Word Workers

A few publishers honestly subordinate money-making to the aim of printing valuable literature whenever it turns up. But even they are likely to miss it either because they are slow in recognizing it or because they do not know where it can be found. To bridge this gap in communication between writers and readers small, independent presses every once in a while appear. Liable to crankiness, preciosity and short wind, a few nevertheless make themselves useful. Last week an interesting candidate for usefulness published its fifth book in a series devoted to "work of individualists." The press: New Directions, of Norfolk, Conn. The editor: 23-year-old James Laughlin IV of the Pittsburgh steel family.

In contrast with similar presses of the past, such as the Black Sun Press conducted in Paris by the late Henry Grew ("Harry") Crosby, New Directions professes a social purpose. Editor Laughlin believes with I. A. Richards and most other competent critics that language, like a swimming pool, needs to be constantly renewed and purified for the pleasure and health of those who use it. If stagnant associations and cliches can be broken up in people's minds they will be more imaginative and receptive to ideas of social change. Says Editor Laughlin: "It is the word worker who must show the way." Less subliminal than that of transition (see p. 68), his program emphasizes nimbleness, freshness and precision. Readers will find a high batting average in New Directions' inexpensive output for its first season:

An anthology, New Directions in Prose and Poetry ($2), including a translation of a famed essay by Jean Cocteau on the Painter Chirico, four good poems by Wallace Stevens on the Idea of Man, suave Surrealist stories by Montagu O'Reilly, fantasies by Henry Miller, incorrigible author of the more-than-Rabelaisian Tropic of Cancer.

Not Alone Lost ($2), sharp, readable but disorderly free verse by Robert McAlmon, who published Ernest Hemingway's first book in the Contact Editions, Paris.

Poems 1929-1936 ($2), by Dudley Fitts, learned, skillful, audacious.

Twelve Poets of the Pacific ($2.50), an anthology of verse written with unusual care and style in traditional metrical forms, edited by Stanford University's Yvor Winters.

White Mule ($2.50), a novel by William Carlos Williams about a New York immigrant family on the make.

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