City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s

by Edmund White

Hardcover, 2009

Status

Available

Call number

MEMO Whit

Genres

Biography & Memoir

Collection

Michael C. Weidemann LGBT Library at Gay City

Publication

Bloomsbury USA (2009), Edition: First American Edition, 304 pages

Description

"City Boy" tells the story of White's years in 1970s New York, bouncing from intellectual encounters with Susan Sontag and Harold Brodkey to his erotic entanglements downtown to the city's burgeoning gay scene of artists and writers.

Media reviews

The New York Times

“City Boy” may lack some of the fineness and intensity of “My Lives,” which remains the essential Edmund White memoir, the one to read first. But this one is salty and buttery, for sure.

User reviews

LibraryThing member bbrad

This vastly entertaining memoir focuses on three scenes from Edmund White's life in the 1960s and '70s: New York City at its depths; the author's life as a gay man; and the literary and artistic crowd that White hung with. These three scenes often intertwine, and when they don't, White jumps agiley

from one to another.

This prolific author has given us in years past - in the twenty two books so far to his credit - his coming out story, stories of lustful romps and travels, gay novels and examinations of prominent gay writers. He's not shy, and he seems completely candid in talking about the psyche and the flesh (he is, after all, the co-author of "The Joy of Gay Sex"). This book chooses an era (1960s, 1970s) and a place (New York City) that showcase that candor:

"We tried to trick every night, if we could do it efficiently, but reserved the weekends for our serious hunting sorties. I'd clean my apartment carefully, change the sheets and towels, put a hand towel under the pillow (the 'trick towel' for mopping up the come) along with the tube of lubricant (usually water-soluble K-Y) . . . You'd buy eggs and bacon and jam and bread for toast, if you wanted to prove the next morning that you were 'marriage material'. You'd place an ashtray, cigarettes, and a lighter on the bedside table. You'd lower the lights and stack the record player with suitable mood music (Peggy Lee, not the Stones) before you headed out on the prowl. All this to prove that you were 'civilized', not just one more voracious two-bit whore."

The era of this book, bifurcated by the Stonewall raid in 1969 that marked the begnning of "gay liberation", was a heady time for gay men. As White relates: "Just as the Crash of 1929 ended the Roaring Twenties, so the AIDS epidemic of 1981 ended the sexy seventies. Sontag once said to me that in all of human history in only one brief period were people free to have sex when and how they wanted - between 1960, with the introduction of the first birth-control pills, and 1981, with the advent of AIDS." That disease took most of White's friends, and he, himself, is positive.

He observes this about gay relationships of those times: "It was as if the three elements (love, sex, friendship) that straight people centered on one other person we gays distributed over several people, and this distribution was a more solid form than companionate marriage." This could only happen, of course, in big cities where there was a plethora of gay folk to fit these many roles. Near the end of the book White observes that by the 1980s gays were seeking to find all three elements in one person.

The cruising and sexual abandon that marked the time of this recollection occurred on the streets, and in the bedrooms, of New York City, then at its nadir. In fact, the book begins this way: "In the 1970s in New York everyone slept till noon. It was a grungy, dangerous, bankrupt city without normal services most of the time. The garbage piled up and stunk during long strikes of the sanitation workers. A major blackout led to days and days of looting. We gay guys wore whistles around our necks so we could summon help from other gay men when we were attacked on the streets by gangs living in the projects between Greenwich Village and the West Side leather bars."

But New York's failings were forgiven: "New York seemed either frightening or risible to the rest of the nation. To us, however, it represented the only free port on the entire continent. Only in New York could we walk hand in hand with a member of the same sex. Only in New York could we ignore a rat galloping across our path and head out for a midnight play reading."

An editing job took White to San Francisco in 1971 or so. That city, which was just beginning to accumulate credentials to become the gay capital of the world, did not appeal: "[I]t seemed to us as if everyone in San Francisco were [sic] doing yoga and reading Krishnamurti, gardening and obsessing about the presentation of his or her macrobiotic diet on an artfully misshapen, partially glazed Korean kiln-fired plate. We didn't care what we ate or how our chakras were lining up. We were hungry for fame. We wanted to be noticed." He soon happily found his way back to New York.

