
Do Something
Coming of Age Amid the Glitter and Doom of '70s New York
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Narrated by:
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Edoardo Ballerini
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By:
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Guy Trebay
About this listen
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • 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 AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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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
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Boys in the Trees
- A Memoir
- By: Carly Simon
- Narrated by: Carly Simon
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Simon's memoir reveals her remarkable life, beginning with her storied childhood as the third daughter of Richard L. Simon, the co-founder of publishing giant Simon & Schuster; her musical debut as half of The Simon Sisters, performing folk songs with her sister, Lucy, in Greenwich Village; to a meteoric solo career that would result in 13 top 40 hits, including the number-one song "You're So Vain".
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Gorgeous and Sad
- By Adele in CBus on 11-30-15
By: Carly Simon
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The Other Olympians
- Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports
- By: Michael Waters
- Narrated by: Jennifer Pickens
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In December 1935, Zdeněk Koubek, one of the most famous sprinters in European women’s sports, declared he was now living as a man. Around the same time, the celebrated British field athlete Mark Weston, also assigned female at birth, announced that he, too, was a man. Periodicals and radio programs across the world carried the news; both became global celebrities. A few decades later, they were all but forgotten. In The Other Olympians, Michael Waters uncovers, for the first time, the gripping true stories of Koubek, Weston, and other pioneering trans and intersex athletes from their era.
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How women athletes have been treated by the world
- By JAMES W GOODWIN on 11-19-24
By: Michael Waters
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The Freaks Came Out to Write
- The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture
- By: Tricia Romano
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller, Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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You either were there or you wanted to be. A defining New York City institution co-founded by Norman Mailer, The Village Voice was the first newspaper to cover hip-hop, the avant-garde art scene, and Off-Broadway with gravitas. It reported on the AIDS crisis with urgency and seriousness when other papers dismissed it as a gay disease. In 1979, the Voice’s Wayne Barrett uncovered Donald Trump as a corrupt con artist before anyone else was paying attention.
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Excellent content and structure, but …
- By richard s. burker on 03-16-24
By: Tricia Romano
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How Sondheim Can Change Your Life
- By: Richard Schoch
- Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Stephen Sondheim died on November 26, 2021, but for countless fans around the world, he is “still here,” to quote one of his lyrics. With acclaimed revivals of his landmark shows occurring around the world and introducing new generations to the man who transformed American musical theater, Sondheim’s legacy has only grown. What is it about such classic songs as “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy, “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music, and “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods that speaks to us so intimately and profoundly?
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Putting It Together
- By 0 Stars on 12-06-24
By: Richard Schoch
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Cue the Sun!
- The Invention of Reality TV
- By: Emily Nussbaum
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Who invented reality television, the world’s most dangerous pop-culture genre? And why can’t we look away? In this revelatory, deeply reported account of the rise of “dirty documentary”—from its contentious roots in radio to the ascent of Donald Trump—Emily Nussbaum unearths the origin story of the genre that ate the world, as told through the lively voices of the people who built it. At once gimlet-eyed and empathetic, Cue the Sun! explores the morally charged, funny, and sometimes tragic consequences of the hunt for something real inside something fake.
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Weak, semi-unconnected stories
- By KDN on 07-20-24
By: Emily Nussbaum
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Health and Safety
- A Breakdown
- By: Emily Witt
- Narrated by: Emily Witt
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 2016, a divisive presidential election was underway, and a new breed of right-wing rage was on the rise. Emily Witt, who would soon publish her first book on sex in the digital age, had recently quit antidepressants for a more expansive world of psychedelic experimentation. From her apartment in Brooklyn, she began to catch glimpses of the clandestine nightlife scene thrumming around her.
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Bored voice
- By Amazon Customer on 12-20-24
By: Emily Witt
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Paradise Bronx
- The Life and Times of New York's Greatest Borough
- By: Ian Frazier
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 20 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past fifteen years, Ian Frazier has been walking the Bronx. Paradise Bronx reveals the amazingly rich and tumultuous history of this amazingly various piece of our greatest city. From Jonas Bronck, who bought land from the local Native Americans, to the formerly gang-wracked South Bronx that gave birth to hip-hop, Frazier’s loving exploration is a moving tour de force about the polyglot culture that is America today.
