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

Resource Information

The work "Literchoor Is My Beat" : a Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Mercer County Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

This resource has been enriched with EBSCO NoveList data.

Label

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

Title remainder

a Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions

Statement of responsibility

Ian S. MacNiven

Creator

• trueMacNiven, Ian S

Subject

• Laughlin, James, 1914-1997
• trueLiterature publishing -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• trueMen with bipolar disorder
• trueModern literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism
• New Directions Publishing Corp
• truePoets, American -- 20th century -- Biography
• truePublishers and publishing -- Biography
• truePublishers and publishing -- United States -- Biography
• trueLiterature -- Publishing -- United States -- History -- 20th century

Genre

• trueBiography

Language

eng

Summary

"A biography--thoughtful and playful--of the man who founded New Directions and transformed American publishing James Laughlin--a poet, publisher, world-class skier--was 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 Pound's The Cantos and William Carlos Williams's 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 longer--in "Literchoor is My Beat": James Laughlin and 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. Laughlin--or J, as MacNiven calls him--emerges as an impressive and complex figure: energetic, idealistic, and hardworking, but also plagued by doubts--not about his ability to identify and nurture talent, but about his own worth as a writer. Haunted by his father's struggles with bipolar disorder, J threw himself into a flurry of activity, pulling together the first New Directions anthology before he'd graduated from Harvard and purchasing and managing a ski resort in Utah. MacNiven's portrait is comprehensive and vital, spiced with Ezra Pound's eccentric letters, J's 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"--

Writing style

• trueRichly detailed
• trueDescriptive

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Biography type

individual biography

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

• 811/.54
• B

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

PS3523.A8245

LC item number

Z77 2014

Literary form

non fiction