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

By: Ian S. MacNiven

Published November 18th 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Category: Business

Pages: 592 pages

ISBN: 9780374712433

Description:
A biographyÑthoughtful and playfulÑof the man who founded New Directions and transformed American publishing

James LaughlinÑa poet, publisher, world-class skierÑwas 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 PoundÕs The Cantos and William Carlos WilliamsÕs Paterson; he brought Herman 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 longerÑin ÒLiterchoor is My BeatÓ: James Laughlin and New Directions, Ian S.ÊMacNiven has given us a sensitive and revealing portrait of this visionary and the understory of the last century of American letters.
ÊÊÊÊ LaughlinÑor J, as MacNiven calls himÑemerges as an impressive and complex figure: energetic, idealistic, and hardworking, but also plagued by doubtsÑnot about his ability to identify and nurture talent, but about his own worth as a writer. Haunted by his fatherÕs struggles with bipolar disorder, J threw himself into a flurry of activity, pulling together the first New Directions anthology before heÕd graduated from Harvard andÊpurchasing and managing a ski resort in Utah.
ÊÊÊÊ MacNivenÕs portrait is comprehensive and vital, spiced with Ezra PoundÕs eccentric letters, JÕs 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.