Praise for My Young Life: "Frederic Tuten has written a sweet, openhearted, guileless, and deeply moving account of his formative years, one that will resonate with anyone who has undergone the process of trying to become an artist. He somehow manages to merge the young and older Frederics so that both are speaking at once, which is quite a feat."
– Luc Sante "Tuten's memoir of growing up in the Bronx is passionate and rueful, and at times, hilarious. His bold, unabashed prose rushes beautifully through the decades. A naïf with attitude, Tuten's younger self is a hopeless romantic, an impoverished dreamer who conflates his desire to be an artist with his yearning for love. He idealizes art and women in equal measure, failing at one but succeeding spectacularly at the other. A burning tale of the long journey from Arthur Avenue to the world of art and artists in Alphabet City."
– David Salle Like Tuten himself, MY YOUNG LIFE has an enormous heart. It's the story of a young man in love with art, with New York, and with just about every person who crosses his path. MY YOUNG LIFE is an antidote to this cool, anxious century: a reminder that we can feel the most overpowering feelings, and dream the most dizzying dreams.
–Paul LaFarge "This memoir is about more than what happens, though what happens is quite a lot. It's about a young man in search of a life, in search of himself. It's about love found and lost. It's about all of us. I love it."
–Diane Keaton "Sensational. So clearly and movingly written–its sentences so funny and quirky and matter-of-factly Steinian–its tone as lucid as James Baldwin's (in "Notes") or Delmore Schwartz (in "In Dreams") or Willa Cather's or Jean Rhys's. A straightforward shaped American (or French-American) tone. (The best American writing–such as yours–is mostly French in its leanness and succulence.) The feelings behind the words are so full and rich and (I daresay)
pregnant with meaning, that the language therefore needs to do nothing fancy; it can simply be itself. A stylistic (and visionary) pinnacle."
–Wayne Koestenbaum "A remarkable–and remarkably beautiful–cultural record that is deeply personal, and a personal record that is deeply cultural."
–Tom McCarthy "The memoir got into my head in a very deep way, and for many nights I had dreams that it provoked. What the book seems to be about (and this is what made it so moving and disturbing) is the sadness of getting what you want. You (or "you") begin by wanting art and sex and you get more sex than you hoped for or imagined, but it leaves you just as lonely as you began. The chance to make art is something hinted at all along and the ending of the book is a wonderfully somersaulting marvel."
–Edward Mendelson "So thrilling.
My Young Life describes a specific period, but it also evokes the timeless fascination with the Romantic life. I don't think I've ever read a book so precise in presenting a young man's preoccupation and occupation."
–Steve Martin