The artistic and literay scene in New York, heavily populated by gays, was very accessible to White - indeed, he became part of it. He titillates us with gossip and revealing vignettes, but, except for the closeted few, who exasperated him, not in an unkind way. The only two figures he portrays as not nice are Lillian Hellman (a "liar", "an appaling person" and "an old fashioned Stalinist without scruples") and Susan Sontag. Indeed, a failing of the book is the excessive space White devotes to Sontag and his falling out with her. This relationsip clearly absorbed much of his emotional energy at the time, but it is not particulary interesting.

White is a superb writer and imagist. Here he is, for example, describing "grizzled Oxford dons" who were occasionally invited to dinner by a friend:

"All those lonley intellectuals, their eyes hollowed out from years of reading microfiches and medieval script, their voices hoarse from gabbling to themselves over tinned beans and Bovril in unheated Rooms, were now being stroked and feted and fed. They were like feral cats being tickled behind the ears for the first time. They were purring, though still looking around anxiously for the next boot in the rear, the next nasty review by a rival in the Times Literary Supplement."

The book is full of such delights. I'm ready for his tales of the '80s and 90s.

Show Less

20 more

LibraryThing member paddlebook

Though I was frequently entertained while reading "City Boy," I ultimately found it to be an unsatisfying melange: roughly equal parts heartfelt elegy for the scruffy, menacing, glamorous free-for-all that was New York in the '70s in which Edmund White forged his literary career, and shameless,

profligate name-dropping, with an occasional dash of catty score-settling. As an evocation of a unique cultural moment, the memoir often works, communicating a clear-eyed nostalgia for its milieu (two frequently but not continually overlapping milieus, actually: post-Stonewall gay life, and haute literary culture) that belies the widespread perception of the city at that time as nothing but a crime-ridden hell-hole. (Having spent much time in New York in the late '70s, I can vouch that, while it could be hair-raising at times, it sure wasn't all "Little Murders" and "Taxi Driver.") But I have to echo many of the other reviews in finding the book rambling, consisting too often of little more than strings of nearly free-associative celebrity sightings and dishy non-sequiturs. It's one thing for White to take John Gardner to task for his puritanical pomposity, but what earthly reason can he have for informing us that Gardner "reputedly had had a colostomy"? He seems to have considered the memoir an appropriate repository for every scrap of memory he could dredge up from those times, relevant or not. I couldn't help but wish that White had dispensed with a third or more of the most trivial anecdotes and gossip items, and produced a slimmer volume that better displayed his gifts for nuanced observation and lyrical prose -- something more along the lines of his "Our Paris."

Show Less

LibraryThing member audramelissa

White's memoir begins when he he arrives in New York City from the Midwest where he followed his lover instead of going on to Harvard. He is is not a writer yet and these two decades are a formative time in his literary career.

As a gay man, White was still hoping to be "cured" as he regularly

(like many other gay men at the time) saw a therapist. In 1969, as the gay movement began with Stonewall, White began to embrace his own identity--and he had little choice when, in 1977, he famously co-authored "The Joy of Gay Sex."

The reader is invited to hear White's tales of the famous artists and literary figures he surrounded himself with and his many lovers and experiences before and in the early days of AIDS. This book is gossip and at the same time revelation. This is a social history of New York at that time told by an insider.

Show Less

LibraryThing member bookmaven404

Let me begin by admitting my bias. I have been a fan of Mr. White's work as far back as Nocturnes for the King of Naples, and was privileged to hear Mr. White read from this work before it was published, when he spoke at the Stonewall Library last Spring. So...that out of the way, I have to say

that I thoroughly enjoyed this book, reading it in two sittings, over one weekend.

I've always been fascinated by both gay history and by social commentary. This book combines the best of both these endeavors. White was uniquely positioned to see and comment on the advent of gay liberation, the sexual liberty and excesses of the 70s, and how both of these impacted culture in the gay mecca that was and is New York. White's style in all of this is transcendent, and "user friendly". I found the work far more accessible and far less troubling than his earlier volume of memoirs My Lives. Sadly, the ravages of time and AIDS means that there are few characters who appear in both. But many of my friends, and myself, found White's graphic recounting of his sexual escapades in My Lives troubling, if not downright distasteful. Though I consider myself relatively knowledgeable about this period in gay history, and the denizens who inhabit it, I have to admit that this book sent me scurrying to look up at least a dozen different people who popped up. It's happily led on to further reading by other writers, and Leo Lerman's volume of diaries, The Grand Surprise, is next up on my reading list.

