Thanks to James Wolcott

In between running up and down the State of Illinois, boxing up and painting over my life in Chicago and looking for employment, I am able to take tiny, extravagant one-hour vacations.

In New York.

In the 1970s.

I am able to take these mini-spas in a NYC I never knew and will never exist again because Mr. Wolcott's new book, "Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York" is just fucking sumptuous.

I mean, how can you not follow this sentence --

"How lucky I was, arriving in New York just as everything was about to go to hell.”

-- wherever it goes?

Sumptuous, thrilling, rich, fiendishly carbonated...it grabs every lit'rary G-spot with velvet Bessey clamps and does not let up until it's had its way with you good and proper.

And for the book-buyer on a budget (namely everybody I know), its a steal because it's a god damned baklava of at least Six!Count 'Em!Six! books for price of one:

• A splendid autobiography of one of this country's finest writers, who (I learned to my surprise) did not ride in on a beam of pink light from style Heaven, but was a small town kid, barely hanging on at a dinky college you never heard of until he saw his opening and dove in hard.


• A glimpse of a bygone world where Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal rampaged through the gooey streets of a dying New York hurling anvils at each other.


• A Bible-based advice guide for Christian singles looking to check off the next box on their Life Plan!


• A practical writer's guide to putting words in a row in a way that won't make you look like a mule-kicked idiot.
  


• A loving introduction to Pauline Kael for those (like me) who did not know anything about her beyond her writing.


• A gritty, "Front Page"-style ringside seat at the ferociously idiosyncratic main events and under-cards of the 1970s New York publishing fight game. ( Is there nudity? Yes there is! Will it make you cringe? Yes it will.)

OK, so its only at least Five!Count 'Em!Five! books for price of one.

Pedants.

Amazon link here.

Here a very good NPR interview with Mr. Wolcott (thanks DonQ!)