Against the Grain: Interviews with Maverick American Publishers

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in a briefpartnership with Peter Martin, founded City Lights bookstore and publishing company in San Francisco in 1953. The publication ofAllen Ginsberg's Howl, and the trial ofCity Lights on obscenity charges, resulted in a landmark judicial ruling against censorship, and in national prominence for the publisher and the writers ofthe so-called Beat Generation. In addition to Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Jack Kerouac, City Lights authors include Kenneth Patchen, Malcolm Lowry, Edward Dahlberg, Julian Beck, and Antonin Artaud. Mr. Ferlinghetti was educated at the University ofNorth Carolina and holds an M.A. in artfrom Columbia and a Doctorat de l'Universite in art/rom the Sorbonne. In July 1981, the loft offices ofCity Lights Bookstore, where this conversation took place, were hung with more than a dozen of 88 AGAINST THE GRAIN the publisher's canvases, some ofthem very recent. A wellknown poet, Ferlinghetti is also the author ofmore than a dozen books, including Pictures of the Gone World, A Coney Island of the Mind, and The Populist Manifestos. DANA: You said, when I talked to you earlier on the phone, that you're "on leave." What's that mean? FERLINGHETTI: Well, I'm painting. See, these are all my paintings. DANA: I noticed them on my way in. Does that mean you're giving yourself more to painting these days than to publishing ? Or writing? FERLINGHETTI: Oh yeah. DANA: Why is that? FERLINGHETTI: I have a co-editor here, Nancy Peters. The one that did the Literary San Francisco book. She's the main editor here. She's the brains of the outfit. DANA: Is there some reason that you're moving away from publishing? FERLINGHETTI: Well, there are just a lot of other things I want to do. The business doesn't leave time enough to do them all, so ... DANA: When did you get interested in painting? Didn't you do an M.A. at ... ? FERLINGHETTI: The paintings on this wall are from the fifties. I've been painting a long time. DANA: You did an M.A. at Columbia on Ruskin and Turner, didn't you? FERLINGHETTI: Yeah. DANA: How did that all start? The interest in painting. FERLINGHETTI: Well, I was on the GI Bill in Paris at the Sorbonne, and I was going to an art school at night, and two, three days a week. That little black and white one there, I did in those days. DANA: Does your move toward painting reflect the discontent with American poetry expressed in your manifestos recently? FERLINGHETTI: Well, no, I think it's the other way around. Lawrence Ferlinghetti 89 The manifestos really enunciate what I wanted to happen with the Pocket Poets series. DANA: What you wanted to happen with the Pocket Poets series? FERLINGHETTI: Yeah. Well, it's what we're still trying to make happen. There can't be a revolution when there isn't one. For instance, in the fifties, when we published the Beat writers first, there was this whole group of writers that no one was publishing. Now, ifJ hadn't been in India. . . DANA: James Laughlin? FERLINGHETTI: Yeah. Ifhe hadn't been in Indiain the fifties, he probably would have picked up on all these properties. Like Ginsberg had sent Laughlin poems before Howl. DANA: Oh, he had? FERLINGHETTI: And when I published Howl, JL wrote me and said, "Ginsberg suddenly got good." Well, I mean this is strictly my point of view. I don't know ifJ will agree with me or not, but he was in India editing Perspective USA. He left New Directions in the hands of other people. I mean he was still the owner, but he had other editors there while he was away. I think they sort ofhad different tastes than he did. I've never discussed this with him, and I don't know whether this is true or not. All I know is that in the fifties there was this hiatus when no one was publishing this hot group of writers. Grove Press didn't exist yet. This was, say, 1953. So that's when we rushed into the gap. And New Directions was always my model and ideal as a publisher. JL is the greatest of the contemporary publishers. Of the publishers of the avant-garde, or of bellelettres , or the modern classics. There's no one else that can compare with him...