WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.367 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.367 --> 00:00:00.950 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Ed. 00:00:00.950 --> 00:00:03.380 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:03.380 --> 00:00:06.300 align:middle line:90% 00:00:06.300 --> 00:00:09.900 align:middle line:84% I want to thank you, sir, as chairman of the department, 00:00:09.900 --> 00:00:11.910 align:middle line:84% and your colleague Lois Shelton is 00:00:11.910 --> 00:00:14.340 align:middle line:84% director of the Poetry Center for 00:00:14.340 --> 00:00:17.280 align:middle line:90% co-sponsoring this twin bill. 00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:20.370 align:middle line:84% Yesterday, was her day, and tonight is mine. 00:00:20.370 --> 00:00:26.880 align:middle line:84% And we were delighted to have J. Laughlin and Mrs. Laughlin 00:00:26.880 --> 00:00:29.280 align:middle line:90% as our guests. 00:00:29.280 --> 00:00:32.040 align:middle line:84% I'm up here, not because I'm chairman 00:00:32.040 --> 00:00:35.190 align:middle line:84% of the friends of the library, but because J. Laughlin asked 00:00:35.190 --> 00:00:40.350 align:middle line:84% me to be here and pitch questions to him, 00:00:40.350 --> 00:00:43.650 align:middle line:84% to be an interlocutor because he has an abhorrence 00:00:43.650 --> 00:00:46.560 align:middle line:90% of a formal lecture. 00:00:46.560 --> 00:00:48.780 align:middle line:84% He doesn't realize this is a dangerous thing 00:00:48.780 --> 00:00:53.100 align:middle line:84% to put Larry Powell on the stage, 00:00:53.100 --> 00:00:57.120 align:middle line:84% but I'm going to do my best, J, to control myself. 00:00:57.120 --> 00:00:59.040 align:middle line:84% But there are a few things I do want 00:00:59.040 --> 00:01:05.850 align:middle line:84% to say on this, your first visit back to Tucson, in what is it-- 00:01:05.850 --> 00:01:06.840 align:middle line:90% 40 years? 00:01:06.840 --> 00:01:08.100 align:middle line:90% About 40, I'd say. 00:01:08.100 --> 00:01:09.090 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:01:09.090 --> 00:01:12.690 align:middle line:90% Slight change in the weather. 00:01:12.690 --> 00:01:18.480 align:middle line:84% You came in the spring, I guess, before encamped on the desert. 00:01:18.480 --> 00:01:24.060 align:middle line:84% This time he came down in an amphibious vehicle from Utah, 00:01:24.060 --> 00:01:26.670 align:middle line:84% and we have put on a pretty nice day for him today. 00:01:26.670 --> 00:01:30.300 align:middle line:90% And he got some golf in. 00:01:30.300 --> 00:01:36.360 align:middle line:84% I sent a postcard this morning to a gentleman in Purchase, New 00:01:36.360 --> 00:01:41.310 align:middle line:90% York, regretting his absence. 00:01:41.310 --> 00:01:47.790 align:middle line:84% And I said, dear Alfred Knapp if you could be with us tonight, 00:01:47.790 --> 00:01:51.270 align:middle line:84% I'd confer the Nobel Prize on you 00:01:51.270 --> 00:01:55.950 align:middle line:84% jointly with J. Laughlin, the Nobel Prize for publishing. 00:01:55.950 --> 00:02:00.330 align:middle line:84% Of course, there is none, but here are 00:02:00.330 --> 00:02:05.250 align:middle line:84% they, two outstanding American publishers of the 20th century, 00:02:05.250 --> 00:02:07.380 align:middle line:90% without any doubt. 00:02:07.380 --> 00:02:12.900 align:middle line:84% And of the two, the most daring is certainly our guest tonight 00:02:12.900 --> 00:02:19.950 align:middle line:84% because he published unknowns more than Mr. Knapp, who, 00:02:19.950 --> 00:02:23.580 align:middle line:84% unless his wife went out and brought them in alive, 00:02:23.580 --> 00:02:27.030 align:middle line:84% tended to be a more conservative publisher. 00:02:27.030 --> 00:02:30.030 align:middle line:84% But J. Laughlin has been willing to take chances 00:02:30.030 --> 00:02:31.515 align:middle line:90% when no other publisher would. 00:02:31.515 --> 00:02:34.440 align:middle line:90% 00:02:34.440 --> 00:02:38.970 align:middle line:84% This is also our first meeting in 40-- 00:02:38.970 --> 00:02:44.610 align:middle line:84% or second meeting-- our first re-meeting in 42 years. 00:02:44.610 --> 00:02:49.290 align:middle line:84% I was a junior typist at UCLA, pecking away on my typewriter 00:02:49.290 --> 00:02:54.870 align:middle line:84% in the order department, and this tall, very tall man 00:02:54.870 --> 00:03:00.120 align:middle line:84% came in and looked down at me at my little typewriter and said, 00:03:00.120 --> 00:03:05.280 align:middle line:84% I'm J. Laughlin, and I've come to thank you and UCLA 00:03:05.280 --> 00:03:08.220 align:middle line:84% for being the first library in the United States 00:03:08.220 --> 00:03:11.100 align:middle line:84% to place this standing order for every book published 00:03:11.100 --> 00:03:13.500 align:middle line:90% by New Directions. 00:03:13.500 --> 00:03:15.540 align:middle line:84% And this was a pretty bold thing, 00:03:15.540 --> 00:03:21.270 align:middle line:84% I must say, that I got my boss there to do in 1939, I guess, 00:03:21.270 --> 00:03:24.870 align:middle line:84% when I first came on those annuals that you published. 00:03:24.870 --> 00:03:27.810 align:middle line:84% He looked down at me, and I looked down at his feet. 00:03:27.810 --> 00:03:29.160 align:middle line:90% They were bare. 00:03:29.160 --> 00:03:32.280 align:middle line:84% He was wearing Mexican sandals, and when 00:03:32.280 --> 00:03:37.450 align:middle line:84% I invited him to come back, and come out, and speak, I said, J, 00:03:37.450 --> 00:03:40.560 align:middle line:90% do you still have a sandals? 00:03:40.560 --> 00:03:43.440 align:middle line:84% Like a good Scott, he replied, yes, 00:03:43.440 --> 00:03:44.670 align:middle line:90% do you want me to bring them? 00:03:44.670 --> 00:03:48.780 align:middle line:90% 00:03:48.780 --> 00:03:53.280 align:middle line:84% Many a young man from a wealthy industrial family 00:03:53.280 --> 00:03:56.340 align:middle line:84% has gone to Harvard and gone back 00:03:56.340 --> 00:03:59.970 align:middle line:84% into the family business, whatever it was. 00:03:59.970 --> 00:04:02.760 align:middle line:84% Here was the exception, who came up from Pittsburgh 00:04:02.760 --> 00:04:08.955 align:middle line:84% through Choate to Harvard, and did not go back to the Jones 00:04:08.955 --> 00:04:12.090 align:middle line:90% and Laughlin Steel Mills. 00:04:12.090 --> 00:04:15.310 align:middle line:84% He told me he had made that resolve early. 00:04:15.310 --> 00:04:20.820 align:middle line:84% He went on instead overseas, and I'd 00:04:20.820 --> 00:04:25.680 align:middle line:84% like to ask him, if he would, to account 00:04:25.680 --> 00:04:29.290 align:middle line:90% for what led to this bold move. 00:04:29.290 --> 00:04:31.290 align:middle line:84% He didn't finish his degree that year. 00:04:31.290 --> 00:04:34.050 align:middle line:84% He went abroad and finished it later. 00:04:34.050 --> 00:04:35.100 align:middle line:90% What took you? 00:04:35.100 --> 00:04:40.410 align:middle line:84% What was the motive, J, that led you to leave Harvard and go off 00:04:40.410 --> 00:04:44.400 align:middle line:84% to Europe when you were still a boy, really. 00:04:44.400 --> 00:04:46.560 align:middle line:84% Well, before I answer that question 00:04:46.560 --> 00:04:48.750 align:middle line:84% I'd like to say what a great pleasure 00:04:48.750 --> 00:04:51.090 align:middle line:90% it is to be with Larry here. 00:04:51.090 --> 00:04:55.960 align:middle line:84% He must certainly be one of my oldest friends from California, 00:04:55.960 --> 00:04:58.770 align:middle line:84% and although I haven't often seen him as I would wish, 00:04:58.770 --> 00:05:01.340 align:middle line:84% we've been in touch one way and another. 00:05:01.340 --> 00:05:04.700 align:middle line:84% He sent me the series of wonderful little memoirs, 00:05:04.700 --> 00:05:06.980 align:middle line:84% and tributes, and books that he has published 00:05:06.980 --> 00:05:09.230 align:middle line:84% in such a beautiful format, and he 00:05:09.230 --> 00:05:13.790 align:middle line:84% is, I would say, perhaps, the outstanding book 00:05:13.790 --> 00:05:17.480 align:middle line:84% man in the good sense in our country. 00:05:17.480 --> 00:05:23.450 align:middle line:84% To get now to why I ran out on Harvard after my freshman year, 00:05:23.450 --> 00:05:25.790 align:middle line:84% it was simply because I was bored to death. 00:05:25.790 --> 00:05:28.670 align:middle line:90% 00:05:28.670 --> 00:05:32.510 align:middle line:84% This is not reverential, but it's the truth. 00:05:32.510 --> 00:05:34.220 align:middle line:90% I happened to get there-- 00:05:34.220 --> 00:05:37.280 align:middle line:84% I got there, I think, in '32 or '33. 00:05:37.280 --> 00:05:40.580 align:middle line:84% And it was between two great generations of Harvard English 00:05:40.580 --> 00:05:45.650 align:middle line:84% professors, the old boys like Kittredge, and Lowes, and Kofi, 00:05:45.650 --> 00:05:51.230 align:middle line:84% and those had retired, and the new great generation 00:05:51.230 --> 00:05:56.960 align:middle line:84% of Teddy Spencer, and FO Mathiessen, and that group 00:05:56.960 --> 00:05:59.240 align:middle line:90% had not yet come on. 00:05:59.240 --> 00:06:03.140 align:middle line:84% And the luminary of the English department, at least, 00:06:03.140 --> 00:06:08.450 align:middle line:84% of the poetry part of the department 00:06:08.450 --> 00:06:11.720 align:middle line:84% was a fellow named Robert Hillier 00:06:11.720 --> 00:06:15.350 align:middle line:90% and frankly, he was dismal. 00:06:15.350 --> 00:06:18.560 align:middle line:84% He thought of himself as a poet, and so 00:06:18.560 --> 00:06:20.840 align:middle line:84% that you may evaluate his standing, 00:06:20.840 --> 00:06:23.120 align:middle line:84% I will recite the first two lines of one 00:06:23.120 --> 00:06:28.220 align:middle line:84% of his most famous poems, which went as follows, "One, two, 00:06:28.220 --> 00:06:34.760 align:middle line:84% three, four, the swift canoe and the shadowy shore," 00:06:34.760 --> 00:06:37.040 align:middle line:84% Actually, I think he did win a Pulitzer Prize, 00:06:37.040 --> 00:06:41.840 align:middle line:84% once but I think he must have had the jury rigged. 00:06:41.840 --> 00:06:45.230 align:middle line:84% He was also not very endearing because if, in his class, 00:06:45.230 --> 00:06:50.510 align:middle line:84% you mentioned the name of Ezra Pound or of TS Eliot, 00:06:50.510 --> 00:06:55.710 align:middle line:84% you were invited to depart the classroom. 00:06:55.710 --> 00:06:59.620 align:middle line:84% So the only real fun at Harvard for people 00:06:59.620 --> 00:07:03.380 align:middle line:84% with literary aspirations that year were healing The Advocate. 00:07:03.380 --> 00:07:05.090 align:middle line:84% That was the literary magazine, where 00:07:05.090 --> 00:07:10.730 align:middle line:84% there were some really superb bibulous parties. 00:07:10.730 --> 00:07:13.280 align:middle line:84% Jim Agee, James Agee-- you may remember 00:07:13.280 --> 00:07:14.360 align:middle line:90% him a very great writer. 00:07:14.360 --> 00:07:16.490 align:middle line:84% He's dead now and was the head of The Advocate. 00:07:16.490 --> 00:07:19.400 align:middle line:84% And he liked a little nip, and he would share it 00:07:19.400 --> 00:07:21.770 align:middle line:84% with the healers, the fellows who were 00:07:21.770 --> 00:07:24.320 align:middle line:90% trying to make the magazine. 00:07:24.320 --> 00:07:26.870 align:middle line:84% So I got really pretty fed up then, 00:07:26.870 --> 00:07:29.060 align:middle line:84% and fortunately, however, I had had 00:07:29.060 --> 00:07:31.940 align:middle line:84% in Choate a marvelous English master, whom you may 00:07:31.940 --> 00:07:34.040 align:middle line:90% have heard of, Dudley Fitts. 00:07:34.040 --> 00:07:36.860 align:middle line:84% He was the man who did those wonderful translations 00:07:36.860 --> 00:07:40.130 align:middle line:84% of the Greek tragedies with Robert Fitzgerald, who 00:07:40.130 --> 00:07:43.160 align:middle line:84% has since translated The Odyssey and so forth. 00:07:43.160 --> 00:07:46.010 align:middle line:84% And Fitts had-- he had inoculated me 00:07:46.010 --> 00:07:47.810 align:middle line:84% with the virus of modern literature. 00:07:47.810 --> 00:07:50.000 align:middle line:84% I mean, when I came to Choate, I knew nothing 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:54.530 align:middle line:84% about any literature at all because in Pittsburgh, 00:07:54.530 --> 00:07:57.202 align:middle line:84% the books were only there to fill the library shelves, 00:07:57.202 --> 00:07:58.910 align:middle line:84% and the only person who ever touched them 00:07:58.910 --> 00:08:02.810 align:middle line:84% was the Irish maid who dusted them every two weeks. 00:08:02.810 --> 00:08:05.060 align:middle line:84% But in Fitts-- under Fitts' tutelage, 00:08:05.060 --> 00:08:07.400 align:middle line:84% I had started reading modern literature 00:08:07.400 --> 00:08:10.730 align:middle line:84% and also reading the classics, that he put me onto. 00:08:10.730 --> 00:08:16.250 align:middle line:84% And through him, I learned about Joyce, and about Eliot, 00:08:16.250 --> 00:08:22.490 align:middle line:84% and about Pound, about Gertrude Stein, and I also-- 00:08:22.490 --> 00:08:26.270 align:middle line:84% it's rather surprised me, learned about Thomas Wolfe, who 00:08:26.270 --> 00:08:29.360 align:middle line:84% didn't seem to me to be exactly Fitts' type of author 00:08:29.360 --> 00:08:32.179 align:middle line:84% because, you know, Wolfe's motto was-- 00:08:32.179 --> 00:08:37.520 align:middle line:84% why do it in one adjective if you can do it in five? 00:08:37.520 --> 00:08:41.809 align:middle line:84% Fitts had been corresponding with Pound in Italy, 00:08:41.809 --> 00:08:45.140 align:middle line:84% through a connection that he'd had with Lincoln Kirstein's 00:08:45.140 --> 00:08:49.380 align:middle line:84% magazine the Hound & Horn, which was not a hunting magazine. 00:08:49.380 --> 00:08:51.770 align:middle line:84% It was a very highbrow, wonderful literary magazine, 00:08:51.770 --> 00:08:53.990 align:middle line:84% and this was a magazine that Pound always 00:08:53.990 --> 00:08:59.180 align:middle line:84% referred to in his letters as the Bitch and Bugle. 00:08:59.180 --> 00:09:03.530 align:middle line:84% So Fitts-- I told Fitts about how disgruntled 00:09:03.530 --> 00:09:05.930 align:middle line:84% I was at Harvard, and he said, well, I'll write to Pound. 00:09:05.930 --> 00:09:12.260 align:middle line:84% And he did write Pound, and Pound said, send him over, 00:09:12.260 --> 00:09:14.870 align:middle line:84% and if he ain't too dumb, maybe I 00:09:14.870 --> 00:09:17.480 align:middle line:84% can drill something into his head. 00:09:17.480 --> 00:09:18.950 align:middle line:90% This was the way Ezra talked. 00:09:18.950 --> 00:09:21.380 align:middle line:84% He had a wonderful cracker-barrel accent. 00:09:21.380 --> 00:09:23.420 align:middle line:84% He preserved-- although he's an expatriate, 00:09:23.420 --> 00:09:26.520 align:middle line:84% he preserved his Americanism to the days of his death. 00:09:26.520 --> 00:09:30.800 align:middle line:84% And he had about five or six marvelous accents, 00:09:30.800 --> 00:09:34.050 align:middle line:84% which I may have something to say about later. 00:09:34.050 --> 00:09:36.950 align:middle line:84% So I went over there and went down to Rapallo, 00:09:36.950 --> 00:09:40.220 align:middle line:84% and we seemed to hit it off right away. 00:09:40.220 --> 00:09:44.450 align:middle line:84% And he accepted me into his private college, which 00:09:44.450 --> 00:09:48.170 align:middle line:84% was called-- he called it the Ezuversity, 00:09:48.170 --> 00:09:50.640 align:middle line:84% and this was a great institution. 00:09:50.640 --> 00:09:54.388 align:middle line:84% First of all, it had no tuition at all. 00:09:54.388 --> 00:09:55.680 align:middle line:90% You don't have to pay anything. 00:09:55.680 --> 00:09:58.640 align:middle line:84% All you had to do is to pay for your own meals, and he would, 00:09:58.640 --> 00:10:03.420 align:middle line:84% he found me a little room, where I boarded 00:10:03.420 --> 00:10:07.170 align:middle line:84% with an old German lady for about $4 a week in those days, 00:10:07.170 --> 00:10:08.890 align:middle line:90% if you can believe it. 00:10:08.890 --> 00:10:12.870 align:middle line:84% And he found me an old lady to teach me Italian Signorina 00:10:12.870 --> 00:10:15.510 align:middle line:84% Canessa, who was a dear old lady who 00:10:15.510 --> 00:10:18.090 align:middle line:84% hated Mussolini passionately because he 00:10:18.090 --> 00:10:19.550 align:middle line:90% had put a tax on canaries. 00:10:19.550 --> 00:10:22.410 align:middle line:90% 00:10:22.410 --> 00:10:26.940 align:middle line:84% The curriculum in the college all 00:10:26.940 --> 00:10:28.710 align:middle line:84% took-- well, there were three, there 00:10:28.710 --> 00:10:31.380 align:middle line:84% were three parts of the educational program 00:10:31.380 --> 00:10:33.540 align:middle line:90% in Pound's college. 00:10:33.540 --> 00:10:37.410 align:middle line:84% First, he would lend me books from his own library, 00:10:37.410 --> 00:10:39.690 align:middle line:84% and these were, of course, fascinating to read. 00:10:39.690 --> 00:10:41.310 align:middle line:90% And he led me all-- 00:10:41.310 --> 00:10:44.430 align:middle line:84% lent me all of the books that he thought a young man, who 00:10:44.430 --> 00:10:48.540 align:middle line:84% had had his tastes malformed by, what he called, 00:10:48.540 --> 00:10:52.980 align:middle line:84% that beanery at Harvard should read. 00:10:52.980 --> 00:10:56.460 align:middle line:84% And one of the most fascinating parts of this reading his books 00:10:56.460 --> 00:10:58.775 align:middle line:90% were his marginal notations. 00:10:58.775 --> 00:11:00.150 align:middle line:84% As he'd go through the book, he'd 00:11:00.150 --> 00:11:02.970 align:middle line:84% write in pencil what he thought about the author, 00:11:02.970 --> 00:11:04.800 align:middle line:84% even it was a famous classic author. 00:11:04.800 --> 00:11:08.100 align:middle line:84% And the most frequent notation was one which was written 00:11:08.100 --> 00:11:15.840 align:middle line:84% in capital letters and it said "B-A-L-L-S," exclamation point. 00:11:15.840 --> 00:11:17.490 align:middle line:84% The second part of the curriculum 00:11:17.490 --> 00:11:20.940 align:middle line:84% took place at lunch and dinner, when we would-- 00:11:20.940 --> 00:11:24.900 align:middle line:84% Ezra took, because his wife was a lovely English lady, 00:11:24.900 --> 00:11:26.910 align:middle line:84% a descendant of Shakespeare's brother, 00:11:26.910 --> 00:11:29.190 align:middle line:84% who of course, being a lady could not possibly 00:11:29.190 --> 00:11:33.330 align:middle line:84% learn to cook, all of the meals were taken in what-- 00:11:33.330 --> 00:11:37.170 align:middle line:84% in the albergo Rappalo, but which Ezra referred to 00:11:37.170 --> 00:11:41.190 align:middle line:90% as the al-buggero Rappalo. 00:11:41.190 --> 00:11:43.380 align:middle line:84% And we would be gathered there to lunch, 00:11:43.380 --> 00:11:46.290 align:middle line:84% Mrs. Pound, and myself, and Ezra, and whoever else-- 00:11:46.290 --> 00:11:51.120 align:middle line:84% This, the population of this college was very fluctuating. 00:11:51.120 --> 00:11:53.910 align:middle line:84% People would drift in, stay for a few days, 00:11:53.910 --> 00:11:56.280 align:middle line:90% go on stay for a week or so. 00:11:56.280 --> 00:12:01.170 align:middle line:84% I stayed actually for nearly a year, and whoever was there, 00:12:01.170 --> 00:12:04.800 align:middle line:84% would participate in listening to his monologues, 00:12:04.800 --> 00:12:07.410 align:middle line:84% and occasionally, in a timid voice, 00:12:07.410 --> 00:12:10.590 align:middle line:84% offering some very slight conjecture 00:12:10.590 --> 00:12:15.060 align:middle line:84% as to the veracity of the professor's remarks. 00:12:15.060 --> 00:12:18.960 align:middle line:84% And what he would usually start the day's work with 00:12:18.960 --> 00:12:22.530 align:middle line:84% and lunch would be, he would read his mail to us. 00:12:22.530 --> 00:12:27.480 align:middle line:84% And he had an enormous correspondence with people 00:12:27.480 --> 00:12:29.230 align:middle line:90% all over the world. 00:12:29.230 --> 00:12:32.370 align:middle line:84% Most of it having to do with economics because, 00:12:32.370 --> 00:12:34.770 align:middle line:84% as you may recall, in about the 1920s, 00:12:34.770 --> 00:12:36.960 align:middle line:84% when he was living in England, he 00:12:36.960 --> 00:12:40.110 align:middle line:84% fell under the spell of the CH Douglas, 00:12:40.110 --> 00:12:41.520 align:middle line:90% the founder of Social credit. 00:12:41.520 --> 00:12:43.200 align:middle line:84% And this became an obsession with him 00:12:43.200 --> 00:12:44.860 align:middle line:90% for the rest of his life. 00:12:44.860 --> 00:12:48.180 align:middle line:84% The gist of social credit is that you blow up the banks, 00:12:48.180 --> 00:12:53.010 align:middle line:84% and you return the issuance of currency to the people-- 00:12:53.010 --> 00:12:55.230 align:middle line:84% very nice arrangement, but it never worked out. 00:12:55.230 --> 00:13:00.300 align:middle line:84% But the mail would be done first and a great deal of comment. 00:13:00.300 --> 00:13:02.220 align:middle line:84% And after that, he would drift off 00:13:02.220 --> 00:13:05.070 align:middle line:84% into whatever was on his mind, and we would sort of 00:13:05.070 --> 00:13:07.800 align:middle line:84% try to steer him, of course, to literature, 00:13:07.800 --> 00:13:10.260 align:middle line:84% and the ancient classics, and the modern classics, 00:13:10.260 --> 00:13:15.360 align:middle line:84% and to stories about his friend Joyce, and his friend Yates, 00:13:15.360 --> 00:13:16.650 align:middle line:90% and so forth. 00:13:16.650 --> 00:13:21.360 align:middle line:84% And he was marvelous because he could mimic everything 00:13:21.360 --> 00:13:22.290 align:middle line:90% that he'd ever heard. 00:13:22.290 --> 00:13:26.550 align:middle line:84% He had a Joyce's accent down, down to pat. 00:13:26.550 --> 00:13:31.200 align:middle line:84% He had Yates' accent down pat, and he was really 00:13:31.200 --> 00:13:34.620 align:middle line:90% great in imitating Yates. 00:13:34.620 --> 00:13:37.740 align:middle line:84% And if you'd like, just to give you 00:13:37.740 --> 00:13:40.770 align:middle line:84% a sample of the way he talked, this is a bunch of-- 00:13:40.770 --> 00:13:42.600 align:middle line:84% I have about thousand letters from him, 00:13:42.600 --> 00:13:47.400 align:middle line:84% and I've culled out a few that are interesting. 00:13:47.400 --> 00:13:49.320 align:middle line:84% And here's one I can read about Yates, 00:13:49.320 --> 00:13:54.600 align:middle line:84% and I'll try and read it in his imitation of Yates. 00:13:54.600 --> 00:13:56.580 align:middle line:90% This is Ezra imitating Yates. 00:13:56.580 --> 00:14:00.600 align:middle line:84% This is from a letter he wrote me in 1934. 00:14:00.600 --> 00:14:04.410 align:middle line:84% "An aged Yates, a lefty Esther, I 00:14:04.410 --> 00:14:08.160 align:middle line:84% had a several serious reflections 00:14:08.160 --> 00:14:15.630 align:middle line:84% array, doing a formal document, requesting you to chloroform me 00:14:15.630 --> 00:14:20.100 align:middle line:90% before I get to that state. 00:14:20.100 --> 00:14:24.880 align:middle line:84% However, must be a trial to be Irish in Ireland." 00:14:24.880 --> 00:14:28.260 align:middle line:90% 00:14:28.260 --> 00:14:30.840 align:middle line:84% He could do this on anybody you know that he'd ever heard. 00:14:30.840 --> 00:14:33.780 align:middle line:84% I mean, he was, he was a priceless mimic. 00:14:33.780 --> 00:14:36.900 align:middle line:84% So that was one phase of the curriculum. 00:14:36.900 --> 00:14:38.400 align:middle line:84% And I guess we've been on two phases 00:14:38.400 --> 00:14:41.610 align:middle line:84% now, and then the third phase with the athletic program. 00:14:41.610 --> 00:14:45.840 align:middle line:84% And this was really delightful because Ezra 00:14:45.840 --> 00:14:47.220 align:middle line:90% loved to play tennis. 00:14:47.220 --> 00:14:49.240 align:middle line:84% There was a fairly decent court in Rapallo, 00:14:49.240 --> 00:14:52.020 align:middle line:84% and he sort of fenced it himself. 00:14:52.020 --> 00:14:57.990 align:middle line:84% He had the most cannonball-- not a serve, but his-- 00:14:57.990 --> 00:14:59.860 align:middle line:84% what he'd like to do is to get in the middle 00:14:59.860 --> 00:15:03.640 align:middle line:84% of the court, sort of about 10 feet back of the net. 00:15:03.640 --> 00:15:06.400 align:middle line:84% And he was quite hefty already in those days. 00:15:06.400 --> 00:15:08.920 align:middle line:84% And he would just wait there until the ball came, 00:15:08.920 --> 00:15:11.030 align:middle line:90% and then he would pivot around. 00:15:11.030 --> 00:15:14.440 align:middle line:84% And with this terrific pivot, he would smite the ball, 00:15:14.440 --> 00:15:16.150 align:middle line:90% and nobody could return it. 00:15:16.150 --> 00:15:19.060 align:middle line:84% And sometimes, he hit it so hard that it wedged itself 00:15:19.060 --> 00:15:24.160 align:middle line:84% into the mesh of the wire at the back of the court. 00:15:24.160 --> 00:15:25.240 align:middle line:90% That was fun. 00:15:25.240 --> 00:15:29.210 align:middle line:84% And then other days, if it was hot, as it got to be often, 00:15:29.210 --> 00:15:32.890 align:middle line:84% we would go out swimming in the beautiful Tegullian 00:15:32.890 --> 00:15:34.960 align:middle line:90% Gulf, which is the-- 00:15:34.960 --> 00:15:37.500 align:middle line:84% Rapallo, as you know, is just down the line from Geneva, 00:15:37.500 --> 00:15:39.730 align:middle line:84% and it's a very beautiful bay there, 00:15:39.730 --> 00:15:42.070 align:middle line:84% with Portofino, romantic Portofino, 00:15:42.070 --> 00:15:45.350 align:middle line:84% standing out with its lighthouse at the end of the thing. 00:15:45.350 --> 00:15:48.970 align:middle line:84% And we'd go out in, what was called, a pattino 00:15:48.970 --> 00:15:53.590 align:middle line:84% A pattino was two pontoons, and two crossed seats, 00:15:53.590 --> 00:15:54.552 align:middle line:90% and oar locks. 00:15:54.552 --> 00:15:56.510 align:middle line:84% We'd go out in this, and the reason, of course, 00:15:56.510 --> 00:15:59.920 align:middle line:84% for going out into the bay was that the sewage from the town 00:15:59.920 --> 00:16:03.250 align:middle line:90% of Rapallo ran onto the beach. 00:16:03.250 --> 00:16:05.127 align:middle line:90% But he loved, he loved swimming. 00:16:05.127 --> 00:16:06.460 align:middle line:90% We had very good times swimming. 00:16:06.460 --> 00:16:07.377 align:middle line:90% He was a good swimmer. 00:16:07.377 --> 00:16:10.300 align:middle line:84% And then if it was raining, the thing that we did is-- 00:16:10.300 --> 00:16:13.850 align:middle line:84% Rapallo, right behind it, has steep mountains going up, 00:16:13.850 --> 00:16:16.540 align:middle line:84% beautiful mountains, and they are all threaded 00:16:16.540 --> 00:16:18.370 align:middle line:90% with what are called salite. 00:16:18.370 --> 00:16:22.570 align:middle line:84% These are little steep paths made with crosses, 00:16:22.570 --> 00:16:26.080 align:middle line:84% crossed pieces of stones all the way up the hill. 00:16:26.080 --> 00:16:29.080 align:middle line:84% And we would walk up, if it was raining up these hills, 00:16:29.080 --> 00:16:31.060 align:middle line:84% and look into this beautiful region, where 00:16:31.060 --> 00:16:34.840 align:middle line:84% the peasants had their olive trees, behind stone walls 00:16:34.840 --> 00:16:36.160 align:middle line:90% and so forth. 00:16:36.160 --> 00:16:39.880 align:middle line:84% And he loved cats, and if we were going walking, 00:16:39.880 --> 00:16:42.100 align:middle line:84% he would always take a few snacks 00:16:42.100 --> 00:16:46.000 align:middle line:84% from the al-buggero Rapallo, and we would go up along the-- 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:48.430 align:middle line:84% and the cats would be waiting for him. 00:16:48.430 --> 00:16:50.500 align:middle line:90% I mean, cats are very smart. 00:16:50.500 --> 00:16:53.140 align:middle line:84% On a rainy day, they'd get on top of these low walls 00:16:53.140 --> 00:16:54.580 align:middle line:90% and waiting for Ezra. 00:16:54.580 --> 00:16:56.920 align:middle line:84% And Ezra would come up with his snacks, and he'd say, 00:16:56.920 --> 00:17:02.680 align:middle line:84% [ITALIAN],, and the cats would all come and get fed. 00:17:02.680 --> 00:17:04.300 align:middle line:84% So as you can see, it was a very, 00:17:04.300 --> 00:17:07.840 align:middle line:84% it was a very diverting college to attend. 00:17:07.840 --> 00:17:10.490 align:middle line:90% 00:17:10.490 --> 00:17:12.819 align:middle line:84% Then the other final, final part of it, 00:17:12.819 --> 00:17:16.030 align:middle line:84% I suppose, you would call the arts program, 00:17:16.030 --> 00:17:20.349 align:middle line:84% and the arts program took place in the local movie theater. 00:17:20.349 --> 00:17:23.260 align:middle line:84% Ezra would get up in the back, back balcony with his-- 00:17:23.260 --> 00:17:25.000 align:middle line:90% he wore a cowboy hat. 00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:27.520 align:middle line:84% And he'd be up there with his cowboy hat, stuffing peanuts, 00:17:27.520 --> 00:17:30.760 align:middle line:84% with his feet up onto the ledge of the beginning 00:17:30.760 --> 00:17:33.310 align:middle line:84% of the balcony, and we watched these terrible-- 00:17:33.310 --> 00:17:34.870 align:middle line:84% I mean, in those days, art had not 00:17:34.870 --> 00:17:36.580 align:middle line:90% arrived in the Italian cinema. 00:17:36.580 --> 00:17:39.650 align:middle line:84% These were the worst pictures you have ever seen. 00:17:39.650 --> 00:17:43.630 align:middle line:84% I mean, absolutely, the worst, and he loved them. 00:17:43.630 --> 00:17:46.300 align:middle line:84% And he would bellow with laughter, 00:17:46.300 --> 00:17:47.800 align:middle line:84% and I always went with him because I 00:17:47.800 --> 00:17:49.990 align:middle line:84% would be able to pick up a few words of Italian 00:17:49.990 --> 00:17:52.840 align:middle line:84% from each attendance at the movies. 00:17:52.840 --> 00:17:57.040 align:middle line:84% That was the Ezuversity, and it was a great beginning. 00:17:57.040 --> 00:17:58.900 align:middle line:84% And I wish that I could have stayed longer, 00:17:58.900 --> 00:18:03.190 align:middle line:84% but there was so much pressure from, so much 00:18:03.190 --> 00:18:05.470 align:middle line:84% pressure from my family to come back to Harvard. 00:18:05.470 --> 00:18:07.390 align:middle line:84% And Ezra finally said, well, yes, you better 00:18:07.390 --> 00:18:08.650 align:middle line:90% go back and finish up. 00:18:08.650 --> 00:18:13.210 align:middle line:84% And then they'll think you're a good boy and be nice to you. 00:18:13.210 --> 00:18:14.380 align:middle line:90% So it worked out. 00:18:14.380 --> 00:18:19.330 align:middle line:84% Didn't you go, really, with a bundle of your own poems? 00:18:19.330 --> 00:18:21.460 align:middle line:84% Yes, I-- well, no, I took a few poems, 00:18:21.460 --> 00:18:23.335 align:middle line:84% and I tried to write others when I was there. 00:18:23.335 --> 00:18:24.202 align:middle line:90% What did he say? 00:18:24.202 --> 00:18:25.160 align:middle line:90% What did he say to you? 00:18:25.160 --> 00:18:28.670 align:middle line:84% Well, he thought they were terrible. 00:18:28.670 --> 00:18:31.750 align:middle line:84% I would take a venture to show them to him never. 00:18:31.750 --> 00:18:34.480 align:middle line:84% I would never show them in public at the school lunches. 00:18:34.480 --> 00:18:36.790 align:middle line:84% I would show them later at tea, sometimes. 00:18:36.790 --> 00:18:38.590 align:middle line:90% He'd invite me to tea. 00:18:38.590 --> 00:18:41.650 align:middle line:84% And I'd show him these things, and he'd start to look at them. 00:18:41.650 --> 00:18:43.240 align:middle line:90% And he'd fuss with his glasses. 00:18:43.240 --> 00:18:45.250 align:middle line:84% And then he'd get out his stub pencil, 00:18:45.250 --> 00:18:47.200 align:middle line:84% and he'd start crossing out words. 00:18:47.200 --> 00:18:48.970 align:middle line:84% And he'd say, you don't need that word, 00:18:48.970 --> 00:18:50.730 align:middle line:90% and you don't need that word. 00:18:50.730 --> 00:18:52.190 align:middle line:84% And finally, he'd say, well, this 00:18:52.190 --> 00:18:56.920 align:middle line:84% is what you really mean to say, and he'd write it out. 00:18:56.920 --> 00:19:00.038 align:middle line:84% Unfortunately, those notes-- I'm sure, I have them somewhere, 00:19:00.038 --> 00:19:02.080 align:middle line:84% and I'm going to find them because they're really 00:19:02.080 --> 00:19:03.460 align:middle line:90% little treasures. 00:19:03.460 --> 00:19:05.592 align:middle line:84% But he thoroughly discouraged-- he said, 00:19:05.592 --> 00:19:08.050 align:middle line:84% he said, you're never going to be able-- you're never going 00:19:08.050 --> 00:19:09.970 align:middle line:90% to make a writer, he said. 00:19:09.970 --> 00:19:12.160 align:middle line:84% Of course, I was writing stories, too, 00:19:12.160 --> 00:19:14.140 align:middle line:84% but he wouldn't look at those because he 00:19:14.140 --> 00:19:16.930 align:middle line:84% said, there's no point in your wasting your time with fiction. 00:19:16.930 --> 00:19:20.050 align:middle line:84% Didn't you publish a story in The Atlantic Monthly 00:19:20.050 --> 00:19:21.550 align:middle line:90% when you were still a Choate? 00:19:21.550 --> 00:19:23.980 align:middle line:84% Yes, but he didn't want to see it. 00:19:23.980 --> 00:19:24.730 align:middle line:90% Did hie like that? 00:19:24.730 --> 00:19:26.980 align:middle line:90% He wouldn't read it. 00:19:26.980 --> 00:19:28.780 align:middle line:84% That was because of The Atlantic Monthly, 00:19:28.780 --> 00:19:30.520 align:middle line:90% not because of you I'm sure. 00:19:30.520 --> 00:19:33.670 align:middle line:84% He said that there was no point in wasting time with fiction 00:19:33.670 --> 00:19:40.300 align:middle line:84% because he said the Stendhal, Flaubert, Joyce, and Henry 00:19:40.300 --> 00:19:43.510 align:middle line:84% James had done everything that could possibly 00:19:43.510 --> 00:19:48.940 align:middle line:84% be done in fiction, and therefore, why bother to try? 00:19:48.940 --> 00:19:51.040 align:middle line:84% But these poems, he would look at, 00:19:51.040 --> 00:19:52.540 align:middle line:84% and then he told me, he said, you're 00:19:52.540 --> 00:19:53.748 align:middle line:90% never going to make a writer. 00:19:53.748 --> 00:19:55.190 align:middle line:90% This is hopeless. 00:19:55.190 --> 00:19:58.550 align:middle line:84% And so I said, whoa, what am I going to do? 00:19:58.550 --> 00:20:03.290 align:middle line:84% And he said, well, you said you must do something useful. 00:20:03.290 --> 00:20:05.630 align:middle line:90% So I said, well, what's useful? 00:20:05.630 --> 00:20:07.490 align:middle line:84% And he thought about that, and then he 00:20:07.490 --> 00:20:14.102 align:middle line:84% said, well, you might assassinate Henry Seidel Canby. 00:20:14.102 --> 00:20:16.370 align:middle line:90% Canby was one of his bete noire. 00:20:16.370 --> 00:20:20.000 align:middle line:84% Canby was the editor of The Saturday Review, 00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:21.890 align:middle line:84% and he wrote that immortal essay, 00:20:21.890 --> 00:20:24.620 align:middle line:84% in which he proved that there was no character 00:20:24.620 --> 00:20:25.790 align:middle line:90% development in Ulysses. 00:20:25.790 --> 00:20:29.360 align:middle line:90% 00:20:29.360 --> 00:20:32.955 align:middle line:84% But I said, how am I going to get away with it? 00:20:32.955 --> 00:20:34.580 align:middle line:84% He thought about it, and he said, nope, 00:20:34.580 --> 00:20:37.880 align:middle line:90% you're not smart enough. 00:20:37.880 --> 00:20:40.130 align:middle line:84% So then I said, well, what else is useful can they do? 00:20:40.130 --> 00:20:42.650 align:middle line:84% And he thought about that, and he said, well, 00:20:42.650 --> 00:20:46.870 align:middle line:84% you might become a publisher, and that's what happened. 00:20:46.870 --> 00:20:49.630 align:middle line:84% And the deal was that if I would go back to Harvard 00:20:49.630 --> 00:20:51.760 align:middle line:84% and learn to be a publisher, he would 00:20:51.760 --> 00:20:53.470 align:middle line:84% let me publish some of his books, 00:20:53.470 --> 00:20:55.750 align:middle line:84% and he would give me letters of introduction 00:20:55.750 --> 00:20:58.270 align:middle line:84% to his other writer friends, such as William Carlos 00:20:58.270 --> 00:21:00.400 align:middle line:90% Williams and other people. 00:21:00.400 --> 00:21:02.710 align:middle line:84% And that's how I got to be a publisher. 00:21:02.710 --> 00:21:04.300 align:middle line:90% And how many years ago was that? 00:21:04.300 --> 00:21:05.080 align:middle line:90% What was the year? 00:21:05.080 --> 00:21:07.030 align:middle line:90% That was 19-- 00:21:07.030 --> 00:21:11.410 align:middle line:84% I think it was 1936 that the first little pamphlet was 00:21:11.410 --> 00:21:15.570 align:middle line:84% put out, with the name New Directions on it. 00:21:15.570 --> 00:21:16.500 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:21:16.500 --> 00:21:19.950 align:middle line:84% Knapp published first in 1914, but then he's 00:21:19.950 --> 00:21:21.600 align:middle line:90% an old man in his 90s. 00:21:21.600 --> 00:21:22.150 align:middle line:90% Right. 00:21:22.150 --> 00:21:25.200 align:middle line:84% You still could overtake him, I suppose. 00:21:25.200 --> 00:21:28.535 align:middle line:90% I wouldn't do that. 00:21:28.535 --> 00:21:32.340 align:middle line:84% Yeah, we'll keep the Nobel Prize split between you. 00:21:32.340 --> 00:21:35.100 align:middle line:84% You went up to Paris at some point. 00:21:35.100 --> 00:21:36.990 align:middle line:84% Was it after you came back to Harvard? 00:21:36.990 --> 00:21:39.000 align:middle line:84% Did you ever graduate from Harvard? 00:21:39.000 --> 00:21:42.380 align:middle line:84% I finally did in 1939, but with-- 00:21:42.380 --> 00:21:45.030 align:middle line:84% I kept taking leaves of absence, so that I 00:21:45.030 --> 00:21:46.980 align:middle line:90% could go back to Europe and-- 00:21:46.980 --> 00:21:49.770 align:middle line:84% Could you transfer your credits from Ezuversity? 00:21:49.770 --> 00:21:51.780 align:middle line:90% No credits. 00:21:51.780 --> 00:21:53.550 align:middle line:90% No grades. 00:21:53.550 --> 00:21:56.790 align:middle line:90% Wasn't even pass-fail. 00:21:56.790 --> 00:21:58.680 align:middle line:84% All you had to do to stay in that college 00:21:58.680 --> 00:22:02.070 align:middle line:90% was just to listen attentively. 00:22:02.070 --> 00:22:05.280 align:middle line:84% Well, It's not a bad idea, I think. 00:22:05.280 --> 00:22:07.500 align:middle line:84% Having taught and having had students, 00:22:07.500 --> 00:22:14.170 align:middle line:84% I know they're an excellent idea, J. You, all right, 00:22:14.170 --> 00:22:18.030 align:middle line:84% you went back to Europe, and who did you fall under then? 00:22:18.030 --> 00:22:22.410 align:middle line:84% Well, I'm a little perplexed on the chronology, but the next-- 00:22:22.410 --> 00:22:24.810 align:middle line:84% Well, just make it up, it doesn't matter. 00:22:24.810 --> 00:22:26.130 align:middle line:90% No, it does. 00:22:26.130 --> 00:22:28.480 align:middle line:84% They're taking notes, but they don't mean a thing. 00:22:28.480 --> 00:22:31.230 align:middle line:84% I think the- the next big influence in my life 00:22:31.230 --> 00:22:32.467 align:middle line:90% was Gertrude Stein. 00:22:32.467 --> 00:22:34.050 align:middle line:84% Yeah, that's what I wanted you to say. 00:22:34.050 --> 00:22:39.360 align:middle line:84% And this was a very odd connection coming, putting it 00:22:39.360 --> 00:22:45.030 align:middle line:84% along with Ezra because Gertrude Stein had referred 00:22:45.030 --> 00:22:46.500 align:middle line:90% to Ezra in one of her-- 00:22:46.500 --> 00:22:48.690 align:middle line:84% I guess it was in her Autobiography of Alice B. 00:22:48.690 --> 00:22:49.320 align:middle line:90% Toklas. 00:22:49.320 --> 00:22:53.460 align:middle line:84% She spoke of Ezra, and she said, he 00:22:53.460 --> 00:22:57.480 align:middle line:84% was a village explainer, very good 00:22:57.480 --> 00:22:59.295 align:middle line:84% if you want to explain a village. 00:22:59.295 --> 00:23:03.060 align:middle line:90% 00:23:03.060 --> 00:23:11.760 align:middle line:84% And Ezra was even less complimentary about Gertrude. 00:23:11.760 --> 00:23:14.010 align:middle line:84% He wrote to me, as I remember, and he said, 00:23:14.010 --> 00:23:19.310 align:middle line:84% I hear you been seeing the old tub of guts. 00:23:19.310 --> 00:23:20.700 align:middle line:90% Oh, awesome. 00:23:20.700 --> 00:23:27.210 align:middle line:84% Watch out, but she was a very fascinating, very fascinating 00:23:27.210 --> 00:23:30.330 align:middle line:84% woman, one of the most charismatic I have ever 00:23:30.330 --> 00:23:35.520 align:middle line:84% known, with it really, in spite of the eccentricities 00:23:35.520 --> 00:23:38.280 align:middle line:84% of her writing, which are really not so eccentric. 00:23:38.280 --> 00:23:41.160 align:middle line:84% I mean, if you read the essays about her by William Carlos 00:23:41.160 --> 00:23:43.830 align:middle line:84% Williams, who took her very seriously, she was really 00:23:43.830 --> 00:23:46.210 align:middle line:84% up to something that needed to be looked at, 00:23:46.210 --> 00:23:49.620 align:middle line:84% which was the question of how you clean up words, and divorce 00:23:49.620 --> 00:23:51.450 align:middle line:84% them from their old associations, 00:23:51.450 --> 00:23:54.690 align:middle line:84% and how you tinker around with new kinds of syntax, 00:23:54.690 --> 00:23:56.340 align:middle line:90% and that sort of thing. 00:23:56.340 --> 00:24:00.180 align:middle line:84% I got to see her because, funny way, I'd been-- 00:24:00.180 --> 00:24:03.150 align:middle line:84% I'd gone to Salzburg for the music festival, 00:24:03.150 --> 00:24:06.240 align:middle line:84% and I was in the [GERMAN] one day, the swimming pool, 00:24:06.240 --> 00:24:08.310 align:middle line:84% and I noticed that a rather distinguished 00:24:08.310 --> 00:24:10.260 align:middle line:84% looking gentleman with one leg, who was, 00:24:10.260 --> 00:24:14.070 align:middle line:84% which was an inch shorter than the other was eyeing me. 00:24:14.070 --> 00:24:16.950 align:middle line:84% And I didn't know about such things in those days, 00:24:16.950 --> 00:24:20.460 align:middle line:84% but anyway he turned out to be French. 00:24:20.460 --> 00:24:24.270 align:middle line:84% And I spoke French because I'd been in school in Switzerland 00:24:24.270 --> 00:24:26.065 align:middle line:90% as a boy, and we became friends. 00:24:26.065 --> 00:24:27.690 align:middle line:84% I must say, he was a perfect gentleman, 00:24:27.690 --> 00:24:31.300 align:middle line:84% as soon as he decided that I was not interested. 00:24:31.300 --> 00:24:33.150 align:middle line:84% He couldn't have been more kind, and polite, 00:24:33.150 --> 00:24:34.950 align:middle line:84% and bought me several good dinners, 00:24:34.950 --> 00:24:37.380 align:middle line:84% and then somehow, the current conversation 00:24:37.380 --> 00:24:39.430 align:middle line:90% got around to Gertrude Stein. 00:24:39.430 --> 00:24:42.150 align:middle line:84% It turned out he was Gertrude Stein's best French friend. 00:24:42.150 --> 00:24:43.650 align:middle line:90% His name was Bernard Fay. 00:24:43.650 --> 00:24:46.740 align:middle line:84% He was at the Sorbonne, and he was the great interpreter 00:24:46.740 --> 00:24:49.260 align:middle line:84% of American history for the French. 00:24:49.260 --> 00:24:51.570 align:middle line:84% He said, would you like to meet her? 00:24:51.570 --> 00:24:52.710 align:middle line:90% So I'd love to meet her. 00:24:52.710 --> 00:24:55.200 align:middle line:84% I read her, and I think she's very interesting. 00:24:55.200 --> 00:24:57.690 align:middle line:84% And so he said, oh I'll fix it up for you, 00:24:57.690 --> 00:25:00.780 align:middle line:84% and he wrote Gertrude and said, can I bring a young man along? 00:25:00.780 --> 00:25:04.560 align:middle line:84% She was at her farm there in the South of France that summer, 00:25:04.560 --> 00:25:08.310 align:middle line:84% and she wrote back or she telegraphed back. 00:25:08.310 --> 00:25:12.370 align:middle line:84% A telegram said, will he do any work? 00:25:12.370 --> 00:25:17.050 align:middle line:84% And I was consulted, and I said, yes, he will do some work. 00:25:17.050 --> 00:25:19.440 align:middle line:84% So we went to Gertrude Stein's farm, which 00:25:19.440 --> 00:25:22.710 align:middle line:84% was in, near the Lac d'Annecy near the Savoie mountains, 00:25:22.710 --> 00:25:23.280 align:middle line:90% and so-- 00:25:23.280 --> 00:25:24.990 align:middle line:90% Let me just get a word in here. 00:25:24.990 --> 00:25:30.330 align:middle line:84% I don't like to bring this up, but wasn't Fay the librarian 00:25:30.330 --> 00:25:31.950 align:middle line:90% in the Bibliothéque nationale? 00:25:31.950 --> 00:25:37.260 align:middle line:84% Well, there's a whole story about Fay. 00:25:37.260 --> 00:25:38.790 align:middle line:90% Well, you know I'm a librarian. 00:25:38.790 --> 00:25:39.810 align:middle line:90% I used to be one-- 00:25:39.810 --> 00:25:41.250 align:middle line:90% Yes, you see, what happened to-- 00:25:41.250 --> 00:25:42.833 align:middle line:84% Maybe, we shouldn't have this come up. 00:25:42.833 --> 00:25:45.340 align:middle line:84% No, what happened to poor Bernard was that he, 00:25:45.340 --> 00:25:48.240 align:middle line:84% when the Germans came in, he stayed, 00:25:48.240 --> 00:25:52.530 align:middle line:84% and he became a collaborator and knew the right people, 00:25:52.530 --> 00:25:56.040 align:middle line:84% and he was made, he was made Bibliothéque, 00:25:56.040 --> 00:26:00.480 align:middle line:84% a librarian of the Bibliothéque nationale by his friends, 00:26:00.480 --> 00:26:03.210 align:middle line:84% with the idea that this would keep him out of trouble. 00:26:03.210 --> 00:26:07.120 align:middle line:84% That after all, a librarian is not dangerous, 00:26:07.120 --> 00:26:10.922 align:middle line:84% and so they thought, if they stashed him away 00:26:10.922 --> 00:26:13.380 align:middle line:84% in the Bibliothéque nationale, nothing would happen to him. 00:26:13.380 --> 00:26:15.660 align:middle line:84% But unfortunately, when the French came back in, 00:26:15.660 --> 00:26:19.080 align:middle line:84% they dug up Bernard, and they sent him off to jail somewhere. 00:26:19.080 --> 00:26:22.410 align:middle line:84% And he languished there for many years, but he did get out. 00:26:22.410 --> 00:26:26.460 align:middle line:84% I heard from him later, and he had a reasonably quiet old age. 00:26:26.460 --> 00:26:28.650 align:middle line:84% Well, excuse me that interruption, but-- 00:26:28.650 --> 00:26:32.490 align:middle line:84% Yeah, but went down to her beautiful farm there. 00:26:32.490 --> 00:26:36.480 align:middle line:84% It was called Bilignin, near Belley, 00:26:36.480 --> 00:26:41.190 align:middle line:84% near the Lac d'Annecy, where the poet Lamartine used 00:26:41.190 --> 00:26:44.670 align:middle line:84% to sit on his camp chair several centuries before, 00:26:44.670 --> 00:26:48.480 align:middle line:84% writing those atrociously romantic poems. 00:26:48.480 --> 00:26:51.780 align:middle line:84% And the work that she wanted me to do, it turned out 00:26:51.780 --> 00:26:56.490 align:middle line:84% was to write press releases for her American lecture tour. 00:26:56.490 --> 00:26:59.010 align:middle line:84% She was going to lecture-- lecture tours had been set up 00:26:59.010 --> 00:27:01.470 align:middle line:84% for her all through the United States, 00:27:01.470 --> 00:27:04.170 align:middle line:84% and someone had told her that whenever 00:27:04.170 --> 00:27:07.980 align:middle line:84% she went to a new city, she must have ready a one-page press 00:27:07.980 --> 00:27:12.150 align:middle line:84% release digest of her lecture for the press. 00:27:12.150 --> 00:27:14.910 align:middle line:84% So she started me in on these things. 00:27:14.910 --> 00:27:17.100 align:middle line:84% Well, her lectures were brilliant 00:27:17.100 --> 00:27:20.070 align:middle line:90% and totally incomprehensible. 00:27:20.070 --> 00:27:23.550 align:middle line:84% They were written in Steinese, not in her Alice B. Toklas 00:27:23.550 --> 00:27:25.290 align:middle line:90% style, but in pure Steinese. 00:27:25.290 --> 00:27:27.540 align:middle line:84% And they were very epistemological, 00:27:27.540 --> 00:27:31.560 align:middle line:84% and they, I suppose, later on, since the structuralist have 00:27:31.560 --> 00:27:34.440 align:middle line:84% arrived on the scene, we could say, that they 00:27:34.440 --> 00:27:37.890 align:middle line:90% were super deconstructed. 00:27:37.890 --> 00:27:39.540 align:middle line:84% They were very hard to understand. 00:27:39.540 --> 00:27:41.190 align:middle line:84% In the first attempts I made, you know, 00:27:41.190 --> 00:27:43.620 align:middle line:84% I do my best to get this down on a page. 00:27:43.620 --> 00:27:46.230 align:middle line:84% And I'd bring it to her, and she'd say no, go back 00:27:46.230 --> 00:27:48.270 align:middle line:90% and do it again. 00:27:48.270 --> 00:27:52.590 align:middle line:84% So it took me nearly a month to finish the work, 00:27:52.590 --> 00:27:54.630 align:middle line:84% and I might confess that I was having 00:27:54.630 --> 00:27:56.130 align:middle line:90% such a very good time there. 00:27:56.130 --> 00:27:58.140 align:middle line:84% And Alice B. Toklas and her assistant 00:27:58.140 --> 00:28:02.400 align:middle line:84% were such superb cooks that I wasn't hurrying with the work. 00:28:02.400 --> 00:28:04.170 align:middle line:84% But there was also there what you 00:28:04.170 --> 00:28:07.710 align:middle line:84% might call an athletic program in that curriculum, 00:28:07.710 --> 00:28:10.290 align:middle line:84% and the athletic program there for Gertrude 00:28:10.290 --> 00:28:15.090 align:middle line:84% consisted in changing tires on her Ford. 00:28:15.090 --> 00:28:17.460 align:middle line:84% Every afternoon, she and Alice would go out 00:28:17.460 --> 00:28:18.450 align:middle line:90% there this lovely-- 00:28:18.450 --> 00:28:20.800 align:middle line:84% I think it was a model A, nice little Ford, 00:28:20.800 --> 00:28:22.890 align:middle line:90% the latest thing in those days. 00:28:22.890 --> 00:28:26.130 align:middle line:84% And she and Alice would sit in front and-- 00:28:26.130 --> 00:28:27.130 align:middle line:90% Gertrude driving. 00:28:27.130 --> 00:28:28.650 align:middle line:90% She was very strong driver. 00:28:28.650 --> 00:28:31.380 align:middle line:84% You know, she was a really muscular woman, 00:28:31.380 --> 00:28:34.980 align:middle line:84% and I would be consigned to the back seat, 00:28:34.980 --> 00:28:38.040 align:middle line:84% with two of the most awful dogs I have ever 00:28:38.040 --> 00:28:40.470 align:middle line:90% had any association with. 00:28:40.470 --> 00:28:43.140 align:middle line:84% One of them was a white poodle named Basket, 00:28:43.140 --> 00:28:47.700 align:middle line:84% and the other was a little Mexican nothing dog named Pepe. 00:28:47.700 --> 00:28:51.810 align:middle line:84% And they both licked me continually, 00:28:51.810 --> 00:28:54.030 align:middle line:84% and I was not allowed to smite them, 00:28:54.030 --> 00:28:56.190 align:middle line:84% to stop them from licking because if I 00:28:56.190 --> 00:28:59.340 align:middle line:84% did Alice was keeping an eye on me in the rear view mirror. 00:28:59.340 --> 00:29:02.820 align:middle line:84% And she would say to me, J, be nice to the dogs. 00:29:02.820 --> 00:29:05.580 align:middle line:90% They're nice to you. 00:29:05.580 --> 00:29:07.860 align:middle line:84% Well, in those days, there were a great many nails 00:29:07.860 --> 00:29:11.400 align:middle line:84% on the roads in that part of the country from hikers 00:29:11.400 --> 00:29:13.770 align:middle line:84% and mountain climbers, and so we'd get maybe, 00:29:13.770 --> 00:29:18.120 align:middle line:84% sometimes two, sometimes three, punctures in a day. 00:29:18.120 --> 00:29:21.960 align:middle line:84% And then Gertrude and Alice would get out of the car, 00:29:21.960 --> 00:29:25.680 align:middle line:84% and they would appropriately sit with their backs to the view 00:29:25.680 --> 00:29:27.420 align:middle line:84% because, as you'll recall, Gertrude 00:29:27.420 --> 00:29:29.880 align:middle line:84% has explained, that the only way to take in a view 00:29:29.880 --> 00:29:31.740 align:middle line:90% is to sit with your back to it. 00:29:31.740 --> 00:29:34.590 align:middle line:84% And they would take out their little teapot or whatever 00:29:34.590 --> 00:29:37.590 align:middle line:84% they had, and I would change the tires. 00:29:37.590 --> 00:29:40.110 align:middle line:84% And we would go on, as long as tires were left. 00:29:40.110 --> 00:29:44.490 align:middle line:84% She had about four spares on the top of the car, 00:29:44.490 --> 00:29:48.120 align:middle line:84% then we would return to the garage to Belley. 00:29:48.120 --> 00:29:51.450 align:middle line:84% And the tires would be repaired, and we'd pick them up 00:29:51.450 --> 00:29:53.400 align:middle line:90% for the next day's jaunt. 00:29:53.400 --> 00:29:58.110 align:middle line:84% But it was a very happy life, but I finally 00:29:58.110 --> 00:30:01.590 align:middle line:90% got into trouble on two counts. 00:30:01.590 --> 00:30:04.470 align:middle line:84% The one was solved by Alice B. Toklas. 00:30:04.470 --> 00:30:09.120 align:middle line:84% Gertrude was insistent that I should take a bath every day. 00:30:09.120 --> 00:30:11.400 align:middle line:84% I don't know whether I smelt or why, 00:30:11.400 --> 00:30:14.610 align:middle line:84% but she would ask me before dinner, she would say, J, 00:30:14.610 --> 00:30:17.100 align:middle line:90% have you had your bath today? 00:30:17.100 --> 00:30:19.950 align:middle line:84% And I would usually say, well, or yes, or maybe, 00:30:19.950 --> 00:30:22.470 align:middle line:84% and the reason I was afraid of the bathtub-- 00:30:22.470 --> 00:30:24.540 align:middle line:90% I mean I'm reasonably cleanly. 00:30:24.540 --> 00:30:26.590 align:middle line:90% I still take a bath once a week. 00:30:26.590 --> 00:30:32.520 align:middle line:84% And the reason that I was concerned was that-- 00:30:32.520 --> 00:30:35.400 align:middle line:90% you know want a geyser is? 00:30:35.400 --> 00:30:37.590 align:middle line:84% This is a thing that you made hot water 00:30:37.590 --> 00:30:40.410 align:middle line:84% with in the old days, where I think 00:30:40.410 --> 00:30:44.430 align:middle line:84% it was, you had to light it as you would light a gas stove, 00:30:44.430 --> 00:30:46.440 align:middle line:84% and then it would heat the water for the bath. 00:30:46.440 --> 00:30:47.565 align:middle line:90% For one bath, that's right. 00:30:47.565 --> 00:30:51.990 align:middle line:84% But the damn thing would spurt a column of flame out at you, 00:30:51.990 --> 00:30:53.820 align:middle line:90% and I was terrified. 00:30:53.820 --> 00:30:56.310 align:middle line:84% And so I finally confessed to Gertrude 00:30:56.310 --> 00:30:59.640 align:middle line:84% what was stopping my cleanliness, and she said, 00:30:59.640 --> 00:31:01.990 align:middle line:90% you are a sissy, j, aren't you? 00:31:01.990 --> 00:31:04.800 align:middle line:84% I said, yes, and she said, well, Alice will 00:31:04.800 --> 00:31:06.270 align:middle line:90% turn on the geyser for you. 00:31:06.270 --> 00:31:10.170 align:middle line:84% So that solved that problem, but a really, really serious 00:31:10.170 --> 00:31:15.930 align:middle line:84% problem developed when one day she caught me reading Proust. 00:31:15.930 --> 00:31:20.820 align:middle line:84% And she said, are you reading that junk? 00:31:20.820 --> 00:31:22.960 align:middle line:84% I said, yes, it's very interesting. 00:31:22.960 --> 00:31:26.730 align:middle line:84% She said don't you realize that both that man Joyce 00:31:26.730 --> 00:31:29.640 align:middle line:84% and that man Proust copied their books 00:31:29.640 --> 00:31:32.820 align:middle line:90% from my Making of Americans? 00:31:32.820 --> 00:31:34.980 align:middle line:90% So I never recovered from that. 00:31:34.980 --> 00:31:38.820 align:middle line:84% I mean, I had by then completed the press releases, 00:31:38.820 --> 00:31:42.690 align:middle line:84% and so I sort of fell from favor. 00:31:42.690 --> 00:31:46.110 align:middle line:84% But I always cherish the dearest thoughts of Gertrude. 00:31:46.110 --> 00:31:48.570 align:middle line:84% She was a very great, great woman. 00:31:48.570 --> 00:31:51.390 align:middle line:84% And of course, the pictures that she 00:31:51.390 --> 00:31:55.410 align:middle line:84% had collected that she had in her apartment there in Paris 00:31:55.410 --> 00:31:57.400 align:middle line:90% were just superb. 00:31:57.400 --> 00:31:59.530 align:middle line:84% Well, just two footnotes here, J, 00:31:59.530 --> 00:32:04.500 align:middle line:84% you did bring her Making of Americans back into print, 00:32:04.500 --> 00:32:05.180 align:middle line:90% didn't you? 00:32:05.180 --> 00:32:09.690 align:middle line:84% No, we brought back the Three Lives, 00:32:09.690 --> 00:32:13.260 align:middle line:84% which is the book modeled on Flaubert's Trois Contes. 00:32:13.260 --> 00:32:17.130 align:middle line:84% It's the three-- fairly long stories, almost novellas, 00:32:17.130 --> 00:32:18.673 align:middle line:90% about servant women. 00:32:18.673 --> 00:32:20.340 align:middle line:84% This is one of the best things, I think, 00:32:20.340 --> 00:32:22.830 align:middle line:84% she ever wrote because this she wrote fairly early on, 00:32:22.830 --> 00:32:24.840 align:middle line:84% and she hadn't gotten so complicated. 00:32:24.840 --> 00:32:29.460 align:middle line:84% And she was still writing conventional syntax. 00:32:29.460 --> 00:32:32.580 align:middle line:84% And she had a marvelous ear, and she had a marvelous knowledge 00:32:32.580 --> 00:32:33.660 align:middle line:90% of psychology. 00:32:33.660 --> 00:32:35.010 align:middle line:90% Did she thank you for that? 00:32:35.010 --> 00:32:37.140 align:middle line:90% Did she appreciate that? 00:32:37.140 --> 00:32:39.900 align:middle line:90% I think vaguely, yes, yes. 00:32:39.900 --> 00:32:41.940 align:middle line:84% She did-- I mean, we didn't break off. 00:32:41.940 --> 00:32:45.420 align:middle line:84% It was just that she wanted from everyone who were around her, 00:32:45.420 --> 00:32:47.370 align:middle line:90% she wanted complete adulation. 00:32:47.370 --> 00:32:49.800 align:middle line:84% I mean, you had to think she was the greatest, 00:32:49.800 --> 00:32:53.010 align:middle line:84% and if you didn't keep voicing that thought, 00:32:53.010 --> 00:32:56.020 align:middle line:84% why you sort of drifted out of her kin. 00:32:56.020 --> 00:32:56.520 align:middle line:90% But we-- 00:32:56.520 --> 00:32:58.260 align:middle line:90% But you published Pound. 00:32:58.260 --> 00:33:03.840 align:middle line:84% You, of course, no one else was publishing him when you began-- 00:33:03.840 --> 00:33:05.010 align:middle line:90% Oh, yes, he was. 00:33:05.010 --> 00:33:06.720 align:middle line:90% He had had-- 00:33:06.720 --> 00:33:08.010 align:middle line:90% He had [INAUDIBLE] 00:33:08.010 --> 00:33:10.710 align:middle line:84% He'd had [INAUDIBLE] He had had, no. 00:33:10.710 --> 00:33:14.070 align:middle line:84% That was Williams, Ed, [INAUDIBLE] He had had Alfred 00:33:14.070 --> 00:33:16.130 align:middle line:90% Knapp had brought out-- 00:33:16.130 --> 00:33:17.010 align:middle line:90% Cathay? 00:33:17.010 --> 00:33:19.740 align:middle line:84% No, Alfred Knapp had brought out Instigations, 00:33:19.740 --> 00:33:22.980 align:middle line:84% the book of essays, and the other, 00:33:22.980 --> 00:33:24.450 align:middle line:84% he brought in two books of essays-- 00:33:24.450 --> 00:33:25.825 align:middle line:84% But he hadn't kept them in print. 00:33:25.825 --> 00:33:26.910 align:middle line:90% --and he had done Lustra. 00:33:26.910 --> 00:33:29.640 align:middle line:84% He had done one of the early books of poems. 00:33:29.640 --> 00:33:31.640 align:middle line:84% He hadn't kept them in print though. 00:33:31.640 --> 00:33:32.550 align:middle line:90% No. 00:33:32.550 --> 00:33:35.040 align:middle line:84% Well, you published Pound, and you kept him in print. 00:33:35.040 --> 00:33:36.250 align:middle line:90% And he's still in print. 00:33:36.250 --> 00:33:38.280 align:middle line:90% Yeah, I think we have-- 00:33:38.280 --> 00:33:41.460 align:middle line:84% in print, we have kept in print every book of Pound's 00:33:41.460 --> 00:33:44.580 align:middle line:84% that we were ever able to get our hands on. 00:33:44.580 --> 00:33:46.812 align:middle line:84% And of course, they don't all sell equally well. 00:33:46.812 --> 00:33:48.270 align:middle line:84% Some of them are just a trickle-ly, 00:33:48.270 --> 00:33:50.880 align:middle line:84% more esoteric books, but the major books. 00:33:50.880 --> 00:33:54.180 align:middle line:84% Now, The Cantos, despite the fact that it's now an $18 book 00:33:54.180 --> 00:33:56.550 align:middle line:90% sells 1500 copies a year. 00:33:56.550 --> 00:34:00.030 align:middle line:84% And the Selected Poems sells about 15,000. 00:34:00.030 --> 00:34:03.060 align:middle line:84% The ABC of Reading sells about 10,000. 00:34:03.060 --> 00:34:04.240 align:middle line:90% So that the good-- 00:34:04.240 --> 00:34:07.140 align:middle line:84% what happens in a deal like this is that the books that sell 00:34:07.140 --> 00:34:09.120 align:middle line:90% carry the ones that are slow. 00:34:09.120 --> 00:34:13.380 align:middle line:84% But it's always been my intention, if I could, 00:34:13.380 --> 00:34:16.409 align:middle line:84% when possible, to keep the principle 00:34:16.409 --> 00:34:19.620 align:middle line:84% works of an important author in print. 00:34:19.620 --> 00:34:24.960 align:middle line:84% Indeed, it has been, and you've done it as no one else has. 00:34:24.960 --> 00:34:27.540 align:middle line:84% There are two names I have written down here. 00:34:27.540 --> 00:34:29.639 align:middle line:84% And they're certainly not related, 00:34:29.639 --> 00:34:32.040 align:middle line:84% but they have the same last name. 00:34:32.040 --> 00:34:35.370 align:middle line:84% And you had a close publishing relationship 00:34:35.370 --> 00:34:38.699 align:middle line:84% and a personal friendship with both, namely 00:34:38.699 --> 00:34:42.360 align:middle line:84% William Carlos Williams and Tennessee Williams. 00:34:42.360 --> 00:34:45.030 align:middle line:84% The two Williams's, though they weren't-- 00:34:45.030 --> 00:34:46.380 align:middle line:90% they knew each other slightly. 00:34:46.380 --> 00:34:48.719 align:middle line:90% I mean, no relation. 00:34:48.719 --> 00:34:52.889 align:middle line:84% William Carlos Williams was one of the people which-- 00:34:52.889 --> 00:34:55.620 align:middle line:90% whom-- sorry, about that-- 00:34:55.620 --> 00:34:59.520 align:middle line:90% whom-- is at whom? 00:34:59.520 --> 00:35:03.030 align:middle line:84% Or is it-- no, that is not correct. 00:35:03.030 --> 00:35:07.980 align:middle line:84% Whom is correct-- whom Ezra had put me in touch with. 00:35:07.980 --> 00:35:09.510 align:middle line:84% And he had written to him and said, 00:35:09.510 --> 00:35:13.022 align:middle line:84% here's this young man, who was interested in publishing, 00:35:13.022 --> 00:35:13.980 align:middle line:90% and you should see him. 00:35:13.980 --> 00:35:17.097 align:middle line:84% So I went down to see Williams, where he was living there. 00:35:17.097 --> 00:35:18.180 align:middle line:90% He was a doctor, you know. 00:35:18.180 --> 00:35:20.070 align:middle line:84% He was a pediatrician, an obstetrician 00:35:20.070 --> 00:35:22.590 align:middle line:84% in a little town of Rutherford, New Jersey, 00:35:22.590 --> 00:35:24.570 align:middle line:84% and he lived there all his entire life, 00:35:24.570 --> 00:35:26.400 align:middle line:90% from the time of his-- 00:35:26.400 --> 00:35:29.610 align:middle line:84% got out of medical school until he died. 00:35:29.610 --> 00:35:36.970 align:middle line:84% He was, he brought in over 3,000 babies, they tell me. 00:35:36.970 --> 00:35:41.070 align:middle line:84% He was a very lovable, though occasionally could 00:35:41.070 --> 00:35:42.690 align:middle line:90% be a little testy-- not testy. 00:35:42.690 --> 00:35:44.790 align:middle line:84% I mean, a little sharp, a little, 00:35:44.790 --> 00:35:47.160 align:middle line:84% he didn't like something, he would tell you so. 00:35:47.160 --> 00:35:49.860 align:middle line:84% And I remember once, he wrote to me, and he said, 00:35:49.860 --> 00:35:52.590 align:middle line:84% you've got to stop publishing all these second raters 00:35:52.590 --> 00:35:56.048 align:middle line:90% in your anthology, and-- 00:35:56.048 --> 00:35:57.840 align:middle line:84% well, Ezra used to say the same thing, too. 00:35:57.840 --> 00:36:00.420 align:middle line:84% I can read you what Ezra said about that. 00:36:00.420 --> 00:36:05.370 align:middle line:84% But Williams was, he was a terribly lovable man, again, 00:36:05.370 --> 00:36:11.040 align:middle line:84% very charismatic, one of the handsomest pictures of him 00:36:11.040 --> 00:36:14.460 align:middle line:84% on our covers of his early books, he is so handsome. 00:36:14.460 --> 00:36:16.500 align:middle line:84% It's unbearable, a most good looking, 00:36:16.500 --> 00:36:21.000 align:middle line:84% rugged, fine, sensitive looking man, and that's what he was. 00:36:21.000 --> 00:36:23.730 align:middle line:90% He had a very split life. 00:36:23.730 --> 00:36:29.070 align:middle line:84% He was a hard practicing doctor, and in those days, of course, 00:36:29.070 --> 00:36:31.380 align:middle line:84% and especially being an obstetrician, 00:36:31.380 --> 00:36:34.350 align:middle line:84% doctors had to make house calls at night. 00:36:34.350 --> 00:36:36.570 align:middle line:84% Isn't that an industrial town, Rutherford? 00:36:36.570 --> 00:36:38.460 align:middle line:90% Well, it's near one. 00:36:38.460 --> 00:36:42.400 align:middle line:84% Rutherford is sort of-- it's not exactly a suburb of New York, 00:36:42.400 --> 00:36:44.010 align:middle line:90% but it's mostly small houses. 00:36:44.010 --> 00:36:46.290 align:middle line:84% But the industrial area, which he wrote about 00:36:46.290 --> 00:36:49.290 align:middle line:84% in his great poem "Paterson", is the towns 00:36:49.290 --> 00:36:53.040 align:middle line:84% of Passaic and Paterson, which are adjacent. 00:36:53.040 --> 00:36:56.430 align:middle line:84% And he was a, he was a wonderful, wonderful character, 00:36:56.430 --> 00:36:58.180 align:middle line:90% and we got on pretty, very well. 00:36:58.180 --> 00:37:02.910 align:middle line:84% And then when I was able to pull together the money, 00:37:02.910 --> 00:37:05.610 align:middle line:84% I brought out, as one of our early books, 00:37:05.610 --> 00:37:09.480 align:middle line:84% I brought out his novel, his first novel in The Stecher 00:37:09.480 --> 00:37:13.368 align:middle line:84% Trilogy, which is the story of his wife's family 00:37:13.368 --> 00:37:14.160 align:middle line:90% is what it's about. 00:37:14.160 --> 00:37:15.570 align:middle line:90% It's a wonderful book. 00:37:15.570 --> 00:37:18.870 align:middle line:84% It's about how immigrants get to be Americans and develop 00:37:18.870 --> 00:37:21.390 align:middle line:90% new attitudes toward life. 00:37:21.390 --> 00:37:25.560 align:middle line:90% And I published that in 19-- 00:37:25.560 --> 00:37:29.520 align:middle line:84% I guess, 1936, and at that time, I always 00:37:29.520 --> 00:37:31.440 align:middle line:84% love this letter because I'm sure it's 00:37:31.440 --> 00:37:36.240 align:middle line:84% the only letter in which my divinity has been recognized. 00:37:36.240 --> 00:37:38.580 align:middle line:84% He wrote to me after that-- or before, just before it 00:37:38.580 --> 00:37:44.220 align:middle line:84% he said, "Dear God, you mentioned casually 00:37:44.220 --> 00:37:47.640 align:middle line:84% that you are willing to publish my White Mule, 00:37:47.640 --> 00:37:50.520 align:middle line:84% that you will pay for it, and that we shall then 00:37:50.520 --> 00:37:52.500 align:middle line:90% share, if any of the profits. 00:37:52.500 --> 00:37:57.600 align:middle line:84% My God, it must be that you are so tall that separate clouds 00:37:57.600 --> 00:38:00.810 align:middle line:84% circle around that head, giving thoughts 00:38:00.810 --> 00:38:04.890 align:middle line:84% of other mettle than those the undersides of which we 00:38:04.890 --> 00:38:06.690 align:middle line:90% are in the habit of seeing." 00:38:06.690 --> 00:38:09.081 align:middle line:84% Now, this is a pretty nice letter to get, you know. 00:38:09.081 --> 00:38:12.170 align:middle line:90% 00:38:12.170 --> 00:38:15.480 align:middle line:90% Unfortunately, we had quite a-- 00:38:15.480 --> 00:38:17.322 align:middle line:84% pretty good success with White Mule. 00:38:17.322 --> 00:38:18.780 align:middle line:84% I think it went into two printings, 00:38:18.780 --> 00:38:21.630 align:middle line:84% and there was a brilliant review by Alfred Kazin in The Times 00:38:21.630 --> 00:38:24.720 align:middle line:84% or someplace, so it got us off to a good start 00:38:24.720 --> 00:38:25.770 align:middle line:90% on the relationship. 00:38:25.770 --> 00:38:30.540 align:middle line:84% And then after that, I did his poems for many years. 00:38:30.540 --> 00:38:33.240 align:middle line:84% And I brought back into print his greatest prose book, 00:38:33.240 --> 00:38:35.790 align:middle line:90% which is In The American Grain. 00:38:35.790 --> 00:38:41.910 align:middle line:84% Those wonderful sort of s-a hyphen poetic prose passages, 00:38:41.910 --> 00:38:47.280 align:middle line:84% where he attempted to recreate the spirit of American history, 00:38:47.280 --> 00:38:50.780 align:middle line:84% going all the way back into the early history in Latin America. 00:38:50.780 --> 00:38:52.930 align:middle line:84% His autobiography is a beautiful book. 00:38:52.930 --> 00:38:55.590 align:middle line:90% Oh, yes, that's lovely book. 00:38:55.590 --> 00:38:57.060 align:middle line:90% I can't think of the name. 00:38:57.060 --> 00:38:59.500 align:middle line:90% It just says autobiography. 00:38:59.500 --> 00:39:02.820 align:middle line:84% Of course, it's-- I think some of his poetry is, to me, 00:39:02.820 --> 00:39:09.690 align:middle line:84% very great though I always remember Donald Davy, 00:39:09.690 --> 00:39:14.250 align:middle line:84% the great British professor, who now teaches here saying at one 00:39:14.250 --> 00:39:17.760 align:middle line:84% conference somewhere, that the worst two influences on young 00:39:17.760 --> 00:39:20.520 align:middle line:84% writers were William Carlos Williams and DH Lawrence. 