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RICHARD KOSTELANETZ
Instead, ND's lists these past few years suggest that the finn's most
significant books have been those by older, neglected European writers:
the most interesting contributions to the latest annual are the first English
translations of Alfred Jarry's novella,
The Supermale
(an inspired comedy
that, in many respects, seems a prelude to recent American comic novels),
and a symbolic story by Gunter Eich. And I might suggest that we
could certainly use good translations of Raymond Roussel, Novalis, Rafael
Alberti, Sergei Essenin, Paul Celan, and many, many other continental
poets.
Both the
Reader
and the latest annual were disappointing. With
such a spectacular back list, the
Reader
offers less than the succession
of rich desserts. The choice of material was erratic-only occasionally
was a writer's best, and/or most characteristic work chosen. The annual
itself, though far from being a bad collection, rivals No. 15, the "inter–
national" issue, as the worst ND has ever published. Not only is it a
good
deal smaller than the 600-page compendiums of the forties but it relies
more upon material previously published in English, which makes up
about half the book, than any other annual I have seen. And the propor–
tion of good pieces has also strikingly decreased: "surprises" seem fewer
and fainter-stories by Mark Power, a young American, and the Mexican
Juan Garcia Ponce; and the sketches of the French 'pataphysician, Ray–
mond Roussel. The book gives the impression of editorial befuddlement,
as though Laughlin did not really know what kind of writing he wanted
to print and simply collected bits and pieces from his "house" regulars–
Hawkes, Levertov, Gregory Corso, Elizabeth Mann Borgese, Thomas
Merton, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. While a periodical may subsist on
ideas or a point of view, a publisher exists primarily for his writers.
Yet at the moment, the annual lacks direction 'and ND as a publishing
house has fewer interesting active writers than ever before.
ND is actually more a part of our cultural history than a current
force, and since Laughlin at just over 50 is hardly ready for retirement,
this decline seems so unnecessary and sad. Indeed, his career suggests
that most of our best publishers, editors and magazines, like many of our
writers, did their best work when they were still quite young. The late
Kurt Wolff and the Frenchman Gaston Gallimard preserved their
supremely intelligent taste. No top-level American publisher seems to have.
Richard Kostelanetz
