My Young Life

November 15, 2018
A familiar coming-of-age memoir about a young New Yorker who dreams of literary success."What a great, noble thing," Tuten (Self-Portraits: Fictions, 2010, etc.) declares, "to give your life to art." In short, nostalgic vignettes dating back as early as 1944, the author, a winner of the Award for Distinguished Writing from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, recounts two decades of maturation and intellectual posturing throughout his formative years in New York. Before becoming a novelist, screenwriter, and art critic, Tuten was determined in his youth to become "part of the world that [he] had read about in novels." After a brief foray into painting, he was drawn to literature and so began the life of an aspiring writer. Although he never made it to la vie boheme in Paris, he repeatedly attempted to emulate a European lifestyle at home. He smoked "unfiltered Gauloises, like the French intellectuals," and his vision of "the artist's life" is one of "books, music, art, and a beautiful woman." As he recalls, "I dreamed of instant fame, a book contract, and the waitress at Figaro noticing me." Tuten pairs this relatable naiveté with too many tales of girlfriends and sexual exploits, but this is appropriate from an author who once considered Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer to be "a manifesto for my liberty." The author's intellectual ambitions, while compelling and at times inspirational, are not particularly unique. The memoir's perfunctory finish reveals the lack of any substantive arc and suggests Tuten could have wandered through more memories if he had felt so inclined. The author's life was unquestionably exciting--he published acclaimed novels, taught with Paul Bowles in Tangiers, worked on films, and befriended Roy Lichtenstein--but these stories are relegated to the occasional endnote, if addressed at all. Perhaps they are being saved for a more exciting follow-up.An unabashed reminiscence that never fully coheres.

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Starred review from March 1, 2019

Novelist Tuten (Van Gogh's Bad Café), now in his early eighties, here looks back to memories of his youth and growing up poor in the Bronx in the 1950s. The author and his immigrant Sicilian mother were abandoned by his father when Tuten was only 11, and here he relates his hardships with family and friends, including many losses and loves. Early on, Tuten tells of when he decided to become a writer, and how he made his own way from high school dropout to attending City College, at times struggling for food and shelter. Some of the people who encourage and befriend him are portrayed as somewhat fantastical, including the painter John Resko, who was charged with murder in his teens and sentenced to die in Dannemora prison but pardoned by then New York governor Franklin Roosevelt. Tuten's stories are mostly drawn with warmth and love, but occasionally, in the footnotes, as he recounts what happened to his family and friends, the author seems a much colder and remote person. VERDICT This story of the intellectual development of a budding writer is fascinating, funny, and a delight to read.--Amy Lewontin, Northeastern Univ. Lib., Boston

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2019
In his highly readable memoir, essayist, novelist, and art critic Tuten shares his story of an aspiring artist coming of age in mid-twentieth-century New York City. In episodes recounted like snapshots in an album, Tuten traces intimacies of a two-decade journey taking him from childhood in a cramped Bronx apartment shared with his immigrant mother and grandmother, through classrooms of City College and caf�s of Greenwich Village, to, eventually, the cusp of a writer's life. Along the way, he shares with wry observation, pathos, and an unflinching honesty the portrait of a young man lured by a vision for himself but stumbling uncertainly along a path to realizing that vision. With loving detail, Tuten brings to life the time and place of the creatively exciting, post-WWII decades in New York City. Tuten's gently self-deprecating yet humorous reflections cover the linked adolescent preoccupations with creative venturing and romantic/sexual adventuring. Tuten's gently self-deprecating yet humorous reflections. In the end, Tuten's achievement is in telling a story that is at once his own while also being universally familiar.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)