Beside the Shadblow Tree: A Memoir of James Laughlin
- Book Review,
by Hayden Carruth
From Booklist
James Laughlin (1914^-97) was an essential figure in twentieth-century literature, not because he was a major writer, though he was a very fine poet, but because New Directions books, which introduced several generations to the best in modern world literature, were "published for" him. That phrase was indicative of Laughlin, his friend, Carruth, imparts, for it skirted publicly acknowledging that he was New Directions' very active publisher-editor. Laughlin was extremely self-effacing, unwilling to show emotion or to endure gratitude. Yet he loved many women besides his three wives, and he was extraordinarily generous, not just with money. Near the end of this careful, thoroughly engaging memoir, as biographical of its author as of its subject, Carruth states his realization that Laughlin had supported him unobtrusively through the most difficult period of Carruth's life and long after. Perhaps Carruth would never have achieved what he did--and he is a major poet--without Laughlin, and the same could be said of several other writers. An essential, beautiful, and moving document. Ray Olson
Book Description
Memoir. It is impossible to imagine what American poetry in the twentieth century might look like without the magnanimity of the late James Laughlin, poet and publisher of New Directions. Among Laughlin's closest friends was poet Hayden Carruth, who served as author, editor, clerk, and typist for New Directions and, at a more personal level, "poetry doctor" for Laughlin himself. BESIDE THE SHADBLOW TREE is the meditation of one great old poet upon the death of another, upon two lives intertwined in various ways for half a century.
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