ABSTRACT
Book editing is one of the most romantic and misunderstood jobs in America. It is exciting to read about Maxwell Perkins (America’s foremost fiction editor) poring over a totally unorganized manuscript from Thomas Wolfe, delivered unceremoniously in a battered trunk. Perkins saw the finely crafted “sculpture” deeply hidden in a dense block of literary “marble.” His ability to organize and edit “chapters” enabled Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and other writers at Scribner’s to realize their potential. Yet Perkins was given an inordinate amount of time by Scribner’s to handcraft “fragments” into finely tuned novels, to allow geniuses to blossom, and to influence the course of American letters.
