In fall of 1939, New Directions Press founder James Laughlin decided to take a brief sabbatical from the day-to-day management of his publishing house, and hired poet Kenneth Patchen to help fill in during his absence. Patchen, whose work New Directions also published, was to assume responsibility for “shipping, book-keeping, letters, addressing, filing, etc.” Apparently, things did not go as planned. Below, amid a flurry of all-cap exclamations, a gobsmacked Laughlin asked Patchen why numerous orders for NDP books remained unfilled at bookstores across the country.
Kenneth, what in Christ’s sweet name is going on. You’re breaking me down. I’ve just received another complaint from a store that no books have arrived. WHAT IS THE MATTER? It gives me nightmares. If this goes on my business will be ruined. People will not put with such service. This complaint comes from Milwaukee—the Bskp of Harry Schwartz–that order went in two weeks ago and they have gotten no books. Now WHAT IS THE TROUBLE? I can’t dope it out. Are you eating the orders? Are you using them to paper the walls of your private megalomaniacal world? Or what?
If you sent out that order, and the ones for Doubleday and Goldman in St. Louis (check back in your record to see) then get after Fields and have him put a tracer on them right away.
Or do I have to come home and unscramble things? Are there dozens of orders that you have overlooked that I haven’t heard about?
You just can’t do this to me. It isn’t right. You say you believe in good writing and then you stick a knife in it by not sending out the books.
Jesus, it ties me in knots.
Maybe your system is balled up. You remember what I told you to do. Put all stock orders (orders for more than one title) in a field and every time a new book arrives in the shop go through them and send the new book out to every place that ordered. Now that ought to be easy as falling off a log.
The only thing I can think of is that you may have been waiting for some of the other books.
If that’s the case, all is lost. Just put a match under the stable and burn the whole place up. If those Miller books and the NDs and FWTs haven’t been in the stores these past week—when the ads broke and the reviews started to appear—then I can just kiss goodbye to my investment and fold up and quit.