One of These Things First

by Steven Gaines

Overview

One of These Things First is a wry and poignant reminiscence of a 15 year old gay Jewish boy in Brooklyn in the early sixties, and his unexpected trajectory from a life behind a rack of dresses in his grandmother’s bra and girdle store, to Manhattan’s fabled Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, a fashionable Charenton for wealthy neurotics and Ivy League alcoholics, whose famous alumni include writers, poets, madmen, Marilyn Monroe, and bestselling author Steven Gaines.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781883285692
Publisher:	Delphinium
Publication date:	08/09/2016
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Steven Gaines is the author of Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons; The Sky's the Limit: Passion and Property in Manhattan; Simply Halston, the biography of the fashion designer; and co-author of The Love You Make: An Insider's Story of the Beatles, among other books. He's a co-founder of the Hamptons International Film Festival and lives in a small hamlet on the East End of Long Island.

Editorial Reviews

One of These Things First is…an absolute treasure. A skilled humorist as well as a tender yet trenchant observer of human behavior and the social forces that so often control it, Gaines has a particular gift for sustaining a tension between self-loathing and self-grandeur—his own as well as that of the people around him.

The New York Times Book Review - Meghan Daum

06/27/2016
Gaines (Philistines at the Hedgerow) looks back at the central issue of his Jewish childhood in Brooklyn, and the unnerving disorder of feeling different, as he works in his grandmother’s ladies’ clothing store. The author, who was 15 in the early 1960s, places readers right in his Borough Park neighborhood. The family thinks he’s going crazy, possibly due to his unmasculine work, while he tries to explain the sexual chaos in his head. His father takes the youth to a doctor who suggests treatment in a mental hospital, landing Gaines at exclusive Payne Whitney. At the hospital, his doctor approaches his case in the conventional manner to cure his homosexuality, while Gaines witnesses the priceless and zany antics of a supporting cast of oddballs—neighbors and fellow patients—worthy of a Marx Brothers madcap romp. By turns comic, honest, and riveting, Gaines tells a story of a well-meaning shrink and his troubled young charge locked in a war of wills to ease “the trauma of homosexuality” and restore his humanity in a conservative world. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"One of These Things First is not only a departure but an absolute treasure. [Gaines is] a skilled humorist as well as a tender yet trenchant observer of human behavior and the social forces that so often control it."

"Funny and poignant."

"A longtime journalist and artful chronicler of New York lives, Gaines’s look back at his own is shocking, funny, and sometimes shockingly funny. A real treasure."

From the Publisher

"One of These Things First is not only a departure but an absolute treasure. [Gaines is] a skilled humorist as well as a tender yet trenchant observer of human behavior and the social forces that so often control it."

New York Times Book Review

"A longtime journalist and artful chronicler of New York lives, Gaines’s look back at his own is shocking, funny, and sometimes shockingly funny. A real treasure."

Nickolas Butler

"Funny and poignant."

New York Post

A poignant and funny book that proves it does get better.

Joy Behar

A beautiful and heart-rending testament . Hard to imagine that in our lifetime we’ve seen such change in the attitudes toward young people. Gaines' irrepressible character comes through loud and clear. Leave it to him to find his way to Payne Whitney, the Harvard of mental joints and then come out of it with honors.

James Lescene

"Years ago Dominick Dunne called Steven Gaines 'a born storyteller.' If anything, we now know Gaines was meant to write his own powerful, heart-wrenching, and funny life story. I could not put it down."

Steven Petrow

"Growing up gay in pre-trendy Brooklyn wasn't always a joyride, as I personally realized ages ago. But Steven Gaines knows it even better. His harrowing account of being a suicidal 15-year-old who checked into Payne Whitney is eye opening, touching and ultimately triumphant because of how well he turned out."

Michael Musto

"A lyrical, dispassionate, humane story with a rich cast of characters . . . an absorbing, self-deprecating, deadpan humorous and painfully insightful memoir."