I found this an easier read than some of White's fiction, but no less engaging. but At one point, White observes that "friendship feeds the spirit." So does White's prose.

Show Less

LibraryThing member LSUTiger

I must admit I was a little leery of reading this book as I had heard a good bit how detailed White was in writing about people in the art scene of New York of the 70's, and I worried that I wouldn't know who half the people he referenced were. However, I was really pleasantly surprised when I

received a copy of this book and read it. Yes, White discusses people that I didn’t know, but he does a great job explaining who people were, why they were relevant, and makes his interaction with them (however unknown they may be to the reader) interesting.

This book works on so many different levels, a memoir, a literary history, a culture study, and a travelogue. Edmund White has clearly led an amazing life as he has detailed in previous books, but reading about his early professional years working as a magazine writer and editor is truly fascinating. Who didn’t this man know or work with during the 70’s? In my opinion, a great strength of this book is the job White does capturing the spirit of New York in the 70’s, particularly the gay male culture. I found myself reading it and thinking about the recent documentary film “Gay Sex in the 70’s.” It was an incredible time, and it makes for a story in the life of an incredible writer.

Show Less

LibraryThing member elizatanner

Having not read Edmund White and only knowing of his work by name, I was curious to read this book. I was, however, dissapointed. I realize there are some for whom this will be a good read, but not I. I was hoping for more about the author, but got much about the time and the persons with whom he

dealt. It was more technical in areas in which I hoped for more personable touches. Perhaps I will try his novels and get a better reaction. As for as biographies go, I pass on this one.

Show Less

LibraryThing member pensivepoet

What to say of someone else’s personal history? There are a handful of moments where the prose moves smoothly – describing Hispanic lovers (pg46), his friend Marilyn (pages in the 30’s), Nabokov’s writing (104), the enthusiasm of a friend, etc. Those are the moments where you can see

White’s love of his subjects and the vision is stunning. But the pearls of clear observation are deeply buried under what seems like an endless barrage of gay New York City name-dropping. And, perhaps that is appropriate of such a history. It is not strictly one moment of beauty after another – some of history is just “lived”.

But, if I had to reduce my thoughts down to an answer to “would I recommend this book to another or not?” I would probably recommend Larry Kramer’s Faggots or Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance for flavor--with this history as a backup for summaries sake.

On a purely “keep the reader engaged” level, I would have preferred the history in vignettes organized by person, year or social observation.

Show Less

LibraryThing member CBJames

What makes someone's life worth writing a book about? What makes someone's memoir worth reading? For me there are two possible answers-- either that person has done something worth knowing more about or that person knew people who did.

Edmund White has done things worth knowing more about. He wrote

one of the very first coming-out-novels, A Boy's Own Story, and has become a well-respected man of letters with multiple novels, biographies of Genet, Proust and Rimbaud, and a position teaching writing at Princeton. But before becoming a success, he spent two decades living in New York City where, when he wasn't looking for sex, he met just about everyone on the literary scene that there was to meet: Tennessee Williams, Elizabeth Bishop, Susan Sontag, Gore Vidal, Jame Merrill, and many others.

City Boy is more than a who's who of New York literati; it's a document of a time, a record of what it was like to live as a gay man when living as a gay man was a new idea. In the 1960's, when City Boy opens, being gay meant living alone, in fear, hiding one's true nature from employers, family, even from ones self if possible. All the gay men Mr. White knew, including himself, were in therapy trying to become straight. They all failed. No one thought they could find the right man and settle down; marriage or anything that resembled it were simply not on anyone's radar pre-Stonewall. In 1969, Mr. White participated in the Stonewall riots, a turning point in the gay rights movement and he survived the explosion of easily available sex and drugs that characterized gay life in the 1970's. He not only survived, he came away with many stories to tell.

These stories make for interesting, sometimes shocking, often amusing reading. Mr. White stayed at Peggy Guggenheim's home in Venice for a time and tells the story of Ms. Guggenheim's response to a tourist who stood outside looking at her home and asked her "isn't Peggy Guggenheim dead?" Ms. Guggenheim responded "Yes." City Boy has plenty of dish on others including an interesting chapter on Harold Brodky who was supposed to be working on the greatest novel ever only to publish a mammoth text few people were able to read let alone praise and a long confession about how poorly he treated Susan Sontag who was largely responsible for his success as a novelist.

