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Tar Heel People/June/1388 words A Writer's Companion By Ralph Grizzle The azaleas were in full bloom when we visited with Louis Rubin Jr. back in April. Rubin's Chapel Hill residence occupies a narrow plot of ground within walking distance of the university where he spent more than two decades helping young writers blossom. I knocked on the door. He opened it and beckoned for me to come inside. I followed him to his study, a dimly lit room that posed a stark contrast to the street outside. The room was cluttered with books and paintings, all lending testimony to Rubin's life as an artist, teacher, writer, editor and publisher. I asked about the paintings, almost all of ships and freighters. He told me that their origin went back four or five years, when he and an old college friend began researching a book. They traveled from Hampton Roads to Corpus Christi (Texas) photographing seaports and writing about them. Rubin began illustrating ships, fulfilling a childhood love of the huge monolithic seagoing vessels. "I grew up in Charleston," he explains, "so my love of ships started as a child. I used to hang out at Adger's Wharf watching the shrimp trawlers and cargo launches come in." When "Seaports of the South: A Journey" was published in 1998, it marked Rubin's 48th book. About half of those books, he says, he either edited or compiled. But the other half, he penned himself. Besides ships, he has written about baseball, writing, the South and, another passion, trains. Following a stint with the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946, Rubin set out to photograph trains while working as a newspaper reporter at the Bergen (New Jersey) Evening Record. It was only a hobby. But like most of his hobbies, Rubin found a book in it. This fall his 50th book (between his upcoming book and the one on seaports, Rubin published one on baseball, another passion), will look back at his love affair with the diesel locomotives of the past. Rubin epitomizes my image of a great writer. "Do you do your work on that," I ask, pointing to an old Underwood #5 typewriter sitting atop a desk. "Oh no," he responds, pointing to an new Imac around the corner. "I only use the typewriter to address envelopes. You know, computers don't do that very well.' The Write Start On a cork board above the typewriter are snapshots of writers who Rubin helped to start on their careers: Kaye Gibbons, Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, to name a few. They still stay in touch with him. They send him pictures of their children and notes wishing him well. Rubin was still newspapering when in 1948, he decided to apply to graduate school at John Hopkins. In the following years, he taught writing at the university, before moving to Roanoke, Virginia, in 1957. That year, he founded the creative writing program at Hollins College. During a 10-year stint, he taught, or "encouraged," as he puts it, many budding writers, including some of those just mentioned. "Writers thrive on encouragement," he says. "It is important to let them know that they're wanted. All I tried to do was encourage them and make them think that what they were doing was worthwhile and dignified and a very powerful thing to do. I think a great deal of teaching involves that kind of encouragement." With that notion firmly entrenched, he transferred to UNC-Chapel Hill in 1967 as a professor of American Literature. He was enjoying his post there, but then in 1981, something happened that caused him to rethink what he was doing. That year, Rubin traveled to New York to attend a panel meeting sponsored by the Modern Language Association. The panel discussed the plight of young writers. "The more we talked, the gloomier I got," Rubin says. "I realized it was almost impossible for young writers from the provinces to get a book looked at by New York agents or publishers. It was pretty depressing the more we talked about it. And here I had been encouraging young writers for many years, encouraging them to do something that was becoming harder and harder to do anything with." The Algonquin Story He returned to Chapel Hill with the resolve to do something about that. In 1982, with plenty of optimism and little working capital, he launched Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, so that regional writers "would not have to run the New York gauntlet." He wrote a former Hollins College student, Shannon Ravenel, to ask if she would join him. She would. They raised capital among a small group of friends and financial backers and worked without pay. They began to put out some fine literature and got noticed almost right away. But there was never enough money. Rubin and Ravenel felt the tremendous financial pressure that accompanied the required capital outlay to print and publicize books. Algonquin was not able to dole out large advances or pay tremendous royalties. "Some of our advances were embarrassingly low," Rubin says, noting that many advances did not reach four figures. "But we started the company in order to help young writers get launched. We wanted to do the best possible thing for the writers. We never lost an author on an advance." Tiny Algonquin had to be crafty in marketing its books. Without huge marketing budgets, getting the word out relied on getting reviews picked up by the press. The company came up with some creative ways to do that, particularly with one of Jill McCorkle's first books. McCorkle had written a book, The Cheer Leader, but Rubin told her she would have to wait until the company could publish it. Algonquin could only publish one fiction title per catalog, he explained. "We restricted ourselves with fiction, because we thought nonfiction would sell best," he says. "Of course, that proved to be wrong." In the meantime, McCorkle wrote another book, July 7. Rubin and Ravenel thought it would be a good idea to market both books at once as a publicity hook. It worked. The two books were widely publicized. Unfortunately, Algonquin did not have the funds for proper follow up, to send the author on tour or take out display ads. Sales lagged, despite the good publicity. McCorkle's dual hits sold only about 3,000 copies of each book. With Clyde Edgerton's Rainey, fledgling Algonquin could not afford large press runs. The company sold 19,000 copies during the first season, but in five separate printings, which meant that there were no economies of scale to reduce the cost of printing and raise much-needed profitability. "We couldn't take the chance of printing a large number of books and getting a low per unit cost," Rubin says. "We couldn't afford to get stuck with them. We simply did not have the capital to take the chances." Money became increasingly more of an issue. Algonquin was unable to keep pace. "I was waking up at 3 in the morning wondering how we were going to pay the bills," Rubin says. "It put a tremendous strain on us." So in 1989, the company was forced to sell to New York-based Workman Publishing, a publisher of children's books, cookbooks and calendars. Workman brought to bear the financial support and marketing strength to give Algonquin a national presence. "It's easy to find good editors but difficult to find good marketing people," Rubin says. "That's what Workman provided." While Algonquin continued to operate fairly autonomously, "it wasn't the same," Rubin laments. "We could no longer call our own shots. If we wanted to take a chance on writer we had to clear it with New York." Rubin worked as publisher and editorial director until 1992, when he decided to call it a day. Looking Back He would, of course, do it all over again. But he says he would tell his writers that after they had made a certain amount of money, they would need find another publisher. "Literary publishing houses have to stay small to survive on a profit basis," he says. And while Algonquin's success - Algonquin is, after all, a highly respected publishing firm - gives Rubin a certain sense of satisfaction, he also lives with a gnawing sense of failure. "I guess we proved a point but failed in setting up a small Southern independent publishing house that would publish nationally," he says. "When I look back, though, we made very few mistakes." But the Algonquin story is only part of Louis Rubin's life story. From the perspective of the retired publisher and professor, he sees himself as having been a teacher all those years. Not just at the universities. "Even editing was teaching," he says. And while he is proud of Algonquin, it is not the thing he is most proud of in his professional career. That distinction belongs to his students. And not just the ones who went on to become famous -- all of them, he says. What's ahead, I ask the 76-year-old Rubin. He looks at me wryly and replies: 77. |
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