MAX PERKINS: EDITOR OF GENIUS by A. Scott Berg Dutton; 498 pages; $15
Whatever his accomplishments as a gifted literary editor, Maxwell Perkins made life hard for would-be biographers. He was a taciturn and thoroughly decent man who absolutely refused to act out the sort of emotional highs and lows that drive a narrative along. By choice, he did exactly the same thing every working day for 32 years: he sat in the New York City offices of Charles Scribner's Sons and nurtured the talents of others. Because three of those were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe,...
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