Byways (First Edition)

Laughlin, James

ISBN 10: 0811216179 / ISBN 13: 9780811216173

Published by New Directions, New York, 2005

About this Item

New York, New Directions, 2005. First edition. First printing. Hardbound. Fine in a fine jacket. A clean tight copy. Publisher's price intact on front jacket flap ($35.00). Comes with archival-quality mylar jacket protector. Smoke-free. Preface by Guy Davenport. Peter Glassgold, editor.

Seller Inventory # Poet-Rear-02

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Byways (First Edition)
• Publisher: New Directions, New York
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811216179
• ISBN 13: 9780811216173
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

The long-awaited memoirs of New Directions' founder. James Laughlin, the late founder and publisher of New Directions, was also a poet of elegance and distinction. At his death in 1997 at the age of eighty-three, he left unfinished his long autobiographical poem, Byways. It is no exaggeration to say that his publishing house, which he began in 1936 while still an undergraduate at Harvard, changed the way Americans read and write serious literature. Yet the man who published some of the greatest writers of the twentieth century remained resistant for most of his life to the memoiristic impulse. In the end he found his autobiographical voice by adopting the swift-moving line of Kenneth Rexroth's booklength philosophical poem, The Dragon and the Unicorn (1952). Byways weaves together family history (the Laughlins were wealthy Pittsburgh steel magnates), the poet's early memories and travels in Europe and America with his playboy father, his years at Harvard, first meetings with Pound, the beginning of his publishing venture, his reminiscences of close friendships with writers including W.C. Williams, Thomas Merton, and Kenneth Rexroth, his postwar work in Europe and Asia with the Ford Foundation as publisher of its international literary magazine, Perspectives, and not least, his many early loves.

About the Authors

James Laughlin (1914–1997) founded New Directions in 1936 while still a student at Harvard. He wrote and compiled more than a dozen books of poetry as well as stories and essays; seven volumes of his correspondence with his authors are available from W.W. Norton. 

 

Peter Glassgold is the former editor in chief of New Directions.

As Bruce Bawer wrote in Bookforum, "the late Guy Davenport (1927-2005) left behind an oeuvre that is one long lesson in the history of civilization, and to read any part of it―story, essay, or translation―is to be enthralled by his unflagging intellectual energy and engagement." His books include The Geography of the Imagination, The Death of Picasso, Herakleitos and Diogenes, A Table of Green Fields, The Cardiff Team, DaVinci's Bicycle, and many more.