Product Description

In Beg, Borrow, Steal Michael Greenberg regales us with his wry and vivid take on the life of a writer of little means trying to practice his craft or simply stay alive. He finds himself doctoring doomed movie scripts; selling cosmetics from an ironing board in front of a women's department store; writing about golf, a game he has never played; and botching his debut as a waiter in a posh restaurant.

Central characters include Michael's father, whose prediction that Michael's "scribbling" wouldn't get him on the subway almost came true; his artistic first wife, whom he met in a Greenwich Village high school; and their son who grew up on the Lower East Side, fluent in the language of the street and in the language of the parlor. Then there are Greenberg's unexpected encounters: a Holocaust survivor who on his deathbed tries to leave Michael his fortune; a repentant communist who confesses his sins; a man who becomes a woman; a Chilean filmmaker in search of his past; and rats who behave like humans and cease to live underground.

Hilarious and bittersweet, Greenberg's stories invite us into a world where the familial, the literary, the tragic and the mundane not only speak to one another, but deeply enjoy the exchange.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64305 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-08
• Released on: 2009-09-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .90" h x 5.60" w x 8.60" l, .78 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 232 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781590513415
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
In these 45 thoughtfully crafted short essays written for London's Times Literary Supplement from 2003 to 2009, Greenberg (Hurry Down Sunshine) touches on his decades of trying to make good as a writer in New York City. Greenberg starts with early memories of growing up in Brooklyn, where he opted out of joining his father's scrap-metal business, instead dropping out of school in the early 1970s in search of a blunt exotic experience in Argentina and New York's Lower East Side. He ended up strapped with a young family of two children and faced years of plying odd jobs, like driving a cab, giving Spanish lessons, selling cosmetics on the street and ghost writing, all the while trying to write his novel. He fashions an anecdote for each of these experiences, in gently self-deprecating prose, such as writing for the movies and working the stock market, both to some success despite his naïveté. He tapped into an enthusiastic group of dachshund owners when he had to find another home for his child-nipping Eli, a troublesome pooch with a disgraceful domed head; he devotes chapters to the Negro Burial Ground and the paupers' cemetery on Hart Island, in New York City. As well, he offers touching reflections on the life of novelist William Herrick and editor Ted Solotaroff, and chronicles some funny run-ins with New Yorkers of all stripes. These are graceful ponderings by a deeply sympathetic soul, a consummate New Yorker and terrific writer. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Juliet Wittman the author of "Breast Cancer Journal: A Century of Petals." THE ADDERALL DIARIES A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder By Stephen Elliott Graywolf. 208 pp. $23 "The Adderall Diaries" should be a lurid work. Among its unsettling elements are the trial of a computer programmer suspected of murdering his Russian wife and a confession by the programmer's best friend that he killed several people. The author's father claimed to have shot a man -- something Elliott couldn't corroborate or disprove. The memoir also covers memories of a wretched childhood, drug use and Elliott's addiction to masochistic sex. Yet this is no potboiler, but a serious literary work designed to make you see the world as you've never quite seen it before. The intensity of Elliott's often beautiful prose evokes the effects of Adderall, the attention deficit medication. Yet the book shows a concern for order: Each chapter begins with a summary of what's to follow, reminiscent of the headings in Victorian novels, and there are even several footnotes. Nonetheless, beneath these devices throbs an all-pervasive sense of the elusiveness of truth. Memories deceive, and almost everyone in this book -- including the author -- is a fantasist. BEG, BORROW, STEAL A Writer's Life By Michael Greenberg Other. 217 pp. $19.95 The short pieces in "Beg, Borrow, Steal" are in the tradition of the literary-journalistic essays that Europeans call feuilletons. Although flexible, this form requires skill and concision, and Michael Greenberg uses it brilliantly. Personal experience is at the center of each piece, but none is solipsistic; the tone is understated and ironic, and every essay contains a hard-won glimmer of insight. The son of a determinedly non-bookish Jewish immigrant who owned a scrap metal yard, Greenberg rejected his father's business and devoted himself to the life of a writer. He scraped by on a number of small jobs, sorting mail, interpreting for Spanish-speaking defendants in criminal court, and selling cosmetics on a street corner. He finally achieved recognition with "Hurry Down Sunshine," a memoir about his daughter's descent into madness. Here, he ponders the ethics of using other people's lives for his work. He describes a visit to Argentina during its state-sponsored Dirty War against trade-unionists, students and activists. While he was there, he met Jorge Luis Borges; his girlfriend stumbled on a demonstration and was imprisoned; and on her release they conceived his son. Greenberg also recounts his experiences at his Hebrew school, where he and his classmates cruelly and ignorantly imitated the stutter of their Torah teacher, an Auschwitz survivor; describes killing a chicken; tells the story of Hart Island, where prisoners bury the indigent dead. More than anything else, Greenberg is a poet of New York, evoking in these fleeting pieces the city in all its scuffed and squalid grandeur.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
"Greenberg, a native New Yorker, loves the city as a child loves a parent, and in its honor he has put together a collection of tightly written incisive chapters, each another tessera or tile in a big mosaic…Greenberg is an acute observer (if 'acute' is defined as sharp, sensitive, even painful)."—Edmund White, The New York Times Book Review

