Do Something Do Something

Do Something

Coming of Age Amid the Glitter and Doom of '70s New York

    • 3.8 • 10 Ratings
    • $13.99

Publisher Description

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • An evocative coming-of-age memoir—the story of the education of a wayward wild child and acidhead who, searching for meaning and purpose, found refuge in the demimonde of the ruined but magical metropolis that was New York City in the 1970s.

“In his beautiful memoir, Do Something, Guy Trebay paints a picture of a vanished, pre-AIDS Gotham that’s both gritty and dazzling.” —The New York Times Book Review


Born in the Bronx, Guy Trebay was raised in an atmosphere of privilege on Long Island’s North Shore after his entrepreneurial father struck business gold with Hawaiian Surf, a wildly successful cologne company that capitalized on the optimism of the 1960s as marketed to “an adventurous new breed of men.’’ But behind the facade of material prosperity lay the emotional disarray of a household dominated by a charismatic, con artist father, a glamorous yet lost and careless mother, a family haunted by tragedy. By the time Trebay established a foothold at the fringes of Andy Warhol’s Factory and the diverse artistic tribes that thrived in Manhattan in that pre-digital era, his father had lost his fortune, his younger sister had been arrested for armed robbery and fled underground, the family house was in ashes, and his mother was dead.

Unschooled and on his own, Trebay became a striver, wending his way through a seemingly apocalyptic landscape populated by a vibrant cast of characters, including washed-up Hollywood screenwriters of the ’30s; Warhol superstars like Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling; fashion geniuses like Charles James; and emerging artists, filmmakers, writers, designers, photographers, and deejays who would powerfully influence mainstream culture in the decades to come.

GENRE
Biographies & Memoirs
RELEASED
2024
June 25
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
256
Pages
PUBLISHER
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
SELLER
Penguin Random House LLC
SIZE
15.5
MB

Customer Reviews

juliusa ,

This was NYC as we experienced it…

Excellently written, true NY memoir that fully captures the NYC we moved to in early 1974 and have since lived and raised a family in. And that family has remained here as well. Was it crazy? Maybe, but we were young and naive and wanted what the city promised as a start in life. This memoir captures all that beautifully and is a must read for anyone who wants to know what NY was like when a President told it to DROP DEAD and it refused to do so. And for anyone who has spent their lifetime here, or a good portion of it, and has remained when everyone they knew abandoned it…. This explains it well. A must read.

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