One of These Things First - Tapa dura

Críticas

A poignant and funny book that proves it does get better.--Joy Behar, "The View"

"By turns comic, honest, and riveting, Gaines tells a story of a well-meaning shrink and his troubled charge locked in a war of wills to ease the 'trauma of homosexuality' and restore his humanity in a conservative world."--Publishers Weekly

"One of These Things First is not only a departure but an absolute treasure. [Gaines is] a skilled humorist as well as a tender yet trenchant observer of human behavior and the social forces that so often control it."--New York Times Book Review

"A lyrical, dispassionate, humane story with a rich cast of characters . . . an absorbing, self-deprecating, deadpan humorous and painfully insightful memoir."--Sag Harbor Express

"Funny and poignant."--New York Post

"Growing up gay in pre-trendy Brooklyn wasn't always a joyride, as I personally realized ages ago. But Steven Gaines knows it even better. His harrowing account of being a suicidal 15-year-old who checked into Payne Whitney is eye opening, touching and ultimately triumphant because of how well he turned out."--Michael Musto, columnist and author of Manhattan on the Rocks

"Years ago Dominick Dunne called Steven Gaines 'a born storyteller.' If anything, we now know Gaines was meant to write his own powerful, heart-wrenching, and funny life story. I could not put it down."--Steven Petrow, columnist, Washington Post

"Steven Gaines is a born storyteller..."--Dominick Dunne

"Breezy, irreverent, amusing...replete with scandal, scurrilous characters, assorted bacchanalia, and all manner of wretched excess."--Laura Landro, Wall Street Journal

PRAISE FOR The Sky's the Limit: "Juicy and highly detailed, the book has movie stars, fashion designers, illicit sex, and lots of connving and cavorting socialites--and it's all about real estate."--Lisa B. Anderson, Chicago Tribune

Reseña del editor

One of These Things First is a wry and poignant reminiscence of a 15 year old gay Jewish boy in Brooklyn in the early sixties, and his unexpected trajectory from a life behind a rack of dresses in his grandmother’s bra and girdle store, to Manhattan’s fabled Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, a fashionable Charenton for wealthy neurotics and Ivy League alcoholics, whose famous alumni include writers, poets, madmen, Marilyn Monroe, and bestselling author Steven Gaines.

With a gimlet eye and a true gift for storytelling, Gaines captures his childhood shtetl in Brooklyn like an Edward Hopper tableau, with all its dramas and secrets: his philandering grandfather with his fleet of Cadillacs and Corvettes; a trio of harpy saleswomen; a giant, empty movie theater, his portal to the outside world; a shirtless teenage boy pushing a lawnmower in front of a house on Long Island; and a pair of tormenting bullies who own the corner candy store whose taunts drive him to a suicide attempt.

Steven Gaines also takes the reader behind the walls of Payne Whitney, the “Harvard of psychiatric clinics,” as Time magazine called it, populated by a captivating group of neurasthenics who subtly begin to change him in unexpected ways. The cast of characters includes a famous Broadway producer who becomes his unlikely mentor, an elegant woman who claimed to be the ex-mistress of newly elected president John F. Kennedy, a snooty, suicidal Harvard architect, and a seductive young Contessa. At the center of the story is a brilliant young psychiatrist who promises to cure a young boy of his homosexuality and give him the normalcy he so longs for. Through it all, Gaines weaves a tale that delights and disturbs with his trademark raconteur panache.