By playing one of these firms against the other, I think we could get an advance of as much as ten or fifteen thousand dollars against the 25¢ reprint rights for Mrs. Stone and three big plays. By the usual publishing practice, this sum would be divided between you and me, and we could then each use our share in the following way. Working through the Authors League, or through your own charitable foundation, which Mr. Colton could set up for you, you could give grants in aid from your share to young writers whom you thought worthy of encouragement and help. I, for my part, would use my share to finance and promote the publication of their books when they had written them, setting up a revolving fund, so that if any of them made a profit, the profits would then be used to finance other books of similar category.
In this way, we could really do an enormous amount of good for the state of American letters today, and both get a lot of satisfaction out of it. Of course, as you know, a great many of the books which I publish now are done on a similar basis, but with the continuing rise in costs and heavier taxes every year, I am severely limited in what I can do. A windfall of this kind would mean the possibility of doing three or four extra books each year which would not otherwise be possible for me on a business basis.
I have made inquiries among other publishers and they tell me that the sale of the 25¢ books does not materially interfere with the sale of the higher priced editions, providing that at least the year or two period elapses before the reprint is issued. I think also that it might be possible to make a stipulation in the contract with the reprint publisher that they should use jackets by Lustig instead of those dreadful chromo scenes of busty ladies that are the usual thing. In particular, I am thinking of Victor Weybright and the New American Library, who do the highest class of books in this field. He has done Donnie [Windham]’s book and Paul [Bowles]’s and a number of others that are first rate literature.
I hope you will think this over seriously and let me have your reactions when you have a moment. I also hope you will not feel that I am getting out of line in making such a suggestion. I realize that you would not be willing to sacrifice your principles about the quality of books and publishing simply for the money that is in it, but when the money is to be used to help other writers who need help, and whom you want to encourage, that puts quite a different light on it, I think.
I have not said anything about this idea to Audrey, but if you think it has merit I could take it up with her and Mr. Colton, and see what kind of thing could be set up for you.
I expect to be here in Alta for another couple of weeks, and then hope to get down to California, to see Christopher [Isherwood], Rexroth and Henry Miller, and a few others, before returning to New York early in June.
I get reports daily from the office, and I gather that things are going along well with the new book. Our new sales manager, Bob MacGregor, is really a crackerjack in his quiet unassuming way, and he has gotten a lot of fine window displays, and Barbara has also gotten some good publicity breaks. She is getting out a special wrap-around band to go on the books announcing the Perry Award, which was a fine thing, and I hope you get a couple of others before the season is over.
The new little Vittorini novel is out, and I will ask Betty to send you a copy at the same time as this letter. I think it is the most beautiful thing he has written.
You will remember John Hawkes, the boy up in Cambridge who wrote The Cannibal. His new novel has just come in and is terribly exciting. It is called The Beetle Leg and we will be bringing it out next fall. It has that same wonderful mixture of reality and unreality that was in the earlier book, and the same power of verbal poetry, and quite a bit more narrative flow. I think he is a comer and a boy to watch. We also have in the shop for next fall a very amusing little novel about life in Greenwich Village and the “hipsters.”
I certainly envy you getting back to Europe again. I’m trying to work things out so that I will be able to get over on a business trip in the summer and possibly we can get together then.
Give my best to your grandfather. What a man! I hope I have as much beans as that when I am his age.
With best to you and Frank,
as ever,
J
« • »
Bob MacGregor: Robert Mercer MacGregor (1911–1974). Robert MacGregor was already the head of his own small publishing firm, Theatre Arts Books, when JL hired him to supervise the New York office and in effect be his second-in-command. A former foreign correspondent and decorated World War II veteran, MacGregor was intelligent, forthright, and an excellent manager. From the day he was hired, June 14, 1950, until New Directions was forced to move its offices from 333 Sixth Avenue to 80 Eighth Avenue in 1978, New Directions and Theatre Arts would share office space. MacGregor’s partner at Theatre Arts, George Zournas, who ran the day-to-day operations, was also his life partner. As a gay man in the 1950s, MacGregor was particularly attuned to dealing with TW, his circle of friends, and the difficult dynamics of his life. JL was always adamant that any telling of the New Directions story should make clear MacGregor’s great contribution to the whole enterprise. Ian MacNiven in his biography of JL, “Literchoor Is My Beat”: A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions, said of MacGregor: “Hiring him would turn out to be the most momentous personnel decision of J’s publishing career.”
new little Vittorini novel: The Twilight of the Elephant (ND 1951).
novel about [ . . . ]“hipsters”: Who Walk in Darkness by Chandler Brossard (ND 1952).
SECTION X
PF: You said you met Bob MacGregor in 1950?
JL: Yes, and when my job at Ford [Foundation] started in 1952, it was a godsend that he had taken on the work at ND. He knew my taste, he was a hard worker and straight. He’s never had the credit that he should have had. I hope that when it’s written [a proposed history of New Directions] it will give proper credit to Bob and to all of you who’ve done such superb work.
