Thomas Beller's Books, etc.

Recent work and news:



"Manet and Degas and Robert and Me"
The New York Times

"MAGIC: The Life of Earvin 'Magic' Johnson"
The New York Times Book Review (front page)

"A writer apologized to me - 23 years later. A 'waterfall' of memories ensued"
The Los Angeles Times

"The Sullivanians"
The Washington Post Book World (front page)

"On Outscoring My Father"
The New Yorker

"A Sense of Where He's Been"
The New Yorker

"Ugly Donald, From Queens"
N+1

"Pandemic Playgrounds"
N+1

"A Few Words About Jerry Stiller"
The New Yorker

"The joys and heartbreak of my 20-year friendship with poet-songwriter David Berman "
Los Angeles Times

"J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist" wins
The New York City Book Award
for Biography/Memoir.

(Podium)

"The N.B.A. Kaleidescope"
The New Yorker

"Wearing the Lead Glasses:
Lead Contamination in New Orleans and Beyond"
Places Journal

"The Shot That Stoped Basketball"
The New Yorker

"Hurricane Bernie"
The Mekong Review

"James Harden's Transcendant Step-back"
The New Yorker

"The Death of a Movie Theater"
The New Yorker

"A Capacious New History of the Beastie Boys
by the Two Who Remain"
The New York Times

"Gathering Moss: A Decade in New Orleans"
The Tulanian

"The Vanished Music Stores of
New York City's Forty-eighth Street"
The New Yorker

"Here We Go Again:
A Few Thoughts on the Cavaliers-Warriors N.B.A. Finals"
The New Yorker

"Loitering Backstage at the N.B.A"
The New Yorker

"Anthony Davis and the Plight of
the Modern N.B.A. Big Man"
The New Yorker

"Somebody's Mother is Waiting in the Lobby"
The New Yorker

"The Egg Cream in Mid-Manhattan"
Harvard Design Magazine

"The Devastating Shutdown of the Cambodia Daily"
The New Yorker

"The Electric-Bike Conundrum"
The New Yorker

"The Fight From Saigon"
The St. Ann's Review

"Frank Ntilikina and French Math At The NBA Draft"
The New Yorker

"Ruth Negga"
Town and Country

"The Warrior's Torrential Victory"
The New Yorker

"Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds: Childhood"
"In Their Lives"

"Reviews of work by Dawn DeDeaux, Tom Lowenstein, Philip Roth, Gregory Pardlo on 4columns.com"
4 Columns

"The Pleasures of The Old Man Game"
The New Yorker

"There's Nowhere To Hide On The Internet"
The New Yorker

"Maybe The Earth Is Flat If You Are Kyrie Irving"
The New Yorker

"A New Orleans All-Star Game Diary #2:
Skills and Dunks"
The New Yorker

"A New Orleans All-Star Game Diary #1"
The New Yorker

"Alexander Chancellor's Laugh"
The New Yorker

"First Snow"
The New Yorker

"America's First Climate Refugees"
Smithsonian Magazine

"Don Delillo and Move-In Day"
The New Yorker

"Holiday Travel"
The Paris Review

"That Time My Band Opened for Blur"
The New Yorker

"'Gimme Shelter' in Central Park"
The New Yorker

"Angola Prison and the Shadow of Slavery"
The New Yorker

"The City Game?"
The New Yorker

"'The Loved Ones'"
The New York Times

"The Menace in Our Own Backyard"
The New York Times

"Don't Call It Katrina"
The New Yorker

The book is a clue:

"Two Readings with Robert Stone"
The New Yorker

"The Expatriate Knicks Fan"
The New Yorker

"Napoleon on the Backstairs"
The New Yorker

The New York Times Book Review:

The New York Times interview.

The Bookforum interview.

Reading and discussion with Edmund White and Patricia Bosworth: June 5th at the 92nd St Y, New York.

