Bibliographical Description
85.09.W015(HC): McInerney – Ransom
RANSOM | A NOVEL BY | Jay McInerney | Vintage Contemporaries | VINTAGE BOOKS • A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE • NEW YORK
A Vintage Original, September 1985, First Edition
146 leaves, pp. [10] 1-2 3-279 [3]
Contents: π1a blank, π1b blank, π2a blurbs, π2b blurbs, π3a half-title, π3b “ALSO AVAILABLE IN VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES”, π4a title, π4b imprint, π5a dedication, π5b blank, 1 fly-title, 2 blank, 3-279 Ransom, χ1b about the author, χ2a blank, χ2b blank.
Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Rick Lovell; interior author photo by Marion Ettlinger.
Copyright: ©1985. ISBN: 0-394-54995-3. Price: $15.95. Ransom was first published, simultaneously in hardcover and paperback, by Vintage Contemporaries in 1985.
Binding: Blue cloth with green-gold gilt text on spine with dust-jacket.
Copies: JDP 1.1 (presumed)
Note: The 1985 Ransom hardcover is the only hardcover title ever printed in the Vintage Contemporaries imprint.
Blurbs
- (front cover) The brilliant new novel by the author of “Bright Lights, Big City”
- (inside front cover) Ransom, Jay McInerney’s second novel, belongs in the distinguished tradition of novels about exile. Living in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, Christopher Ransom seeks a purity and simplicity he could not find at home, and tries to exorcise the terror he encountered earlier in his travels—a blur of violence and death at the Khyber Pass, on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. / Ransom has managed to regain control, chiefly through the rigors of karate—a discipline in which his profound disillusionment can, he hopes, be subsumed. Supporting himself by teaching English to eager Japanese businessmen, he finds company with impresario Miles Ryder and fellow expatriates whose headquarters is Buffalo Rome, a blues-bar that satisfies the hearty local appetite for Americana and accommodates the drifters pouring through Asia in the years immediately after the fall of Vietnam. / Increasingly, Ransom and his circle are threatened, by everything they thought they had left behind, in a sequence of events whose consequences Ransom can forestall but cannot escape. / Jay McInerney details the pattern of hopefulness and weakness, adventure and bitter failure, that leads Christopher Ransom toward an inevitable reckoning with his fate—in a novel of grand scale and serious implications. Ransom.
- (inside rear cover) Jay McInerney is the author of two novels, Bright Lights, Big City and Ransom. His work has appeared in such publications as Esquire, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Granta, Vanity Fair, Playboy, Vogue, and The New Republic. He lives in upstate New York with his wife, Merry.
- (rear cover) Jay McInerney is an extremely gifted young writer, and it is a pleasure to see the beginning of a career like his. One waits with anticipation for whatever comes next – The Washington Post
- (rear cover) The author is one of those rare writers who catches the moods, nuances and manners of a sub-culture with humor, finesse, skill and accuracy. A born stylist and a remarkable discovery! – George Plimpton