My Young Life

Frederic Tuten

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781501194474
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

"A l ove song to a lost New York" ( New York magazine) from novelist, essayist, and critic Frederic Tuten as he recalls his personal and artistic coming-of-age in 1950s New York City, a defining period that would set him on the course to becoming a writer. Born in the Bronx to a Sicilian mother and Southern father, Frederic Tuten always dreamed of being an artist. Determined to trade his neighborhood streets for the romantic avenues of Paris, he learned to paint and draw, falling in love with the process of putting a brush to canvas and the feeling it gave him. At fifteen, he decided to leave high school and pursue the bohemian life he'd read about in books. But, before he could, he would receive an extraordinary education right in his own backyard."A stirring portrait…and a wonderfully raw story of city boy's transformation into a writer" ( Publishers Weekly ), My Young Life reveals Tuten's early formative years where he would discover the kind of life he wanted to lead. As he travels downtown for classes at the Art Students League, spends afternoons reading in Union Square, and discovers the vibrant scenes of downtown galleries and Lower East Side bars, Frederic finds himself a member of a new community of artists, gathering friends, influences—and many girlfriends—along the way.Frederic Tuten has had a remarkable life, writing books, traveling around the world, acting in and creating films, and even conducting summer workshops with Paul Bowles in Tangiers. Spanning two decades and bringing us from his family's kitchen table in the Bronx to the cafes of Greenwich Village and back again, My Young Life is an intimate and enchanting portrait of an artist's coming-of-age, set against one of the most exciting creative periods of our time—"so thrilling…so precise in presenting a young man's preoccupation and occupation" (Steve Martin).

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Rex’s Visit. The Race
• Illness. Houses Without Windows
• First Love and Icarus
• Earning My Keep
• Aerograms. Romeo and Juliet
• The Last Radio
• Paint Tubes and an Easel
• Tight Pink Sweaters
• Louie’s Luncheonette
• A Powder-Blue Sweater
• The Artist at Work
• First Review. Picasso Unmasked
• The Seduction of a Green Cover
• Dancing Daffodils
• Blindness
• The Bracelet
• Bad News
• The Paradise Movie House
• Coffeepots and Apples
• Ideal Forms
• My Mother’s Books
• Rimbaud in the Kitchen
• Trash Cans and Kafka
• Crime and Punishment
• African Masks and a Lesson
• Tattoos
• Molly
• Tables and Whales
• Post Office or College
• The Letter
• Overcoats and Penmanship
• Mexican Murals and Exile
• Prison Walls and a Memoir
• Leonard and Belinda
• Cocktail Party by the Hudson
• Soft Porn and Unfinished Novels
• Office Crushes. New Chances
• Art Deco Eden
• Diana
• Mexican Skies and Dark Cantinas
• Ice Cubes and Caviar
• Adios, Muchachos y Compañeras de Mi Vida
• On the Road
• Before the Bar with Dignity
• The Intellectual at Large
• Lord Byron and Smoke Rings over Broadway
• Vodka, Bread, and Pickles
• Banishment
• Fame
• Jack
• Love in the Mountains
• Ernest
• The Eiffel Tower and the Tundra
• The Owl and the Bookworm
• Perfume and Work Boots
• Rebecca and Sandra
• Ulysses and Riding Crops
• Waterfalls and Rubbers
• Gutted Hares and the Library
• Sliced Tomatoes and High Fever
• Rebecca
• Kim’s Laundry
• Rodin and Vagabonds
• Expensive Watches and Martin Eden
• Simona
• Sandra and Baby Ice Cubes
• The Interview
• Simona. The Sociology of Flirtation
• Tugboats and Clouds
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright