Lost on Treasure Island: A Memoir of Longing, Love, and Lousy Choices in New York City

Description

When Midwesterner Steve Friedman arrived in Manhattan, the land of the quick and the mean, raring to go and ready to conquer, he soon found pitfalls and pratfalls more numerous and perilous than he had ever imagined. Here is his utterly honest, often hilarious, self-deprecating account of those fateful years, starting with his first job at GQ and his awkward efforts to impress his boss, Art Cooper, and including real and imagined love affairs, disasters at work and play, growing self-awareness with its inevitable bouts of depression and subsequent therapies-all of which fail-and in the end, a wisdom that promises better things to come. In the tradition of Bright Lights, Big City and The Devil Wears Prada, Lost on Treasure Island is a witty rendition of the perils of growing up and being thrown into the real world. With sharp humor and unexpected sincerity, Friedman crafts an inviting portrait of the best of times and the worst of times. For all those who have confronted the endless opportunities of the Big Apple, only to discover how hard it is to succeed in this-or any-big city, this boisterous and often enlightening memoir will prove irresistible.

After finishing this sometimes infuriating, oft funny, and truly touching memoir, I m amazed there s not a line of ladies volunteering to be Mrs. Friedman. Lost on Treasure Island is chest of wonders indeed. --Shari Goldhagen, author of Family and Other Accidents An unvarnished reckoning of the realities of following one's dreams to make it as a writer (and fully formed adult) in Manhattan. Through highs and lows, Friedman's caustic charm steals the show." --Thomas Kohnstamm, author of Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? I love Lost on Treasure Island. It's the truest, funniest, sexiest big-city adventure story I've ever read. As a hero, Steve Friedman is wildly flawed, but as a writer, he's in a class with Nick Hornby at his best and Candace Bushnell in her dreams. --Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Super Athletes, And the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen I loved Lost on Treasure Island, and, by the end, its hapless, hopeful, utterly hilarious narrator. I laughed, I cried, I flung it to the floor and snatched it up again. It's The Devil Wears Prada meets A Million Little Pieces meets Lolita. Fantastic. --Cathi Hanauer, author of Sweet Ruin and editor of The Bitch in the House Lost on Treasure Island brilliantly limns one Midwestern man's seriocomic struggles with success, sex and spiritual development in Manhattan. Kind of a Bright Lights, Big City without the drugs, a Pilgrim's Progress without the progress, a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man without the art or the young man. It is one man's down-and-dirty account of his battle with demons within and without. Brutally honest doesn't begin to describe it. This is a spiritual striptease that sears the soul and tickles the funny bone. Friedman writes like an angel going to hell on a Harley. --Jeff Leen, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Kings of Cocaine and Queen of the Ring Lost on Treasure Island is the story of every Midwesterner who has ever come to the Big City to follow a dream. I read it with both jealousy and gratitude: jealous because Steve Friedman is a truly gifted memoirist, and grateful that I have never personally auditioned for the role of Mrs. F. This is a fantastic read. --Sarah Rose, author of All the Tea in China Steve Friedman is a toxic cad and a fabulous writer. --Meghan Daum, Los Angeles Times columnist You may be horrified by the spectacle of Friedman trolling for babes at 12-step meetings while pitying his own inability to understand what his problem with the ladies is. You will be amply rewarded, however, by the final, jaw-dropping comeuppance he receives at the sadistic hands of a famous memoirist who snags him on a cyberdating site and emotionally demolishes him without so much as a smooch. You ll actually feel sorry for him. --Ben Dickinson