Jimmy Neurosis: A Memoir

by James Oseland Narrated by James Oseland

Overview

From a celebrated figure of the food world comes a poignant, provocative memoir about being young and gay during the 1970s punk revolution in America

Long before James Oseland was a judge on Top Chef Masters, he was a teenage rebel growing up in the pre-Silicon Valley, California, suburbs, yearning for a taste of something wild. Diving headfirst into the churning mayhem of the punk movement, he renamed himself Jimmy Neurosis and embarked on a journey into a vibrant underground world populated by visionary musicians and artists.

In a quest that led him from the mosh pits of San Francisco to the pop world of Andy Warhol's Manhattan, he learned firsthand about friendship of all stripes, and what comes of testing the limits-both the joyous glories and the unanticipated, dangerous consequences.

With humor and verve, Oseland brings to life the effervescent cocktail of music, art, drugs, and sexual adventure that characterized the end of the seventies. Through his account of how discovering his own creativity saved his life, he tells a thrilling and uniquely American coming-of-age story.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

11/05/2018
A gay teen seeks self-definition through sex, drugs, and punk rock in this sometimes grim, sometimes exuberant coming-of-age memoir. A food journalist and Top Chef Masters judge, Oseland (Cradle of Flavor) recalls his late-1970s high school years in a dreary Bay Area town under the thumb of his fragile, homophobic single mom and rowdy, homophobic schoolmates, who were forever spraying him with epithets. He started venturing into San Francisco, where offbeat gal-pals introduced him to the emerging punk-rock scene; he also experienced giddy gay trysts and a serious relationship, at age 15, with a 38-year-old artist. (“We laughed” after discussing the statutory rape question, he writes.) Oseland adopted the nom de punk “Jimmy Neurosis” along with dyed-orange hair, eyeliner, torn shirts, and women’s capri pants, and weathered familial conflict, a savage beating by thugs, and trying to “shake the sense that I was a stranger in a strange land.” Oseland’s memoir juxtaposes suburban banality with grungy punk clubs, Quaaludes and heroin, and furtive men’s-room hookups, in a stew of atmospheric prose (“The band started playing... a corrosive progression of electronic noises, loud enough that it felt like a solid mass I could lean on”). Oseland’s adolescent sulks sometimes grate, but at his best he presents an engrossing portrait of his emergence from childhood constraints into a frightening, exhilarating adult world. (Feb.)

From the Publisher

Oseland writes this vibrant coming-of-age memoir in an instantly lovable voice, part surly teenager and part sweetly naive dreamer. . . . At times, Jimmy Neurosis echoes Patti Smith’s Just Kids . . . but Oseland tells this story with a poignant style all his own.” — Rolling Stone

“Affecting . . . Here we see the power of the punk scene before it grows corrupted, and even of those brief flashes of intimacy, physical or otherwise, which Oseland shares with his anonymous partners, a strategy to expose and, in some way, to mitigate his vulnerability and loneliness.” — Los Angeles Times

“It ain’t easy being a gay adolescent punk-rocker in suburbia but this heroic book proves you can survive conventional society’s assholism if you believe in your own style and find an outlaw culture to welcome you in before you go off the deep end.” — John Waters

“A page-turner about a timid adolescent who hurls himself out of 1970s suburban California into New York and San Francisco’s electric gay scenes. This gripping and inspired tale of the artist as a young man vividly shows that it does in fact get better.” — Andre Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name

“I rooted for Jimmy Neurosis on every page of this brave, engrossing, deeply touching memoir.” — Francine Prose, author of What to Read and Why

“In this triumphant book, James Oseland not only reminds you how hard it is to be teetering on the edge of adulthood, but also what it takes to move forward.  For the first time in my life I finally understand the appeal of Punk Rock.” — Ruth Reichl, author of Tender at the Bone 

“Nonstop entertainment with an irreverent voice and a beautiful lens over a golden age now gone.” — Out Magazine, “9 Queer Books to Read This Month”

Rolling Stone

Oseland writes this vibrant coming-of-age memoir in an instantly lovable voice, part surly teenager and part sweetly naive dreamer. . . . At times, Jimmy Neurosis echoes Patti Smith’s Just Kids . . . but Oseland tells this story with a poignant style all his own.

|Los Angeles Times

Affecting . . . Here we see the power of the punk scene before it grows corrupted, and even of those brief flashes of intimacy, physical or otherwise, which Oseland shares with his anonymous partners, a strategy to expose and, in some way, to mitigate his vulnerability and loneliness.

Andre Aciman

A page-turner about a timid adolescent who hurls himself out of 1970s suburban California into New York and San Francisco’s electric gay scenes. This gripping and inspired tale of the artist as a young man vividly shows that it does in fact get better.

John Waters

It ain’t easy being a gay adolescent punk-rocker in suburbia but this heroic book proves you can survive conventional society’s assholism if you believe in your own style and find an outlaw culture to welcome you in before you go off the deep end.

Francine Prose

I rooted for Jimmy Neurosis on every page of this brave, engrossing, deeply touching memoir.

Out Magazine

Nonstop entertainment with an irreverent voice and a beautiful lens over a golden age now gone.

Ruth Reichl

In this triumphant book, James Oseland not only reminds you how hard it is to be teetering on the edge of adulthood, but also what it takes to move forward.  For the first time in my life I finally understand the appeal of Punk Rock.

Los Angeles Times

Affecting . . . Here we see the power of the punk scene before it grows corrupted, and even of those brief flashes of intimacy, physical or otherwise, which Oseland shares with his anonymous partners, a strategy to expose and, in some way, to mitigate his vulnerability and loneliness.

John Waters

It ain’t easy being a gay adolescent punk-rocker in suburbia but this heroic book proves you can survive conventional society’s assholism if you believe in your own style and find an outlaw culture to welcome you in before you go off the deep end.

Out Magazine

Nonstop entertainment with an irreverent voice and a beautiful lens over a golden age now gone.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173518552
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/05/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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