Coming Unbuttoned

The first four chapters of this autobiography are unassuming and sensitive as Broughton ( The Androgyne Journal ) writes of his early life. Readers learn that the octogenarian poet and experimental filmmaker enjoyed dressing up in his mother's clothes, adored the father who died when Broughton was in kindergarten, was constantly at odds with his social-climbing mother and detested the stepfather who shipped him off to military school. It's easy to sympathize as he talks of school friendships, his college years at Stanford (``I had requested the Sorbonne or Oxford or Columbia. My mother only wanted me to learn how to get rich and meet the right people.'') and his early adulthood (sailing on a passenger cargo ship, then settling in New York City). But the larger portion of this volume is devoted to the postwar years, which he spent in San Francisco and Europe. Having met many notable people, Broughton forsakes introspection for literary gossip and name-dropping: Kenneth Rexroth, Pauline Kael, Dylan Thomas, Anais Nin. The birth of a daughter is dispensed with in two sentences. Broughton's insistence on making himself the center of attention increasingly intrudes. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)