Josh Karlen, author of Lost Lustre: A New York Memoir, on tour November 2010

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:44:34 +0000

About Lost Lustre: A New York Memoir

Paperback: 250 pages

Publisher: Tatra Press (October 16, 2010)

Muggings on Avenue C, punk bands at CBGB, youthful romance in Greenwich Village, parties in a nascent SoHo, dropping out from the famous Music & Art High School. In this episodic, coming of age memoir, Josh Karlen chronicles growing up in New York’s Greenwich Village, East Village, and crime-ridden Alphabet City in the 70s and early 80s. Lost Lustre recaptures a downtown Manhattan at a pivotal time of the city’s history, when New York was suffering its gravest financial crisis and soaring crime, yet also was home for a spectacular resurgence of the arts. Karlen shares a fascinating personal history of the punk rock scene through a prism of The Lustres, a band that played venues such as CBGB a few years after its stage had held the Talking Heads, Patti Smith and the Ramones. In the title chapter, Karlen poignantly pays homage ot the band’s charismatic and talented lead singer, whose life in many ways seemed to mirror his times in both its shining creativity and nihilistically destructive force.

“A window into a darker, grittier version of the city…[Karlen's] memories of living in the rough neighborhood known as Alphabet City are vibrant…”–Publishers Weekly

“Lost Lustre is a reverberant, strata-rich memoir, written with a relaxed and endearing fluency and modesty. I was engrossed.”–Edward Hoagland, author of NOTES FROM THE CENTURY BEFORE

Listen to basement tapes of The Lustres, circa 1980!

Eggshells

Running My Way

Take the Bus

For more information about Lost Lustre, check out the publisher’s website, TatraPress.com.

About Josh Karlen:

Josh Karlen, a native New Yorker, grew up on the Lower East Side and in Greenwich Village. A former journalist, he was a correspondent in the Baltics for United Press International, Radio Free Europe, and other news organizations.

Josh lives in New York City with his wife and two children and is a media relations specialist.

Wendy Burden, author of Dead End Gene Pool, on tour April/May 2010

admin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:12:57 +0000

About Dead End Gene Pool

In the tradition of Sean Wilsey’s Oh The Glory of It All and Augusten Burrough’s Running With Scissors, the great-great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt gives readers a grand tour of the world of wealth and WASPish peculiarity, in her irreverent and darkly humorous memoir.

For generations the Burdens were one of the wealthiest families in New York, thanks to the inherited fortune of Cornelius “The Commodore” Vanderbilt. By 1955, the year of Wendy’s birth, the Burden’s had become a clan of overfunded, quirky and brainy, steadfastly chauvinistic, and ultimately doomed bluebloods on the verge of financial and moral decline-and were rarely seen not holding a drink. In Dead End Gene Pool, Wendy invites readers to meet her tragically flawed family, including an uncle with a fondness for Hitler, a grandfather who believes you can never have enough household staff, and a remarkably flatulent grandmother.

At the heart of the story is Wendy’s glamorous and aloof mother who, after her husband’s suicide, travels the world in search of the perfect sea and ski tan, leaving her three children in the care of a chain- smoking Scottish nanny, Fifth Avenue grandparents, and an assorted cast of long-suffering household servants (who Wendy and her brothers love to terrorize). Rife with humor, heartbreak, family intrigue, and booze, Dead End Gene Pool offers a glimpse into the fascinating world of old money and gives truth to an old maxim: The rich are different.

About Wendy

Wendy Burden is a confirmed New Yorker who, to her constant surprise, lives in Portland, Oregon. She is the great-great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, which qualifies her to comment freely on the downward spiral of the blue blood families. She has worked as an illustrator, a zookeeper, and a taxidermist; and as an art director for a pornographic magazine from which she was fired for being too tasteful. She was also the owner and chef of a small French restaurant, Chez Wendy. She has yet to attend mortuary school, but is planning on it.