One of These Things First - Tapa blanda

Críticas

"An absolute treasure."--New York Times Book Review

"Humane and generous...Shocking, funny, and sometimes shockingly funny. A real treasure."--Boston Globe

"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, The Washington Post

"Gaines' readers accompany him on this heart wrenching, funny, ultimately triumphant journey."--Bay Area Reporter

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

"An extraordinary book. Incredibly moving and beautifully written."--Jay McInerney

"By turns comic, honest, and riveting,"--Publishers Weekly

"This is a memoir for anyone who loves Paddy Chayefsky and Hanya Yanigahara. Steven Gaines has turned his considerable journalistic talents onto his younger self, writing a lyrical, wry and precisely excavated book."--Carl Swanson, New York Magazine

"A candid, entertaining memoir... A spirited narrative of a hard-won coming-of-age."--Kirkus Reviews

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.