WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.730 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.730 --> 00:00:02.473 align:middle line:90% Thanks, Cybele. 00:00:02.473 --> 00:00:03.640 align:middle line:90% And it's amazing to be here. 00:00:03.640 --> 00:00:05.410 align:middle line:84% I got the tour of the Poetry Center 00:00:05.410 --> 00:00:10.952 align:middle line:84% today, which is incredible, an oasis in a desert. 00:00:10.952 --> 00:00:12.160 align:middle line:90% So it's wonderful to be here. 00:00:12.160 --> 00:00:16.360 align:middle line:84% And thanks, Gail, for everything she does here too. 00:00:16.360 --> 00:00:21.610 align:middle line:84% I have a little bit of a cough, so I'll try and turn away. 00:00:21.610 --> 00:00:25.220 align:middle line:84% So I was invited here to speak about my experiences working 00:00:25.220 --> 00:00:27.800 align:middle line:90% in book publishing. 00:00:27.800 --> 00:00:29.960 align:middle line:84% Thinking about what I could say, I 00:00:29.960 --> 00:00:31.430 align:middle line:84% realized I've never really examined 00:00:31.430 --> 00:00:33.560 align:middle line:84% the 11 years of editorial work I've been 00:00:33.560 --> 00:00:35.990 align:middle line:90% engaged with at New Directions. 00:00:35.990 --> 00:00:38.150 align:middle line:84% It's also a personal time of transition for me, 00:00:38.150 --> 00:00:41.870 align:middle line:84% as in this new year, I've taken on an editor-at-large role 00:00:41.870 --> 00:00:44.600 align:middle line:84% at the press, and I'm now also helping New York Review 00:00:44.600 --> 00:00:47.810 align:middle line:90% of Books with their list. 00:00:47.810 --> 00:00:50.880 align:middle line:84% Essentially, I fell into publishing by accident. 00:00:50.880 --> 00:00:54.410 align:middle line:84% After graduate school in the writing program at NYU, 00:00:54.410 --> 00:00:57.590 align:middle line:84% I was about to start working at a drug rehab center in Brooklyn 00:00:57.590 --> 00:01:00.320 align:middle line:84% that paid for room and board when a friend said 00:01:00.320 --> 00:01:03.170 align:middle line:84% I should interview at the nonprofit publisher, The New 00:01:03.170 --> 00:01:05.060 align:middle line:90% Press. 00:01:05.060 --> 00:01:08.000 align:middle line:84% After a few months there in the marketing department, 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:09.740 align:middle line:84% the same friend said that there was 00:01:09.740 --> 00:01:12.080 align:middle line:84% a job opening at New Directions and I 00:01:12.080 --> 00:01:14.570 align:middle line:90% should go visit the press. 00:01:14.570 --> 00:01:16.280 align:middle line:84% On the day of my visit, for some reason, 00:01:16.280 --> 00:01:19.610 align:middle line:84% I didn't realize it was an official interview until four 00:01:19.610 --> 00:01:23.690 align:middle line:84% higher-ups seated me in the center of a little half circle 00:01:23.690 --> 00:01:26.920 align:middle line:84% and began to pepper me with questions. 00:01:26.920 --> 00:01:31.300 align:middle line:84% After praising all the ND books I had loved during my college 00:01:31.300 --> 00:01:32.980 align:middle line:84% years, the editor-in-chief described 00:01:32.980 --> 00:01:35.350 align:middle line:84% the clerk position they were hiring for as, 00:01:35.350 --> 00:01:39.460 align:middle line:84% quote, "the first stop on the whipping post." 00:01:39.460 --> 00:01:42.490 align:middle line:84% More questions followed, and I said something to the effect 00:01:42.490 --> 00:01:45.940 align:middle line:84% that perhaps the job wasn't suited for me as I never 00:01:45.940 --> 00:01:47.650 align:middle line:90% worked in an office before. 00:01:47.650 --> 00:01:49.660 align:middle line:84% At that point, I'd only been at The New Press 00:01:49.660 --> 00:01:51.700 align:middle line:90% for about two months. 00:01:51.700 --> 00:01:54.700 align:middle line:84% And then the unforgettable moment happened. 00:01:54.700 --> 00:01:57.700 align:middle line:84% The president at the time, Griselda Ohannessian, 00:01:57.700 --> 00:02:00.910 align:middle line:84% who actually just passed away this year, she 00:02:00.910 --> 00:02:03.730 align:middle line:84% had been working at New Directions since the 1950s, 00:02:03.730 --> 00:02:06.460 align:middle line:84% picked up a box from a nearby table 00:02:06.460 --> 00:02:08.860 align:middle line:84% and raised it toward me saying, here have a chocolate. 00:02:08.860 --> 00:02:10.060 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:02:10.060 --> 00:02:11.560 align:middle line:90% And that's the true story. 00:02:11.560 --> 00:02:16.010 align:middle line:84% [LAUGHS] Apparently, I had gotten the job. 00:02:16.010 --> 00:02:19.810 align:middle line:84% So that's how things started for me in publishing. 00:02:19.810 --> 00:02:21.700 align:middle line:84% Before that, I had hardly even paid attention 00:02:21.700 --> 00:02:24.670 align:middle line:84% to who published which books I was reading. 00:02:24.670 --> 00:02:27.700 align:middle line:84% You quickly learn that the more you pay attention to this, 00:02:27.700 --> 00:02:31.570 align:middle line:84% the more transparent the world of publishing becomes. 00:02:31.570 --> 00:02:34.690 align:middle line:84% My work experiences up until that time 00:02:34.690 --> 00:02:38.080 align:middle line:84% range from being a composition tutor, an usher 00:02:38.080 --> 00:02:41.860 align:middle line:84% at a small concert hall, an English teacher in China, 00:02:41.860 --> 00:02:44.920 align:middle line:84% working in a research lab in an aquarium. 00:02:44.920 --> 00:02:47.020 align:middle line:84% Publishing had never even surfaced 00:02:47.020 --> 00:02:49.300 align:middle line:90% in my mind as an option. 00:02:49.300 --> 00:02:51.130 align:middle line:84% Everything about the job I learned 00:02:51.130 --> 00:02:56.870 align:middle line:84% as I went along, which today, for most jobs, seems a luxury. 00:02:56.870 --> 00:02:59.830 align:middle line:84% One thing I want to note from the start 00:02:59.830 --> 00:03:01.600 align:middle line:84% is that my work experiences only relate 00:03:01.600 --> 00:03:04.720 align:middle line:84% to a particular kind of book publishing; 00:03:04.720 --> 00:03:08.980 align:middle line:84% that is, the publishing of literary books, literature 00:03:08.980 --> 00:03:12.160 align:middle line:84% of the past and the present, of authors in the US 00:03:12.160 --> 00:03:15.250 align:middle line:90% and from around the world. 00:03:15.250 --> 00:03:18.180 align:middle line:84% These kinds of books are in marketing terms called, quote, 00:03:18.180 --> 00:03:22.800 align:middle line:84% "trade books," which are defined as books designed 00:03:22.800 --> 00:03:24.540 align:middle line:84% for the general consumer that you 00:03:24.540 --> 00:03:28.980 align:middle line:84% find in bookstores, public libraries, and wholesalers. 00:03:28.980 --> 00:03:31.800 align:middle line:84% But this descriptor becomes stranger and stranger to me 00:03:31.800 --> 00:03:35.100 align:middle line:84% as a large percentage of general consumers don't 00:03:35.100 --> 00:03:38.470 align:middle line:84% buy these kinds of books, plus new books of literature, 00:03:38.470 --> 00:03:41.250 align:middle line:84% particularly those in translation, 00:03:41.250 --> 00:03:42.990 align:middle line:84% are often hard to find in bookstores 00:03:42.990 --> 00:03:46.110 align:middle line:90% and public libraries-- 00:03:46.110 --> 00:03:46.980 align:middle line:90% except for this one. 00:03:46.980 --> 00:03:47.850 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHS] 00:03:47.850 --> 00:03:49.650 align:middle line:84% Reflecting on today's business of books, 00:03:49.650 --> 00:03:51.960 align:middle line:84% I think of that bygone era of book publishing 00:03:51.960 --> 00:03:54.510 align:middle line:84% when books were set in type, and those 00:03:54.510 --> 00:03:57.210 align:middle line:84% who worked the ink blocks were called bears 00:03:57.210 --> 00:03:59.310 align:middle line:84% and the typesetter, the compositors were called 00:03:59.310 --> 00:04:03.720 align:middle line:84% monkeys, and a ream of paper was worth 15 francs 00:04:03.720 --> 00:04:06.420 align:middle line:84% until words were printed on it and the reams worth changed 00:04:06.420 --> 00:04:09.900 align:middle line:90% to either 5 or 300 francs. 00:04:09.900 --> 00:04:12.750 align:middle line:84% Here's one of my favorite passages from Balzac's La 00:04:12.750 --> 00:04:17.190 align:middle line:84% Comedie humaine in his novel Lost Illusions translated 00:04:17.190 --> 00:04:20.470 align:middle line:90% by Herbert Hunt. 00:04:20.470 --> 00:04:22.690 align:middle line:84% "The thing we give our lives for, 00:04:22.690 --> 00:04:25.750 align:middle line:84% the subject we rack our brains over 00:04:25.750 --> 00:04:28.300 align:middle line:84% and wrestle with for nights on end, 00:04:28.300 --> 00:04:32.020 align:middle line:84% the race we run across the fields of thought, the monument 00:04:32.020 --> 00:04:35.290 align:middle line:84% we build with the heart's blood, editors 00:04:35.290 --> 00:04:39.130 align:middle line:84% regard all that as a good or a bad piece of business. 00:04:39.130 --> 00:04:41.230 align:middle line:84% Your manuscript will sell or it won't, 00:04:41.230 --> 00:04:42.910 align:middle line:90% that's their whole problem. 00:04:42.910 --> 00:04:45.190 align:middle line:84% For them a book is merely a capital risk. 00:04:45.190 --> 00:04:48.310 align:middle line:84% The finer it is, the less chance it has of selling. 00:04:48.310 --> 00:04:50.650 align:middle line:84% Every exceptional man rises above the masses, 00:04:50.650 --> 00:04:52.900 align:middle line:84% and therefore his success is in direct ratio 00:04:52.900 --> 00:04:57.150 align:middle line:84% to the time needed for his work to prove his value. 00:04:57.150 --> 00:04:59.500 align:middle line:84% No publisher is willing to wait for that. 00:04:59.500 --> 00:05:02.100 align:middle line:84% Today's book must be sold out tomorrow. 00:05:02.100 --> 00:05:03.840 align:middle line:84% Following that policy, publishers 00:05:03.840 --> 00:05:07.260 align:middle line:84% refuse substantial books which can only gradually obtain 00:05:07.260 --> 00:05:10.110 align:middle line:90% the serious approval they need." 00:05:10.110 --> 00:05:13.320 align:middle line:90% And that was Paris in the 1820s. 00:05:13.320 --> 00:05:21.630 align:middle line:84% So James Laughlin founded New Directions in 1936. 00:05:21.630 --> 00:05:24.630 align:middle line:84% He once amusingly said that it took 20 years for a good book 00:05:24.630 --> 00:05:26.230 align:middle line:90% to find an audience. 00:05:26.230 --> 00:05:28.380 align:middle line:84% In other words, to return to Balzac, 00:05:28.380 --> 00:05:31.440 align:middle line:84% he published books which can only gradually obtain 00:05:31.440 --> 00:05:35.120 align:middle line:90% the serious approval they need. 00:05:35.120 --> 00:05:37.490 align:middle line:84% To a friend, Laughlin once wrote, "I often 00:05:37.490 --> 00:05:40.190 align:middle line:84% feel I'm working in a vacuum or in a country where 00:05:40.190 --> 00:05:42.500 align:middle line:90% few readers hear the sounds." 00:05:42.500 --> 00:05:48.210 align:middle line:84% And yet, he persisted until his death in 1997. 00:05:48.210 --> 00:05:50.870 align:middle line:84% He had dropped out of Harvard at age 19, 00:05:50.870 --> 00:05:53.780 align:middle line:84% went to Paris to work for Gertrude Stein, 00:05:53.780 --> 00:05:56.090 align:middle line:84% attended Pound's "Ezuversity" for a time, 00:05:56.090 --> 00:05:57.830 align:middle line:90% then returned to Harvard. 00:05:57.830 --> 00:05:59.780 align:middle line:84% And while still an undergraduate student, 00:05:59.780 --> 00:06:02.870 align:middle line:84% he launched the press with an anthology of writing 00:06:02.870 --> 00:06:06.350 align:middle line:84% called New Directions in Poetry and Prose, 00:06:06.350 --> 00:06:11.420 align:middle line:84% subtitled "Indirect Criticism, Surrealism, Dream 00:06:11.420 --> 00:06:16.010 align:middle line:84% Writing," which included work by Pound, William Carlos 00:06:16.010 --> 00:06:19.910 align:middle line:84% Williams, Wallace Stevens, Lorine Niedecker, Henry 00:06:19.910 --> 00:06:24.500 align:middle line:84% Miller, Elizabeth Bishop, Gertrude Stein among others. 