Peek inside one of New York City's grandest homes-that of Benjamin Sonnenberg, Sr., the inventor of modern public relations-in this smart and hilarious memoir of privilege and excess, told by the son of a powerful and seductive man.
Ben Sonnenberg(1936-2010) was a playwright, poet, and publisher. In
1981, he started the literary magazineGrand Street, which he edited
for nine years. He lived in New York City with his wife, the writer
Dorothy Gallagher.In 1994, Sonnenberg was named an honorary fellow
of the Royal Society of Literature.
Maria Margaronis is a writer, translator, and broadcaster. A former
associate literary editor of The Nation and longtime writer for the
magazine, her work has appeared in many other publications,
including The Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books,
The Guardian, and Grand Street. She reports and presents radio
documentaries for the BBC, and divides her time between London and
Greece.
"Confessions of a bad boy turned great magazine
editor." —Michael Dirda, Washington Post, List of 66 Favorite
Books
"Lost Property stands up to comparison with the great romantic
autobiographies, with Stendhal’s Life of Henry Brulard and Musset’s
Confessions of a Child of the Century, with Cyril Connolly’s
aphoristic The Unquiet Grave and J.R. Ackerley’s delicious Hindoo
Holiday. Its style is just right: darting, anecdotal, slightly
bemused, possessing a lilting irony that makes for compulsive
readability. There is also something funny, sexy, or shocking on
every page." —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
“In this wry, clever memoir, . . . Sonnenberg unabashedly
chronicles a childhood of spoils coupled with an absence of
familial affection, a psychological wound he salved with clothes,
books and women. . . . his cleverness shines brightest in
self-deprecating jabs.” —Connor Goodwin, InsideHook
"Here is the story . . . of Sonnenberg’s passage from sometimes
wicked child of privilege to sexual and intellectual errant to bold
editor of one of the great journals of our time, Grand Street . . .
[Sonnenberg] remains the magical center, the touchstone of what in
many ways is the tale of a lover’s progress, with its shames and
virtues." —JoAnn Wypijewski, The Nation
"Lost Property chronicles the seductions and failures of a
self-proclaimed poseur, a brilliant aesthete, and a son who was
capable of living his life only after his father’s death . . .
Sonnenberg’s voice is self-deprecating and proud, viciously funny
and pained." —Jane Mendelsohn, The Village Voice
"Lost Property reads like a Henry James novel rewritten by Nabokov.
Sonnenberg is acutely conscious of his rarity value as a
Croesus-rich man of letters and uses his wealth and wealth of
reading to indulge his taste for posing." —Susannah Herbert, The
Sunday Telegraph
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