A memoir can be a significant statement about a person or about a period of time. It can be as moving as a novel if it's able to come together as a such. The first half, perhaps the first two thirds of City Boy come very close to this. Mr. White's portrayal of his own life and the lives of those close to him do create a lively picture of New York when New York was down and out. But the last section of the book becomes a series of scenes, brief views of the famous people Mr. White knew, and City Boy becomes simply a collection of portraits and anecdotes with little sense of purpose to them. By the end there was little feeling of having reached a deeper understanding of the book's subjects. While City Boy falls short in the end, it succeeds as an entertaining, frank portrait of the author's life and of New York City in the 1960's and 1970's.

Show Less

LibraryThing member marblearch

I'll use White's own words: "gauche and self-serving" (p 248). Chapter 17 drops more names than the whole canon of Dominick Dunne's journalism pieces in VF. A big disappointment from an author I admire. True, the background of NYC during this time is fascinating, but it has been better served

elsewhere, notably Larry Kramer's "Faggots."

Show Less

LibraryThing member adelavoe

New York of the late 50’s, the 60’s and the 70’s was a romantic time of shabbiness and low rents. Outcasts were discovering who they really were and gay life was thriving. In a small corner of this gay mecca Edmund White was finding his way amidst a circle of artistic intelligencia –

writers, book and magazine editors, choreographers , photographers, actors, and dancers.

Ordinarily the anecdotes that Professor White presents should be fascinating, however the writing lacks vigor and virtuosity. Truman Capote observed once very astutely that Gore Vidal’s novels lacked a “voice”. Such is the case with the writing of Professor White. Unfortunately, dynamic narrative such as his feud with Susan Sontag reads like a book report.

Still the book was a nostalgic tour through pre-AIDS New York and its name dropped illuminati. It was a stimulating visit.

Show Less

LibraryThing member blakefraina

In Alan Bennett's play The History Boys, when the dimmest of the students is asked to define history, he replies, "It's just one [expletive] thing after another." Funny perhaps, but true.

And it's also the reason I tend to avoid non-fiction...memoirs particularly. At least when one is writing a

biography (particularly about someone who is already dead) or writing about history, the author has enough distance to give the story some shape and ascribe it some sort of meaning. Autobiography is a bit stickier.

I chose to read White's City Boy primarily because of its subtitle, "My Life in New York During the 1960's and 70's." As a music fan, that era in NYC history has always interested me. EVen though the seedy, filthy, dangerous New York of the 1970's has been all but forgotten, it was fertile ground for many of the most influential artists, writers and musicians of the latter part of the Twentieth Century. I figured if anyone could conjur that time period on the page, it would surely be a skillful and evocative writer like White.

Unfortunately I found the book to be dull and almost completely formless. He flits from one episode to another, tepidly dishing the dirt on a lot of hotsy totsy (and mostly dead) literary luminaries, only about half of whom I've heard of. While he does spill a fair amount of ink on the squalid living conditions in pre-boom Manhattan, the descriptions are all fairly dry and cliche (garbage piling in the streets due to strikes, multiple locks on apartment doors) and lack any real flavour of the era. Surprisingly, the rampant sex of that time period is somewhat coyly presented and, in retrospect, primarily only as a set up for the sea change occasioned by the looming AIDS crisis that comes near the book's conclusion.

The most fascinating aspect of the story dealt with the writing of his first novel, Forgetting Elena and his subsequent struggle to get it edited, published, reviewed and recognized. That novel has always been a favourite of mine and, as a writer, the story of how a debut novel goes from idea to publication, was edifying and fascinating. But that, in and of itself, is not enough for me to wholeheartedly recommend White's book.

For a more lively, colourful version of this period in NY history (with a gay perspective), one should really read Wayne County's outrageous memoir, Man Enough to be a Woman.

