Without Louis

Although I knew Louis Rubin for more than forty years, I would like, now that he is gone, to concentrate on a fairly short period in the 1970s and 1980s when he and I collaborated—one could fairly say conspired—most closely.

In 1973 I found myself with some time on my hands. Looking for an amusing project, I thought of something to do with American humor, and I presented the case to some friends in the Chapel Hill English department. To Hugh Holman, Lewis Leary, Blyden Jackson, Richard Fogle, and Louis Rubin I casually said, “Look: there have been two Oxford Books of American Verse, which contain almost nothing light, and an Oxford Book of Light Verse, which contains almost nothing American; but there is no Oxford Book of American Light Verse. I think somebody ought to rectify that, but I can’t think of anybody qualified.” I don’t remember how Hugh, Lewis, Blyden, and Rich responded, but Louis’s reaction I do remember: direct as always, he asked, “Why don’t you do it?”

I didn’t even know how to go about such a thing. “Write to them,” Louis said. So I wrote to the Oxford University Press, USA, suggesting that somebody should undertake such a project. After some back and forth, I submitted a tentative table of contents and a preface. They responded rather grudgingly but agreed to give the project a try. Needing a lot of help, I talked with people in Chapel Hill and wrote to others all over. John Hollander and George Starbuck had plenty of useful ideas, but nobody had better ideas than Louis, who seemed to have read everything, including some very remote writings from American literature.

So, after some years, with a good deal of pushing and pulling, adding and subtracting, I finally presented my Oxford editor, James Raimes, with a paper bag containing hundreds of pages—literally cut and pasted—prompting him to say, “I thought this was supposed to be light verse.” Along the way I had corresponded with William Styron (another friend of Louis’s), David Ogilvy, and Max Schulman and had telephone conversations with Edward Gorey and the widow of W. C. Handy. I sought Louis’s advice at every step, and I acknowledged his help in the preface. On one of my last visits in 2013, I gave him a spare copy, since he needed something to read.

In the early 1980s, when I had published some parodies, satires, and jokes in the Sewanee Review and elsewhere, Louis came to me with the idea of producing a magazine of literary humor, and I jumped at the chance. I had fun gathering old pieces from magazines as well as writing some new items, but I expressed misgivings about finding a publisher. “Oh,” Louis said, “I’ve already found one: Nick Lyons.” The Uneeda Review came out in 1984, with contributions by Lee Smith as well as Louis and me, and found some buyers. It was all Louis’s doing, from the original idea to the selection of the publisher; I was a grateful passenger, along for the ride. From inception to publication, Louis did all the heavy lifting, and he was wonderful at it.

(Sixteen years after the Uneeda Review appeared, at Easter of 2000—which became notorious as the weekend of Elián González, the hapless little Cuban boy who was all over the news—I had a very vivid dream to the effect that Louis and I decided to prepare a Uneeda Number Two. I never got much beyond the title and a sketch of the front cover, but Louis encouraged me to continue. But, alas, we both had too much else going on and never got around to finishing the project. Just lately, going through boxes of miscellaneous documents, I’ve come across some very funny satires and parodies that Louis wrote but, as far as I know, never published. And I’ve done a thing or two myself. I’ve talked with Lee Smith. Stay tuned.

Louis and his wife Eva were both accomplished painters. Louis knew everything about ships, boats, fish...