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Just Beautiful
- By Yusuf on 09-09-24
By: Ian Frazier
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The Bluestockings
- A History of the First Women's Movement
- By: Susannah Gibson
- Narrated by: Fenella Fudge
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In England in the 1700s, a woman who was an intellectual, spoke out, or wrote professionally was considered unnatural. After all, as the wisdom of the era dictated, a clever woman—if there were such a thing—would never make a good wife. But a circle of women called the Bluestockings did something extraordinary: Coming together in glittering salons to discuss and debate as intellectual equals with men, they fought for women to be educated and to have a public role in society. In this intimate and revelatory history, Susannah Gibson delves into the lives of these pioneering women.
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fascinating book almost ruined by the reader
- By braingirl on 08-13-24
By: Susannah Gibson
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A Wilder Shore
- The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson
- By: Camille Peri
- Narrated by: Jeanette Illidge
- Length: 16 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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He was an ambitious but drifting writer from a prominent Scottish family. She was a tough Nevada silver miner’s wife, with children, when they met. Who could have predicted that Fanny Van de Grift and Robert Louis Stevenson would go on to create one of history’s great literary marriages? From their first encounter in France in 1876, Fanny and Louis’s partnership transcended societal expectations to become a literary union that was progressive, eccentric, and tempestuous, but always animated by a profound mutual respect
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Fairly interesting
- By Luke on 10-25-24
By: Camille Peri
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I Just Keep Talking
- A Life in Essays
- By: Nell Irvin Painter
- Narrated by: Nell Irvin Painter
- Length: 17 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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From the New York Times bestselling author of The History of White People and Old in Art School, a finalist for the NBCC Award, comes a comprehensive new collection of essays spanning art, politics, and the legacy of racism that shapes American history as we know it. These essays resist easy answers in favor of complexity, the inescapable sense of our country’s potential thwarted by its failures. This collection will surely solidify Painter’s place among the finest critics and writers of the last half century.
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Author reader
- By K D S on 07-11-24
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John Lewis
- A Life
- By: David Greenberg
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 24 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Born into poverty in rural Alabama, Civil Rights icon John Lewis would become second only to Martin Luther King, Jr. in his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. He was a Freedom Rider who helped to integrate bus stations in the South, a leader of the Nashville sit-in movement, the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, and the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which he made into one of the major civil rights organizations.
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A Legendary Life
- By Tracy Jackson on 03-28-25
By: David Greenberg
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Ambition Monster
- A Memoir
- By: Jennifer Romolini
- Narrated by: Jennifer Romolini
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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After years of relentlessly racing up the professional ladder, Jennifer Romolini reached the kind of success many crave: a high-profile, C-suite dream job, a book well-received enough that reporters wanted to know the secrets to her success, and a gig traveling around the country giving speeches on “making it.” She had a handsome and clever husband, a precocious child. But beneath this polished surface was a powder keg of unresolved trauma and chronic overwork. It was all about to blow.
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Love love love
- By James on 06-07-24
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Cocktails with George and Martha
- Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
- By: Philip Gefter
- Narrated by: Alexa Morden
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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From its debut in 1962, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a wild success and a cultural lightning rod. The play transpires over one long, boozy night, laying bare the lies, compromises, and scalding love that have sustained a middle-aged couple through decades of marriage. It scandalized critics but magnetized audiences. Across 644 sold-out Broadway performances, the drama demolished the wall between what could and couldn’t be said on the American stage and marked a definitive end to the I Love Lucy 1950s.
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Another Bad Narration
- By TPH on 02-25-24
By: Philip Gefter
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I Heard Her Call My Name
- A Memoir of Transition
- By: Lucy Sante
- Narrated by: Lucy Sante
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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For a long time, Lucy Sante felt unsure of her place. Born in Belgium, the only child of conservative working-class Catholic parents who transplanted their little family to the United States, she felt at home only when she moved to New York City in the early 1970s and found her people among a band of fellow bohemians. Some would die young, from drugs and AIDS, and some would become jarringly famous. Sante flirted with both fates on her way to building an estimable career as a writer. But she still felt like her life was a performance. She was presenting a facade, even to herself.
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I'm so glad I read this book
- By Judy in Salt Lake on 03-09-25
By: Lucy Sante
What listeners say about Do Something
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Polly B.
- 07-05-24
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.
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- Beauhanks
- 07-05-24
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.
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