The Uptown Local - by Cory Leadbeater

About the Book

Book Synopsis

A brilliant debut memoir about a young writer--struggling with depression, family issues, and addiction--and his life-changing decade working for Joan Didion

As an aspiring novelist in his early twenties, Cory Leadbeater was presented with an opportunity to work for a well-known writer whose identity was kept confidential. Since the tumultuous days of childhood, Cory had sought refuge from the rougher parts of life in the pages of books. Suddenly, he found himself the personal assistant to a titan of literature: Joan Didion.

In the nine years that followed, Cory shared Joan's rarefied world, transformed not only by her blazing intellect but by her generous friendship and mentorship. Together they recited poetry in the mornings, dined with Supreme Court justices, attended art openings, smoked a single cigarette before bed.

But secretly, Cory was spiraling. He reeled from the death of a close friend. He spent his weekends at a federal prison, visiting his father as he served time for fraud. He struggled day after day to write the novel that would validate him as a real writer. And meanwhile, the forces of addiction and depression loomed large.

In hypnotic prose that pulses with life and longing, The Uptown Local explores the fault lines of class, family, loss, and creativity. It is a love letter to a cultural icon--and a moving testament to the relationships that sustain us in the eternal pursuit of a life worth living.

Review Quotes

"Cory Leadbeater writes with beauty, precision and velocity and The Uptown Local is a memoir like no other. It's the story of his relationship with a great American writer, but it's also the saga of his family's dark struggle with 21^st century American realities, not to mention his own terrifying years of grief, addiction and depression. Leadbeater exposes all of his demons with wit and poetic intensity, but underneath his calamities we also discover a young man from a tough town whose life was saved by literature, by art, by music, and by the mentorship of those who'd come this way before him. Leadbeater's passion to create proves a worthy match for his self-destructive urges, but the final piece of the puzzle will always be love. Leadbeater's path to this wisdom, earned as a caregiver, partner and father, is the final, breathtaking flowering in this remarkable book." -- Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left To Come Looking For You

"The Uptown Local is a beautifully written and deeply moving memoir about how identity is reimagined through art, and how one writer came to understand himself amid the painful constraints of class and trauma. It is also about an intimate, tender, and unlikely friendship. And finally, it is a kind of love letter to the complexities of New York City, the miraculous place where everything seems possible."
-- Dana Spiotta, author of Wayward

"It has been a long time since I've read a memoir this poignant and intimate. As much a remembrance of Joan Didion as it is an inquiry into how we create--relationships, art, and finally one's self--The Uptown Local is a beautiful, heartrending book."
-- Cristina Henríquez, author of The Great Divide

"A piercing, erudite, deeply felt exploration of life and art, desire and loss, of choosing to seek out and make what's beautiful against all odds, Cory Leadbeater's The Uptown Local grabbed me by the throat and held me up close to all life's layers: love, hate, birth, and death. I felt grateful, moved, richer because of its unrelenting clarity and force." -- Lynn Steger Strong, author of Want

"Something beautiful and lasting has been made: The Uptown Local. Cory Leadbeater's debut memoir on an aspiring writer's dream employment is a brilliant achievement: a consummately loving portrait of a great writer and a deeply flawed father and son. Leadbeater makes exquisite examination of depressions, terrors, and Death, yet the Joy part is wonderful and true."
-- Christine Schutt, author of Pure Hollywood

"The Uptown Local renders the dizzying, sometimes painful experience of becoming yourself in prose that perfectly mirrors the story at its heart: at once tender and brutal, surreal and direct, cerebral and visceral. Here, the contradictions of a bifurcated life are not smoothed over, but pulled apart and examined with curiosity, rigor, and love. A spectacular debut."
-- Lilly Dancyger, author of First Love

"More than a tender ode to Joan Didion, Cory Leadbeater honors her memory by taking seriously an imperative central in her work: we must face hard truths to know ourselves. The Uptown Local is a beautiful catalog of twin yearnings: to be seen and to disappear; to belong everywhere and nowhere; to go forth and to return home, and--above all else--to love and to be loved." -- Chloé Cooper Jones, two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and author of Easy Beauty.

"Leadbeater debuts with a stirring account of his time working for Joan Didion in the final years of her life...This gloriously written recollection does right by Didion."
-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The Uptown Local is a twin portrait of a writer as a struggling young man and of a great author in the last years of her life." -- Financial Times

"Leadbeater makes us see there was so much more to [Joan Didion] (to all of us) than just one thing." -- The Guardian

"[Leadbeater] remained at [Didion's] side for nine years, until she died. Now he's written about it, vulnerably...Laced with grief, The Uptown Local is partly about Leadbeater's great love for Didion, who represents everything his upbringing didn't provide...He writes frankly about his depression and suicidal ideation...There's a gentle restraint to Uptown Local." -- New York Times

"It is this sort of wisdom for which I once turned to Didion, and that Leadbeater himself amply provides." -- Washington Post