Kenneth Rexroth and James Laughlin: Selected Letters

I like the genre of collected letters, so I tackled this book even though I don't like Rexroth's poetry nor do I think he's a reliable literary critic. Laughlin owned New Directions, a very important publishing house, without which innumerable avant-garde writers would have been unpublished. This is a selection of their correspondence from 1937 to 1981, with an emphasis on what Rexroth had to say. The letters are heavily annotated and would be of great use to anyone interested in obscure writers, poets, translators, and various artistic figures of that time. Laughlin was an heir to the Jones-Laughlin steel fortune, and his generosity made a big difference in supporting the avant-garde of that era. Rexroth was older than most of the Beat generation and was sort of the paterfamilias of that crowd. I have never thought the San Francisco Renaissance to have much artistic merit but you be your own judge.