Lucky Jim | TBogg

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Lucky Jim
By: TBogg Thursday December 1, 2011 9:04 pm	Tweet14

I fully expect all of you to attend the FDL Book Salon this Sunday, 12/4 (2PM-ish, Pacific time) when I will be hosting Mr James Wolcott and discussing his book, Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York where we will talk about the four P’s (punk, Patti, porn, and Pauline) along with what life was like before there were intertubes and people used to get their cultural cues from laser-etched essays and reviews in these things called “magazines” and “newspapers” instead of checking the Tomatometer (“It only got a 64. It must suck“) or the off-the-cuff couldn’t-be-bothered anonymously-sourced friend’s dismissive default, “I heard it was only okay”.

Lucking Out is a picaresque tale of a young man “arriving in New York just as everything was about to go to hell” with only a song in his heart, a spring in his step, and an introductory letter from Norman Mailer in his pocket. After that, things got a lot more interesting…

I was once seated with Pauline in the last row of a literary panel discussion downtown starring Cynthia Ozick and Joyce Carol Oates, who were trading honeydew compliments back and forth as if they expected Eudora Welty to show up with a wide-brimmed hat and a watering can. Ozick would compliment Oates on the dynamic fecundity of her bullet-train imagination and how it cowed her, confessing that she could only proceed to the next sentence in her own fiction after she had chipped and beveled the previous sentence to perfection, to which Oates would deftly respond, And that’s what I so admire and envy about your writing, Cynthia, the exquisite luminosity of each beautifully chosen, carefully arranged phrase and metaphor… Back and forth it fluttered, Ozick in her girlish voice (so incongruous with her tank-turret head) and Oates doing her shrinking-violet act, until Pauline side-whispered, “Can you believe this shit?”

I know. Totally awesome and potty-mouthed at the same time.

So join us as we discuss everything from Lester Bangs to Gelsey Kirkland, Ellen Willis to Al Goldstein, Clay Felker to Deep Throat (the movie, not the Nixon snitch), Gore Vidal to Tina Weymouth, and everyone and everything in between…

15 Comments

15 Responses to “Lucky Jim”

SteveAudio December 1st, 2011 at 11:42 pm

Name checking Gelsey Kirkland, very cool!

mass December 2nd, 2011 at 3:23 am

Finishing the book now. Really fun read. I first visited NYC in the late 70s, when it was still an insane town. Deep Throat billboard across the street from my room at the old Taft Hotel.

When i lived there in the late 90s, it was wonderful, but truly changed. Wolcott makes a great point when he says things changed when people became obsessed with real estate above all other concerns.

GuyFromOhio December 2nd, 2011 at 3:27 am

I was once seated with Pauline in the last row of a literary panel discussion downtown starring Cynthia Ozick and Joyce Carol Oates, who were trading honeydew compliments back and forth as if they expected Eudora Welty to show up with a wide-brimmed hat and a watering can.

He was snarky before snark had a name.

Hatmandu December 2nd, 2011 at 7:09 am

If he mentions in the book an incident at CBGB where he witnessed a skinny, mop-topped, white boy falling off of a table and shattering his forearm in three places during a New York Dolls show, there is a 95% probability it is me.

UncertaintyVicePrincipal December 2nd, 2011 at 7:15 am

Great. I just bought the Kindle book where on page two I already find this:

Next door to the Latham (hotel) hunkers another low-profile holdover, the Prince George, which, before the gold medallions and furry testicles of disco descended, was a popular layover for flight crews whose trim blue uniforms and clippy stride made everybody else on the sidewalk look like clumps.

This is going to be good.

Those book salons are excellent.

montysano December 2nd, 2011 at 7:53 am

Tina Weymouth? I’m so there.

The Talking Heads’ film “Stop Making Sense” convinced me that Weymouth is about as deadly cool as it gets.

clockwork December 2nd, 2011 at 8:46 am

I read “Lucking Out” on my Kindle the day it hit the electronic newstand. It rocks, rolls, and stays up all night long. Buy it, borrow it, or steal it. It’s just that good.

MNGus December 2nd, 2011 at 8:58 am

Love me some Wolcott. He do have a way with a phrase.

sbruin December 2nd, 2011 at 9:27 am

If someone pointed a gun at my head and said choose between Wolcott and Pierce, I’d say, “Fire.” I’m so there on Sunday.

OT–show of hands, people. Who had Gingrichi in the pool? Never in a thousand years could I imagine such a thing.

puravida December 2nd, 2011 at 9:30 am

Sign me up for the Deep Throat!

The discussion, that is.

UncertaintyVicePrincipal December 2nd, 2011 at 9:35 am

In response to sbruin @ 9