Maxwell
Perkins fostered the development of Twentieth Century American literature like
no other, as the editor of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood
Anderson, Dawn Powell, and James Jones. He always made his p&l’s editing
Taylor Caldwell, but the “Perkin’s touch” also guided his literary luminaries
to bestseller status. Perhaps none of Perkins’ bestsellers were as unlikely as
Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel and
of Time and the River, nor were any
of his other professional dealings as tempestuous as those with the Southern
Modernist. Their storied editor-author, surrogate father-and-son relationship
is dramatized in Michael Grandage’s Genius
(trailer
here),
which opens this Friday in New York.
The
Great Depression is in its early days, but Perkins’ world remains untouched. He
lines edits during the day at the prestigious publishing house Charles Scribner’s
Sons, returning to his quiet home outside the City in the evenings. Thomas
Wolfe hardly seems to have noticed the current state of affairs either. The
garrulous writer seems to live in his own little world, financially maintained
by his formerly married lover, Aline Bernstein. Thanks to her support, he has
completed an intimidatingly long manuscript that has been rejected by nearly
every house in New York—but not Scribner’s.
Much
to everyone’s surprise, Perkins agrees to buy what was then known as O Lost, but he insists Wolfe trim some
of its girth. The novelist is amenable in principle, but he will fight for
every phrase and passage. It will be a difficult editorial process, but it
yields Look Homeward, Angel—and the
rest is history. While still enjoying the success of his first novel, Wolfe
delivers his second, the even more ambitious and unruly Of Time and the River, which will make the editorial give-and-take
for his first book look like child’s play.
It
looks somewhat odd to see the definitive American book editor and three of the
greatest American novelists of the Modern era played by three Brits and an
Australian, but at least that spares us the spectacle of little Leo DiCaprio trying
to fill Hemingway’s shoes or Ryan Gosling moping about as Fitzgerald. First and
foremost, Colin Firth has the perfect urbane sophistication and Ivy League
reserve for the patrician Perkins. Jude Law can get a bit theatrical as Wolfe,
but the novelist’s Walt Whitman expansiveness is hard resist unleashing.
Regardless, he develops some nice master-apprentice chemistry with Firth.
Dominic
West clearly has a blast chewing the scenery in his brief appearance as Papa
Hemingway, but it is Guy Pearce who really gives the film some tragic heft as
the Zelda and alcoholism afflicted Fitzgerald. Similarly, Nicole Kidman’s
complex portrayal of the difficult, desperately possessive, but not
unsympathetic Rubenstein will probably be overlooked or unfairly discounted.
However, Laura Linney is grossly under-employed as Louise Perkins.
Screenwriter
John Logan’s adaptation of A. Scott Berg’s biography, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius actually shows an understanding of
how the book business worked in the 1920s and 1930s. Unlike The Girl in the Book, there are no
misuses of publishing jargon to make industry professionals wince. It is also a
classy period production that even includes an era appropriate jazz club sequence,
featuring appropriately swinging Jools Holland Big Band sidemen (Kenji Fenton,
Winston Rollins, and Chris Storr).