« • »
my job at Ford [Foundation]: When his marriage to Margaret Keyser Laughlin dissolved in 1951, JL accepted a salaried position with the Ford Foundation as head of Intercultural Publications. His job was to produce Perspectives USA, a magazine of his own creation to promote American culture and creative achievement. The final issue of Perspectives would be published in 1957. During this period, JL remained involved with everything going on at New Directions; however, he was frequently traveling, and the day-to-day running of the office was left in the capable hands of Robert MacGregor.
96. TL—2
July 25, 1951 [New York]
DEAR TENNESSEE,
What kind of a time have you been having over there? I’ve been hoping to hear from you, but I guess if you are working, you’re probably too busy for letters. Anyway, I may get down to see you soon. By the time this reaches you, I will have arrived in Paris, then I have to do about three weeks’ business in London, then I’ll head South, and see you if you are visible. So drop me a card in England giving me your plans and dates. My address there will be c/o the Phyllis Court Club at Henley on Thames.
As you probably heard, everyone has been sick back here, but they seem to be making progress. Paul Bigelow had a very serious operation on his head over at the Manhattan General Hospital, and I haven’t been able to see him, but I checked by phone with his nurse, and she reports that it was satisfactory and that he is making good progress.
Audrey also had quite a tough time in the hospital. I think it was more than just appendicitis. But she is on her feet again now, and seems all right though she looks very pale. She works much too hard, and ought to take it easier.
Do you happen to have any short thing around, either poetry or prose, that would be suitable for the next number of the Annual? I have gotten most of the book off to the printer before leaving, but there is still space, and it really wouldn’t be the same without you. So if you have something, shoot it to me in England, and I’ll pop it along to New Jersey to the printer. Of course, I have “Hard Candy” her
e in my files, but Audrey doesn’t seem to like the idea of using it, so I guess we’d better let that lie for a while.
I hope you have been writing some more poetry. As I told you a good many times, I am very anxious to get together a group of your poems for a book soon, and I think this coming winter would be a good time, if you will only bestir yourself to search for them. I keep feeling you have others hidden around that I haven’t seen.
Did you hear that Gore has become a manufacturer on the Hudson River? I haven’t seen him, but I hear that his father has set him up some kind of a plant, which he is supposed to manage. That will be something.
I was awfully glad when I got the news from Audrey that you had changed your mind, at least temporarily, about 25¢ reprints. Not having heard back from you, I don’t know whether my letter on this subject had anything to do with your decision or not, but anyway I was pleased. As you may have heard from Audrey, 25¢ rights on Streetcar have now been sold to Weybright of New American Library for a very handsome sum—$12,000 in fact, which is not chicken feed in any league, and surely the largest sum that has ever been paid for a play. But it nearly wasn’t so good. Audrey was on the point of closing a deal with Bantam for only $3000 and I tipped her off that others were interested, and when she had to go to the hospital she turned the matter over to me, and by dint of playing one against another, they bid the advance up to the large figure.
I am particularly happy about getting this windfall, because my share of it will permit me to print two or three books by promising newcomers which I would not otherwise have been able to do, since business in general is lousy here now. I’ll tell you more about it when I see you. I just hope you realize how very deeply I appreciate the enormous help you have given to New Directions.
Since getting back from the West, my life has been the usual rat race of trying to catch up with business in the office, though I did have several very pleasant days off at Nantucket. The weather was lovely up there and the ocean was fine. Of course, the place is getting much too crowded with tourists, but the architecture is still almost unspoiled, and you can get away on a bicycle or a car to those wonderful moors along the beaches.
Well, drop me a card to England, and I surely hope we can meet in Italy or the South of France later in the summer.
Best to you and Frank,
James Laughlin
Dictated by Mr. Laughlin
but signed in his absence
by the most wonderful, kind,
sweet, charming, brilliant,
trustworthy, fascinating [ . . . ]
« • »
but signed in his absence: ND book designer and future Mrs. Laughlin, Gertrude Huston typed this letter from JL’s dictation.
97. TLS—1
7/24/52 [Hamburg, Germany]
DEAR JAY:
I’ve had you on my mind ever since I got to Europe but I just haven’t had much chance to write a letter. We spent about a week in Paris with Maria and I have never seen her looking so well, the stay on the sea had done her a world of good, her vitality was such that I simply could not keep up with her. I left her in good hands. She had lunch with John Huston, José Ferrer and myself the day before I left Paris and from then on, I take it, they took up where I had left off and I think she is not quite sure which of them she prefers and gives me to understand that both are mad for her, which I do not find in the least inconceivable, do you? The Russians are mad!
I had a lot of work do and Rome was getting too hot for it so I left there after about two weeks and came up here to Hamburg which is very cool and invigorating. I thought I would be unknown up here. Quite the contrary! Had no sooner registered than reporters were calling and I had lots of pictures taken this afternoon. Alas, for the anonymous joys of the gay cabarets!—This hotel is so swanky that one cannot bring in friends at night, so don’t be surprised if my next book of poems includes a lot of bucolics and eclogues and fauns and satyrs among the moonlit trees. Just so it doesn’t also include the “polizei.” Hamburg is really madder than the Russians.
Gadg is giving me many notes for revisions on Camino so I don’t know just when I will get to work on the poems, but I will as soon as possible.
