"Literchoor Is My Beat": A Life of James Laughlin Publisher of New Directions

About this book

A biographythoughtful and playfulof the man who founded New Directions and transformed American publishing James Laughlinpoet publisher world-class skierwas the man behind some of the most daring revolutionary works in verse and prose of the twentieth century. As the founder of New Directions he published Ezra Pounds The Cantos and William Carlos Williamss Paterson; he brought Hermann Hesse and Jorge Luis Borges to an American audience. Throughout his life this tall charismatic intellectual athlete and entrepreneur preferred to stay hidden. But no longerin "Literchoor Is My Beat": A Life of James Laughlin Publisher of New Directions Ian S. MacNiven has given us a sensitive and revealing portrait of this visionary and the understory of the last century of American letters. Laughlinor J as MacNiven calls himemerges as an impressive and complex figure: energetic idealistic and hardworking but also plagued by doubtsnot about his ability to identify and nurture talent but about his own worth as a writer. Haunted by his fathers struggles with bipolar disorder J threw himself into a flurry of activity pulling together the first New Directions anthology before hed graduated from Harvard and purchasing and managing a ski resort in Utah. MacNivens portrait is comprehensive and vital spiced with Ezra Pounds eccentric letters Js romantic foibles and anecdotes from a seat-of-your-pants era of publishing now gone by. A story about the struggle to publish only the best it is itself an example of literary biography at its finest.