EULOGY

By EUGENE LINDEN

PIONEER PUBLISHER Sporting muddy work clothes as he cleared a trail with his chainsaw in Norfolk, Conn., 6-ft. 7-in. James Laughlin looked more like a refugee from the set of the film Deliverance than one of America's most distinguished publishers. Except for indulgences such as a fondness for television shows like Hawaii Five-O, Laughlin was austere--in his business ventures, his poetry and his habits. New Directions, the publishing house he founded while still a sophomore at Harvard, gave meager advances but brought to the world's attention Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Henry Miller and many other authors who had struggled to find an outlet with mainstream houses. Although he proudly claimed he had never given an advance of more than $10,000, he regularly lent money to writers who had fallen on hard times. Laughlin was a pioneer in the world of sport, founding Alta, a ski area in Utah beloved for its light powder and cheap lift tickets. In his later years, he returned to his youthful dreams of writing poetry. Just before he died, Laughlin was working on Byways, an extended narrative he was writing in a meter he had learned from Kenneth Rexroth, another New Directions poet.

--By Eugene Linden