Affectionate greetings to Gertrude.
Yours ever,
Tenn
« • »
John Huston: (1906–1987), American film director who adapted The Night of the Iguana into a screenplay and directed the 1964 film version.
José Ferrer: (1912–1992), Puerto Rican–born actor and theater and film director, best known for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac on both stage and screen.
Gadg: Elia Kazan’s nickname, which stemmed from his skill at fixing things—pronounced like the first syllable of the word “gadget.”
Camino: TW wanted the anglicized pronunciation of Camino Real used and asked that it be printed in every edition of the play: Cámino Réal [reel].
98. TL—2
March 26, 1953 [New York]
DEAR TENN:
I’m sorry that I didn’t get a chance to see you before you went off to Key West to tell you how much I enjoyed the play [Camino Real]. I think I might be inclined to argue about some of the things that Kazan did with it, but certainly it is one of your finest works, and full of beautifully poetic passages. I think I have two main objections to the direction. First, it didn’t make the actors speak the lines of poetry the way I think poetry should be spoken on the stage. They don’t bring it out properly. They rush over it, either because they don’t know how to speak it or because they don’t realize how important it is. On the French stage, where there is a tradition of rhetorical theatre, this wouldn’t happen. I hope that Barrault will do this play in Paris because I think he would really bring out what is in it. Kazan is just too Hollywood for my taste. He seems to think more of motion than emotion. He clutters up the line of the play with a continuous scurrying around of busyness on the stage so that the audience’s attention is continually distracted from what is being said and meant. The real feelings of the play, its philosophical depth and tragic beauty, never managed to cut through all that scrambling around. He gets it now and then—in the love scene, for example, where he just lets the actors be quiet on the stage and do justice to the lines—but most of the time it is obscured.
Well, this is all water under the bridge—it’s a lavish production—and I don’t set myself up anyway to know anything about the theatre. But I keep feeling in the back of my mind that you will only be able to realize the full poetry that is in you when you forget about Broadway, with all its stereotypes and limitations, and look around for some small theatre somewhere which has an audience, and a management, that really cares about poetry and the imagination.
I hope you weren’t letting yourself be upset by the silly things that the reviewers wrote about the play in the papers. Nothing better could be expected of that crew. They can only appreciate a thing if it fits within their own limited horizons. I’m convinced that you’ll get a very different reaction on Camino when it gets to Europe.
The real quality of the play comes out in reading, so I’m glad that the book will be available. I hope you will let Bob [MacGregor] have the finished script as soon as possible so that we can get started.
I’m urging all my friends to pay no attention to the reviews but to go and see the play and judge it for themselves. Dr. Fischer, our German publisher who is here, is crazy about it—went twice—and wants to translate a scene for his magazine in Frankfurt, Die Neue Rundschau.
Well, let me hear from you when you have a moment, and I hope you and Frank have a wonderful time down there in Key West. I’ll be writing soon about other matters, but wanted to get word to you about Camino. It’s a wonderful play, and don’t let anybody tell you different. This is real theatre, and what the American theatre desperately needs if it isn’t going to become simply a bad copy of Hollywood.
As ever,
James Laughlin
« • »
Barrau
lt: Jean-Louis Barrault (1910–1994), French actor and director.
the reviewers: The original production of Camino Real was almost unanimously attacked by the New York critics.
99. TLS—2
April 5, 1953 [Key West]
DEAR JAY:
I want to thank you for the never-failing appreciation you have for anything good in my work. Your letter meant a great deal to me, since I went through a pretty black period after those notices came out. I had suspected that we would be blasted by a quorum of the critics, ever since New Haven Gadg and I had expected or feared it pretty certainly, but even so there was a degree of militant incomprehension that seemed like an order to get out and stay out of the current theatre.
I’m glad that you felt poetry in the play [Camino Real]. I can’t agree with you about Gadg. I don’t think this play was nearly as easy for him as Streetcar or Salesman, it was a much harder and more complex job, and he was working with players at least half of which were dancers and had no previous speaking experience on the stage, an inadequate budget and far from adequate time in rehearsal and try-out on the road. Gadg is not as fond of verbal values as he should be, but of all Broadway directors he has the most natural love of poetry. Not a single critic seemed to have any sense of the abstract, formal beauty of the piece. They concentrated on what each thing might mean in a literal, logical sense, and I can’t help thinking that there was a general feeling of ill-will among them at what seemed new and intransigent in the work. I have had a couple of letters from Atkinson, in London, expressing moral and chauvinistic indignation over the pessimism which he says “American audiences” will not accept, that they won’t like it in Anouilh and Sartre and will not accept it from me. He repeated America and American several times as if the play was a violation of national respect. Nevertheless I think he, almost alone, did make an effort to divorce his personal repugnance from his professional appraisal, and was frank about the source of that repugnance. A couple or three nights ago I got a special delivery letter from Edith Sitwell, couched in the most extravagant heart-felt terms, for which I was rightly overcome with gratitude, and there has been a flood of letters from people known and unknown, more even than I got during the whole course of Streetcar, saying their love of the play and anger at its reception.
The Luck of Friendship Page 19