One effective way to get a sense of how Pound worked is to look at his marginal notes in his readings of others, and to look at his unfinished bits--his starts at essays. There are alot of these in the Beinecke Library, Yale. His marks are all over the Fenollosa material, and give the sense that unlike the meticulous planner Joyce, for example, Pound read and formulated as he read. Probably talked through his ideas a bit, or formulated them while writing to others, then to the typewriter. Achilles Fang's dissertation notes also show how Pound ran thru the Histoire Generale de al Chine, picking here and there. Fang goes to some length to explain the intellectual importance (or lack thereof, if you prefer) of all of that skipping around Pound does.
 
<<< "C.Brandon Rizzo" <[log in to unmask]>  1/17  2:58p >>>
Robert:
I agree that laziness may be a symptom of technological advances, viz., the
computer. Yet most young writers that I've met use notebooks or journals. It
seems to me that the initial scribbles stay initial, i.e., there's little to
no serious 'work' ethic. Much writing is being done, but very little
revision, esp. at the undergraduate levels. This may be instilled by reading
a 'collegiate demagog' such as Kerouac, who condensed his literary ideas into
the essay 'Spontaneous Prose'..."First thought best thought" seems to be the
maxim. Of course, this can lead to a lack of real delving, esp. if one does
not consider that 'On The Road' was rewritten several times. Just a thought.
Which leads to the inevitable question of Pound: How did he actually work?
What were his habits, his quirks of process? Where might one find such
information?
 
--CB