Lost Property: Memoirs & Confessions of a Bad Boy - Hardcover

Sonnenberg, Ben

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671701886 ISBN 13: 9780671701888

Publisher: Summit Books, 1991

Synopsis

The son of the founder of public relations reflects on his unusual life in his father's shadow, chronicling his defiant youth, his escapades with beautiful women and the CIA, and his battle with multiple sclerosis

About this title

About the Author

Ben Sonnenberg is a playwright, poet, and publisher. He founded the literary magazine Grand Street in 1981 and spent nine years as its editor. He lives in New York City with his wife, the writer Dorothy Gallagher.

From Kirkus Reviews

The founder of Grand Street offers an erudite and prickly memoir about friendships with intellectuals and socialites, dozens of love affairs, and his struggles to emerge from the shadow of his powerful father. Sonnenberg's father was a P.R. whiz who supplemented his professional success by collecting antiques and throwing elaborate parties at his Gramercy Park mansion. Overweight as a child, Sonnenberg spoke in epigrams and vied for power with the servants. At age 15, his marathon of womanizing began when he tricked a Radcliffe graduate student into bed by telling her he was an editor of the Partisan Review. From then on, he went from woman to woman, many of whom were older and hypereducated. He tried to dazzle his psychiatrists with his knowledge of obscure analytic theory; he developed a taste for handmade suits; he traveled in Europe and made famous friends (Orson Welles, Glenn Gould, Ted Hughes). He was briefly employed by the CIA, interviewing Hungarian refugees, but his life was mostly parties, books, and women. Then, at 34, a strange series of falls began, and some time later he was diagnosed as suffering from MS. After the death of both parents left him with money to disperse, he started Grand Street and discovered the pleasure of working as an ``accompanist: essential but subordinate'' to other writers. Sonnenberg marshals razor-sharp anecdotes, obscure literary references, and a keen eye for the telling detail to relate his story, which is by no means always pretty. A perceptive, unapologetic self-portrait by an unrepentantly self-involved man. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Summit Books
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0671701886
• ISBN 13: 9780671701888
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 217