The Way It Wasn't: From the Files of James Laughlin - Hardcover

Inhaltsangabe

James Laughlin—poet, ladies' man,heir to a steel fortune, and the founder of New Directions—was still atwork on his autobiography when he died at 83. He left behind personalfiles crammed with memories and memorabilia: in "M" he is takingMarianne Moore to Yankee games (outings captured here in charmingsnapshots) to discuss "arcane mammals," and in "N" nearly plunging off amountain, hunting butterflies with Nabokov ("Volya was a doll in a verysevere upper-crust Russian way").

With an accent on humor, TheWay It Wasn't is a scrapbook loaded with ephemera—letters andmemories, clippings and photographs. This richly illustrated albumglitters like a magpie's nest, if a magpie could have known TennesseeWilliams, W.C. Williams, Merton, Miller, Stein, and Pound. In "C": "Iwish that nice Jean Cocteau were still around. He took me to lunch atthe Grand Véfours in the Palais-Royal and explained all about flyingsaucers. He understood mechanical things. He would advise me." In "P":"There was not much 'gracious living' in Pittsburgh, where at one house,the butler passed chewing gum on a silver salver after coffee." And:"The world is full of a large number of irritating people." In "H"there's Lillian Hellman: "What a raspy character. When I knocked at herdoor to try to borrow one of her books (hoping to butter her up) sheonly opened her door four inches and said words to the effect: 'Fuckoff, you rapist.'" Marketing in "M": "I think it's important to get the'troubadours' into the title. That's a 'buy-me' word." In "G": "Olgaasked Allen Ginsberg if he was also buying Pound Conference T-shirts forhis grandchildren. She was most lovable throughout." In "L": "WyndhamLewis wrote 'Why don't you stop New Directions, your books are crap.'"And we find love in "L": "Cicero noted that an old love pinches like acrab." But in The Way It Wasn't James Laughlin's love of thecrazy world and his crazier authors does not pinch a bit: it glows withwit and enlarges our feeling for the late great twentieth century.

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