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Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in the Seventies

door James Wolcott

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"A memoir by Vanity Fair culture critic James Wolcott about coming of age in 1970s New York"--Provided by publisher."How lucky I was, arriving in New York just as everything was about to go to hell." That was autumn 1972, when a very green James Wolcott arrived from Maryland, full of literary dreams, 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 memoir is also a rollicking portrait of a legendary time and place. Wolcott was taken up by fabled film critic Pauline Kael; he became an early observer-participant in the nascent punk scene at CBGB, mixing with Patti Smith, Lester Bangs, and Tom Verlaine; and as a Village Voice writer he encountered the literary scene when Mailer, Gore Vidal, and George Plimpton strode the earth, and writing really mattered.--From publisher description.… (meer)

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Toon 4 van 4

Wolcott shares everything that was great about NYC (well, HIS nyc) in the 70s, without lording it over your head or making you feel like a dolt simply because his parents had sex before yours did. I picked it up expecting to drool over the CBGB's sections and instead found myself entranced with his tales of Pauline Kael and of falling in love with the ballet. I will buy this as a gift for any aspiring journalist I meet. (

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Caryn.Rose | Mar 18, 2015 |

Wolcott is a talented writer who knew Mailer and Kael and was in the middle of the mid-'70s CBGBs scene, yet his book is a snooze. Wolcott is fond of long sentences put together in long paragraphs for page after long page; when a bit of dialog appears in this stuffy construction, it's to be savored like a brief breeze in an airless room. The attitude is somewhat witty, but mostly dry. Reading it is like listening to a guy who's not that passionate about what he's saying, yet who can't stop talking.

I get the feeling that if Wolcott got only semi-dirty in the Seventies, it's because he was only semi-involved—always looking on, noting names and eager to get back to where he really wanted to be, at his typewriter. (

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john.cooper | Oct 1, 2013 |

A bit disappointing. If you are interested in the subjects (roughly, in Seventies NYC: Village Voice, Pauline Kael, Punk rock, Porn and ballet) you'll be interested in the book, but unless you take enough satisfaction in Wolcott's vigorous, playful and cheeky prose for its own sake, you may like me feel there is too much potted and cliched cultural history about what everyone thought, and too much skimming the surface of the names Wolcott often reaches for just to be able to drop.

Capybara_99 | Jul 9, 2013 |

If you know what "New York in the 1970s" means, then this book is for you. The author was a hustling young author from the hinterlands who got a start at the Village Voice, hung out at CBGB's, and saw movies as an apprentice of sorts to Pauline Kael, who he defends at some length. There's also a pretty interesting chapter on porn and ballet and the general "emergence of the body" as something worth thinking about in the 70s. A bit bloviating at the end, but worthy. (

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tuke | Dec 1, 2012 |

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With some offhand encouragement from Norman Mailer, Wolcott quixotically quit college, moved to New York, and badgered his way into a job at the then enormously influential Village Voice. His hilarious account of his trial by fire at this veritable “gladiator school” for journalism is acidly revealing of the dynamics at work in crisis-riddled New York, a crucible for gutsy creativity.

toegevoegd door paradoxosalpha | bewerkBooklist

Actually, the entire book is not only a bittersweet valentine to a much-maligned era but a model of exemplary prose that any writer would do well to study. ... Gives the lie to the belief that the ’70s contained nothing but disco decadence and self-help solipsism.

toegevoegd door paradoxosalpha | bewerkKirkus

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"A memoir by Vanity Fair culture critic James Wolcott about coming of age in 1970s New York"--Provided by publisher."How lucky I was, arriving in New York just as everything was about to go to hell." That was autumn 1972, when a very green James Wolcott arrived from Maryland, full of literary dreams, 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 memoir is also a rollicking portrait of a legendary time and place. Wolcott was taken up by fabled film critic Pauline Kael; he became an early observer-participant in the nascent punk scene at CBGB, mixing with Patti Smith, Lester Bangs, and Tom Verlaine; and as a Village Voice writer he encountered the literary scene when Mailer, Gore Vidal, and George Plimpton strode the earth, and writing really mattered.--From publisher description.

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