00:39:20.520 --> 00:39:25.170 align:middle line:84% [SCOFFS] But to me, he's been a very great, good influence, 00:39:25.170 --> 00:39:26.910 align:middle line:84% and I think his poetry is very beautiful. 00:39:26.910 --> 00:39:30.420 align:middle line:84% And I think that Paterson, his long, personal epic, 00:39:30.420 --> 00:39:33.300 align:middle line:84% where he was obviously influenced by the fact 00:39:33.300 --> 00:39:36.420 align:middle line:84% that his friend Pound had written a Cantos, 00:39:36.420 --> 00:39:38.850 align:middle line:84% but he's going to write it entirely in his own way, 00:39:38.850 --> 00:39:41.040 align:middle line:90% and he does. 00:39:41.040 --> 00:39:44.010 align:middle line:84% If you can figure out a little bit what's going on, 00:39:44.010 --> 00:39:46.380 align:middle line:90% it's a very wonderful poem. 00:39:46.380 --> 00:39:49.475 align:middle line:84% And then even the poems of his last years, 00:39:49.475 --> 00:39:50.850 align:middle line:84% the Pictures from Brueghel, which 00:39:50.850 --> 00:39:53.520 align:middle line:84% won the Pulitzer Prize posthumously, those 00:39:53.520 --> 00:39:55.240 align:middle line:90% are extremely beautiful. 00:39:55.240 --> 00:39:57.810 align:middle line:84% And he was certainly one of the real innovators 00:39:57.810 --> 00:39:59.760 align:middle line:84% in the modern poetic movement, the man who 00:39:59.760 --> 00:40:03.360 align:middle line:84% worked out a different way of writing free verse. 00:40:03.360 --> 00:40:06.000 align:middle line:84% He was always pressing to make his free verse more 00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:08.430 align:middle line:84% measured or structured, and I think 00:40:08.430 --> 00:40:11.820 align:middle line:84% he succeeded toward the end after he worked it out. 00:40:11.820 --> 00:40:14.970 align:middle line:84% How would you connect him with Tennessee Williams if he-- 00:40:14.970 --> 00:40:16.810 align:middle line:90% Well, I think the only-- 00:40:16.810 --> 00:40:18.390 align:middle line:90% there's not much connection. 00:40:18.390 --> 00:40:22.110 align:middle line:84% Tennessee came from St. Louis and was very southern. 00:40:22.110 --> 00:40:24.270 align:middle line:84% They did, however, both write plays. 00:40:24.270 --> 00:40:30.120 align:middle line:84% Now, William Carlos Williams wrote about five plays. 00:40:30.120 --> 00:40:32.550 align:middle line:84% They never, they have been played. 00:40:32.550 --> 00:40:35.845 align:middle line:84% They have been seen in the Village and off-Broadway, 00:40:35.845 --> 00:40:38.780 align:middle line:84% but they're not really, he didn't really 00:40:38.780 --> 00:40:42.440 align:middle line:84% know how to construct a play for the theater. 00:40:42.440 --> 00:40:45.500 align:middle line:84% If you want to read one of them, the one I would recommend 00:40:45.500 --> 00:40:47.480 align:middle line:84% is the one called A Dream of Love, 00:40:47.480 --> 00:40:49.820 align:middle line:90% which is autobiographical. 00:40:49.820 --> 00:40:53.870 align:middle line:84% And I won't spoil it for you by telling you what the plot is, 00:40:53.870 --> 00:40:57.260 align:middle line:84% but it's pretty good, at least, to read, 00:40:57.260 --> 00:41:00.710 align:middle line:84% even though when it's played, it's a little shaky. 00:41:00.710 --> 00:41:04.070 align:middle line:84% Well, Ezra certainly never sent you to Tennessee Williams. 00:41:04.070 --> 00:41:10.790 align:middle line:84% No, I met, I met Tennessee at a cocktail party at Lincoln 00:41:10.790 --> 00:41:11.480 align:middle line:90% Kirstein's. 00:41:11.480 --> 00:41:13.160 align:middle line:84% Lincoln, you know, is the great, he 00:41:13.160 --> 00:41:15.800 align:middle line:84% was the fellow who first published the Bitch and Bugle, 00:41:15.800 --> 00:41:17.000 align:middle line:90% as Ezra called it. 00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:20.720 align:middle line:84% And then later, he became the patron of Balanchine's ballet. 00:41:20.720 --> 00:41:22.790 align:middle line:84% In fact, he was the one who brought Balanchine 00:41:22.790 --> 00:41:26.120 align:middle line:84% to this country, and he's really the great saint 00:41:26.120 --> 00:41:28.580 align:middle line:90% now of American Ballet. 00:41:28.580 --> 00:41:30.470 align:middle line:84% And it was at a party at his house, 00:41:30.470 --> 00:41:33.200 align:middle line:90% that I first met Tennessee. 00:41:33.200 --> 00:41:38.360 align:middle line:84% I never cared much for cocktail parties and got very shy, 00:41:38.360 --> 00:41:40.355 align:middle line:84% and I noticed in the far end of the apartment, 00:41:40.355 --> 00:41:42.710 align:middle line:84% there was this little guy in sort 00:41:42.710 --> 00:41:49.750 align:middle line:84% of baggy pants and torn gray sweater. 00:41:49.750 --> 00:41:55.070 align:middle line:84% And he was obviously unenjoying the party as much as I was. 00:41:55.070 --> 00:41:57.490 align:middle line:84% So I went and started to talk to him, 00:41:57.490 --> 00:42:00.130 align:middle line:84% and he was very nice, always friendly to talk to, 00:42:00.130 --> 00:42:02.260 align:middle line:84% and I talked, you know, wormed it out of him 00:42:02.260 --> 00:42:05.080 align:middle line:84% that he was a young playwright, that he'd 00:42:05.080 --> 00:42:08.770 align:middle line:84% written a couple of short plays, and that he liked poetry, 00:42:08.770 --> 00:42:12.670 align:middle line:84% and his favorite part was Hart Crane, who was also 00:42:12.670 --> 00:42:14.470 align:middle line:84% one I admired very much and that he 00:42:14.470 --> 00:42:17.230 align:middle line:84% said that when he went around the country hitchhiking, 00:42:17.230 --> 00:42:21.370 align:middle line:84% he would always carry a volume of Hart Crane in his knapsack. 00:42:21.370 --> 00:42:25.660 align:middle line:84% And that was the beginning of a friendship, which lasted up 00:42:25.660 --> 00:42:28.120 align:middle line:84% until his death last year, and I think 00:42:28.120 --> 00:42:33.880 align:middle line:84% I published, oh, about 25 of his plays 00:42:33.880 --> 00:42:38.770 align:middle line:84% and, let's see, three, two volumes of his short stories, 00:42:38.770 --> 00:42:42.040 align:middle line:84% and he is-- if you've never read his short stories, 00:42:42.040 --> 00:42:46.150 align:middle line:84% he is a marvelous short story writer, a simply marvelous 00:42:46.150 --> 00:42:49.720 align:middle line:84% short story writer, and if he hadn't become so famous 00:42:49.720 --> 00:42:53.240 align:middle line:84% in the theater, he would be known for those short stories. 00:42:53.240 --> 00:42:55.420 align:middle line:84% And I earnestly recommend them to you. 00:42:55.420 --> 00:43:01.570 align:middle line:84% He has a simply magical style, which is slightly comic. 00:43:01.570 --> 00:43:03.220 align:middle line:84% Whatever he's talking about, he'll 00:43:03.220 --> 00:43:07.600 align:middle line:84% give it a slightly, softly comic touch, 00:43:07.600 --> 00:43:11.200 align:middle line:84% and then this beautiful, flowing Southern prose. 00:43:11.200 --> 00:43:15.620 align:middle line:84% I mean, you know, Truman Capote isn't a patch on it. 00:43:15.620 --> 00:43:20.860 align:middle line:84% And then we also did two volumes of his poetry, 00:43:20.860 --> 00:43:24.550 align:middle line:84% and his poetry is highly romantic, very romantic, 00:43:24.550 --> 00:43:29.800 align:middle line:84% and a bit lush, reflecting some of his, shall we say, 00:43:29.800 --> 00:43:31.060 align:middle line:90% preferences. 00:43:31.060 --> 00:43:38.320 align:middle line:84% And there again, he would never take any pains with his lines. 00:43:38.320 --> 00:43:40.900 align:middle line:84% Everything was pretty rough, but it's 00:43:40.900 --> 00:43:44.300 align:middle line:84% very-- if you like romantic poetry, he's very, very good. 00:43:44.300 --> 00:43:47.410 align:middle line:84% You took your authors that you thought 00:43:47.410 --> 00:43:49.690 align:middle line:84% were worth publishing, you took them personally, 00:43:49.690 --> 00:43:52.810 align:middle line:84% as you found them, and you didn't bring judgments 00:43:52.810 --> 00:43:55.450 align:middle line:84% to any of these writers, did you? 00:43:55.450 --> 00:43:59.410 align:middle line:84% Well, they weren't the kind-- you mean, did I change things? 00:43:59.410 --> 00:44:00.850 align:middle line:90% You didn't judge them, no. 00:44:00.850 --> 00:44:02.960 align:middle line:84% They were personally-- you didn't tend to judge-- 00:44:02.960 --> 00:44:04.780 align:middle line:84% Oh, you mean, did I like their character? 00:44:04.780 --> 00:44:06.430 align:middle line:90% They're so different you see. 00:44:06.430 --> 00:44:07.150 align:middle line:90% Oh, no! 00:44:07.150 --> 00:44:10.030 align:middle line:84% I didn't fuss with their characters, never. 00:44:10.030 --> 00:44:13.750 align:middle line:84% I mean, after all, we published Céline, 00:44:13.750 --> 00:44:19.780 align:middle line:84% the great French novelist, who was a paranoid anti-Semite. 00:44:19.780 --> 00:44:22.990 align:middle line:84% Pound, later in his life, became a paranoid anti-Semite. 00:44:22.990 --> 00:44:25.450 align:middle line:84% I just never thought that it was up to me 00:44:25.450 --> 00:44:28.060 align:middle line:84% to play God and try to tell these guys how 00:44:28.060 --> 00:44:29.890 align:middle line:90% to straighten themselves out. 00:44:29.890 --> 00:44:31.760 align:middle line:90% Yeah, well, Ezra did, of course. 00:44:31.760 --> 00:44:32.260 align:middle line:90% Oh, yes. 00:44:32.260 --> 00:44:33.730 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:44:33.730 --> 00:44:36.580 align:middle line:84% You didn't learn that from-- you didn't learn anything from Ezra 00:44:36.580 --> 00:44:38.980 align:middle line:90% then that was bad did you? 00:44:38.980 --> 00:44:41.980 align:middle line:84% Well, would you rephrase the question? 00:44:41.980 --> 00:44:45.640 align:middle line:84% Yeah, let's back away from that one. 00:44:45.640 --> 00:44:49.960 align:middle line:84% No, I think we should face up to the truth about Ezra, 00:44:49.960 --> 00:44:54.820 align:middle line:84% that he was anti-Semitic, that he thought 00:44:54.820 --> 00:44:58.270 align:middle line:84% Mussolini was the nuts, but you must 00:44:58.270 --> 00:45:01.690 align:middle line:84% look at this medically, as well as morally. 00:45:01.690 --> 00:45:04.785 align:middle line:84% I learned from Ezra's doctors at the St. Elizabeth's Hospital, 00:45:04.785 --> 00:45:06.160 align:middle line:84% when they had him down there, you 00:45:06.160 --> 00:45:07.930 align:middle line:84% know, after he'd done those broadcasts 00:45:07.930 --> 00:45:13.030 align:middle line:84% and they put him in the hospital instead of hanging him, 00:45:13.030 --> 00:45:17.140 align:middle line:84% that the head doctor there said, this is a medical situation. 00:45:17.140 --> 00:45:19.630 align:middle line:84% He is anti-Semitic because he is paranoid. 00:45:19.630 --> 00:45:21.640 align:middle line:84% He is paranoid because the world never 00:45:21.640 --> 00:45:24.520 align:middle line:84% accepted his economic ideas, and you must 00:45:24.520 --> 00:45:26.860 align:middle line:90% look at it also in that light. 00:45:26.860 --> 00:45:30.700 align:middle line:84% And at the time of the great Bollingen controversy, 00:45:30.700 --> 00:45:33.760 align:middle line:84% after all the poets had given him the Bollingen prize, 00:45:33.760 --> 00:45:37.750 align:middle line:84% it was all this hue and cry about can a bad man 00:45:37.750 --> 00:45:39.140 align:middle line:90% write a good poem? 00:45:39.140 --> 00:45:41.590 align:middle line:84% You know, this was the kernel of it. 00:45:41.590 --> 00:45:46.660 align:middle line:84% Well, I think yeah, he can write a bad poem and good poem. 00:45:46.660 --> 00:45:51.370 align:middle line:84% I mean, obviously the two suppressed Cantos, 72 and 73, 00:45:51.370 --> 00:45:54.040 align:middle line:84% which he wrote in Italian and which I have read 00:45:54.040 --> 00:45:56.140 align:middle line:90% are pretty bad stuff. 00:45:56.140 --> 00:45:58.750 align:middle line:84% And there is bad stuff in those Rome broadcasts, 00:45:58.750 --> 00:46:04.240 align:middle line:84% but there is so much else in The Cantos that is totally 00:46:04.240 --> 00:46:08.110 align:middle line:84% life enhancing and beautiful that I think the answer is 00:46:08.110 --> 00:46:10.570 align:middle line:90% he can write both. 00:46:10.570 --> 00:46:13.840 align:middle line:84% Well, I think this distinguishes you, J, if I may say. 00:46:13.840 --> 00:46:17.140 align:middle line:84% I know you don't like me to speak of you personally. 00:46:17.140 --> 00:46:19.750 align:middle line:84% You'd rather keep New Directions as just a name, 00:46:19.750 --> 00:46:21.400 align:middle line:84% and it was a long time before you 00:46:21.400 --> 00:46:25.090 align:middle line:84% identified your name J. Laughlin with the publishing house. 00:46:25.090 --> 00:46:27.550 align:middle line:84% But still, it seems to me the kind 00:46:27.550 --> 00:46:31.540 align:middle line:84% of tolerance and acceptance that you brought to your authors 00:46:31.540 --> 00:46:35.290 align:middle line:84% list is not unique in American publishing, 00:46:35.290 --> 00:46:38.090 align:middle line:84% but certainly it's a shining example. 00:46:38.090 --> 00:46:39.940 align:middle line:84% Well, I don't know how shining it is, 00:46:39.940 --> 00:46:44.500 align:middle line:84% but you can't interfere in your author's lives, 00:46:44.500 --> 00:46:47.480 align:middle line:90% or they won't stick around. 00:46:47.480 --> 00:46:49.042 align:middle line:90% They're living their lives. 00:46:49.042 --> 00:46:51.000 align:middle line:84% They know what kind of lives they want to live, 00:46:51.000 --> 00:46:55.850 align:middle line:84% and it's not up to the publisher to be a therapist to them. 00:46:55.850 --> 00:46:57.710 align:middle line:90% I mean, you can-- 00:46:57.710 --> 00:46:59.480 align:middle line:84% occasionally, I might've said, you 00:46:59.480 --> 00:47:01.040 align:middle line:90% know, oh, come off it so-and-so. 00:47:01.040 --> 00:47:04.070 align:middle line:84% I mean, Edward Dahlberg, I used to tell him 00:47:04.070 --> 00:47:07.833 align:middle line:84% what I thought of his life, but he'd already told me so 00:47:07.833 --> 00:47:09.500 align:middle line:84% many times what he thought of me that it 00:47:09.500 --> 00:47:13.290 align:middle line:84% was sort of just hitting the ball back into his court. 00:47:13.290 --> 00:47:18.200 align:middle line:84% I got on his you know what list, too, one time, and I-- 00:47:18.200 --> 00:47:21.950 align:middle line:84% he came to see me at UCLA, and he said, I'm a writer, 00:47:21.950 --> 00:47:23.820 align:middle line:84% you know, but I don't come for that reason. 00:47:23.820 --> 00:47:26.630 align:middle line:90% I want a job for my wife. 00:47:26.630 --> 00:47:29.510 align:middle line:84% She can type, and I want you to hire her as a typist. 00:47:29.510 --> 00:47:31.920 align:middle line:84% And then I can go and write books. 00:47:31.920 --> 00:47:34.550 align:middle line:84% Well, it so happened she was a very good typist, 00:47:34.550 --> 00:47:36.480 align:middle line:84% and she was very attractive person. 00:47:36.480 --> 00:47:38.480 align:middle line:84% And we put her out front at the loan desk, 00:47:38.480 --> 00:47:40.010 align:middle line:84% and it certainly created business. 00:47:40.010 --> 00:47:41.514 align:middle line:90% This was Arlene? 00:47:41.514 --> 00:47:42.410 align:middle line:90% Yes, it was Arlene. 00:47:42.410 --> 00:47:43.520 align:middle line:90% Oh, she was a beauty. 00:47:43.520 --> 00:47:44.570 align:middle line:90% Yeah, exactly. 00:47:44.570 --> 00:47:49.340 align:middle line:84% And what she saw in that awful man-- 00:47:49.340 --> 00:47:52.100 align:middle line:84% Yeah, that's exactly what I thought, too, 00:47:52.100 --> 00:47:55.730 align:middle line:84% but certainly, the circulation went up at the wrong desk. 00:47:55.730 --> 00:48:00.170 align:middle line:90% 00:48:00.170 --> 00:48:03.170 align:middle line:84% Well, you know, de ni de mortuis nihil nisi bonum, 00:48:03.170 --> 00:48:07.580 align:middle line:84% but I'm still getting back at Edward. 00:48:07.580 --> 00:48:09.002 align:middle line:84% Good, I'm not through either, so-- 00:48:09.002 --> 00:48:10.940 align:middle line:90% No. 00:48:10.940 --> 00:48:14.030 align:middle line:84% I should have been tipped off because the first time 00:48:14.030 --> 00:48:16.700 align:middle line:84% that I took him out to lunch, and you know, 00:48:16.700 --> 00:48:19.310 align:middle line:84% I wasn't going to buy him very good lunch first. 00:48:19.310 --> 00:48:22.340 align:middle line:84% I think we went somewhere and got a pastrami sandwich. 00:48:22.340 --> 00:48:25.610 align:middle line:84% And he looked at me, and he said-- 00:48:25.610 --> 00:48:27.350 align:middle line:84% we got on the subject of Edmund Wilson, 00:48:27.350 --> 00:48:31.760 align:middle line:84% and he said, Edmund Wilson, he said, the man's an ignoramus. 00:48:31.760 --> 00:48:34.680 align:middle line:84% I should have gotten the message. 00:48:34.680 --> 00:48:38.480 align:middle line:84% And then there was just one succession of terrible fights 00:48:38.480 --> 00:48:40.940 align:middle line:84% about everything, culminating with the day 00:48:40.940 --> 00:48:44.210 align:middle line:84% that he came into the office one day and he-- 00:48:44.210 --> 00:48:46.430 align:middle line:84% the telephone girl very beautifully 00:48:46.430 --> 00:48:49.940 align:middle line:84% pasted up on the wall of her cubicle, which 00:48:49.940 --> 00:48:54.560 align:middle line:84% was also the entrance wall, some lovely jackets of recent books. 00:48:54.560 --> 00:48:58.100 align:middle line:84% And Edward inspected them all closely, 00:48:58.100 --> 00:49:00.080 align:middle line:90% and he didn't find one of his. 00:49:00.080 --> 00:49:04.340 align:middle line:84% So then he tore off the wall every jacket that was on it 00:49:04.340 --> 00:49:06.890 align:middle line:90% and stomped out of the office. 