Do Something

Coming of Age Amid the Glitter and Doom of '70s New York

By: Guy Trebay

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

An evocative coming-of-age memoir—the story of the education of a wayward wild child and acidhead who, searching for meaning and purpose, found refuge in the demimonde of the ruined but magical metropolis that was New York City in the 1970s.

“In his beautiful memoir, Do Something, Guy Trebay paints a picture of a vanished, pre-AIDS Gotham that’s both gritty and dazzling.”—The New York Times Book Review

Born in the Bronx, Guy Trebay was raised in an atmosphere of privilege on Long Island’s North Shore after his entrepreneurial father struck business gold with Hawaiian Surf, a wildly successful cologne company that capitalized on the optimism of the 1960s as marketed to “an adventurous new breed of men.’’ But behind the facade of material prosperity lay the emotional disarray of a household dominated by a charismatic, con artist father, a glamorous yet lost and careless mother, a family haunted by tragedy. By the time Trebay established a foothold at the fringes of Andy Warhol’s Factory and the diverse artistic tribes that thrived in Manhattan in that pre-digital era, his father had lost his fortune, his younger sister had been arrested for armed robbery and fled underground, the family house was in ashes, and his mother was dead.

Unschooled and on his own, Trebay became a striver, wending his way through a seemingly apocalyptic landscape populated by a vibrant cast of characters, including washed-up Hollywood screenwriters of the ’30s; Warhol superstars like Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling; fashion geniuses like Charles James; and emerging artists, filmmakers, writers, designers, photographers, and deejays who would powerfully influence mainstream culture in the decades to come.

©2024 Guy Trebay (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Do Something is so beautiful and so personal that one feels like an intimate friend after reading Trebay's tale of New York in the 1970’s. I loved it all. It's the mark of something powerful when a voice lingers in one’s head after one reads a book, and Trebay's voice rings incredibly clear.”—Tom Ford, fashion designer and filmmaker

“In tracing what led to his amazing career at The New York Times, Guy Trebay captures a 1970’s Manhattan that we’ve almost lost, but cannot forget. He does this in brilliant and exquisite prose that is at once lyrical, lavish, and yet thoroughly unlacquered. A work that reminds one of raw times in a city that is forever reinventing itself, and with it, those we’ve once been and are not unhappy to become.”—André Aciman, New York Times best-selling author of Find Me and Call Me By Your Name

“Guy Trebay's Do Something is prodigal in its riches. It is so action-packed it could be three or four memoirs, with a cinematic cavalcade of contrasting scenes and landscapes. It mixes heartbreak and exhilaration and melancholy and laughs, youthful hijinks and later-life rueful wisdom, in vividly bright, tightly economical prose. You will read it so fast you may want to put the needle back at the start.”—Lucy Sante, award-winning author of I Heard Her Call My Name

Heartache and heartbreak and the will to survive.

This was a masterful telling, and an intricate weaving together of stories from the author's life.

an amazing story

so eloquently told. I would expect no less from Guy Trebay, whose writing I have admired in The New York Times. But that gave no clue of the wastrel life, the tragic sister, the family skeletons behind the Upper middle class life he led, the exotic path that led him to the Gray Lady. five stars would not be enough.