The gilded razor A memoir

Privileged, gay, drug-using, self-loathing teenager Lansky (currently a writer and editor at TIME) chose to be a high-school senior in New York City, living with his newly divorced father rather than staying with his mother in his hometown, Portland, Oregon. Lansky's memoir of that year and his first few months in college is unstintingly honest about his sexual activities, his rampant drug use, his continual warping of the truth to make himself likable to the new people he met. His beleaguered parents (and dad's new girlfriend) do their best, eventually paying to send the unrepentant, sick teen into several different rehab programs, fascinatingly depicted here and showing the young Lansky's calmly selfish language, thoughts, and actions. In this fraught and frightening telling, there's unbounded behavior on all levels, and Lansky ingests nearly every drug he can think of (many of which he spews back out again). There are moments of levity here and goodness, as well, but the best news is that Lansky ultimately wants to find his way back to normalcy. Readers will cheer him on.--Kinney, Eloise Copyright 2016 Booklist

There is much in this memoir of addiction that comes off as stereotypical, from the socialite party girl best friend to the loving-yet-absent divorced parents. Yet despite the been-here-read-it-before feeling, there is something in Lansky's story that-wait for it-can be called addictive. An editor at Time magazine who has written for countless A-list publications, Lansky is more than another journaling junkie. Maybe its because his downward spiral only lasted a couple years in his late teens, but Lansky tells his tale with a rapid pacing that perfectly apes the speed at which he was careening out of control. But despite this flat out writing style, Lansky's command of language never wavers as he alternatively bears his soul and pokes fun at himself with prose that's incisive and witty. When he asks questions like "Do I need a green Dior trench coat in rehab?" there is no doubt that some will find him "fucking ridiculous," as one treatment center patient called him, but even those who find another addiction memoir a bitter pill to swallow can't deny Lansky's writing chops or storytelling skills. Agent: Andrew Stuart, Stuart Agency (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

The Gilded Razor Prologue For many years after it was over, there were songs I could not listen to, for fear they would take me back there; certain photographs that made me clench my jaw in a particular way; and street corners where, crossing from a subway exit to reach an appointment or a restaurant, I would flash back momentarily to a long-forgotten winter night years earlier and see myself, seventeen years old and spectral in the lamplight, stumbling out of a brownstone with a runny nose and my fly unzipped. My hair would have been too long, probably, from always taking the money my father gave me for a haircut and using it to buy drugs. ("What do you mean, 'It doesn't look any different'?" I'd ask, always doe-eyed.) My hands would have been wedged into my pockets because I always forgot to wear gloves. And I would have been walking briskly back to my father's apartment, eager to get into bed and pretend it never happened. I say that I would have done so because so often I did, but if I could, I would do it differently. Memory is a funny type of haunting. The subconscious keeps chewing away at sins atoned for long ago. Even after everything has been set right, the body doesn't forget the places it's been. Stockholm. I sleep badly, tossing and turning in my hotel room. In the night, I awake from strange, listless dreams. The furniture turns to gold when I touch it, then crumbles into dust, silken as ash. I'm just tired, I tell myself; it's just jet lag--the foreignness of a new place. One morning I wake up and the bed is full of glitter. I fall back asleep, and when I awake again, the sheets are crisp and white as fresh snow. At a fancy party, there's a champagne toast; I hold my glass up to the light, watching the bubbles fizzle and break as they meet the surface. I set it down on the table unsipped. I am used to that by now. It may not always get better, but it will always get different. That was the promise--the only promise. There are ghosts around every corner. At a cocktail bar in Södermalm: I am alone at a table, writing in a notebook, when I see a man I recognize, although I can't say from where. He smiles at me--he knows me, too, and more intimately than I know him. He has a handsome, doleful face. Faces like that all blur together for me now. His name could be Jim, or Steve. He could be an investment banker or a surgeon or a congressman. He approaches me. Slowly, he reaches out to touch my face and presses a finger against my cheek. I want to ask what he's doing, but instead I just sit there, frozen. He raises his hand to show me. On the tip of his thumb, there is a speck of glitter. "Where did that come from?" I ask. We both begin to laugh. I don't go home with him because things are different now. But that night, alone in my room, I dream of falling down the stairs in a town house in Boston. I dream that I'm running through the ruddy desert of Utah, with no shoes on, under a silver moon. I dream that my apartment is full of snow, and there are wolves at the foot of the bed, nipping at my ankles. Excerpted from The Gilded Razor: A Memoir by Sam Lansky All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.