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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 Columbia: University of South Carolina Press (2004). xxxiv + 361 pp. ISBN 1570035482 (hardcover), $29.95.
The subject matter of this book is not in itself groundbreaking, as Maxwell Perkins was the subject of an extensive biography by A. Scott Berg, and his correspondence with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe has already found its way into print in previous collections. Whereas these earlier editions highlight the importance of Perkins in the lives and careers of these writers, the letters in this volume present the writers as foils to reflect the many facets of Perkins's personality and work ethic.
In his introduction, Matthew J. Bruccoli identifies Perkins as one of the few editors known to readers of early-twentiethcentury American literature, a distinction due, in part, to his association with many of the leading authors of his time. This volume presents Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wolfe as the three sons that Perkins, the father of five daughters, never had. It is no secret that Perkins enjoyed his martinis and that he was perfectly happy in the company of men-these three in particular, each of whom enjoyed some degree of infamy as a prodigious drinker in his own right. It is understandable, too, that these writers, each of whom had a complex and often difficult relationship with his own father, looked to their editor as a surrogate father of sorts. And, as evidenced in these letters, the surrogate sons harbored no small degree of sibling rivalry.
The introduction also explains how the three writers came to Scribner's, how they defined their own relationships with Perkins, and how they responded (or did not respond) to one another. Each "son" was different and was treated differently by the "father." Perkins's "close relationships with Fitzgerald and Hemingway were mainly epistolary" (xvii), as he rarely saw either of them in person. Wolfe, on the...