‘Vitality to an extraordinary degree’
The Great Gatsby may well be the greatest American novel
The year 1925 was a particularly memorable one in American literary history. During those 12 months F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby first appeared and his friend Ernest Hemingway produced his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. In both cases the publisher was Charles Scribner’s Sons in New York and they each had the same editor, Maxwell Perkins. You will find both books in many lists of the great American novels of all time. Both authors became legends in their time; those stories are still with us nearly a century later.
Fitzgerald and Hemingway were lucky to have found a sensitive and caring editor in Perkins. He was a Harvard-educated, New Jersey lad who had begun his working life as a reporter for “The New York Times.” He then joined the accounting department at Scribner’s before finding a new role for himself as a fledgling editor. When Perkins joined the editorial staff, Scribner’s was a well-known, old-school firm that was famous for publishing the likes of John Galsworthy, Henry James and Edith Wharton. He brought a fresh eye for fresh literary talent at a time when the conventional values in American culture were undergoing a major upheaval. With the First World War over, the Roaring Twenties or “the Jazz Age” were astir in New York City. In that atmosphere Perkins’s significant role in championing Fitzgerald and Hemingway makes a great story in itself; it is told in compelling detail by A. Scott Berg in his biography Maxwell Perkins: Editor of Genius.
Though first published in 1976, Berg’s biography did not have its first trade paperback publication until 2016. Some of you will already know of Perkins’s role as editor because of a feature film in 2016 called Genius. It dramatized his editorial relationship with Thomas Wolfe (not to be mistaken for the late journalist Tom
Wolfe) in the difficult shortening and shaping of Wolfe’s long novel Look Homeward, Angel, among others. Fitzgerald and Hemingway also make appearances in that film.
It was particularly meaningful to me to read about Max Perkins’s unstinting efforts to bring Fitzgerald into the Scribner’s fold and to shepherd The Great Gatsby into print. It is one of my favorite novels. Let’s begin with Perkins’s struggle in 1920 to convince the conservative Charles Scribner and his senior editors to take a chance on Fitzgerald. Scott had brought a draft of The Romantic Egotist to the firm but had found no interest whatsoever. It was passed down the chain of editors until it landed on Perkins’s desk. To him it “seemed to display so much vitality,” but he was told to turn it down. Still, Perkins asked that he might see a rewrite.
Perkins later provided important advice on the weaknesses of the plot, urging Fitzgerald to “intensify” his prose and his vision. Following several more discussions with Scott, he was determined to see the novel published despite the firm opposition of all his editorial superiors at Scribner’s. More convinced than ever of Fitzgerald’s potential as a writer, he took his stand at a crucial editorial meeting. There he urged his colleagues to think primarily of “talent” and timeliness rather than tradition: “If we are going to turn down the likes of Fitzgerald, I will lose all interest in publishing books,” he told them. That heartfelt plea won the support of old Charles Scribner himself. Thus Fitzgerald’s first novel, by now entitled This Side of Paradise, was published in 1921. With the proceeds Fitzgerald was able to marry his southern belle, Zelda Sayre, and begin their expensive and exhausting life together.
Fast forward to 1924 when Fitzgerald was in Paris working on his third novel. His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, had been followed by a collection of stories called Tales of the Jazz Age. As well, he had interested Perkins in two prospective American talents, Ernest Hemingway who was a new friend in Paris and Ring Lardner Jr., a seasoned journalist and sportswriter. Perkins would champion both of them.
Fitzgerald’s working title for Gatsby was Among the Ash-Heaps and Millionaires. However, he had become frustrated with his text and had cast it aside “a dozen times.” Ever positive, Perkins urged him to struggle on and complete a draft. From Paris Fitzgerald confessed that he was beset by laziness, compromised by his tendency to allow Zelda to criticize his work-in-progress, and plagued by his own self-doubts (or “word consciousness).” Perkins, however, continued to encourage and buoy him up. He must have been delighted when Scott wrote that he again at work, feeling “a new self-understanding” and a sense of engagement in “a consciously artistic achievement.”
Perkins replied positively to this new surge of confidence. “I understand exactly what you have to do…: you are to go ahead at just your own pace and if you should finish the book when you think you will, you will have performed a very considerable feat, even in the matter of time, it seems to me.” Though he had not yet seen the manuscript, he urged Fitzgerald to think of a different title. When the author suggested Trimalchio in West Egg and The Great Gatsby as alternatives, Perkins jumped at the latter as “suggestive and effective.”
Late in 1924 Perkins received the manuscript. It was short by novelistic standards—a mere 50,000 words. “I am tired of being the author of This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald told him, even as he announced that “I think that at last I have done something really my own.” Perkins’s reply was extraordinarily perceptive. “I think the novel a wonder … it has vitality to an extraordinary degree and glamour, and a great deal of underlying thought of unusual quality. It has a mystic atmosphere…. And as for sheer writing, it is astonishing.” Perkins’s unwavering confidence in Fitzgerald’s ability had been vindicated to an extent he had scarcely imagined.
Scott Berg then delineates some of the important advice that Perkins provided to Fitzgerald in the final preparatory stages. How for instance could he make Gatsby himself as clear and visible to the reader as Tom Buchanan? How could he provide the reader with weighty hints as to the sources of Gatsby’s evident wealth? And how could he improve the crucial Plaza Hotel scenes? Fitzgerald reply was thankful: “With the aid you have given me, I can make Gatsby perfect.” For his part Perkins replied that he was ashamed to make so many suggestions to an author who had clearly mastered his craft and had produced a remarkable book. However, as Berg rightly concludes, “It was not until the final revision of the manuscript that it acquired its brilliance.” Fitzgerald himself never doubted the worth of Max’s assistance.
Interestingly, The Great Gatsby was not a big hit at the start; it did steady but unimpressive business. It took years for its extraordinariness to be felt by readers across the literary marketplace that is the globe. At the same time the story of Maxwell Perkins’s enlightened support and guidance of Fitzgerald makes for splendid reading. It reminds us how much a caring and wise editor can do to make a particular book (and its writer) much better than it (he) might have been.