00:06:24.500 --> 00:06:26.940 align:middle line:84% A lot of the history of New Directions is well documented, 00:06:26.940 --> 00:06:29.700 align:middle line:84% and I don't have time to go into detail here. 00:06:29.700 --> 00:06:32.060 align:middle line:84% But for those interested, I recommend reading Hayden 00:06:32.060 --> 00:06:35.120 align:middle line:84% Carruth's little biography of Laughlin called Beside 00:06:35.120 --> 00:06:38.900 align:middle line:84% the Shadblow Tree, the essay on Laughlin in Eliot 00:06:38.900 --> 00:06:41.630 align:middle line:84% Weinberger's Oranges and Peanuts for Sale-- 00:06:41.630 --> 00:06:44.870 align:middle line:84% and some of these books we're going to pass around and you 00:06:44.870 --> 00:06:48.740 align:middle line:84% could just look at them and pass them on-- 00:06:48.740 --> 00:06:51.080 align:middle line:84% The Way It Wasn't, an illustrated 00:06:51.080 --> 00:06:53.180 align:middle line:84% eclectic alphabetical compilation 00:06:53.180 --> 00:06:56.630 align:middle line:84% of letters and ephemera culled from Laughlin's files, 00:06:56.630 --> 00:07:00.320 align:middle line:84% coedited by Daniel Javitch and the current president of ND, 00:07:00.320 --> 00:07:05.740 align:middle line:84% Barbara Epler, and Laughlin's own lyrical episodic memoir, 00:07:05.740 --> 00:07:08.960 align:middle line:90% Byways. 00:07:08.960 --> 00:07:14.140 align:middle line:84% I'm also circulating some catalogs you could see too. 00:07:14.140 --> 00:07:17.080 align:middle line:84% There will also be a biography of Laughlin published 00:07:17.080 --> 00:07:21.700 align:middle line:84% by FSG in the next year or two written by Ian MacNiven, 00:07:21.700 --> 00:07:23.500 align:middle line:84% and other historical information you 00:07:23.500 --> 00:07:27.022 align:middle line:84% could find on our new website, ndbooks.com. 00:07:27.022 --> 00:07:28.480 align:middle line:84% And you can find a lot of materials 00:07:28.480 --> 00:07:31.630 align:middle line:84% online and in person at Harvard's Houghton Library that 00:07:31.630 --> 00:07:34.480 align:middle line:84% archives the ND papers, and also the Beinecke 00:07:34.480 --> 00:07:38.440 align:middle line:90% at Yale that has the ND library. 00:07:38.440 --> 00:07:40.750 align:middle line:84% But it's still incredible for me to peruse 00:07:40.750 --> 00:07:44.530 align:middle line:84% the list of authors Laughlin published over the years-- 00:07:44.530 --> 00:07:48.760 align:middle line:84% Pound, Williams, Delmore Schwartz, Kenneth Patchen, 00:07:48.760 --> 00:07:53.670 align:middle line:84% Kay Boyle, Dylan Thomas, Rimbaud, Kafka, Lorca. 00:07:53.670 --> 00:07:55.470 align:middle line:84% As Weinberger's notes in his essay, 00:07:55.470 --> 00:07:58.200 align:middle line:84% New Directions was an early and usually 00:07:58.200 --> 00:08:02.070 align:middle line:84% the first American publisher of Neruda, Sartre, Brecht, Camus, 00:08:02.070 --> 00:08:07.320 align:middle line:84% Celine, Mishima, Montale, Cendrars, Borges, Apollinaire, 00:08:07.320 --> 00:08:14.060 align:middle line:84% Paz, Rilke, Pasternak, Michaux, Svevo, Isherwood, Ungaretti, 00:08:14.060 --> 00:08:18.530 align:middle line:84% John Hawkes, Paul Bowles, Nabokov, Carson McCullers, 00:08:18.530 --> 00:08:20.510 align:middle line:90% Paul Valery and on. 00:08:20.510 --> 00:08:23.750 align:middle line:84% He also brought back into print The Great Gatsby, Light 00:08:23.750 --> 00:08:26.770 align:middle line:90% in August-- 00:08:26.770 --> 00:08:31.120 align:middle line:84% it's kinda amazing [LAUGHS] to bring back in print-- 00:08:31.120 --> 00:08:34.630 align:middle line:84% EM Forster, Conrad, Henry James, Nathanael West, Djuna Barnes, 00:08:34.630 --> 00:08:37.125 align:middle line:84% DH Lawrence, Stendhal, and Flaubert. 00:08:37.125 --> 00:08:39.250 align:middle line:84% And then there was Laughlin's continuing commitment 00:08:39.250 --> 00:08:43.510 align:middle line:84% to the American poetry avant-garde, HD, 00:08:43.510 --> 00:08:49.490 align:middle line:84% Kenneth Rexroth, George Oppen, Ferlinghetti, Muriel Rukeyser, 00:08:49.490 --> 00:08:53.390 align:middle line:84% Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, Robert Duncan 00:08:53.390 --> 00:08:54.920 align:middle line:90% among many others. 