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James Laughlin (1914-97), the bold and fiercely independent poet and founder of New Directions Publishing in 1936, championed new poetry, experimental prose, and controversial plays. His "stable" included Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Tennessee Williams, Christopher Isherwood, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and, at one point, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Franz Kafka. Hear the man tell the origins story of New Directions, including living with Gertrude Stein, his assessment of Pound’s decline into madness, and much more in this historic 1975 conversation with Susan Howe and Charles Ruas.