... essential, joyous reading as we follow his adventures meeting soon-to-be-famous artists, dancers, musicians, and writers of Sixties New York.

... nothing short of Zelig-esque from the get-go.

... a Pac-Man sized chunk of the pie chart [of the memoir]...is devoted to sex. It was Giorno’s animating force, his reason for being, his means of communication, and often the heart of his poetry practice.

John Giorno (1936-2019) writes the following about being at a Ronettes and Shirelles concert with Andy Warhol at the Brooklyn Fox Theatre in 1963: 'By chance, I was smack in the middle of something extraordinary.' 'Well, when weren't you?' readers may find themselves wondering while devouring Giorno's edifyingly dishy book.

Except for a few inspired pages devoted to the death of William Burroughs, his friend of 33 years, this is not a memoir one reads for the prose, but rather for its frank witness to moments in literary, artistic, and social history..

The creativity and debauchery of gay artists and writers blooms in this exuberant memoir of avant-garde New York from the 1950s through the 1990s.

This memoir is also overlong, but the author has plenty of interesting stories to tell.