Querido Scott / Querido Max

by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Maxwell Perkins, Santiago Featherston (Translator)

Discusiones sobre tramas, personajes, la creación de Gatsby, dificultades personales y financieras se encuentran en esta correspondencia. El libro nos ofrece una mirada íntima al vínculo entre dos figuras destacadas de la literatura estadounidense donde se observa cómo Fitzgerald cambia a lo largo del tiempo, mostrando una evolución en su carrera y estilo de escritura. «Con la ayuda que me has dado puedo hacer que Gatsby sea perfecta... Lo demás es sencillo, y puedo verlo con tanta claridad que hasta puedo distinguir los manierismos que antes lo perjudicaron». Lectura imprescindible para quienes disfrutan del proceso creativo, la historia editorial y el impacto de la amistad, estas cartas revelan la profunda relación entre dos de las personalidades más emblemáticas de la literatura.
«Ningún editor fue más leal y considerado, nadie podría ser un mejor amigo que M. Perkins». Ernest Hemingway
«La contribución de Perkins a la literatura estadounidense es incalculable. Sin él, tal vez no habría Fitzgerald, Hemingway o Wolfe, o al menos no las obras por las cuales los conocemos». A. Scott Berg

364 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, widely known simply as Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age, a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Born into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald was raised primarily in New York state. He attended Princeton University where he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson. Owing to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army during World War I. While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery's exclusive country-club set. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald's marriage proposal due to his lack of financial prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920). The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade.
His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), propelled him further into the cultural elite. To maintain his affluent lifestyle, he wrote numerous stories for popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Despite its lackluster debut, The Great Gatsby is now hailed by some literary critics as the "Great American Novel". Following the deterioration of his wife's mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night (1934).
Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works during the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood, where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter. While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death. After a long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety only to die of a heart attack in 1940, at 44. His friend Edmund Wilson edited and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), after Fitzgerald's death. In 1993, a new edition was published as The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli.