub. Date: March, 1999 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Editor to Author: The Letters of Maxwell E. Perkins by Maxwell E. Perkins, Maxwell E. Perkins ISBN: 087797229X Publisher: Cherokee Publishing Company Pub. Date: December, 1997 List Price(USD): $36.00 |
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