The subtitle of Do Something: Coming of Age Amid the Glitter and Doom of '70s New York promises tales of an unforgettable Manhattan decade and, to be sure, the book contains lots of that: in the 1970s, Guy Trebay could be found "hanging around creative oddballs, drugged-up drag queens with washed-up Hollywood characters and the Warhol-adjacent." But his book also travels chronologically wide of 1970s New York, resulting in not so much a portrait of a specific time and place as--and this may sound twee given the company that Trebay was keeping--the story of a writer finding his voice.
Born in 1952, Trebay (In the Place to Be) grew up in a big dysfunctional family in the Bronx and, later, Long Island. After graduating from high school, he moved to Manhattan, where he was flittingly employed (illustrator's model, "disco juice boy" at a gay dance club) when not enjoying creative pursuits. Although Trebay lamented that "I had not found myself miraculously swept up into Andy Warhol's glamorous coterie," his preoccupation with storytelling guided him toward satisfying work as a reporter.
Do Something offers unstinting nostalgia for not just old New York but the family whose disintegration preceded Trebay's Manhattan adventures. He also writes about the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1991's Crown Heights riots. (He covered the latter as a reporter.) The narrative has an as-it-comes-to-me feel, its chapterlessness ultimately leaving readers with the impression of having been wound in one long skein of wistfully gorgeous sentences. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer