To Loot My Life Clean: The Thomas Wolfe-Maxwell Perkins Correspondence

"I want, much more than I have ever in this first draught, to loot my life clean, if possible of every memory which a buried life and the thousand faces of forgotten time could awaken and to weave it into Antaeus like a great densely woven web . . ."
—Thomas Wolfe to Maxwell Perkins, April 1933

The relationship between Thomas Wolfe and his legendary editor, Maxwell Perkins, has been the subject of guesswork and anecdote for seventy years. Beginning with the 1929 publication of Look Homeward, Angel, literary scholars have debated the writer’s dependence on his editor and the degree to which Perkins participated in Wolfe’s work. Now, with this volume of 251 letters between Wolfe and the House of Scribner (two-thirds of which have never been published), the mythologized friendship between the author and the editor is clarified, and the record can be set straight.

Celebrated for his close literary relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and other literary giants of the early twentieth century, Maxwell Perkins was both mentor and father figure to Thomas Wolfe. According to the introduction, "The letters published here document Wolfe’s artistic and professional problems, and demonstrate how Perkins, serving as both editor and friend, aided Wolfe in solving them. Only by considering all of the author/editor/publisher correspondence can Wolfe’s literary career and his complex relationship with Charles Scribner’s Sons be properly assessed." The successes and pains of both Wolfe’s career and his friendship with Perkins are revealed in letters between the two as well as through Wolfe’s correspondence with other Scribner employees. Documenting an important era in American literary history, the letters of To Loot My Life Clean span the Wolfe-Perkins friendship, from their meeting in 1929, through the novelist’s break with his editor and the House of Scribner, until Wolfe’s death in 1938.

About the Editors:
Matthew J. Bruccoli, Emily Brown Jefferies Professor of English at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, is the leading authority on F. Scott Fitzgerald and the authors of the House of Scribner.

Park Bucker earned his Ph.D. in American literature from the University of South Carolina in Columbia. He is the editor of The Catalogue of the Matthew J. and Arlyn Bruccoli Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Bucker’s volume on social fiction is forthcoming.

"I want, much more than I have ever in this first draught, to loot my life clean, if possible of every memory which a buried life and the thousand faces of forgotten time could awaken and to weave it into Antaeus like a great densely woven web . . ."
—Thomas Wolfe to Maxwell Perkins, April 1933

The relationship between Thomas Wolfe and his legendary editor, Maxwell Perkins, has been the subject of guesswork and anecdote for seventy years. Beginning with the 1929 publication of Look Homeward, Angel, literary scholars have debated the writer s dependence on his editor and the degree to which Perkins participated in Wolfe s work. Now, with this volume of 251 letters between Wolfe and the House of Scribner (two-thirds of which have never been published), the mythologized friendship between the author and the editor is clarified, and the record can be set straight.

Celebrated for his close literary relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and other literary giants of the early twentieth century, Maxwell Perkins was both mentor and father figure to Thomas Wolfe. According to the introduction, "The letters published here document Wolfe s artistic and professional problems, and demonstrate how Perkins, serving as both editor and friend, aided Wolfe in solving them. Only by considering all of the author/editor/publisher correspondence can Wolfe s literary career and his complex relationship with Charles Scribner s Sons be properly assessed." The successes and pains of both Wolfe s career and his friendship with Perkins are revealed in letters between the two as well as through Wolfe s correspondence with other Scribner employees. Documenting an important era in American literary history, the letters of To Loot My Life Clean span the Wolfe-Perkins friendship, from their meeting in 1929, through the novelist s break with his editor and the House of Scribner, until Wolfe s death in 1938.

About the Editors:
Matthew J. Bruccoli, Emily Brown Jefferies Professor of English at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, is the leading authority on F. Scott Fitzgerald and the authors of the House of Scribner.

Park Bucker earned his Ph.D. in American literature from the University of South Carolina in Columbia. He is the editor of The Catalogue of the Matthew J. and Arlyn Bruccoli Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Bucker s volume on social fiction is forthcoming.

Publishers Weekly

A complete collection of the 10-year correspondence between novelist Thomas Wolfe and Scribner editor Maxwell Perkins debunks the myth that Wolfe was an undisciplined child-genius dependent on a stern father-editor. The volume's 251 letters, two-thirds of which are published for the first time, include correspondence with John Hall Wheelock (who handled the line-editing and proofreading Perkins shunned) and other Scribner's staff. Wolfe's letters resemble his novels: frenzied, expansive, rawly emotional and confessional, as chaotic as the American scene he celebrated. Most were written abroad, as the peripatetic Wolfe fled the distractions of critics and his destructive relationship with socialite Aline Bernstein. Wandering and homesickness are constant themes. Wolfe's mercurial personality blazes forth as he rhapsodizes about America's romantic grandeur and rails against "the sterility crowd," the "sniffers, whiffers and puny, poisonous apes" like T.S. Eliot and other Lost Generation writers he felt were in love with despair. Wolfe emerges as driven, intensely committed, locked in a torturous, exhausting struggle with his talent and material that verges on madness--a writer reliant on his editor's judgment but also possessing a clear artistic vision. High-strung, hypersensitive to criticism and in need of constant reassurance, he is difficult, demanding and "crammed to the lips with living." Though sorely tested by their contentious professional relationship, Wolfe and Perkins's abiding affection clearly survived Wolfe's 1937 break with Scribner's. "My friendship with Tom," wrote Perkins to Wolfe's family after his death in 1938, "was one of the greatest things in my life." Bruccoli, a Fitzgerald scholar at the University of South Carolina, and his associate Bucker, present a fascinating, if partial, portrait of one of the 20th century's most vital creative partnerships. Illus. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

A larger than life figure -- like his contemporary, Ernest Hemingway -- Thomas Wolfe embodied a particularly American vision of the restless and eager writer, taking in the totality of his life experience and turning it into a gigantic, unwieldy vision in prose. With the publication of his semiautobiographical Look Homeward, Angel in 1929, Wolfe announced his dramatic entrance on the stage of modern fiction; but an early death made his exit sadly premature.