Max Perkins - The Editor Who Created Hemingway and Fitzgerald

While the story of American literature in the 20th Century usually centers on Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, far fewer people know the editor who made both careers possible. His name was Max Perkins.Where Fitzgerald and Hemingway were the voices, Perkins was the quiet force at Scribner's who pulled them out of droughts and depressions and never stopped betting on them. He shaped works like The Great Gatsby and ensured The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms found their audience.Perkins spent his career insisting that an editor creates nothing and that he only releases the writer's energy. His own career was the proof he was wrong.This episode is what I learned from A. Scott Berg's Max Perkins: Editor of Genius.