"Her Party"
The New Yorker

Radio/Podcast: An interview with Susan Larson (on New Orleans Public Radio, WWNO), with Janet Coleman on WBAI's Cat Radio, with Pat Towers, on Robin Hood Radio, "the smallest NPR Station in the nation."

The New Yorker's Page Turner:"Books to Look Out For in June."

New York Magazine's Vulture: "8 Books You Need to Read in June,"

The Los Angeles Times: Summer Books Preview, 2014. "J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist" is available at your local bookstore and these venues: Amazon, Powell's, Indiebound,

"The All-Star Game Diaries"
The New Yorker

Book Review: A Port In The Storm
The New York Times Book Review

"Nirvana For two Year Olds"
The New Yorker

"Generation Crossfit "
The New Yorker

"The Perils of Precocity"
The New Yorker

"The Lady Upstairs"

Vogue. September, P. 472
Excerpt from my forthcoming biography of
J.D. Salinger

"Repeat, Memory"
The New Yorker

"Excerpt from 'A Symposium on Psychoanalysis' by Thomas Beller,
from The Threepenny Review"
International Psychoanalysis

"The Ongoing Story: Twitter and Writing"
The New Yorker

Discussing The Onging Story on:
The New Yorker's Out Loud podcast

"The Mother of All Frequencies or: A Tweet Not Tweeted"
The New Yorker

"'Both Flesh and Not' by David Foster Wallace: Review"
San Francisco Chronicle

"Remembrance of Snows Past"
The New Yorker

"Icebreaker"
The New Yorker

"River of Berman"
Tabletmag.com

"Saying Goodbye To Now"
The New Yorker

Discussing Saying Goodbye To Now on:
The New Yorker's Out Loud podcast

"My Thanksgiving Panic"
Salon.com

"Parking: The Agonies and the Ecstasies"
The New Yorker

Discussing Parking: The Agonies and the Ecstasies on the
The New Yorker's Out Loud Podcast

"The Two Thousand Dollar Popsicle"
The New Yorker

New Orleans' problem with lead paint and kids.

Central Park

The NY Times Review of Central Park

"The Mollification of Manhattan"
The New Yorker

The zoning hearing, the above essay, and the larger debate covered in The New York Times.

"Thomas Beller Needs to Take Better Care of His Things"
The Atlantic Wire

"How I Lost My iPhone in New Orleans, or Some New Adventures of Huck Finn"
The New Yorker

"Spree"
The New Yorker

"In Between Days"
The New York Times, T Magazine

"The Purple Krama"
Guernica

"An Exile from the Kingdom of Me"
The New Yorker

"Negative Space"
The New York Review of Books

"Saigon on the Bayou"
Travel & Leisure Magazine

"The Topographical Soul"
The Paris Review

Reading Nicolo Tucci's "The Evolution of Knowledge,"
The New Yorker's Fiction Podcast

"Us and Them"
Tabletmag.com

"The Laundry Room"
The Paris Review

Said Sayrafiezadeh reads Thomas Beller's "A Different Kind of Imperfection," and discusses it with The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman.
The New Yorker's Fiction Podcast

A Celebration of Stanley A. Bosworth Saint Ann's School Founding Headmaster, 1965-2004 Church of St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Brooklyn, New York October 15, 2011

"The Maserati Kid"
The Paris Review

"On Steve Jobs"
N+1

"Stalking The Stalkers"
The New York Times Magazine

They're at It Again: Stories from Twenty Years of Open City

"'On Abundance,'"
Man with a Pan"
.

"The closing of H&H Bagels on 80th Street and Broadway sparked a surge of interest into that institution, some of which found its way to 'Portrait of The Bagel As A Young Man," collected in 'How To Be a Man."
The Wall Street Journal's two cents.

"Open City's Closing: 20 years, 30 Issues and 'Life Pressed Into' The Pages"
The Wall Street Journal
.