"The short pieces in Beg, Borrow, Steal are in the tradition of the literary-journalistic essays that Europeans call feuilletons. Although flexible, this form requires skill and concision, and Michael Greenberg uses it brilliantly. Personal experience is at the center of each piece, but none is solipsistic; the tone is understated and ironic, and every essay contains a hard-won glimmer of insight… Greenberg is a poet of New York, evoking in these fleeting pieces the city in all its scuffed and squalid grandeur."—Juliet Wittman, The Washington Post

"[A] terrific new collection…. It is as though Bellow or Alfred Kazin were transported to post-millennial New York, bringing their toughness and romanticism to bear on our softer and more familiar world…. This book, with its intrepidity, humor, and dark insight, offers its own, irrefutable justification for the 'writer's life.'"—Adam Kirsch, Tablet

“Binding together this episodic autobiography is the series of marginal jobs—mover, Bronx street vender, author of voice-over narration (“Golf. Simple. Majestic. Timeless”)—with which Greenberg supported his literary career….The real attraction, however, is…the everyday texture of metropolitan life, which Greenberg captures with diaristic immediacy.”—The New Yorker

“Beg, Borrow, Steal is a delightful journey through a well-lived life in New York City. The 44 chapters-once-columns stand alone and yet, pulled together, flow like a river of many surprises…The more I read of Greenberg's life, the more I wanted to keep reading. The chapters are short, up to 5 pages each, and loud with wit, wisdom and irony. Many are simply perfect.”—Kassie Rose, WOSU Radio

“[Beg, Borrow, Steal] amounts to a history of a man from nowhere determined to be, and continuing to be, a writer no matter what….Greenberg’s unsparing, ferric style of truth telling [is] direct, unbuffered, sharp-edged….He was variously a peddler of cosmetics and fire alarms, cab driver and chauffeur, Spanish teacher and court interpreter, furniture mover, bookstore clerk, mail sorter, waiter, and hack writer, all pursuits providing subjects for these essays in which the quotidian is illuminated and refracted through a cool, audacious eye.”—Boston Globe

“Interesting, forthright, and funny... In these finely turned columns, Greenberg’s candid, disarming voice reveals a honed sense of irony gained over a lifetime spent befriending the oddballs, con men, and hard luck types who comprise a significant segment of New York City…This is a rewarding encounter with an engaging, unusual literary sensibility.”—Jewish Book World

"Greenberg's book is an important reminder to writers that they don't need to write 'important' stories, but rather, they need to give each story importance."—Carol Hoening, The Huffington Post

“Beg, Borrow, Steal is a series of reflections on the hardships, delights, and moral dilemmas one encounters when trying to get through life primarily by means of stringing words together. As a stylist…Greenberg is at the top of his form… He has the rare ability to say exactly what he needs to say in order to make the story work and, at the same time, to give his sentences a felicitous rhythm that doesn’t call attention to itself.”—The New Criterion

"Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer's Life will become a bestseller today and a classic inspiration tomorrow. Just as people carried Kerouac and Bellow in their back pocket, Greenberg's conversational tone stays with you, and you want to read his essays again and again….We hope by now, with thousands of Hurry Down Sunshine fans ready to read Beg, Borrow, Steal, that Greenberg will be motivated to keep observing, writing, and counting us among his grateful audience."—Blogcritics.org

"Quietly elegant, effortless, valuable, and perfectly crafted, like gems or teardrops…[Greenberg writes] the way Chagall would make a stained-glass window, using familiar materials and skills to create something delicate and undeniable and new."—Bookslut.com

"[Greenberg] creates poignant subtexts involving fundamental human values and emotions like love, desire, honesty and malice…skillfully explores issues that range from the profoundly tragic to the delightfully funny."—Kirkus Reviews

"In these 45 thoughtfully crafted short essays written for London's Times Literary Supplement from 2003 to 2009, Greenberg (Hurry Down Sunshine) touches on his decades of trying to make good as a writer in New York City...These are graceful ponderings by a deeply sympathetic soul, a consummate New Yorker and terrific writer."—Publishers Weekly

“Greenberg’s [Times Literary Supplement] editor gave him simple instructions: for each piece, spill a drop of blood, give it a sense of urgency….Greenberg skillfully meets his editor’s requirements and seems to have carefully and artfully selected words and constructed sentences for maximum impact….His narratives, which mostly take place in New York City, include an entertaining cast of characters and span from his youth in the 1970s through marriage and raising his own children to the near present day, with the underlying theme of a writer eking out a living by any means possible and, in turn, living a full life.”—Library Journal

"Beg, Borrow, Steal is a writing memoir that belongs in the company of like classics such as Grace Paley's Just as I Thought, Annie Dillard's Living by Fiction, William Gass's Fiction and the Figures of Life, and Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings…What is often thought of as an intangible, cerebral activity—writing—is made palpable in this book."—ForeWord Magazine

"Greenberg's descriptions of his encounters with mentors, his dealings with the movie world and his endless family dramas are rendered with biting humor and insight. The unflinching stories are so well written, readers will wince."—Florida Times-Union

Customer Reviews

A Rich, Original Read Paced for New York Reading
Sent an advance reader's copy of this book (as a sometimes reviewer, and without knowing the author), I was drawn from the first sentence into this mesmerizing collection of personal accounts, ranging in subject from the author's family to the many failed or else underappreciated artists Greenberg has known in New York. It's written in short chapter-essays, each a self-contained meditation on a central event or personality or passion that Greenberg uses to springboard into other areas that often seem unrelated. The fine connective tissue of the 45-chapter book turns out to be his unbroken, ultimately undaunted desire to cobble together a life from writing, a subtle underlying theme he manages to insert so entertainingly that as soon as you finish one piece you'll want to turn the page and start the next one before you turn out the light and roll over. I didn't read his previous book, HURRY DOWN SUNSHINE, but here Greenberg gives us some of the background to the story he told there, as well as a couple of glimpses into the hazards of finally having a successful literary career after a lifetime of failures, half-starts and disappointments. Largely, the anecdotes are deftly included ancillary notes to the group portrait of a vanishing New York. What Greenberg can squeeze into five or six pages, simply by quick association and spare description, it takes some writers chapters to accomplish. It would make a great model for composition and creative writing students. A man in his 50s, Michael Greenberg has the maturity and the trained eye to use his many experiences and the simple juxtapositions of his ideas to great effect, and a freshness of voice that makes his style almost transparent.

AND THE BEST EPISODE WILL NOT REACH PUBLICATION
we of the Vine often have the great good fortune to read Advance UNcorrected Proof copies of soon to be published blockbusters or doorstoppers.

Each month we get a long list of books to select, most of the most tempting already gone, leaving the juvenile lit behind.

When I read the subtitle here: "A Writer's Life" I jumped on it, and happily discovered it was still available, as I too live, and I write.