00:08:54.920 --> 00:08:57.530 align:middle line:84% Laughlin also continued to publish the annual anthology 00:08:57.530 --> 00:09:00.980 align:middle line:84% of poetry and prose until the early '90s as well 00:09:00.980 --> 00:09:04.520 align:middle line:84% as several anthologies of classical and modern poetry 00:09:04.520 --> 00:09:08.000 align:middle line:84% from around the world, quite a humbling publishing vision 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:10.080 align:middle line:90% to carry on. 00:09:10.080 --> 00:09:12.180 align:middle line:84% Without a small but devoted population 00:09:12.180 --> 00:09:16.080 align:middle line:84% of readers whose reading habits are equally perverse, 00:09:16.080 --> 00:09:19.690 align:middle line:84% ND would have closed shop years ago. 00:09:19.690 --> 00:09:22.380 align:middle line:84% And what I mean by that is I think we often 00:09:22.380 --> 00:09:26.100 align:middle line:84% forget that literature isn't meant to be comforting 00:09:26.100 --> 00:09:29.620 align:middle line:84% and reassuring, the way a technologically perfected 00:09:29.620 --> 00:09:34.330 align:middle line:84% mattress molds to the body and so leads to easy sleep. 00:09:34.330 --> 00:09:36.400 align:middle line:84% Poetry literature can be dangerous, 00:09:36.400 --> 00:09:38.710 align:middle line:84% dangerous for the mind and spirit, 00:09:38.710 --> 00:09:42.700 align:middle line:84% dangerous for our emotions, for our perceptions. 00:09:42.700 --> 00:09:45.820 align:middle line:84% It can bring us to an unexpected place of thinking and feeling, 00:09:45.820 --> 00:09:52.020 align:middle line:84% a place of uneasiness or pain or truth or ecstasy. 00:09:52.020 --> 00:09:55.200 align:middle line:84% It wakes us up, or even causes madness. 00:09:55.200 --> 00:09:58.620 align:middle line:84% Why else does the priest burn Don Quixote's books, 00:09:58.620 --> 00:10:03.750 align:middle line:84% or right now isn't the school district banning The Tempest 00:10:03.750 --> 00:10:06.990 align:middle line:90% or The Fire Next Time? 00:10:06.990 --> 00:10:10.770 align:middle line:84% And in the first five years, Laughlin 00:10:10.770 --> 00:10:13.620 align:middle line:84% published around 40 titles, selling them to bookstores out 00:10:13.620 --> 00:10:15.900 align:middle line:90% of his station wagon. 00:10:15.900 --> 00:10:19.470 align:middle line:84% Currently, we bring out about 30 to 35 books annually, 00:10:19.470 --> 00:10:23.280 align:middle line:84% mostly fiction and poetry, some letters, essays, memoirs, 00:10:23.280 --> 00:10:27.042 align:middle line:84% and plays and many books in translation. 00:10:27.042 --> 00:10:29.000 align:middle line:84% Our business tier is divided into two seasons-- 00:10:29.000 --> 00:10:31.160 align:middle line:84% fall/winter and spring/summer-- which 00:10:31.160 --> 00:10:34.160 align:middle line:90% you'll see the two catalogs. 00:10:34.160 --> 00:10:37.430 align:middle line:84% And we have over 1,000 books in print. 00:10:37.430 --> 00:10:40.100 align:middle line:84% In the office, there are about nine full-time employees. 00:10:40.100 --> 00:10:42.440 align:middle line:84% And in the past few years, we've hired interns who 00:10:42.440 --> 00:10:45.050 align:middle line:90% have become totally essential. 00:10:45.050 --> 00:10:47.330 align:middle line:84% We also use a few outside book designers 00:10:47.330 --> 00:10:52.220 align:middle line:84% and had an ongoing relationship with WW Norton, who 00:10:52.220 --> 00:10:55.490 align:middle line:84% warehouses and distributes our books, as well 00:10:55.490 --> 00:10:58.880 align:middle line:84% as the titles of about 11 other presses, 00:10:58.880 --> 00:11:03.200 align:middle line:84% like Thames and Hudson, Dalkey Archive, and Fantagraphics. 00:11:03.200 --> 00:11:08.500 align:middle line:84% That's the general structure of what goes on. 00:11:08.500 --> 00:11:09.000 align:middle line:90%