Few brilliant novelists were as charismatic, tormented and in
desperate need of help as Thomas Wolfe, whose 1929 novel,
Look Homeward, Angel, was a reckless, massive 1,100-page manuscript until
editor Maxwell Perkins cut it down to size. In
Genius, out June 10, Colin Firth plays Perkins and Jude Law
plays Wolfe during the riveting time period during which the author struggles
to finish his second novel, despite his confusions and carousing. The movie has
plenty of high drama, but check out Berg's stellar biography of Perkins, which
captures the entire era of American history when novelists were legit
celebrities and Maxwell was a guiding force in the lives of two other novelists
with high-maintenance personalities, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest
Hemingway.
