Rubin read from his latest book, "An Honorable Estate: My Time in the Working Press," at the Bull's Head Bookshop. The book follows the publisher's early career as a young reporter in Virginia.
Rubin said he wrote the book because he was curious about what had led him to becoming a teacher and founder of a publishing company.
"Ever since I was 8, 9, 10 years old, I wanted to write the news," he said. "I wanted to figure out how it was that lifetime goal of mine, somehow I didn't follow it."
In fact, diverging from his reporting aspirations helped Rubin to end up as a professor emeritus of English at the University, he said. "Teaching wasn't something I had planned," he said. "I was kind of backed into it."
Television cameras rolled as Rubin began to read excerpts from his book. The sections he read told of his early experiences with the newspaper industry as an editor working in the days of liner type machines.
Bull's Head Manager Erica Eisdorfer said she wasn't at all surprised the network was interested in covering the event.
"It's about his `oeuvre,' the body of his work," she said. "Louis Rubin is a powerhouse in the publishing industry. He literally discovered such writers as Kaye Gibbons and Clyde Edgerton. He's a major figure."
But as he sat at the front of the small audience of people before him, Rubin seemed not to be taken at all by his accomplishments.
In a scruffy southern accent, he proceeded to amuse the audience with the antics of several people he'd worked with as a young reporter in Staunton, Va.