Sag Harbor Express

"This is a memoir for anyone who loves Paddy Chayefsky and Hanya Yanagihara. Steven Gaines has turned his considerable journalistic talents onto his younger self, writing a lyrical, wry and precisely excavated book which zaps you back to that moment when you first wonder, ‘Is this really who I am? What does it mean to not be what I think I’m supposed to be? Can I change?’"

Carl Swanson

PRAISE FOR Philistines at The Hedgerow: “Such a cast of eccentrics hasn't been seen since Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Jay McInerney

PRAISE FOR The Sky's the Limit: “Juicy and highly detailed, the book has movie stars, fashion designers, illicit sex, and lots of connving and cavorting socialites—and it's all about real estate.

Lisa B. Anderson

Steven Gaines is a born storyteller…

Dominick Dunne

Breezy, irreverent, amusing...replete with scandal, scurrilous characters, assorted bacchanalia, and all manner of wretched excess.

Laura Landro

PRAISE FOR Fool's Paradise: “A fun yarn about a bunch of charming scammers and swindlers with garish tastes..."

Miami Herald

Gaines skillfully unravels Manhattan’s social fabric...

New York Observer

A fun read flush with anecdotes.

Dan Ackman

A gossipy social history of scandal and intrigue, Miami Style

USA Today

An entertaining chronicle

Carl Hiaasen

A gossipy social history of scandal and intrigue, Miami Style

USA Today

PRAISE FOR Fool's Paradise: “A fun yarn about a bunch of charming scammers and swindlers with garish tastes..."

Miami Herald

"Funny and poignant."

New York Post

"A longtime journalist and artful chronicler of New York lives, Gaines’s look back at his own is shocking, funny, and sometimes shockingly funny. A real treasure."

Boston Globe

03/01/2016
A journalist, public radio show host, and New York Times best-selling author, Gaines (Philistines at the Hedgerow) turns his observational talents on himself in a memoir that begins in March 1962 with a near-successful suicide attempt. He persuaded his grandfather to support a stay at the exclusive Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where he acknowledged his homosexuality, attempted a conversion cure, and met a lot of celebrities. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

2016-05-23
The story of the author's experiences of transformation in a famed mental hospital.In the early 1960s, after a failed suicide attempt, Gaines (Fool's Paradise: Players, Poseurs, and the Culture of Excess in South Beach, 2009, etc.), at 15, became a patient at the Payne Whitney in Manhattan, where Marilyn Monroe, Carson McCullers, William S. Burroughs, Robert Lowell, and other notables had been treated. In a candid, entertaining memoir, the author chronicles growing up gay and confused in Borough Park, "the cognac of Brooklyn, the potent and flavorful essence"; dealing with his father's rage, teenage crushes, and strange compulsions; and landing at the storied hospital where fellow patients included producer Richard Halliday, husband of actress Mary Martin; a raunchy, eccentric contessa; and a woman who claimed to be John F. Kennedy's spurned mistress. Gaines was put under the care of a psychiatrist to whom he finally confided the cause of his distress: "I THINK I AM A HOMOSEXUAL," he wrote in a sealed note. "Homosexuality can be cured, like many other disorders," his doctor told him, news that buoyed Gaines' spirits. "I would jump through hoops of fire," he thought, "if I could be normal." Although the path to heterosexuality eluded him at Payne Whitney and through 12 years of Freudian therapy, Gaines changed radically. Under the mentorship of the moody Halliday, who imparted Broadway gossip; the spurned mistress, who prescribed for him new clothes from Brooks Brothers and a spiffy hairstyle; and Martin's suggested reading list (including To Kill a Mockingbird and Breakfast at Tiffany's, Gaines left behind his provincial Brooklyn roots. "I felt like Eliza Doolittle at the psycho country club," he writes. "Maybe it was a ship of crazies, but I had embarked on a voyage where almost anything was possible." In this short memoir, the author vividly portrays the crazies both within and outside of the mental hospital. A spirited narrative of a hard-won coming-of-age.

Kirkus Reviews