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From the book "the 100 year old man who climbed out of the window~" On the page 37

If he was half as crazy as his father , then he was capable of anything was how Mr. Wholesale Gustavsson saw it,and since he wanted to be around quite a bit longer ...

It is hard to understand the structure of this sentence ,especially the usage of 'how' on the second line. If I replace' how' as' that ', would it be ok ?

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  • This book was translated from the Swedish: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… You should capitalize your title. The sentence is not well structure.
    – Lambie
    Commented Jun 25, 2019 at 19:17

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It might help if you read it like this

"If he was half as crazy as his father, then he was capable of anything" was how Mr. Wholesale Gustavsson saw it, and since he wanted to be around quite a bit longer...

Here, I'm using the quotation marks to indicate the portion that is the man's thought/perspective. You can replace how with the way in which,

"If he was half as crazy as his father, then he was capable of anything" was the way in which Mr. Wholesale Gustavsson saw it, and since he wanted to be around quite a bit longer...

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  • Oh thanks million. Your explanation made the sentence clear to understand ~
    – lee
    Commented Mar 11, 2017 at 12:00
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If he was half as crazy as his father , then he was capable of anything was how Mr. Wholesale Gustavsson saw it,and since he wanted to be around quite a bit longer ...

The translation is badly structured.

This would be better English:

How Mr. Wholesale Gustavsson saw it was that if he was half as crazy as his father, then he was capable of anything. And since he wanted to be around quite a bit longer [etc.]

We don't have the name of the other character, which might be used instead of the first "he".

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