 

***

Seduction Theory

"Touching and often funny... graced by elegant turns of phrase, a fresh way with metaphor and real insight. Brilliantly captures the great expectations and recurring ambivalence of youth." -- New York Times Book Review

"A touching collection of stories about love in the city... (an) exceptionally memorable... spirited collection." -- Time Magazine

***

The Sleep-Over Artist

A New York Times Notable Book.

A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2000.

"Captures perfectly the myriad stages of fear, discovery and elation that mark one's first sexual experience... Beller paints a hauntingly accurate portrait of a love affair laced with grown-up complications."
--New York Times Book Review

"Hits a pitch of anguish so leavened by humour as to keep the reader off guard in a satisfying if disturbing way."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"Beller is a master of the profound and fatal flaw... poetry is everywhere."
--Los Angeles Times

"Smart and funny. Beller has an admirable eye for detail, and a cutting observational wit."
-- Deborah Picker, L.A. Weekly

"A frank, likeable book with an appealing central character."
--Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"Beller is writing in a genre - the guy-coming-of-age - that has been around for a while. But in his modest way he changes the rules."
--Sarah Kerr, Vogue

"Featuring a New York that, like Kundera's Prague, is a vast hive of seductions and betrayals, Beller's carefully crafted debut novel charts the coming-of-age of Alex Fader.... Beller has the true novelist's knack for weaving together the disparate threads of postmodern urban existence into convincing studies of character. The vignettes of Alex's life coalesce into a moving portrait of a young man intuitively seeking a place he can call home."
--Publishers Weekly

"Fresh, sophisticated, and most of all utterly readable."
--Eva Hoffman

How To Be a Man:
Scenes From a Protracted Boyhood
Amazon
, Barnes and Noble, W.W. Norton.

"Smart, funny, interesting..."
--Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post

"Beller can write his butt off."
--Donnell Alexander in The San Francisco Chronicle

"A supremely enjoyable collection of essays written in clear, often very funny prose."
--Adrienne Day, in Time Out New York

"Not since I first read Joseph Mitchell have I felt so vividly and beautifully transported to the streets of New York. Thomas Beller is a chronicler of his own life but also of the life of the city, and there's a quality of unbridled curiosity to his work which make his essays shimmer with comedy and insight and exuberance. I absolutely loved this book."
--Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir!

"The best sections of his book . . . call to mind Raymond Carver in their clarity of language and subdued emotion. A fine collection of essays that will resonate with many."
--Publishers Weekly

"Elegant descriptions and sophisticated insights that evince the hipness you expect from a lifelong New Yorker and a sweetness and intimacy you might not."
--Carole Goldberg in The Hartford Courant

"An enjoyably mature read."
--Gilbert Cruz, Entertainment Weekly

" Beller's smooth prose and insightful analyses will appeal to fans of good writing everywhere."
--Audrey Snowden, Library Journal

"Doesn't show how to be a man so much as a mensch."
--Jacob Heilbrunn, New York Times Book Review

"These quite marvelous and darkly hilarious personal essays derive their power from a shameless honesty, often about the most shameful moments, which suddenly reveal a luminous upside in the author's comic retelling. Together they give us a privileged view of how curiously attenuated and winding, for many a young American male, is the long march to maturity."
--Phillip Lopate, author of Getting Personal, and Waterfront

"Each meticulous sentence is a crooked finger that lures the reader deeper into his darkly funny world."
--Lauren Gilchrist,
Columbia Spectator

 

Editors' Choice: New York Times Book Review, Amazon.com

 

 

Table of Contents

 

Manhattan Ate My Car (read)

The Costume Party

Mother Goes to Hollywood (read)

Chemistry Set

The Drummer

The Birthday Suit

Portrait Of The Bagel As AYoung Man

The Problem with T-Shirts

A Biker in the City

Turtles In New York

The Breakup

The Tryout

Addicted To Love

The Last Days of Shakespeare & Company

Scenes From a Playground

A Bike Messenger in the City

Strip Club

A Car Is Not A Castle

Walking The Dog

The Floating Armoire