Lucking Out Paperback by James Wolcott

Product Details

• Publisher: Anchor (2012-10-02)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 272 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780767930628
• Item Weight: 283.5 grams
• Dimensions: 20.32 x 13.21 x 1.78 cm

From one of our most admired (and feared) cultural critics, a memoir that captures all the gritty, grubby glamour of New York in the awful/wonderful Seventies.

In the autumn of 1972, a very young and green James Wolcott arrived in New York from Maryland, full of literary dreams, equipped with a letter of introduction from Norman Mailer, and having no idea what was about to hit him. Landing at a time of accelerating municipal squalor and, paradoxically, gathering cultural energy in all spheres as "Downtown" became a category of art and life unto itself, he embarked upon his sentimental education, seventies New York style. This portrait of a critic as a young man is also a rollicking, acutely observant portrait of a legendary time and place. Mixing grit and glitter in just the right proportions, suffused with affection for the talented and sometimes half-crazed denizens of the scene, it will make readers long for a time when you really could get mugged around here.

About the Author

JAMES WOLCOTT is a longtime columnist and blogger for Vanity Fair. He is the author of a novel, The Catsitters, and the non­fiction work Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants. He lives in New York with his wife, the critic and novelist Laura Jacobs, and their three ocicats, Jasper, Henry, and Veronica.