Dear Scott/Dear Max The Fitzgerald-Perkins Correspondence

by F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Kuehl

Book Overview

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)... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684135035
• ISBN13: 9780684135038
• Release Date: January 1971
• Publisher: Simon Schuster Trade
• Length: 282 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Required Reading for Editors and Authors

Though it's either incredibly expensive or simply out of print (or both?), I'd like to submit that Dear Scott/Dear Max: The Fitzgerald-Perkins Correspondence should be required reading for every editor and every author (or anyone else interested in learning how the publishing industry works) who can get their hands on it. The collected letters between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his editor, Maxwell Perkins (editor par excellence to Edith Wharton, Thomas Wolfe, Henry James, and Ernest Hemingway, just to name a few), illustrate the various aspects, intricacies, tensions, and ultimate value of the ideal editor/author relationship. Every conceivable aspect of this relationship is detailed in the book, and there's gold on almost every page. This behind-the-scenes look at the crafting and delivery of content as a collaboration between editor and author is priceless for the access it offers. (It's also quite interesting to learn that Fitzgerald couldn't spell or punctuate grammatically correct sentences by himself to save his life. All errors in the quotes in this post are sic.) Take, for example, this passage from Fitzgerald regarding the title for the book he was working on at the time: "I have now decided to stick to the title I put on the book [Trimalchio in West Egg]. The only other titles that seem to fit it are Trimalchio and On the Road to West Egg. I had two others Gold-hatted Gatsby and The High-bouncing Lover but they seemed to light." This note came in response to the following suggestion, gently offered by Perkins: "I always thought that 'The Great Gatsby' was a suggestive and effective title, -- with only the vaguest knowledge of the book, of course. But anyway, the last thing we want to do is divert you to any degree, from your actual writing, and if you let matters rest just as they are now, we shall be perfectly satisfied. The book is the thing, and all the rest is inconsiderable beside it." In the end, we know who won this battle, but Fitzgerald stuck to his guns, even as the book was going to press: "I wired you on a chance about the title -- I wanted to change back to Gold-hatted Gasby but I don't suppose it would matter. That's the one flaw in the book -- I feel Trimalchio might have been best after all." The title of Fitzgerald's first book with Maxwell Perkins (and Scribner's) also underwent a title change, though Fitzgerald suggested this switch. Perkins actually thought that "The Education of a Personage ... strikes us as an excellent title," but Fitzgerald bluntly changes his own mind in his follow-up letter on the subject: "The title has been changed to This Side of Paradise from those lines of Richard Brookes: '... Well, this side of paradise/ There's little comfort in the wise.'" These exchanges are perhaps the juiciest, and the most fun with the benefit of hindsight, but the interesting and substantive parts of their letters begin from Fitzgerald's very first contact with Perkins, in which, even before the editor has