Warning: This book is well written, not like my stuff. It is very well written. When you do pick up this book, realize you will not put it back down until you have finished it, the following day. Do not pick it up therefore unless you have a good free unfettered time period ahead, like two days, easily.

Comparison has been made to Talk of the Town. I find the comparison faulty. Talk of the Town traditionally resembled taking a smooth ride up Park Street or Fifth Avenue in the back of a long chaufeur driven limo in the company of one rather aloof, elegant, easily wealthy and eloquent companion, or rather, not companion, but one who briefly permits you to share space, and a ride, and to listen to rivetting, gentle words.

This book is like riding next to guy, divorced and remarried but ever thinking of the first, driving an old Corolla on the beaten sides of town, the toxic dumps, the public housing, his dad's old metal junkyard.

This is the contrast. The comparison converges nevertheless in that neither can be put down.

Except for this. Within our VINE AUP we find a small slip of paper reporting that what for me is the heart and soul of this collection of old columns from the Times Literary Supplement what is now designated as Episode Eleven will not appear, the episode entitled Afterlife which discusses his father, his life and his work, etc.

Reason for this heartless excision reads "For editorial considerations" but perhaps the reference to toxic waste and other matters made legal issues also of prime consideration. Who knows. I only know the loss of this episode seriously compromises and renders near senseless the remainder.

As a near contemporary of the author, and also of the Northeast originally, I was very grateful for his recounting of those years, and dropping so many beloved names like Danny Kalb and Dave Van Ronk, etc. In fact in one way this collection serves as reference to further works, not only those of Saul Bellow of course, but also Willa Cather, Mark Twain, the reference to other writers is endless and enriching.

A pessimistic work. The author states the only indication from his editor at the TLS was a sense of urgency in the writing. This is the slow motion urgency, taking its time to develop and to express itself. In the end apparently the only one who wins is his daughter up on the farm surviving by working cattle it what appears to be an idyllic situation while reality may differ.

You will love with melancholy this book. In the end the author has all his deeply held beliefs and family myths dispelled by new news, which might in itself be fiction, and we are left wondering. One review here claims to love the way the final line of the episodes sums things up neatly. I found things consistently left frayed and unresolved, and open. I still cannot figure out the author's true impression of our African American brothers, among whom he has spent much time, yet appears to picute as essentially violent and ready to explode. My impression has been other, and far more varied.

Ans so you will find, if you too are of this age and place, gripping reading here, to fight with, to engage, to love and to weep, to laugh and again to love. And to read again. Complex. Multi-layered. Basically memoirs but much more as well.

Who are we. How do we live. Why. What does it all mean? What can it mean. Or not. And how ridiculous are those darn polyamorists!

GEt this book. Read it with plenty of time ahead of you, and with plenty of rest, and food and drink nearby. Realize the best has been left out, the key to this puzzle, unless you do have an Advance Uncorrected Proof copy.

It's as if Leopold Bloom came up imprudently in Manhattan, and Rockaway, roughly, rather than gentile Dublin. What would he too think?

Writing is tougher than you'd suppose - and sometimes funnier
I don't often laugh out loud while reading, but this book generated more than one chuckle. It is also moving, sometimes to the brink of tears. Michael Greenberg doesn't overtly manipulate you; his writing style is straightforward and wry. He is willing to look at himself with regret and respect, see the less-than-noble nature of his particular beast, and keep going. Whether he is comparing great moments in golf to great moments in history (priceless, especially about WWII), or the way he cleaned up the soiled money his incontinent uncle gave him, because he really needed the dough, he shows you every step of an erratic life with a man who loves to write but has to make a living. There are some excellent insights into the nature of writing - the boredom of writing about people you can't relate to, the ethics of writing negatively of people who will read about themselves in your work, the determination to give up the trash work for classier endeavors, only to succumb to the need to pay the rent. Greenberg has a talent for appreciating the absurd, which makes this an extremely enjoyable read. You don't have to be a writer to enjoy this book - anyone trying to establish himself and scrabbling to maintain a hold on the lowest rungs of the ladder of success will empathize with Greenberg's tale.