Ma chérie please inform me on who Max Perkins is s’il te plaît et merci ☺️
Of course mon ange!
(Prepare for a giant rant I’m so sorry)
OKAY SO
Max Perkins lived from September 20, 1884 to June 17, 1947. He was an incredible book editor, and (though hardly anyone knows his name) discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, just to name a few. He was unlike most editors of his time, in that he actively sought out promising young writers, his first big find happening in 1919 with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Despite Fitzgerald’s first novel initially being rejected by the publishing house Perkins worked at, he worked with Fitzgerald to revise it until it was accepted. It was actually through Fitzgerald that Perkins met Ernest Hemingway, eventually publishing his first novel (The Sun Also Rises) in 1926. Perkins was known for the incredible attention he gave each of his authors’ books. He’s actually the one who made “old sport” such a big thing in The Great Gatsby (and he’s the reason it’s called “The Great Gatsby”)— he suggested Fitzgerald extensively use that phrase to add to Gatsby’s personality and make him a bit less of a mystery to the reader. Perkins had great relationships with most, of not all, of the authors he worked with. He wasn’t just an editor; he was a confidante, counselor, moneylender, critic, friend. Some of the quotes from him that I really love (from the book we read about him in my Intro to Publishing class) are:
• “An editor does not add to a book. At best he serves as a handmaiden to an author. Don’t ever get to feeling too important about yourself, because an editor at most releases energy. He creates nothing.“
• “A writers best work comes entirely from himself”
• “... an editor can only get so much out of an author as the author has in him.”
• “Before an author destroys the natural qualities of his writing— that’s when an editor has to step in. But not a moment sooner.”
And yeah, he’s basically who I want to be when I grow up lol.
(The biography we read about him is called Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg if anyone’s interested)