00:49:06.890 --> 00:49:08.300 align:middle line:90% He was, he was a bastard. 00:49:08.300 --> 00:49:11.615 align:middle line:90% I lent him books at-- 00:49:11.615 --> 00:49:13.430 align:middle line:90% I lent him books at UCLA. 00:49:13.430 --> 00:49:15.618 align:middle line:90% He never brought them back. 00:49:15.618 --> 00:49:16.160 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:49:16.160 --> 00:49:18.660 align:middle line:84% That's the last thing to do to a librarian. 00:49:18.660 --> 00:49:19.160 align:middle line:90% I-- 00:49:19.160 --> 00:49:21.560 align:middle line:90% Oh. 00:49:21.560 --> 00:49:25.910 align:middle line:84% Any rate, but I kept his wife on. 00:49:25.910 --> 00:49:27.550 align:middle line:90% All right, let's see. 00:49:27.550 --> 00:49:30.980 align:middle line:84% I've got a couple of names here that I'd like to mention, 00:49:30.980 --> 00:49:34.580 align:middle line:84% and there are two foreign writers, one Russian, one 00:49:34.580 --> 00:49:37.010 align:middle line:84% German, that you had something to do with. 00:49:37.010 --> 00:49:39.500 align:middle line:90% The first is Nabokov. 00:49:39.500 --> 00:49:43.010 align:middle line:84% Oh, he was a marvelous, marvelous man as well as 00:49:43.010 --> 00:49:43.970 align:middle line:90% a very great writer. 00:49:43.970 --> 00:49:46.790 align:middle line:84% It had always grieved me that he didn't get the Nobel Prize. 00:49:46.790 --> 00:49:49.850 align:middle line:84% I think he deserved it, just for pure invention 00:49:49.850 --> 00:49:52.220 align:middle line:90% and glorious style. 00:49:52.220 --> 00:49:54.050 align:middle line:84% But he was, he was wonderful, you know. 00:49:54.050 --> 00:49:58.830 align:middle line:84% He was a real Russian aristocrat. 00:49:58.830 --> 00:50:00.980 align:middle line:84% He came on in the great landed families, 00:50:00.980 --> 00:50:02.960 align:middle line:84% and this dawned upon me when one day he 00:50:02.960 --> 00:50:07.250 align:middle line:84% told me that in the old days, before the tsar had fallen, 00:50:07.250 --> 00:50:09.890 align:middle line:84% when his grandfather took the whole family 00:50:09.890 --> 00:50:12.800 align:middle line:84% to the French watering place Biarritz 00:50:12.800 --> 00:50:16.640 align:middle line:84% in the South of France, that the carriage and the family 00:50:16.640 --> 00:50:21.110 align:middle line:84% horses for the carriage were sent on ahead by railroad. 00:50:21.110 --> 00:50:22.910 align:middle line:84% And that's the background he came from. 00:50:22.910 --> 00:50:26.510 align:middle line:84% The wonderful thing was that he survived a complete destruction 00:50:26.510 --> 00:50:28.640 align:middle line:90% of his family and fortune. 00:50:28.640 --> 00:50:32.780 align:middle line:84% And because he had this resolute drive to be a great writer, 00:50:32.780 --> 00:50:35.090 align:middle line:90% and he became a great writer. 00:50:35.090 --> 00:50:38.600 align:middle line:84% My contact with him was through his books. 00:50:38.600 --> 00:50:42.296 align:middle line:84% I did his wonderful book of his, what's the-- 00:50:42.296 --> 00:50:43.148 align:middle line:90% Sebastian. 00:50:43.148 --> 00:50:44.330 align:middle line:90% Yeah, Sebastian Knight. 00:50:44.330 --> 00:50:45.290 align:middle line:90% It's a marvelous book. 00:50:45.290 --> 00:50:47.582 align:middle line:84% It's one of these books where you don't know quite what 00:50:47.582 --> 00:50:49.474 align:middle line:90% is happening or who is who. 00:50:49.474 --> 00:50:50.370 align:middle line:90% Who is who? 00:50:50.370 --> 00:50:50.870 align:middle line:90% Who is whom? 00:50:50.870 --> 00:50:52.470 align:middle line:90% Who is who? 00:50:52.470 --> 00:50:54.980 align:middle line:90% But I recommend it to you. 00:50:54.980 --> 00:50:58.880 align:middle line:84% It's a beautiful, beautiful, flawless, exquisite piece 00:50:58.880 --> 00:51:00.710 align:middle line:90% of novel construction. 00:51:00.710 --> 00:51:02.670 align:middle line:90% But you didn't publish Lolita. 00:51:02.670 --> 00:51:03.380 align:middle line:90% Why not? 00:51:03.380 --> 00:51:06.110 align:middle line:84% Well, because I didn't think my mother would like it. 00:51:06.110 --> 00:51:11.030 align:middle line:90% 00:51:11.030 --> 00:51:12.080 align:middle line:90% That's not a joke. 00:51:12.080 --> 00:51:12.850 align:middle line:90% That's the truth. 00:51:12.850 --> 00:51:13.350 align:middle line:90% I'm sure. 00:51:13.350 --> 00:51:14.058 align:middle line:90% That's the truth. 00:51:14.058 --> 00:51:17.510 align:middle line:84% Yes I had-- well, that's why I didn't publish Henry Miller's 00:51:17.510 --> 00:51:19.040 align:middle line:90% Tropic books. 00:51:19.040 --> 00:51:21.560 align:middle line:84% Because the way I learned about Henry Miller was 00:51:21.560 --> 00:51:25.250 align:middle line:84% that one day Henry had sent a copy of Tropic of Cancer 00:51:25.250 --> 00:51:28.070 align:middle line:84% to Ezra in Rapallo, and we were having lunch. 00:51:28.070 --> 00:51:30.530 align:middle line:84% And Ezra tossed his book across to me and he said, 00:51:30.530 --> 00:51:33.890 align:middle line:84% here, Jess, is a dirty book that's really pretty good. 00:51:33.890 --> 00:51:37.670 align:middle line:84% And then I wrote to Henry, and we set up a correspondence, 00:51:37.670 --> 00:51:39.950 align:middle line:84% which continued for a great many years, in fact, 00:51:39.950 --> 00:51:43.100 align:middle line:84% up to the time of his death, but-- and I published about 20 00:51:43.100 --> 00:51:46.310 align:middle line:84% books of Henry's, but they were always the essays, 00:51:46.310 --> 00:51:48.680 align:middle line:84% or the books about other writers, 00:51:48.680 --> 00:51:50.640 align:middle line:84% or about anything of that kind because-- 00:51:50.640 --> 00:51:52.355 align:middle line:84% Oh, and the travel books, The Colossus of Maroussi. 00:51:52.355 --> 00:51:53.647 align:middle line:90% Yes, that was a beautiful book. 00:51:53.647 --> 00:51:55.760 align:middle line:84% Certainly, one of his finest books, and you've 00:51:55.760 --> 00:51:56.870 align:middle line:90% kept them in print. 00:51:56.870 --> 00:51:59.543 align:middle line:84% Yes, they're-- well, they're not all in print, 00:51:59.543 --> 00:52:00.960 align:middle line:84% but they're most of them in print. 00:52:00.960 --> 00:52:03.170 align:middle line:84% Well, a lot of publishers have published, 00:52:03.170 --> 00:52:05.630 align:middle line:84% and then if it wasn't a big seller, 00:52:05.630 --> 00:52:07.460 align:middle line:90% they let the author die. 00:52:07.460 --> 00:52:11.450 align:middle line:84% But you never let anyone die, did you? 00:52:11.450 --> 00:52:15.992 align:middle line:84% Many authors have gone to the happy hunting ground-- 00:52:15.992 --> 00:52:18.200 align:middle line:84% But not because you didn't keep their books in print. 00:52:18.200 --> 00:52:21.380 align:middle line:84% Well, we tried, but of course, the sales 00:52:21.380 --> 00:52:24.170 align:middle line:84% of those kind of books that we published, you know, 00:52:24.170 --> 00:52:27.060 align:middle line:84% they don't really provide an income for anybody. 00:52:27.060 --> 00:52:31.490 align:middle line:84% Let's mention one that did, and it was Herman Hesse Siddhartha. 00:52:31.490 --> 00:52:32.320 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:52:32.320 --> 00:52:33.528 align:middle line:90% So how did you get that book? 00:52:33.528 --> 00:52:35.690 align:middle line:84% Now, that book, publishing that, I 00:52:35.690 --> 00:52:38.270 align:middle line:90% owed entirely to Henry Miller. 00:52:38.270 --> 00:52:40.790 align:middle line:84% Henry Miller had received from a lady in England, 00:52:40.790 --> 00:52:45.170 align:middle line:84% who had done a translation of it, Hesse's Siddhartha, which 00:52:45.170 --> 00:52:49.940 align:middle line:84% is this pseudo-Buddhist one about this joker in old time 00:52:49.940 --> 00:52:52.850 align:middle line:84% India, who is sort of like the Buddha. 00:52:52.850 --> 00:52:57.030 align:middle line:84% And it's-- what it is, I thought it was and I still think it is, 00:52:57.030 --> 00:53:02.360 align:middle line:84% is a sort of a popularization of Buddhist principles, 00:53:02.360 --> 00:53:05.690 align:middle line:84% but told in a very glamorous Indian story. 00:53:05.690 --> 00:53:06.680 align:middle line:90% And I read this thing. 00:53:06.680 --> 00:53:08.660 align:middle line:84% That's what I thought it was, and I wrote back to Henry. 00:53:08.660 --> 00:53:10.520 align:middle line:84% And I said, Henry this isn't really so hot. 00:53:10.520 --> 00:53:14.300 align:middle line:84% And he kept writing back to me every few months, and he said, 00:53:14.300 --> 00:53:16.520 align:middle line:90% you got to publish Siddhartha. 00:53:16.520 --> 00:53:19.070 align:middle line:84% So after about two years, I said, OK, Henry, we'll 00:53:19.070 --> 00:53:20.750 align:middle line:90% give it a spling. 00:53:20.750 --> 00:53:21.950 align:middle line:90% And we brought it out. 00:53:21.950 --> 00:53:25.025 align:middle line:84% In the first year, it sold about 400 copies. 00:53:25.025 --> 00:53:27.150 align:middle line:84% The next year was a little more, and the next year, 00:53:27.150 --> 00:53:28.040 align:middle line:90% a little more. 00:53:28.040 --> 00:53:31.190 align:middle line:84% Then the great Hesse boom came on in the American colleges, 00:53:31.190 --> 00:53:33.080 align:middle line:84% when they were reading Steppenwolf, 00:53:33.080 --> 00:53:37.160 align:middle line:84% and Damien, and Goldun and Narcissus, and all that stuff. 00:53:37.160 --> 00:53:42.560 align:middle line:84% And that, I think, it ended up, when at its peak, 00:53:42.560 --> 00:53:45.920 align:middle line:84% it was selling a quarter of a million copies a year. 00:53:45.920 --> 00:53:48.814 align:middle line:84% So that paid for a lot of poets-- 00:53:48.814 --> 00:53:49.760 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:53:49.760 --> 00:53:52.590 align:middle line:84% --and short story writers, and whatnot. 00:53:52.590 --> 00:53:57.170 align:middle line:84% And there was another one that helped with the poorer sellers, 00:53:57.170 --> 00:54:00.590 align:middle line:84% and that was the Ferlinghetti's you know. 00:54:00.590 --> 00:54:03.440 align:middle line:84% It's that City Lights Bookshop in San Francisco 00:54:03.440 --> 00:54:08.742 align:middle line:84% and Columbus Avenue, his Coney Island of the Mind. 00:54:08.742 --> 00:54:09.950 align:middle line:90% How did you come on that one? 00:54:09.950 --> 00:54:12.740 align:middle line:84% Well, that's thanks to Rexroth, Kenneth Rexroth, 00:54:12.740 --> 00:54:15.740 align:middle line:84% who I might say that Rexroth, when 00:54:15.740 --> 00:54:18.770 align:middle line:84% Ezra got so involved with economics, that that was all he 00:54:18.770 --> 00:54:21.410 align:middle line:84% wanted to write me about, and he wasn't giving me 00:54:21.410 --> 00:54:24.260 align:middle line:84% much advice anymore, I turned to Rexroth, 00:54:24.260 --> 00:54:28.130 align:middle line:84% whom I had met through mountaineering connections, 00:54:28.130 --> 00:54:33.980 align:middle line:84% and he sort of succeeded Pound as my literary mentor. 00:54:33.980 --> 00:54:39.080 align:middle line:84% I used to go down and visit him in California and again, 00:54:39.080 --> 00:54:42.020 align:middle line:84% in San Francisco, and again, it was sort of like the Ezuversity 00:54:42.020 --> 00:54:43.550 align:middle line:84% because I could stay there with him, 00:54:43.550 --> 00:54:46.220 align:middle line:84% and all I had to contribute was the price 00:54:46.220 --> 00:54:48.260 align:middle line:90% of a few groceries every day. 00:54:48.260 --> 00:54:51.770 align:middle line:84% And I had the run of his library and all the benefit 00:54:51.770 --> 00:54:54.350 align:middle line:84% of his explanation of what made literature, 00:54:54.350 --> 00:54:58.670 align:middle line:84% and what in culture was good, and why the Chinese poets were 00:54:58.670 --> 00:55:00.920 align:middle line:84% important, and that kind of thing. 00:55:00.920 --> 00:55:03.950 align:middle line:84% He had that same encyclopedic interest 00:55:03.950 --> 00:55:05.340 align:middle line:90% that Ezra had didn't he? 00:55:05.340 --> 00:55:05.840 align:middle line:90% Mhm. 00:55:05.840 --> 00:55:08.670 align:middle line:84% Wide ranging languages, subjects-- 00:55:08.670 --> 00:55:09.200 align:middle line:90% Everything. 00:55:09.200 --> 00:55:11.450 align:middle line:84% --he was interested in it and knew something about it. 00:55:11.450 --> 00:55:14.240 align:middle line:84% Beyond that, he had a photographic memory. 00:55:14.240 --> 00:55:17.240 align:middle line:84% Any piece of paper that went in front of his eyes 00:55:17.240 --> 00:55:19.910 align:middle line:84% went right into that computer-- what 00:55:19.910 --> 00:55:22.670 align:middle line:84% do you call it-- that floppy disk, 00:55:22.670 --> 00:55:27.650 align:middle line:84% and he could remember everything he had ever written. 00:55:27.650 --> 00:55:29.540 align:middle line:84% And I've seen this machine operating. 00:55:29.540 --> 00:55:33.920 align:middle line:84% He used to like after lunch to take a long hot bath 00:55:33.920 --> 00:55:37.213 align:middle line:84% in the tub, and there was across the tub, 00:55:37.213 --> 00:55:38.630 align:middle line:84% there'd be a reading board, and he 00:55:38.630 --> 00:55:41.930 align:middle line:84% would be lying there reading, and the pages were just turning 00:55:41.930 --> 00:55:45.920 align:middle line:84% at about this speed, like, that and everything was 00:55:45.920 --> 00:55:47.540 align:middle line:90% going in there. 00:55:47.540 --> 00:55:50.780 align:middle line:84% It was all just going in, so that when he wrote his essays, 00:55:50.780 --> 00:55:52.160 align:middle line:84% he never had to look anything up, 00:55:52.160 --> 00:55:54.440 align:middle line:90% and he made very few mistakes. 00:55:54.440 --> 00:55:55.910 align:middle line:90% I made one mistake. 00:55:55.910 --> 00:56:00.110 align:middle line:84% I asked him to come and lecture or give a reading at UCLA, 00:56:00.110 --> 00:56:03.320 align:middle line:84% and I persuaded Ed, the chairman of the English Department 00:56:03.320 --> 00:56:04.640 align:middle line:90% then to sponsor this. 00:56:04.640 --> 00:56:07.580 align:middle line:84% And chairman have their uses, sir, you see, 00:56:07.580 --> 00:56:14.330 align:middle line:84% and so I didn't know that it was to be a 9 o'clock class, 9:00 00:56:14.330 --> 00:56:16.730 align:middle line:84% AM, and when I told Kenneth Rexroth, 00:56:16.730 --> 00:56:18.770 align:middle line:84% we're reading at 9:00 AM, he wanted 00:56:18.770 --> 00:56:21.170 align:middle line:90% to go back to San Francisco. 00:56:21.170 --> 00:56:23.660 align:middle line:84% But he came to the class, and he was so mean. 00:56:23.660 --> 00:56:27.170 align:middle line:84% And he was so grumpy, and so curmudgeonly, 00:56:27.170 --> 00:56:29.030 align:middle line:90% that it was a disaster, really. 00:56:29.030 --> 00:56:32.540 align:middle line:84% And I didn't end up reading the poetry 00:56:32.540 --> 00:56:34.340 align:middle line:84% because I slumped to the back of the room 00:56:34.340 --> 00:56:35.990 align:middle line:90% and made myself scarce. 00:56:35.990 --> 00:56:38.420 align:middle line:84% But he could be very sharp indeed. 00:56:38.420 --> 00:56:41.990 align:middle line:84% Well, if you'd had the class at about midnight, 00:56:41.990 --> 00:56:43.530 align:middle line:90% he would have been superb. 00:56:43.530 --> 00:56:45.320 align:middle line:84% I know, but I wouldn't have been awake. 00:56:45.320 --> 00:56:47.950 align:middle line:90% 00:56:47.950 --> 00:56:49.200 align:middle line:90% He was a skier, too. 00:56:49.200 --> 00:56:49.700 align:middle line:90% Oh, yeah. 00:56:49.700 --> 00:56:51.242 align:middle line:84% You used to ski together, didn't you? 00:56:51.242 --> 00:56:53.320 align:middle line:84% Yes, we made many, many wonderful trips 00:56:53.320 --> 00:56:56.560 align:middle line:84% all winter and summer, up into the Sierra Mountains 00:56:56.560 --> 00:56:57.490 align:middle line:90% there in California. 00:56:57.490 --> 00:56:58.750 align:middle line:90% He was a great mountain man. 00:56:58.750 --> 00:57:02.140 align:middle line:84% He was a natural mountain man, a tremendous love of nature, 00:57:02.140 --> 00:57:05.380 align:middle line:84% understanding of nature, and we would go up 00:57:05.380 --> 00:57:07.000 align:middle line:90% on both sides of the Sierras. 00:57:07.000 --> 00:57:10.570 align:middle line:84% Often, we would go up in winter, from the Mono Lake side, 00:57:10.570 --> 00:57:11.770 align:middle line:90% and we'd hike up in there. 00:57:11.770 --> 00:57:16.150 align:middle line:84% And we would dig a sort of a cave bed in the snow, 00:57:16.150 --> 00:57:20.410 align:middle line:84% and Kenneth would cut a lot of fur boughs with his knife. 00:57:20.410 --> 00:57:23.410 align:middle line:84% Then we'd sleep on these fur boughs0 in this cave, 00:57:23.410 --> 00:57:25.270 align:middle line:84% and he was a great mountain cook, too. 00:57:25.270 --> 00:57:27.760 align:middle line:84% He could make more good stuff out 00:57:27.760 --> 00:57:31.660 align:middle line:84% of dried apricots and tomato paste. 00:57:31.660 --> 00:57:35.620 align:middle line:84% And he, of course, we had slightly different objectives 00:57:35.620 --> 00:57:39.970 align:middle line:84% on these ski trips because I would be tearing up 00:57:39.970 --> 00:57:43.450 align:middle line:84% the mountain, and trying to ski down without flattening myself, 00:57:43.450 --> 00:57:45.820 align:middle line:84% and kind of very often, if the weather was nice, 00:57:45.820 --> 00:57:48.460 align:middle line:84% would spend the whole day sitting 00:57:48.460 --> 00:57:51.730 align:middle line:84% on a stump meditating, I mean, absolutely 00:57:51.730 --> 00:57:53.170 align:middle line:90% motionless meditating. 