James Laughlin, New Directions, and the remaking of Ezra Pound (Google eBook)

Gregory Peter Barnhisel

Univ of Massachusetts Press, 2005 - Literary Criticism - 272 pages

Although James Laughlin (1914-1997) came from one of Pittsburgh's leading steel-making families, his passions were literary rather than industrial--he wanted to be a poet. Laughlin was a freshman at Harvard when he traveled to Rapallo, Italy, in 1933 to meet Ezra Pound (1885-1972), and he returned the following year to enroll in the poet's "Ezuversity." Pound dismissed Laughlin's poetic talents, advising the wealthy young man to make himself a publisher. Laughlin did just that, founding New Directions Press in 1936. For much of the 1930s, Laughlin and Pound were friends, business associates, collaborators, student and teacher, and even at times son and surrogate father. But Laughlin's investment in Pound--and their friendship--was severely tested by Pound's wartime propaganda broadcasts for Italian state radio, his capture and abortive trial for treason, and his thirteen-year stay as a mental patient in St. Elizabeths Hospital. Following this scandal and disgrace, the reading public no longer wanted to buy Pound's books, and the critical establishment dismissed him as a Fascist crank. Laughlin and New Directions responded by marketing Pound in such a way as to convince consumers that the poet's importance needed to be judged solely on aesthetic grounds, and that his political beliefs were irrelevant to his accomplishments as a pioneering literary artist. With Pound's encouragement, and despite the poet's oft-expressed opposition to the mixture of commerce and art, Laughlin used such marketing tools as advertising, the cultivation of friendly critics, and the development of the trade paperback to enhance Pound's reputation. Drawing on a wide range of sources--including interviews withLaughlin and other New Directions staffers and unpublished materials from numerous literary archives--Gregory Barnhisel tells the story of the personal and professional relationship between one of the twentieth century's most controversial writers and his loyal and innovative American publishers--a relationship that eventually helped remake literary history and continues to shape our understanding of modernism itself.

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• Pound and the Publishing Industry: 14
• Fighting the Enemy The Birth of New Directions: 47
• The Objective Perception of Value The Bollingen Award: 92
• Prying Apart Poetry and Politics: 127
• The Pound Era: 159
• Conclusion: 197
• Notes: 205
• Bibliography: 245
• Index: 263

Popular passages

Page 9 - MS. The voice that issues from this Spirit is that Vox Populi which the Deity inspires. Foolish must he be who can mistake for this a local acclamation, or a transitory outcry — transitory though it be for years, local though from a Nation. Still more lamentable is his error who can believe that there is...‎

Page 9 - Works, it is this, - that every Author, as far as he is great and at the same time original, has had the task of creating the taste by which he is to be enjoyed: so has it been, so will it continue to be.‎

Page 10 - It is a metaphor, taken from a passive sense of the human body, and transferred to things which are in their essence not passive — to intellectual acts and operations.‎

About the author

Greg Barnhisel is associate professor of English at Duquesne University and author of James Laughlin, New Directions, and the Remaking of Ezra Pound (University of Massachusetts Press, 2005).

Bibliographic information

• Title: James Laughlin, New Directions, and the remaking of Ezra Pound; Studies in print culture and the history of the book
• Author: Gregory Peter Barnhisel
• Contributor: New Directions Publishing Corp
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press, 2005
• ISBN: 1558494782, 9781558494787
• Length: 272 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Literary; Literary Criticism / Books & Reading