He retained his affection for the sea, using a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1934 to sail around the world via Europe, the Suez Canal, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and Hawaii.
[2] He later served in a variety of positions at the College, including Advisor to the Arts, Assistant Librarian, and Lecturer and Professor of English.
[1] Laing's most successful book was The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck, described as an "unexpected sensation" featuring "ghoulish subject matter—including abortions, babies born with fused lower limbs, an epileptic murderer, and a woman driven mad by sadistic research experiments.
[8] These books are representative of Laing's enormously diverse literary output, which included both fiction and nonfiction informed by his days at sea, poetry for The New Yorker and many other prominent literary magazines, and reviews of serious contemporary poetry and drama noted decades later for their balanced acknowledgment of experimental and political strains in literature of the period.
[9][10] Laing was also a co-founder of a newsletter opposed to the Vietnam War called American Voters Betrayed By Johnson, which eventually evolved into the left-wing political journal Groundswell Quarterly.