Stephen Bruno

nonfiction/memoir (author was incidentally raised in a Puerto-Rican/Ecuadorian-American Pentecostal household in the Bronx) - interesting look at a job which, on the one hand, is "nice work if you can get it" -- a cushy job compared to others in the same pay range, but on the other hand is a service job in which you are considered "less than" rather than an equal, or even a friend, to the people you serve every day (though it's true that some of them treat you with more kindness and show more consideration, it's also true that others can be mean and dismissive).

To call this a "memoir" is perhaps a stretch here, but Mr. Bruno is a great storyteller and these well-crafted essays provide what I assume is an accurate picture of Park Avenue building politics--the senior staffers who call the shots, the residential Board members you'd better handle with kid gloves, the organizational culture that apparently necessitates baseball talk and the the ogling of "fat asses," the fresh upstarts who think a well-crafted petition will revolutionize the way things have always been done (doormen do belong to a union, but when members disagree amongst themselves that's not much of a help). Family details are thin and he admits to having no successful long-term relationships, so he keeps the focus mainly on the work--which is fine--and also interestingly conveys a very short glimpse of his struggles pursuing an advanced degree in writing. Getting into a top school was apparently a piece of cake--simply collecting a bunch of facebook updates for his writing sample was sufficient, but once there he finds himself surrounded by (predominantly white) peers flourishing in a separate culture that he feels excluded from. Hopefully he finds an educational environment where he feels more at ease (preferably without having to go into much more debt--maybe he can win a place at a writer's workshop for minority writers?) and that he can publish more of his work in the future. show less

I appreciated the behind-the-scenes look at the lives of doormen. Some of the stories were amusing, but I couldn't really relate to the author's take on things. Still, I wish him success.