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314 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
"humor" is harder to take. A man of good quality should change
his name every ten years and have a go with plastic surgery."
One reason for Pound's inability to get any articles or short pieces
into print during his years of incarceration was his well-known
opinion of American publishers. In 1939, he wrote to Kunitz and
Haycraft as follows:
"The printing centre for live writing in the English or American
language was shifted to New York in 1917 or 1919. After that war
the muckers of the American publishing swamp did nothing and
London again took over the lead in this field. America once again
gets her stuff after London has had it." 2
American publishers during the 1930s did little more than print
some "social protest" novels by the hack writers on The New
Masses. In the 1940s, they printed a great deal of poor stuff, mostly
war propaganda. One might suppose that war propaganda would
be exciting, but this material was not. In the 1950s, they began
to unmire, and now it seems that a few good things will be printed.
It is interesting to note for the record that the best avant-garde
periodicals during the years 1948-1955 were those that Ezra inspired
from the madhouse. He was still keeping the banner flying,
just as he had done in 1912 with Poetry; in 1917 with The Little
Review, and in 1927 with The Exile.
These little publications were sometimes printed on hand
presses by members of Pound's circle. T. David Horton was printing
Mood; Dallam Flynn was printing Four Pages; William Mc­
Naughton was printing Strike; and I was printing Three Hands.
And there were others. In Provincetown, Paul Koch was printing
some good items.
The editorial tone of these "little magazines", which achieved
very little in the way of circulation, was often as gruff as Ezra himself
had been in his writing and such broadcasts as his exhortation
on the work of E. E. Cummings, when he demanded of his audience,
"well dam you read Cummings if you won't read Brooks
Adams/ or better read both of them and try to find out what has
been done to you/ what is being done to you/ conducive to material/
spiritual and intellectual RUIN."
Pound was outraged when President Truman seized the steel