Max Perkins: Editor of Genius

At one point he told Cowley that the man he would most like to resemble was Major General John Aaron Rawlins. According to the Dictionary of American Biography, Rawlins was “the most nearly indispensable” officer of General Grant’s staff. It was his job to keep Grant sober; edit his important papers and put them in final form; apply tact and persis

He urged Anaïs Nin to publish her diaries.

“Why don’t you write yourself?” she inquired in a letter. “I have a feeling you could write so much better than most of the people who do write.” Perkins delivered his response when they met next. She recalled, “Max just stared at me for a long time and said, ‘Because I’m an editor.’

Hollywood studios were filled with a “strange conglomeration of a few excellent overtired men making the pictures and as dismal a crowd of fakes and hacks at the bottom as you can imagine.” The consequence, Scott said, “is that every other man is a charlatan, nobody trusts anybody else, and an infinite amount of time is wasted from lack of confiden

You can’t know a book until you come to the end of it, and then all the rest must be modified to fit that.

Mozart was an artistic and financial success, and it was not long before Mrs. Davenport was writing a new book, a novel.

Her appointment was followed by several others.

The successful editor is one who is constantly finding new writers, nurturing their talents, and publishing them with critical and financial success.

For the rest of the morning Max dictated letters.