Show Less

LibraryThing member IsolaBlue

Reading City Boy is a bit like sitting down with an old friend one has known for years and still - despite hearing similar stories from him each time you meet - feeling closer to him than ever and realizing how much his friendship means to you. White still has the ability to startle, to come out

with some revelation about himself that leaves the reader wondering: "Why did he admit that?" We learn from Edmund White: learn to be more honest, more down-to-earth, more tolerant, and more understanding. In City Boy, White's focus changes from the interior to the exterior. Those who read and enjoyed My Lives may be disappointed in City Boy. My Lives was a breathtaking excursion into the life and mind of Edmund White. Each page had the ability to charm or alarm us. City Boy, on the other hand, is more about the world outside, the world of others, the world that White lived in and observed while simultaneously living the life that we all have come to know through his other books. City Boy is an authentic representation of the 60s and 70s and of gay culture during those years, in particular. But if a reader picks up this book hoping for sadly amusing pages about White being led around on a leash or fascinating insights into his real-world relationships with women, one will find City Boy lacking. For someone yearning to have lived through the 60s or 70s and having missed it by a decade or two or three, City Boy should supply a good picture of the times. If someone is seeking a little gossip or some smartly drawn vignettes of famous people, City Boy should please as well. White gives wry observations of James Merrill, Vladimir Nabokov, Jan Morris, John Hohnsbeen, Peggy Guggenheim, William Burroughs, Jasper Johns, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Susan Sontag among others. The author who always seems to us as though we've known him forever, this time around has taken the focus outside, writing about the decades he remembers well but through the lens of his movement around the cities: New York, San Francisco, and Paris. As always, White is a class act. At his simplest and least exciting he is always a gentleman, one who deserves the title of "our friend between the covers."

Show Less

LibraryThing member ClifSven

I must admit that while I enjoy much of White’s work I found City Boy to be tedious. Having lived in San Francisco and the Bay Area at roughly the same time as White, my experience as a gay man was a great deal different from his. I didn’t get the sense of history I was expecting from this

book…not the day-to-day existence of life in New York City before/after Stonewall…more a sense of what it was like to live in a dynamic city that was on the front lines of gay liberation – and a city that was very, very different than San Francisco. Even his time in San Francisco (which overlapped my time in SF) reads as if he was living in a completely different place and time

Instead of what I was expecting I got was a gossipy, name-dropping account of White and his rather banal existence of dead-end jobs and the almost non-stop search for yet another anonymous sexual encounter. While I understand that promiscuous sex was part and parcel of a gay (especially a young gay) man’s life at that time, I did not get a sense that Mr. White ever gained any insight from these experiences.

I expect more from a memoir than “….and then I went to [fill in the blank]”; “…and then [fill in the blank] did me” …; “…and then I saw [again, the blank] at [whatever famous gay night spot was the current rage]” ; “…and then I had sex with [anonymous person whose name I never knew and never saw again]”.

What I missed most from this book, after finishing it, was a sense of who Edmund White was and what he learned of himself (and others) on his journey to the man he is today.

Show Less

LibraryThing member mcelhra

This book just did not hold my interest at all. I wouldn't have finished it but I received it through GoodReads First Reads program so I felt like I had to.

City Boy is author Edmund White's account of his years in New York as a struggling author. I didn't feel any emotion coming out of him. It felt

like he was just writing a laundry list account of his activities and so it was hard to connect with him. Also, he name dropped a lot and it was clear that I was supposed to be impressed but I only recognized a handful of names that were dropped. It was hard to keep everyone straight too - he mentioned dozens of people.

Show Less

LibraryThing member dmtmusic

As a great admirer of Edmund White's previous writings, I must say that I was sorely disappointed in this latest memoir. I've managed to get half-way through Chapter 4, and honestly can't bring myself to go on (though I did peruse a few later chapters in hopes that the writing got better). As

another reviewer pointed out, the book reads like a laundry list of names and places with the barest of description, and no elaboration.

There's a distinct lack of flow and cohesion, and I found myself wondering if the book might not be more palatable if heard rather than read. Might it have begun as a series of verbal reminiscences, later transcribed? It would certainly account for the disjointed, maundering prose and maddening overabundance of the simplest of simple sentences. And while wit is certainly in evidence here, it falls flat when set amidst such bare-bones, banal reportage.

Also, while I'm very indulgent of name dropping (I generally find the name dropping in Ned Rorem's diaries charming, and a little vicariously thrilling), I find it largely without charm here. After coming across the name of a friend of a friend mentioned in less-than-flattering terms, I found myself flipping to the back of the book in search of an index so that I could look up the people I know and get the ordeal over with. No such luck. Instead, I found the brief acknowledgments page, which I suspect is the key to understanding the unfortunate quality of the book: here Mr. White doesn't thank those whose helpfulness he appreciated, but those whose appreciation he found helpful.

This is one of those books that I will make a serious effort to forget so as not to mar my estimation of his earlier works.

