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Lost Property

Memoirs and Confessions of a Bad Boy

By Ben Sonnenberg

List Price: $17.95

October 8, 1999 | Paperback | 5.5 x 8.3, 264 Pages | ISBN 9781582430454
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"At last, a defiant life that does not end in bathos, drugs, or stacks of old newspapers, one that draws its distinction from, and ends up as, art." —James Salter, author of All That Is

An antic, insolent memoir from the founder of Grand Street.

Ben Sonnenberg chronicles for us his coming-of-age at 19 Gramercy Park, once described by The New Yorker as “the greatest house…in private hands in New York.” In a voice that is both candid and cultivated, he reflects upon his political, sexual, and aesthetic education as the son of one of America’s most powerful men, the inventor of public relations, Benjamin Sonnenberg, Sr.

Sonnenberg takes the reader along on his flight into anarchy and sabotage-a life of sex and espionage spent in Cold War Europe and 1960s New York. At the same time, he spins a tale of universal human struggles: of family, marriage, divorce, sickness, and debt. A savage comedy, Lost Property is deepened by its reflections upon class, culture, and illness.

About Ben Sonnenberg

BEN SONNENBERG was an American publisher and founder of the literary magazine Grand Street.

Praise

“In some respects, Sonnenberg follows in the tradition of his favorite Continental autobiographers—Nabokov, Baudelaire, Stendhal—and presents a view of an artist’s reactions to a kaleidoscopic world. But he also tells a fully American tale of will–how one tries to escape inherited surroundings and prove oneself through love and work.” —Publishers Weekly

“At last, a defiant life that does not end in bathos, drugs, or stacks of old newspapers, one that draws its distinction from, and ends up as, art.” —James Salter, author of All That Is

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