James Laughlin (1914-1997) - poet, ladies' man, heir to a steel fortune, and the founder of New Directions Publishing - left behind files crammed full of photos, letters, clippings, and notes.
The Way It Wasn't is the gorgeous scrapbook of that collection, selected and edited by Mr. Laughlin's son-in-law, Daniel Javitch, with Barbara Epler, Editor-in-Chief of New Directions. It includes Laughlin's observations on the personalities of twentieth-century culture, including Tennessee Williams, Thomas Merton, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Jean Cocteau, Lillian Hellman, and Allen Ginsberg.
For instance, he relates that Djuna Barnes "came into the ND office to tell me that the next printing of
Nightwood was to be done on paper that would last for 1,000 years. I called the dealers... but the best they could promise was 700 years. She was very put out with me, declared me an idiot and theatened me with her cane."
This event will combine projected images from the collection with Laughlin's hilarious and caustic comments on the literary world of the twentieth century and the story of how the editors sifted through his massive files.
Daniel Javitch is a Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University.
Gus Powell is an award-winning photographer whose books include
The Company of Strangers. He served as the photo editor for
The Way It Wasn't.
