The Way It Wasn't2006

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...