James Laughlin, New Directions, and the remaking of Ezra Pound

the long version

"Although James Laughlin (1914-1997) came from one of Pittsburgh's leading steel-making families, his passions were literary rather than industrial - he wanted to be a poet. Laughlin was a freshman at Harvard when he traveled to Rapallo, Italy, in 1933 to meet Ezra Pound (1885-1972). and he returned the following year to enroll in the poet's "Ezuversity." Pound dismissed Laughlin's poetic talents, advising the wealthy young man to make himself over into a publisher. Laughlin did just that, founding New Directions in 1936." "Drawing on a wide range of sources - including interviews with Laughlin and other New Directions staffers and published materials from numerous literary archives - Gregory Barnhisel tells the story of the personal and professional relationship between one of the twentieth century's most controversial writers and his loyal and innovative American publisher - a relationship that eventually helped remake literary history and continues to shape our understanding of modernism itself."--Jacket.