Word: berge
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...Berg for example, is clearly ascinated by Perkin's odd relations with women--describing in detail his platonic ove for Elizabeth Lemmon, his stromy marriage, and his fights with Zelda Fitzgerald and Aline Berstein. Thomas Wolfe's lover--but does not attempt to find in them some secret to Perkins' great eye for fine writers. Rather, Berg simply presents his information about Maxwell Perkins the man, and then moves on to describe his relations with his authors and the conservative elite at Charles Scribners Sons...
Above all, Max mistrusted the dry, academic approach to literature. Wolfe, who in You Can't Go Home Again provided the best portrait of Perkins before Berg's book, tells of a conversation Max has with one of his daughters...
Lovers of Hemingway. Fitzgerald, Wolfe, Lardner and company will devour Berg's book if for nothing more than the anecdotes about the writers. Though Berg adds little to the voluminous scholarship on these writers, there emerges from Perkins' letters and trivia a picture of the writers maintained over and over again that they didn't give a damn about what the critics said; but they always listened to Perkins' advice and--as the letters show--followed it closely. Perkins, of course, remained equally loyal to his writers, giving a seemingly limitless supply of encouragement, advice and advance money from...
Perkins work with Fitzgerald and Wolfe forms the most interesting part of Berg's book. Tales of Fitzgerald's crackup are many, but Berg's picture of Perkins' desparate attempts to save Fitzgerald from his own insecurity is compelling and memorable. And Berg will no doubt find a place for himself among historians of literature for his work on the friendship and eventual estrangement of Perkins and Wolfe--the fiery, romantic writer upon whom Perkins staked much of its reputation...
...Perkins: Editor of Genius Berg convincingly argues that it was Perkins' overwhelming sense of loyalty and responsibility to his writers that made him a scrupulous editor and a successful advocate for their cause when his supervisors and fellow editors at Scribners balked. This biography provides an excellent picture of how Perkins, once he discovered a writer, would work to establish him in American letters. Berg, however, does not really address to other side of the problem--just how this man developed a unique eye for spotting fine writers--and it will take a work dealing with more purely literary questions...