00:57:53.170 --> 00:57:56.950 align:middle line:84% He was a Buddhist, and meditation 00:57:56.950 --> 00:57:58.210 align:middle line:90% was very important to him. 00:57:58.210 --> 00:58:01.090 align:middle line:84% And even when he was living in San Francisco, 00:58:01.090 --> 00:58:06.310 align:middle line:84% he had kind of a little den up toward Muir Woods there 00:58:06.310 --> 00:58:09.668 align:middle line:84% and not in the redwoods, but in some place in the woods. 00:58:09.668 --> 00:58:11.710 align:middle line:84% And he'd go up there and spend the whole day just 00:58:11.710 --> 00:58:13.600 align:middle line:90% meditating or reading. 00:58:13.600 --> 00:58:15.790 align:middle line:84% You fell on evil days, as you know, 00:58:15.790 --> 00:58:21.370 align:middle line:84% and he spent his last years in Santa Barbara near the campus. 00:58:21.370 --> 00:58:23.470 align:middle line:84% His latter years, as you know, he 00:58:23.470 --> 00:58:29.800 align:middle line:84% was paralyzed and not able to speak, and it was-- 00:58:29.800 --> 00:58:32.440 align:middle line:84% and you'll forgive me but saying this, J-- 00:58:32.440 --> 00:58:35.410 align:middle line:84% but it was J. Laughlin who provided 00:58:35.410 --> 00:58:41.530 align:middle line:84% Kenneth Rexroth with nursing care up to his death. 00:58:41.530 --> 00:58:44.770 align:middle line:84% You've taken care of your authors in more than one way. 00:58:44.770 --> 00:58:47.810 align:middle line:90% 00:58:47.810 --> 00:58:49.810 align:middle line:84% There are a lot of other things I've noted here, 00:58:49.810 --> 00:58:53.530 align:middle line:84% but I think it's a good time to turn to the audience 00:58:53.530 --> 00:58:58.750 align:middle line:84% and recognize them anybody that wants to pitch them up here 00:58:58.750 --> 00:59:00.550 align:middle line:90% at J. Laughlin. 00:59:00.550 --> 00:59:03.310 align:middle line:90% He'll be glad to respond. 00:59:03.310 --> 00:59:04.390 align:middle line:90% Questions, please. 00:59:04.390 --> 00:59:05.080 align:middle line:90% No speeches. 00:59:05.080 --> 00:59:09.010 align:middle line:90% 00:59:09.010 --> 00:59:10.240 align:middle line:90% One, at the back. 00:59:10.240 --> 00:59:15.170 align:middle line:84% When you began publishing, how did you get into distribution 00:59:15.170 --> 00:59:16.480 align:middle line:90% with your father? 00:59:16.480 --> 00:59:20.500 align:middle line:84% That was the most difficult problem. 00:59:20.500 --> 00:59:24.400 align:middle line:84% There were, in those days, none of these wholesalers 00:59:24.400 --> 00:59:28.990 align:middle line:84% who handle a small press books, and so that-- 00:59:28.990 --> 00:59:36.010 align:middle line:84% I tried first to send out circulars to libraries, lists 00:59:36.010 --> 00:59:39.190 align:middle line:84% that you could get from that Bowker Directory of Libraries, 00:59:39.190 --> 00:59:39.910 align:middle line:90% and then I try-- 00:59:39.910 --> 00:59:41.590 align:middle line:84% I think I bought a couple of lists 00:59:41.590 --> 00:59:44.500 align:middle line:84% from magazines like the Partisan Review. 00:59:44.500 --> 00:59:47.560 align:middle line:84% But it didn't go very well because the writers I 00:59:47.560 --> 00:59:50.860 align:middle line:84% was involved with had no reputations, and Pound did. 00:59:50.860 --> 00:59:54.880 align:middle line:84% I mean, Pound, we could always sell 500 or 600 of his. 00:59:54.880 --> 00:59:57.608 align:middle line:84% So then, I tried going out, myself, during the-- they 00:59:57.608 --> 00:59:59.150 align:middle line:84% had a thing at Harvard in those days, 00:59:59.150 --> 01:00:01.210 align:middle line:84% called a reading period before exams, 01:00:01.210 --> 01:00:03.880 align:middle line:84% when you're supposed to read, and instead of reading, 01:00:03.880 --> 01:00:07.510 align:middle line:84% I would just drive west, stopping in bookstores, 01:00:07.510 --> 01:00:09.850 align:middle line:90% as far as I had time to go. 01:00:09.850 --> 01:00:13.210 align:middle line:90% But the response was pathetic. 01:00:13.210 --> 01:00:15.340 align:middle line:90% I mean, I'd wander in there. 01:00:15.340 --> 01:00:17.830 align:middle line:84% In those days, I wore an Austrian Loden Mantel, 01:00:17.830 --> 01:00:20.080 align:middle line:84% which was a sort of a peasants cape, 01:00:20.080 --> 01:00:27.320 align:middle line:84% and I think this apparition of this new type of salesman 01:00:27.320 --> 01:00:31.180 align:middle line:84% did nothing much to move the books. 01:00:31.180 --> 01:00:34.330 align:middle line:84% But usually, there were, usually, 01:00:34.330 --> 01:00:36.190 align:middle line:84% these nice ladies who were buyers, 01:00:36.190 --> 01:00:38.410 align:middle line:84% and bookstores would take pity on me, you know. 01:00:38.410 --> 01:00:41.560 align:middle line:84% And they'd say, William Carlos Williams, who's he? 01:00:41.560 --> 01:00:43.390 align:middle line:90% Ezra Pound, who's he? 01:00:43.390 --> 01:00:46.540 align:middle line:84% And they didn't have time for me to educate them, 01:00:46.540 --> 01:00:48.550 align:middle line:84% so they'd buy a couple of books, maybe, 01:00:48.550 --> 01:00:50.060 align:middle line:84% and this didn't work out very well. 01:00:50.060 --> 01:00:52.540 align:middle line:90% I mean, so very little. 01:00:52.540 --> 01:00:55.000 align:middle line:84% So then we hit on the idea of having 01:00:55.000 --> 01:00:57.310 align:middle line:90% what is called commission men. 01:00:57.310 --> 01:01:01.630 align:middle line:84% These are bookstores' traveler salesmen, who take-- 01:01:01.630 --> 01:01:04.840 align:middle line:84% will represent five or six companies, 01:01:04.840 --> 01:01:07.330 align:middle line:84% and that began to help a little bit. 01:01:07.330 --> 01:01:10.780 align:middle line:84% But the books, really, never circulated 01:01:10.780 --> 01:01:15.550 align:middle line:84% very well until some of the people like Pound, 01:01:15.550 --> 01:01:19.810 align:middle line:84% or Williams, or Dylan Thomas, or Merton became famous enough, 01:01:19.810 --> 01:01:24.550 align:middle line:84% so that the college bookstores where professors would suggest 01:01:24.550 --> 01:01:28.330 align:middle line:84% them, please stock this book, I want to use it in my class. 01:01:28.330 --> 01:01:30.410 align:middle line:84% And it wasn't until that point was reached 01:01:30.410 --> 01:01:32.860 align:middle line:90% that we were in the black. 01:01:32.860 --> 01:01:36.910 align:middle line:84% But I have no answer to the problem of distribution. 01:01:36.910 --> 01:01:38.920 align:middle line:84% I think it's-- you know how it is. 01:01:38.920 --> 01:01:41.170 align:middle line:84% You send the books out and the stores send them 01:01:41.170 --> 01:01:43.360 align:middle line:84% back in three weeks for credit because they haven't 01:01:43.360 --> 01:01:46.630 align:middle line:84% got shelf space, and they haven't got inventory money 01:01:46.630 --> 01:01:48.200 align:middle line:90% to carry them. 01:01:48.200 --> 01:01:52.570 align:middle line:84% And the books-- kind of books we do, don't get reviewed quickly. 01:01:52.570 --> 01:01:55.260 align:middle line:84% They get reviewed three or four months later, and by that time, 01:01:55.260 --> 01:01:56.677 align:middle line:84% the bookstores have returned them. 01:01:56.677 --> 01:01:58.700 align:middle line:90% It's a very sticky problem. 01:01:58.700 --> 01:02:02.950 align:middle line:84% And it wasn't just money that did this, J. It wasn't that you 01:02:02.950 --> 01:02:06.410 align:middle line:84% had a family bankroll behind you. 01:02:06.410 --> 01:02:09.220 align:middle line:84% It was something else, and it was taste. 01:02:09.220 --> 01:02:10.610 align:middle line:90% It was discrimination. 01:02:10.610 --> 01:02:11.530 align:middle line:90% It was persistence. 01:02:11.530 --> 01:02:16.330 align:middle line:84% It was also the prudence of a thrifty Scot, wasn't it? 01:02:16.330 --> 01:02:17.080 align:middle line:90% Well, we-- 01:02:17.080 --> 01:02:19.510 align:middle line:84% You never spent more than you had, did you? 01:02:19.510 --> 01:02:22.150 align:middle line:84% Well, if I did, then I had to write to my mother. 01:02:22.150 --> 01:02:26.560 align:middle line:90% 01:02:26.560 --> 01:02:29.900 align:middle line:84% Yeah, it's a combination, and it's a rare combination. 01:02:29.900 --> 01:02:32.470 align:middle line:84% And that's why there's only one New Direction and only one 01:02:32.470 --> 01:02:33.730 align:middle line:90% J. Laughlin. 01:02:33.730 --> 01:02:35.300 align:middle line:90% And that's how simple it is. 01:02:35.300 --> 01:02:36.761 align:middle line:90% Here's a question here. 01:02:36.761 --> 01:02:39.020 align:middle line:84% How did you come to know Thomas Merton? 01:02:39.020 --> 01:02:40.070 align:middle line:90% Merton? 01:02:40.070 --> 01:02:46.280 align:middle line:84% Well, at Columbia, his most beloved professor 01:02:46.280 --> 01:02:48.380 align:middle line:90% was Mark Van Doren. 01:02:48.380 --> 01:02:51.320 align:middle line:84% And Mark Van Doren lived-- by this time, 01:02:51.320 --> 01:02:52.370 align:middle line:90% I'd moved to Connecticut. 01:02:52.370 --> 01:02:54.800 align:middle line:84% Mark Van Doren had a farm about 10 miles away, 01:02:54.800 --> 01:02:56.270 align:middle line:90% and I got to know him. 01:02:56.270 --> 01:02:59.318 align:middle line:84% I think we met at a square dance, and-- 01:02:59.318 --> 01:03:00.860 align:middle line:84% well that's all right, square dance-- 01:03:00.860 --> 01:03:08.030 align:middle line:84% and Merton sent his poems, from the monastery, up to Van Doren, 01:03:08.030 --> 01:03:09.860 align:middle line:84% asking for his advice about them. 01:03:09.860 --> 01:03:12.290 align:middle line:84% And Van Doren liked them, and he sent them to me. 01:03:12.290 --> 01:03:14.900 align:middle line:84% And I liked them, and so that's how we 01:03:14.900 --> 01:03:16.580 align:middle line:90% started publishing his poetry. 01:03:16.580 --> 01:03:18.350 align:middle line:84% And we published, I think, almost all 01:03:18.350 --> 01:03:22.010 align:middle line:84% of his poetry and some of his other prose books, too. 01:03:22.010 --> 01:03:25.770 align:middle line:84% Though, not all of him because Merton was such a steamroller 01:03:25.770 --> 01:03:26.270 align:middle line:90% writer. 01:03:26.270 --> 01:03:29.390 align:middle line:84% I mean, he would finish three and four books in a year. 01:03:29.390 --> 01:03:31.760 align:middle line:84% I don't know how he did it because you 01:03:31.760 --> 01:03:34.300 align:middle line:84% know those monks down there in that monastery, 01:03:34.300 --> 01:03:41.340 align:middle line:84% they're in the church singing liturgy six times a day. 01:03:41.340 --> 01:03:44.210 align:middle line:84% And then in between, they have to produce all that cheese 01:03:44.210 --> 01:03:47.090 align:middle line:90% to keep the place going. 01:03:47.090 --> 01:03:51.110 align:middle line:84% And I don't know how he managed to write the way he did. 01:03:51.110 --> 01:03:52.730 align:middle line:90% So to-- was he a Trappist? 01:03:52.730 --> 01:03:54.200 align:middle line:90% Yeah, he was a Cistercian. 01:03:54.200 --> 01:03:56.330 align:middle line:90% Cistercian in Kentucky? 01:03:56.330 --> 01:04:00.264 align:middle line:84% In Gethseman, Kentucky, below Bardstown. 01:04:00.264 --> 01:04:03.486 align:middle line:84% Would you perhaps [INAUDIBLE] that that what 01:04:03.486 --> 01:04:06.320 align:middle line:84% keeps you so interested in Latin American poets? 01:04:06.320 --> 01:04:08.320 align:middle line:84% I know you translated a lot of his-- 01:04:08.320 --> 01:04:12.870 align:middle line:84% Yeah well, yes, Quadra, Pablo Antonio Quadra, 01:04:12.870 --> 01:04:17.880 align:middle line:84% who is still surviving in Nicaragua, and also 01:04:17.880 --> 01:04:21.690 align:middle line:84% Ernesto Cardinale, who is now Minister of Culture 01:04:21.690 --> 01:04:25.920 align:middle line:84% in the government, revolutionary government of Nicaragua, 01:04:25.920 --> 01:04:29.190 align:middle line:84% but some of the other ones came to me from other sources. 01:04:29.190 --> 01:04:31.320 align:middle line:84% I mean I knew Parra, Nicanor Parra, 01:04:31.320 --> 01:04:35.430 align:middle line:84% from Chile before I took him to visit Merton at the monastery, 01:04:35.430 --> 01:04:38.550 align:middle line:84% and it was through Parra that Merton began to write, 01:04:38.550 --> 01:04:44.410 align:middle line:84% what he called, the anti-poems of the book [AUDIO OUT] 01:04:44.410 --> 01:04:45.880 align:middle line:90% And we had part of-- 01:04:45.880 --> 01:04:49.780 align:middle line:84% Let Us Now Praise Famous Men in that, with the wonderful Walker 01:04:49.780 --> 01:04:54.710 align:middle line:84% Evans photographs, and I saw him, maybe, two, twice a year, 01:04:54.710 --> 01:04:59.050 align:middle line:84% up to the time of his death and revered him very much. 01:04:59.050 --> 01:05:03.010 align:middle line:84% I think that Let Us Now Praise Famous Men 01:05:03.010 --> 01:05:05.635 align:middle line:84% is one of the great modern American prose classics. 01:05:05.635 --> 01:05:08.818 align:middle line:84% And another question, the lady in blue. 01:05:08.818 --> 01:05:14.520 align:middle line:90% Can you [INAUDIBLE] 01:05:14.520 --> 01:05:15.020 align:middle line:90% What? 01:05:15.020 --> 01:05:17.950 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 01:05:17.950 --> 01:05:21.520 align:middle line:84% Well, you want to do Djuna first? 01:05:21.520 --> 01:05:26.140 align:middle line:90% Well, Djuna-- Djuna, hmm. 01:05:26.140 --> 01:05:34.060 align:middle line:84% She was an astonishing lady, and we got along pretty well 01:05:34.060 --> 01:05:36.405 align:middle line:90% at first, until she decided-- 01:05:36.405 --> 01:05:38.030 align:middle line:84% she came in the office one day, and she 01:05:38.030 --> 01:05:40.480 align:middle line:84% says-- she always called me Mr. Laughlin, 01:05:40.480 --> 01:05:42.730 align:middle line:90% and I called her Miss Barnes. 01:05:42.730 --> 01:05:44.260 align:middle line:84% And she said, Mr. Laughlin, I would 01:05:44.260 --> 01:05:47.470 align:middle line:84% like you to publish a new edition of Nightwood on paper, 01:05:47.470 --> 01:05:51.400 align:middle line:90% which will last for 1,000 years. 01:05:51.400 --> 01:05:56.920 align:middle line:84% And I gulped because I knew that this was rather unlikely, even 01:05:56.920 --> 01:05:59.080 align:middle line:90% with a handmade European paper. 01:05:59.080 --> 01:06:02.830 align:middle line:84% But I went through the motions and researched it, and finally 01:06:02.830 --> 01:06:06.055 align:middle line:84% said, Ms. Barnes, the best we can do for you is 500 years. 01:06:06.055 --> 01:06:08.990 align:middle line:90% 01:06:08.990 --> 01:06:14.180 align:middle line:84% Then she got, she got rather affronted by that. 01:06:14.180 --> 01:06:18.090 align:middle line:84% And she got a bit angry, and she was obviously-- 01:06:18.090 --> 01:06:21.910 align:middle line:84% she loved to bait me, and you know, she was, 01:06:21.910 --> 01:06:26.110 align:middle line:84% you know what her nature was, and she was trying to bait me. 01:06:26.110 --> 01:06:28.420 align:middle line:84% And so I controlled my anger, and I said, 01:06:28.420 --> 01:06:32.140 align:middle line:84% Ms. Barnes, I learned at my mother's knee 01:06:32.140 --> 01:06:35.230 align:middle line:84% that I must never fight with a lady. 01:06:35.230 --> 01:06:37.120 align:middle line:90% So she stomped out. 01:06:37.120 --> 01:06:39.960 align:middle line:84% The next day, I was walking up Sixth Avenue from the office. 01:06:39.960 --> 01:06:42.940 align:middle line:84% And she was walking down the other side of Sixth Avenue, 01:06:42.940 --> 01:06:46.180 align:middle line:84% and she always carried a sort of big stick. 01:06:46.180 --> 01:06:48.070 align:middle line:90% She stopped, and she saw me. 01:06:48.070 --> 01:06:50.890 align:middle line:84% And she waved her stick, and she shouted 01:06:50.890 --> 01:06:56.140 align:middle line:84% through the traffic of Sixth Avenue, she said, Mr. Laughlin, 01:06:56.140 --> 01:06:58.120 align:middle line:90% how is your mother's knee today? 01:06:58.120 --> 01:07:00.402 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:07:00.402 --> 01:07:04.660 align:middle line:90% 01:07:04.660 --> 01:07:09.310 align:middle line:84% But she was quite, she was quite wonderful, 01:07:09.310 --> 01:07:13.870 align:middle line:84% but you couldn't really do anything for her. 01:07:13.870 --> 01:07:17.650 align:middle line:84% She thought that all publishers, except TS Eliot, who 01:07:17.650 --> 01:07:21.250 align:middle line:84% had helped her write Nightwood, were just crooks. 01:07:21.250 --> 01:07:26.290 align:middle line:84% And any kind of offer that you made to her, 01:07:26.290 --> 01:07:28.120 align:middle line:90% she would smell a rat in it. 01:07:28.120 --> 01:07:30.940 align:middle line:84% I remember there was one time that I 01:07:30.940 --> 01:07:33.010 align:middle line:84% knew she was pretty hard up, so I said now, 01:07:33.010 --> 01:07:37.240 align:middle line:84% Ms. Barnes, Nightwood is a great book, 01:07:37.240 --> 01:07:40.210 align:middle line:84% and it is going to last for 500 years. 01:07:40.210 --> 01:07:42.730 align:middle line:84% And money will be coming in on this book 01:07:42.730 --> 01:07:45.490 align:middle line:90% long after you are dead. 01:07:45.490 --> 01:07:48.880 align:middle line:84% I said, I would like to make you the following proposition. 