Show Less

LibraryThing member disturbingfurniture

I had to read "Boys Own Story" in college, and was surprised that there were such books in the world--I was a sheltered child of the 80's. I loved it and went looking for similar.

I can't say that I have picked up a book by White since then--OK I have picked them up just not read them and NOT

because I applied to study under him at Brown & wasn't accepted--something which White probably had nothing to do with.

THAT has nothing to do with my review of this which is: I was a bit bored. There are a lot of famous people mentioned (some, I admit, I had to look up--though not in the index...since there isn't one) and there is some pretty prose...but I don't feel as if I was given more than a fleeting glimpse of life in New York in the 60's and 70's. I think this might have meant more to me had I lived through the 60's and 70's...And fans of his other books, especially his biographical books will probably like this much more than I did.

Show Less

LibraryThing member smileydq

I received this book in November and tried to read it then but couldn't get through it. I picked it up twice more before finally finishing it, and after all that effort to read the book I'm a little disappointed.

White spins an engaging story, mixing comic anecdotes with serious reflection on

himself and his peers at a time of great change in their lives - but I just wasn't interested. An excessive amount of name dropping turned me off from the very beginning, and the rest of the book did little to change my impressions. I think White has a lot of interesting things to say, and overall is an insightful and talented writer - clearly, since he overcame the early writers' block he describes in the book to publish 23 books - but his prose here was clumsy, often repetitive and even gossipy in tone. I thought I would like that casual, 'have I got a story for you' feel - instead it made the book a difficult one for me to finish.

I understand that White's life and writing have been vastly impacted by the time and place in which his adult life began - there were times, however, many times throughout the book, where entire paragraphs read like a roster of the literary and cultural icons of his time. Good for him, for meeting and observing all of those people. But was that all he had to write about?"

Show Less

LibraryThing member dbsovereign

Although I enjoyed this book, White's overuse of the regal "we" is a bit tiresome and he is definitely very New York centric, but after all it is about his life in New York City. For the person who would otherwise have zero knowledge of the pre-condom, pre-plague days this should be an eye opener.

For those of us who lived through those times, it’s a fun romp into an almost forgotten past. Some juicy gossip and brutally honest post-mortems help provide a glimpse into the literary and artistic hub.

Show Less

LibraryThing member the_darling_copilots

Edmund White's City Boy is a memoir of the author's growth as a writer during the 1970s, primarily in New York. It is full of anecdotes and stories about real people--of varying degrees of fame--like Robert Wilson, James Merrill, William Burroughs, and Harold Brodkey, among many, many others. All

of the characterizations are fascinating, capturing the particular impact that this or that person had on the author. These passages are the kind that inspired me to track down some of the people that were new to me and thus discover something wonderful and unexpected; and on the other hand, to be reminded of old favorites now also seen in the new light of White's sensibility.

The description of Jasper Johns in Chapter 15, whose "house had the sort of simplicity that only money could buy" (214) is especially powerful. His description of Johns starts on an intimate, personal level and then opens into a discussion (one of many) about the differences between artists of the time who were publicly out (like White) and those that were closeted (like Johns, Sontag, and many others). This chapter especially exemplifies White's charm, and the mixture of his thoughtfulness, his awe for the people who inspired him, and (not least) his vanity. Like he does in most of the book, in this chapter he balances the nostalgic voyeurism of his past with a thoughtful criticism of the attitudes of his younger self.

The book is solidly interesting and rewarding--up until the last chapter, which seems rushed and awkward. White doesn't seem to know how to talk about Susan Sontag, and ends up shifting suddenly, through a discussion of the impact of AIDS on the 1970s New York scene, into a weaker, maudlin prose unlike anything that precedes it. The impulse to grieve rings true, but his writing is clearly more effective in remembering earlier, happier times than it is eulogizing the loss of them.

Show Less

LibraryThing member BrokenSpines

If there were a name index to this book, it would be a hundred pages long. The author is basically unknown, but he moved among a lot of famous and near-famous people. I read it in 5 hours looking for points where his life in New York and San Francisco intersected with my own. There were several. He

remined me of that hideous male look of the 1970s where one's shoulders and waist were the same size. Also, the author is right on target when he describes New York and San Francisco as being so different from the rest of the country that they could have been entirerly different cultures located on distant continents.

Show Less

LibraryThing member RODNEYP

There are so many of us.

Fewer