James Laughlin--poet, ladies' man, heir to a steel fortune, and thefounder of New Directions--was still at work on his autobiography when hedied at 83. He left behind personal files crammed with memories andmemorabilia: in "M" he is taking Marianne Moore to Yankee games (outingscaptured here in charming snapshots) to discuss "arcane mammals," andin "N" nearly plunging off a mountain, hunting butterflies with Nabokov("Volya was a doll in a very severe upper-crust Russian way").Withan accent on humor, The Way It Wasn't is a scrapbook loaded withephemera--letters and memories, clippings and photographs. This richlyillustrated album glitters like a magpie's nest, if a magpie could haveknown Tennessee Williams, W.C. Williams, Merton, Miller, Stein, andPound. In "C": "I wish that nice Jean Cocteau were still around. He tookme to lunch at the Grand Vefours in the Palais-Royal and explained allabout flying saucers. He understood mechanical things. He would adviseme." In "P": "There was not much 'gracious living' in Pittsburgh, whereat one house, the butler passed chewing gum on a silver salver aftercoffee." And: "The world is full of a large number of irritatingpeople." In "H" there's Lillian Hellman: "What a raspy character. When Iknocked at her door to try to borrow one of her books (hoping to butterher up) she only opened her door four inches and said words to theeffect: 'Fuck off, you rapist.'" Marketing in "M": "I think it'simportant to get the 'troubadours' into the title. That's a 'buy-me'word." In "G": "Olga asked Allen Ginsberg if he was also buying PoundConference T-shirts for his grandchildren. She was most lovablethroughout." In "L": "Wyndham Lewis wrote 'Why don't you stop NewDirections, your books are crap.'" And we find love in "L": "Ciceronoted that an old love pinches like a crab." But in The Way It Wasn'tJames Laughlin's love of the crazy world and his crazier authors doesnot pinch a bit: it glows with wit and enlarges our feeling for the lategreat twentieth century.