Diane Keaton charms in 'Then Again'

THEN AGAIN, by Diane Keaton. Random House, 265 pp., $26.

One of the key insights of Diane Keaton's memoir, "Then Again," appears in its final pages: "In a way I became famous for being an inarticulate woman." In that sweetly self-aware light, this book is just what you might expect: a self-deprecating, charming, occasionally wise, occasionally cringe-worthy collage of outbursts, anecdotes and musings.

Collage is a technique Keaton learned at her mother's knee. In 1961, when Diane was 16, Dorothy Hall (nee Keaton) packed her four children into the family station wagon and drove them from California to New York to see an exhibit called "The Art of Assemblage" at the Museum of Modern Art. "Soon she was collaging almost anything," remembers Keaton, "including collage trash cans and collage storage boxes made with lumpy papier-mâché; she even collaged the inside of all the kitchen cabinets."

Included in "Then Again" are many excerpts from Dorothy's 85 journals, along with photographs of their bindings and contents. The journals document the emotional peaks and valleys of Dorothy's life as a wife and mother, her frustrated ambition, plans for self-improvement and reactions to her daughter's success.

Most interesting are the parts dealing with Keaton's career. She moves to New York, gets a part in the musical "Hair" and doesn't take the extra $50 per show offered for stripping in the final scene. She meets Woody Allen and stars with him in "Play It Again Sam." She suffers from bulimia for about five years before a shrink helps her.

Keaton has never married and is still pretty much of a teenager as far as romance is concerned. She's never gotten over any of her famous boyfriends. "I miss Woody. . . . I know he's borderline repulsed by the grotesque nature of my affection."

"Once Warren [Beatty] chose to shine his light on you, there was no going back," she explains, but she never "quite passed the savvy/smarts/endurance test."

Next, she provides a list of all her notes and phone messages from Al Pacino. "After Al," she writes, "I lost all semblance of . . . sexy confidence. Maybe I wasn't pretty enough for Al."

Last but not least, at the age of 57, she is so dazzled she forgets her lines every time she and Jack Nicholson run through their kiss on the set of "Something's Gotta Give."

More self-esteem might have made her more successful in love, but as a memoirist, her lack of egotism is an asset. "Every audition was lost to either Blythe Danner or Jill Clayburgh, who weren't 'too nutty,' " she writes of her early struggles. When she wins an Academy Award for playing Annie Hall, she dismisses it as an "affable version of myself."

It was a brilliant idea for Keaton to adopt a baby girl at 50 and a son a few years later. She may not have been wife material, but she was made to be a mom, and though she has buried both of her parents, it doesn't seem that she's ever been happier than she is now, in the sweet triangle of a family she's created.