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

Laughlin, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811216764 ISBN 13: 9780811216760

Publisher: New Directions, 2006

Synopsis

Lavishly illustrated, The Way It Wasn't offers an intimate firsthand encounter with 20th-century Modernism, from the extraordinary man who defined it for America.

James Laughlin―poet, ladies' man, heir to a steel fortune, and the founder of New Directions―was still at work on his autobiography when he died at 83. He left behind personal files crammed with memories and memorabilia: in "M" he is taking Marianne Moore to Yankee games (outings captured here in charming snapshots) to discuss "arcane mammals," and in "N" nearly plunging off a mountain, hunting butterflies with Nabokov ("Volya was a doll in a very severe upper-crust Russian way").

With an accent on humor, The Way It Wasn't is a scrapbook loaded with ephemera―letters and memories, clippings and photographs. This richly illustrated album glitters like a magpie's nest, if a magpie could have known Tennessee Williams, W.C. Williams, Merton, Miller, Stein, and Pound. In "C": "I wish that nice Jean Cocteau were still around. He took me to lunch at the Grand Véfours in the Palais-Royal and explained all about flying saucers. 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 her door to try to borrow one of her books (hoping to butter her up) she only opened her door four inches and said words to the effect: 'Fuck off, 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": "Olga asked Allen Ginsberg if he was also buying Pound Conference T-shirts for his grandchildren. She was most lovable throughout." In "L": "Wyndham Lewis 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 a crab." But in The Way It Wasn't James Laughlin's love of the crazy world and his crazier authors does not pinch a bit: it glows with wit and enlarges our feeling for the late great twentieth century.

About this title

About the Author

James Laughlin (1914–1997) founded New Directions in 1936 while still a student at Harvard. He wrote and compiled more than a dozen books of poetry as well as stories and essays; seven volumes of his correspondence with his authors are available from W.W. Norton. 

Barbara Epler is Editor-in-Chief of New Directions.

Daniel Javitch is Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University. He is the author of Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England, Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso, and is at work on a book tentatively entitled Thinking About Genre in the Sixteenth Century. He has been, since 1972, a director of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Review

“Readers who revel in literary gossip are in for a real treat this holiday.... The Way It Wasn't retails amusing anecdotes and outrageous opinions about all these writers... along with rants about the book industry, memories of childhood and youth and affectionate reminiscences of old girlfriends.”
- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

“Laughlin was more than the greatest American publisher of the twentieth century: His press was the twentieth century.”
- Eliot Weinberger, The Nation

“I urge you to read this unforgettable parade of portraits ... which changed my life and those of my peers.”
- Irving Malin, The Hollins Critic

“A selection of glittering fragments punctuated by superb illustrations.”
- George Core, Sewanee Review

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0811216764
• ISBN 13: 9780811216760
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Epler Barbara, Javitch Daniel