EDITORnThomas FlemingnMANAGING EDITORnKatherine DaltonnCONTRIBUTING EDITORSn]ohn W. Aldridge, Harold O.].nBrown, Samuel Francis, GeorgenGarrett, Russell Kirk, E. ChristiannKopff, Clyde WilsonnCORRESPONDING EDITORSnBryce Christensen, Odie Faulk, JanenGreer, Andrei Navrozov, John SheltonnReed, Joseph Schwartz, Gary VasilashnEDITORIAL SECRETARYnLeann DobbsnEDITORIAL ASSISTANTnMatthew KaufmannPUBLISHERnRichard A. VaughannART DIRECTORnAnna Mycek-WodeckinPRODUCTION MANAGERnGuy ReffettnADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVEnGeorgia L. WolfnCOMPOSITION MANAGERnAnita FedoranCIRCULATION DIRECTORnCarol BennettnA Publication ofnThe Rockford Institute:nAllan C. Carlson,nPresidentnEditorial and Advertising Offices: 934 NorthnMain Street, Rockford, IL 61103.nEditorial Phone: (815)964-5054,nAdvertising Phone: (815) 964-58n.nSubscription Department: P.O. Box 800, MountnMorris, IL 61054. Call 1-800-435-0715, innIllinois 1-800-892-0753.nU.S.A. Newsstand Distribution by EasternnNews Distributors, Inc., 1130 Cleveland Road,nSarfdusky, OH 44870.nCopyright © 1989 by The Rockford Institute.nAll rights reserved.nCHRONICLES (ISSN 0887-5731) is publishednmonthly for $21 per year by The RockfordnInstitute, 934 North Main Street, Rockford, ILn61103-7061.nSecond-class postage paid at Rockford, IL andnadditional mailing offices.nPOSTMASTER: Send address changes tonCHRONICLES, P.O. Box 800, Mount Morris,nIL 61054nThe views expressed in Chronicles are thenauthors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect thenviews of The Rockford Institute or, of itsndirectors.nChroniclesnA MAGAZINE Of AMERICAN CULTUREn4/CHRONICLESnVol. 13. No. 4 April 1989nOn Tublishersnand Sinners’nPOLEMICS & EXCHANGESnAlthough I admire the “All BookednUp” issue of Chronicles (Januaryn1989), I must protest E. ChristiannKopfFs untrue asserhon that “MaxwellnPerkins of Scribner’s did not just rewritenand butcher Scott Fitzgerald andnThomas Wolfe. . . .”nWhatever Perkins did or did not donto Wolfe’s work, he neither rewrote nornbutchered Fitzgerald’s prose. There isnno evidence of Perkins’s rewriting onnany page of Fitzgerald’s surviving manuscripts.nProf KopfF should have known — ornshould have learned — that the textualnscholarship on Stephen Crane wasndone by Fredson Bowers, and thatnProf Bowers’s editions of Maggie andnRed Badge were published in the UniversitynPress of Virginia Edition ofnCrane well before the edited RednBadge appeared in the Norton Anthology.n— Matthew /. BruccolinJefferies Professor of EnglishnUniversity of South CarolinanColumbia, SCnDr. KopffnReplies:nBy the words “rewrite and butcher” Inmeant to suggest that (1) Perkins had ansignificant influence on the novels ofnFitzgerald and Wolfe and (2) that influencenwas not necessarily beneficent. (1)nis controversial, (2) is not. ProfessornBruccoli tries to deny (1) by telling usnthat Perkins did not write onnFitzgerald’s manuscripts, while forgettingnto tell us that he did write onnFitzgerald’s proof (The Letters of F.nScott Fitzgerald, New York, 1963, p.n151. When Letters, pp. 149-52 arencompared with Editor to Author: ThenLetters of Maxwell E. Perkins — NewnYork, 1950, p. 51—we have a clearncase of Perkins’ rewriting Fitzgerald’snThe Beautiful and the Damned.) Perkins’npreferred method of changing hisnnnauthors’ texts was long editorial meetingsnwith them. Perkins himself describesnone such session with Wolfe innThe Carolina Magazine for Octobern1938. (See A. Scott Berg, Max Perkinsn— New York, 1978, pp. 7-8.) It endednwith Wolfe effectively calling the editorna ratriesnake, but conceding the omissionsnPerkins wanted. Perkins introducednFitzgerald to the ideas of changingnthe point of view of the first draft ofnThis Side of Paradise from first personnto third person and restructuring thenpresentation of Gatsby. Other suggestions,nsuch as omitting the mutilationnof Myrfle Wilson in Gatsby, werenrejected. These and many other examplesnof Perkins’ influence on Fitzgeraldnand Wolfe have long been known fromnthe Scribner archives at Princeton andnBerg’s book. Perkins regretted that hencould not talk directly to Fitzgeraldnabout Gatsby. I believe that it wasnprecisely to avoid such a situation thatnFitzgerald went to Europe to write it.nI said that “Crane’s version” of RednBadge of Courage, i.e., a reconstructionnof Crane’s manuscript text beforenit went through the editorial process atnAppleton, was first published in thenNorton Anthology of American Literature.nProf Bruccoli says, “The textualnwork on Stephen Crane was done bynFredson Bowers.” Much, though notnall, important work for the text ofnCrane was made available to scholarsnthrough Bowers’ critical edition, as wellnas his facsimile edidon of Crane’s manuscript,nwhich was dedicated to Prof.nBruccoli. But Bowers did not publishn”Crane’s version” of Red Badge ornanything like it. He showed his loyaltynto the Appleton text by printingnCrane’s original chapter 12 separatelynfrom the main text. He also emendedn(or, as Douglas Young used to put it,n”immended”) the dialogue to removentraces of dialect from Henry Fleming’snspeeches and introduces dialect intonthe dialogue of other characters. Thenomissions alone have been estimated tonaffect 5,000 words of a short book. Allnthis is well known and can be easilynconfirmed by anybody with access to anresearch library.n