BOOKS
477
and Tennessee Williams. He performed another service for several
older American writers: at a time when their works were either neglected
or out of print, he revived Nathanael West, William Carlos Williams,
Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Kenneth Rexroth. And Laughlin was,
I think, the first publisher to do what has since become very fashionable
and profitable: he issued
.a
line of critical monographs on the major
modern authors, a series, I would say, of higher intellectual intensity
and critical quality than the current crop of jargonized, almost anonymous
"studies." (Incidentally, the extensively detailed bibliography in the
appendix is needlessly modest in not mentioning writers introduced to
America in the annuals-way back in 1949, for instance, ND published
extracts from Bernard Frechtman's translation of
Our Lady of th,:
Flowers.)
In fewer than 500 books, this four-fold achievement is extra–
ordinary, if not incomparable; and although it is impossible to measure
accurately a publisher's impact, the
Reader
makes us wonder what
th ~
current literary scene would be like if ND had never existed.
But by 1965 there are numerous reasons to believe that ND has
outlived its purpose. The leadership in importing what is to my taste
the new European literature of the fifties was assumed by Grove Press,
although by the middle of the sixties Grove has moved on to other
interests. Many publishers have followed the example set by Knopf,
ND, and Grove (and have, no doubt, also been influenced by the profits
accruing from sales of the best modern literature to campus paperback
bookshops) and many are nowadays eagerly collecting the most recent
European writing, so that within the last five years the latest fashions
in Paris, Moscow and Germany (though not in Rome or Madrid) have
appeared in America in competent, if not definitive, translations.
And ND's efforts on behalf of American writing have been asstUTIeU
by other publishers. For a variety of reasons-one of the i'tIos-himportant
a more sophisticated critical press-the past few years have shown fewer
writers meriting resurrection; and ND has not been involved with any
of them. Nearly all the younger American writers now on the ND list
have little impact outside the ND orbit. Denise Levertov is the prirne
exception. Many of the others, like John Hawkes, gain more of their
literary reputation, I suspect, from ND's continual backing of their
work than from any intrinsic achievement. One can see a diffusion of
sponsorship of the best young American writers too, for in a country
that has never had a true organized literary avant-garde-our successful
experimental writers tend to be individual eccentrics, working very much
on their own-a single magazine or publisher is not likely to comer the
market.
