An Honorable Estate

Louis D. Rubin has enjoyed a long and productive career as a professor of English and author and editor of many books. He was one of the first teachers of creative writing courses anywhere - at Hollins College, where one of his students was novelist-to-be Lee Smith. He is also the founder of Algonquin Books. Few realize, however, that from his pre-teens, Rubin grew up wanting to be a newspaperman, a working journalist. An Honorable Estate is Rubin's reminiscence of his years as a journalist - the career he pursued with youthful passion for a few years after his return from WWII. His book looks at his pursuit, his experience, and his ultimate abandonment of the field. "I wanted to figure out why I ended up leaving the profession that I had always wanted to follow, and that I continue to admire so much, and what that meant about my own capabilities," he says.