01:07:48.880 --> 01:07:52.240 align:middle line:84% I will pay you $100, first of every month-- 01:07:52.240 --> 01:07:54.940 align:middle line:84% and in those days, $100 was pretty good money-- 01:07:54.940 --> 01:07:58.030 align:middle line:84% And this will simply be charged up against Nightwood, 01:07:58.030 --> 01:07:59.900 align:middle line:84% and you will be under no obligation 01:07:59.900 --> 01:08:03.220 align:middle line:84% and myself or my heirs will recoup 01:08:03.220 --> 01:08:05.920 align:middle line:90% this in the course of time. 01:08:05.920 --> 01:08:08.110 align:middle line:84% She was absolutely convinced that this 01:08:08.110 --> 01:08:11.740 align:middle line:84% was some kind of a crooked deal, and she wouldn't take it. 01:08:11.740 --> 01:08:15.580 align:middle line:84% Though she was, she was having a very hard time living. 01:08:15.580 --> 01:08:17.170 align:middle line:90% But I admired her very much. 01:08:17.170 --> 01:08:21.880 align:middle line:84% I think Nightwood is one of the great prose 01:08:21.880 --> 01:08:25.060 align:middle line:90% masterpieces of this century. 01:08:25.060 --> 01:08:29.180 align:middle line:84% I agree with her that it will live, but she drifted off, 01:08:29.180 --> 01:08:29.680 align:middle line:90% you know. 01:08:29.680 --> 01:08:30.910 align:middle line:90% I mean she was there. 01:08:30.910 --> 01:08:32.649 align:middle line:84% I'd see her occasionally on the street, 01:08:32.649 --> 01:08:35.080 align:middle line:84% and she stopped asking about my mother's knee. 01:08:35.080 --> 01:08:38.680 align:middle line:84% But she really was sort of going off, 01:08:38.680 --> 01:08:42.970 align:middle line:84% and it was sort of a limbo of her own. 01:08:42.970 --> 01:08:46.840 align:middle line:84% There is a nice story about Pound and Djuna Barnes, 01:08:46.840 --> 01:08:49.930 align:middle line:84% that I was visiting him in Venice in the '60s. 01:08:49.930 --> 01:08:52.120 align:middle line:84% That was when he had gone into his silent period, 01:08:52.120 --> 01:08:54.520 align:middle line:84% you know, when he wasn't talking anymore, 01:08:54.520 --> 01:08:57.590 align:middle line:84% which can be interpreted in various ways. 01:08:57.590 --> 01:08:59.140 align:middle line:84% Some people say it was meditation, 01:08:59.140 --> 01:09:02.687 align:middle line:84% and other people say it was mental disturbance. 01:09:02.687 --> 01:09:05.020 align:middle line:84% I don't think-- I think he just, as he told me, he said, 01:09:05.020 --> 01:09:05.812 align:middle line:90% I've talked enough. 01:09:05.812 --> 01:09:08.229 align:middle line:90% I'm not going to talk anymore. 01:09:08.229 --> 01:09:10.479 align:middle line:84% Well, anyway it was at this time when he was silent, 01:09:10.479 --> 01:09:11.560 align:middle line:90% and I'd taken him-- 01:09:11.560 --> 01:09:15.340 align:middle line:84% Olga, his lady, looked after him, and I'd do some shopping, 01:09:15.340 --> 01:09:17.200 align:middle line:84% suggest we take Ezra out to lunch, 01:09:17.200 --> 01:09:18.550 align:middle line:90% so I took him out to lunch. 01:09:18.550 --> 01:09:22.930 align:middle line:84% And I talked, and I talked, and I talked, never an answer. 01:09:22.930 --> 01:09:25.700 align:middle line:90% Nothing for an hour. 01:09:25.700 --> 01:09:28.540 align:middle line:84% And finally, I thought I said, Ezra 01:09:28.540 --> 01:09:33.520 align:middle line:84% what was Djuna Barnes like when she was in Paris. 01:09:33.520 --> 01:09:37.660 align:middle line:84% But she's so beautiful, and he suddenly spoke, 01:09:37.660 --> 01:09:41.589 align:middle line:84% and he said, well, she weren't exactly cuddly. 01:09:41.589 --> 01:09:45.520 align:middle line:90% 01:09:45.520 --> 01:09:47.920 align:middle line:84% And she never, she never was cuddly. 01:09:47.920 --> 01:09:53.290 align:middle line:84% I mean, if you met her on, if you met her on Sixth Avenue 01:09:53.290 --> 01:09:58.390 align:middle line:84% or in The Jumble Shop restaurant, she weren't cuddly, 01:09:58.390 --> 01:10:00.700 align:middle line:90% but she was a marvelous writer. 01:10:00.700 --> 01:10:02.270 align:middle line:90% Anymore, here? 01:10:02.270 --> 01:10:03.190 align:middle line:90% We're-- yes. 01:10:03.190 --> 01:10:04.549 align:middle line:90% Was there any other [INAUDIBLE]? 01:10:04.549 --> 01:10:07.270 align:middle line:90% He wrote a couple of them. 01:10:07.270 --> 01:10:11.290 align:middle line:90% Well, Dahlberg was a string. 01:10:11.290 --> 01:10:15.280 align:middle line:84% But I think that that autobiographical book of his 01:10:15.280 --> 01:10:18.510 align:middle line:84% Because I Was Flesh is a masterpiece. 01:10:18.510 --> 01:10:22.700 align:middle line:84% I think it's one of the masterpieces. 01:10:22.700 --> 01:10:25.280 align:middle line:84% I put up, you know, but I didn't want 01:10:25.280 --> 01:10:26.720 align:middle line:84% to go on waiting for another one, 01:10:26.720 --> 01:10:30.440 align:middle line:84% when going through these scenes with him. 01:10:30.440 --> 01:10:32.270 align:middle line:90% Here's a question back here. 01:10:32.270 --> 01:10:41.030 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 01:10:41.030 --> 01:10:42.990 align:middle line:90% Very little. 01:10:42.990 --> 01:10:48.050 align:middle line:84% Ezra, you see, his books were edited for him by TS Eliot, who 01:10:48.050 --> 01:10:49.940 align:middle line:84% would then pass sheets along with us, 01:10:49.940 --> 01:10:51.440 align:middle line:90% if you know what I mean. 01:10:51.440 --> 01:10:55.220 align:middle line:84% Our sheets of his books would be printed 01:10:55.220 --> 01:10:57.920 align:middle line:84% by Faer & Faber in England, and we'd bind them up here. 01:10:57.920 --> 01:11:00.440 align:middle line:84% And Eliot, of course, was a great editor, 01:11:00.440 --> 01:11:03.440 align:middle line:84% and he could get away with fixing Ezra up a bit 01:11:03.440 --> 01:11:08.030 align:middle line:84% because they were such great friends, but other people, 01:11:08.030 --> 01:11:08.780 align:middle line:90% not much. 01:11:08.780 --> 01:11:11.690 align:middle line:84% Henry Miller, you couldn't touch a word. 01:11:11.690 --> 01:11:14.660 align:middle line:84% Nabokov, you couldn't touch a word. 01:11:14.660 --> 01:11:20.758 align:middle line:84% Merton would accept a little bit of changing the word here 01:11:20.758 --> 01:11:22.550 align:middle line:84% and there, but you'd have to show it to him 01:11:22.550 --> 01:11:25.010 align:middle line:90% and get his approval of it. 01:11:25.010 --> 01:11:27.440 align:middle line:90% Rexroth, you couldn't change. 01:11:27.440 --> 01:11:30.620 align:middle line:84% Most of these people, they were not beginning writers. 01:11:30.620 --> 01:11:33.950 align:middle line:84% They were mature people, who knew what they wanted, 01:11:33.950 --> 01:11:36.840 align:middle line:84% and that was the way it was going to be. 01:11:36.840 --> 01:11:39.380 align:middle line:84% And I think the only time that I ever 01:11:39.380 --> 01:11:43.070 align:middle line:84% got away with changing anything was in John Hawkes' great novel 01:11:43.070 --> 01:11:45.560 align:middle line:84% Lime Twig, which is the one, you know, 01:11:45.560 --> 01:11:48.050 align:middle line:84% about the rigged horse race in England. 01:11:48.050 --> 01:11:51.170 align:middle line:84% And there I felt that some connectives were 01:11:51.170 --> 01:11:53.180 align:middle line:90% needed between the sections. 01:11:53.180 --> 01:11:55.100 align:middle line:84% And I told him that, and he thought about it. 01:11:55.100 --> 01:11:58.280 align:middle line:84% And he said, yes, you're right, and then he wrote those superb 01:11:58.280 --> 01:11:59.480 align:middle line:90% little, they're-- 01:11:59.480 --> 01:12:03.080 align:middle line:84% sound like sporting columns in the English press about horse 01:12:03.080 --> 01:12:07.070 align:middle line:84% racing, by a man whom he invented named Sidney Slyter. 01:12:07.070 --> 01:12:08.300 align:middle line:90% But I didn't write them. 01:12:08.300 --> 01:12:11.100 align:middle line:84% I just told him something was needed. 01:12:11.100 --> 01:12:15.440 align:middle line:90% We do very little editing. 01:12:15.440 --> 01:12:18.470 align:middle line:90% You're designing-- Alvin Lustig. 01:12:18.470 --> 01:12:20.780 align:middle line:84% Oh, yes, he was a great designer. 01:12:20.780 --> 01:12:22.620 align:middle line:90% He came out of Los Angeles. 01:12:22.620 --> 01:12:24.920 align:middle line:84% We knew him over there in his beginning. 01:12:24.920 --> 01:12:27.860 align:middle line:84% The only trouble is he thought he was the Messiah. 01:12:27.860 --> 01:12:28.910 align:middle line:90% Oh, he was. 01:12:28.910 --> 01:12:30.920 align:middle line:90% Oh. 01:12:30.920 --> 01:12:33.416 align:middle line:84% You're more perceptive than I am, J. I-- 01:12:33.416 --> 01:12:34.640 align:middle line:90% He was. 01:12:34.640 --> 01:12:39.320 align:middle line:84% Oh, he was, he was just absolute revolution in book cover design 01:12:39.320 --> 01:12:41.030 align:middle line:84% when he came along, and you can see those 01:12:41.030 --> 01:12:47.060 align:middle line:84% on the covers he did for us, the new classic series. 01:12:47.060 --> 01:12:49.580 align:middle line:84% I mean, they're stunning and absolutely original. 01:12:49.580 --> 01:12:51.110 align:middle line:90% And then he was the one-- 01:12:51.110 --> 01:12:53.720 align:middle line:84% it became too expensive for us to use a lot of color 01:12:53.720 --> 01:12:55.490 align:middle line:84% on the jackets, and he said, well, 01:12:55.490 --> 01:12:59.750 align:middle line:84% I'll design a pattern for you to use only black and white. 01:12:59.750 --> 01:13:01.920 align:middle line:84% That's what we've done ever since. 01:13:01.920 --> 01:13:04.505 align:middle line:84% And your logo-- who did your, originally, that logo? 01:13:04.505 --> 01:13:07.260 align:middle line:84% You mean, the sitting down horse? 01:13:07.260 --> 01:13:07.790 align:middle line:90% Yes. 01:13:07.790 --> 01:13:10.940 align:middle line:90% That may be a centaur. 01:13:10.940 --> 01:13:14.120 align:middle line:84% That was done by a sculptor protégé of Pound's. 01:13:14.120 --> 01:13:16.640 align:middle line:84% Pound was always very good to artists, 01:13:16.640 --> 01:13:19.295 align:middle line:84% beginning with [INAUDIBLE] and many others. 01:13:19.295 --> 01:13:22.220 align:middle line:84% He paid artists, and that was a German fellow 01:13:22.220 --> 01:13:26.720 align:middle line:84% named Angus who turned up in Rapallo, stony broke. 01:13:26.720 --> 01:13:31.640 align:middle line:84% And having walked down from Hamburg to see Pound because he 01:13:31.640 --> 01:13:33.530 align:middle line:90% wanted to talk about Gaudier. 01:13:33.530 --> 01:13:36.530 align:middle line:84% And Ezra having no beds in his place 01:13:36.530 --> 01:13:39.260 align:middle line:84% put him up in the dog kennel on the terrace. 01:13:39.260 --> 01:13:43.730 align:middle line:84% It was a nice big dog kennel, and then Ezra fed him. 01:13:43.730 --> 01:13:46.790 align:middle line:84% And he took him over to the local gravestone then, 01:13:46.790 --> 01:13:49.610 align:middle line:84% and he vouched for his being given a piece of-- 01:13:49.610 --> 01:13:51.020 align:middle line:90% I don't it was marble. 01:13:51.020 --> 01:13:52.580 align:middle line:84% I think it was granite or something, 01:13:52.580 --> 01:13:56.750 align:middle line:84% and Angus did this beautiful sculpture of what I suppose 01:13:56.750 --> 01:13:58.280 align:middle line:90% is a sitting down horse. 01:13:58.280 --> 01:14:01.400 align:middle line:84% And then as return salesman, as he was doing all his life 01:14:01.400 --> 01:14:02.960 align:middle line:84% with so many authors, and sold it 01:14:02.960 --> 01:14:07.580 align:middle line:84% to Signora Agnelli, the wife of the fiat man. 01:14:07.580 --> 01:14:11.270 align:middle line:84% And this put Angus on his feet, and then he left the dog kennel 01:14:11.270 --> 01:14:15.020 align:middle line:84% and became the terror of husbands 01:14:15.020 --> 01:14:16.030 align:middle line:90% in the town of Rapallo. 01:14:16.030 --> 01:14:20.840 align:middle line:90% 01:14:20.840 --> 01:14:23.073 align:middle line:90% Well, here's one, yeah. 01:14:23.073 --> 01:14:25.388 align:middle line:84% In your experience as a publisher, 01:14:25.388 --> 01:14:30.169 align:middle line:84% do you prefer [INAUDIBLE] author represented by an agent 01:14:30.169 --> 01:14:33.380 align:middle line:90% or vice-versa [INAUDIBLE]? 01:14:33.380 --> 01:14:41.370 align:middle line:84% Well, I think that it's nice to deal directly with the author, 01:14:41.370 --> 01:14:43.770 align:middle line:84% but we have dealt with many agents 01:14:43.770 --> 01:14:45.030 align:middle line:90% where an author had an agent. 01:14:45.030 --> 01:14:48.540 align:middle line:90% 01:14:48.540 --> 01:14:52.080 align:middle line:84% I think most publishers would prefer to deal with the author 01:14:52.080 --> 01:14:56.610 align:middle line:90% unless we're Edward Dahlberg. 01:14:56.610 --> 01:14:59.700 align:middle line:84% It would have been great if Edward had had an agent, 01:14:59.700 --> 01:15:01.830 align:middle line:84% but unfortunately, no agent would have him. 01:15:01.830 --> 01:15:05.010 align:middle line:90% 01:15:05.010 --> 01:15:07.320 align:middle line:84% I wanted to ask you about Sun Valley. 01:15:07.320 --> 01:15:11.970 align:middle line:84% Is it true that you started skiing at Sun Valley, Idaho? 01:15:11.970 --> 01:15:15.000 align:middle line:84% No, I started skiing on the slopes 01:15:15.000 --> 01:15:18.540 align:middle line:84% of what was then called the Pennsylvania College for Women 01:15:18.540 --> 01:15:23.010 align:middle line:84% in Woodland Road, Pittsburgh at the age of eight. 01:15:23.010 --> 01:15:25.710 align:middle line:84% All right, when did you get the Sun Valley? 01:15:25.710 --> 01:15:27.660 align:middle line:90% Oh, I don't know. 01:15:27.660 --> 01:15:30.235 align:middle line:90% 30-- I, 38 maybe? 01:15:30.235 --> 01:15:30.735 align:middle line:90% 38. 01:15:30.735 --> 01:15:34.170 align:middle line:90% 01:15:34.170 --> 01:15:36.170 align:middle line:90% 38, but I quickly left there. 01:15:36.170 --> 01:15:39.620 align:middle line:84% It was too social and went down to Alta Utah, which 01:15:39.620 --> 01:15:42.980 align:middle line:84% is when I first went there, it was marvelously wild 01:15:42.980 --> 01:15:44.720 align:middle line:90% and practically nobody there. 01:15:44.720 --> 01:15:46.870 align:middle line:90% It was great. 01:15:46.870 --> 01:15:49.720 align:middle line:84% Well, we're going to wind up very quickly here now, 01:15:49.720 --> 01:15:54.850 align:middle line:84% but I'll recognize a final question if it's a good one. 01:15:54.850 --> 01:15:55.350 align:middle line:90% Is it? 01:15:55.350 --> 01:15:58.900 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 01:15:58.900 --> 01:16:06.720 align:middle line:84% Well, supposedly, supposedly, I am doing that, 01:16:06.720 --> 01:16:11.820 align:middle line:84% but the circumstances were a little peculiar. 01:16:11.820 --> 01:16:15.300 align:middle line:84% I was teaching up at a wonderful, marvelous writers 01:16:15.300 --> 01:16:19.890 align:middle line:84% conference named Centrum, up in Pacific Northwest last year, 01:16:19.890 --> 01:16:23.520 align:middle line:84% and one of the people on the program panel 01:16:23.520 --> 01:16:29.220 align:middle line:84% was Gordon Lish, a very brilliant editor at Knapp. 01:16:29.220 --> 01:16:34.290 align:middle line:84% And we were partying a bit, and the next morning, 01:16:34.290 --> 01:16:36.598 align:middle line:84% when Gordon came around, and he said, 01:16:36.598 --> 01:16:38.640 align:middle line:84% I thought you'd like to see the contract that you 01:16:38.640 --> 01:16:41.788 align:middle line:90% signed last night. 01:16:41.788 --> 01:16:43.830 align:middle line:84% So I don't know whether I'll ever get it written. 01:16:43.830 --> 01:16:51.960 align:middle line:84% It's-- this kind of a problem, I can sit here and buzz along, 01:16:51.960 --> 01:16:56.550 align:middle line:84% but to put it in nice forms, another story, 01:16:56.550 --> 01:16:59.400 align:middle line:90% I'm going to try. 01:16:59.400 --> 01:17:02.820 align:middle line:84% Well, J, we're terribly grateful. 01:17:02.820 --> 01:17:06.300 align:middle line:84% This is one step only on a select reading 01:17:06.300 --> 01:17:11.520 align:middle line:84% tour that's taken him the last two stops, Salt 01:17:11.520 --> 01:17:13.690 align:middle line:90% Lake and Albuquerque. 01:17:13.690 --> 01:17:17.070 align:middle line:84% He's leaving Thursday for Los Angeles, 01:17:17.070 --> 01:17:20.790 align:middle line:84% and then is it back Norfolk, Connecticut? 01:17:20.790 --> 01:17:21.950 align:middle line:90% I hope. 01:17:21.950 --> 01:17:23.340 align:middle line:90% Not that I haven't-- 01:17:23.340 --> 01:17:26.280 align:middle line:84% I mean, it's very exciting to come to universities 01:17:26.280 --> 01:17:29.650 align:middle line:84% such as this, and meet students, and graduate students, 01:17:29.650 --> 01:17:32.500 align:middle line:90% and people, but home is home. 01:17:32.500 --> 01:17:38.040 align:middle line:84% And I like to be there with my books and my nice person who 01:17:38.040 --> 01:17:39.300 align:middle line:90% looks after me. 01:17:39.300 --> 01:17:42.030 align:middle line:90% And-- well, she's here now. 01:17:42.030 --> 01:17:43.650 align:middle line:84% I mean, I wouldn't come on these trips 01:17:43.650 --> 01:17:47.400 align:middle line:84% if she wouldn't keep on looking after me. 01:17:47.400 --> 01:17:49.380 align:middle line:84% But it's been a wonderful experience, 01:17:49.380 --> 01:17:54.450 align:middle line:84% and it certainly blows apart the attitudes of the professors 01:17:54.450 --> 01:17:57.960 align:middle line:84% at Harvard and Yale, who think that cultivation and education 01:17:57.960 --> 01:17:59.170 align:middle line:90% staff at the Hudson River. 01:17:59.170 --> 01:17:59.805 align:middle line:90% It isn't so. 01:17:59.805 --> 01:18:02.400 align:middle line:90% 01:18:02.400 --> 01:18:03.905 align:middle line:90% Well, thank you very much. 01:18:03.905 --> 01:18:04.530 align:middle line:90% You're welcome. 01:18:04.530 --> 01:18:07.280 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 01:18:07.280 --> 01:18:24.000 align:middle line:90%