Bibliographical Description
87.03.W032: Weesner – The Car Thief
The Car Thief | by Theodore Weesner | VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES | Vintage Books | A Division of Random House | New York
192 leaves, pp. [6] 1–3 4-52 53–55 56-149 150–153 154-228 229–231 232-282 283–285 286-370 [8]
First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, March 1987
Original publication: Random House 1972
Contents: π1a author photo with blurbs, π1b ‘Also By Theodore Weesner’, π2a title, π2b imprint, π3a dedication, π3b blank, 1-370: The Car Thief : 1-52 ‘Book One | [decorative rule 57 mm] | The Arrest’, 53-149 ‘Book Two | [decorative rule 57 mm] | Detention’, 150 blank, 151-228 ‘Book Three | [decorative rule 63 mm] | The Beating’, 229- ‘Book Four | [decorative rule 63 mm] | Withdrawal’, 283-370 ‘Book Five | [decorative rule 73 mm] | Summer Death’; χ1a about the author, χ1b blank, χ2a Vintage Contemporaries order form, χ2b Vintage Contemporaries list, χ3a blank, χ3b blank, χ4a blank, χ4b blank.
Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Rick Lovell; interior author photo by Hilary Masters.
Copyright: © 1967, 1969, 1971, 1972. ISBN: 0-394-74097-1. Price: $6.95. The Car Thief was first published by Random House 1972.
Copies: JDP 1.1
Blurbs
- (front cover) So poignant and beautifully written, so true and painful, that one can’t read it without feeling the knife’s cruel blade in the heart. – Boston Globe
- “The car’s heater was issuing a stale and odorous warmth, but Alex remained chilled. He had walked several blocks through snow and slush, wearing neither hat nor gloves nor boots, to where he had left the car the night before. The steering wheel was icy in his hands, and he felt icy within, throughout his veins and bones. Alex was sixteen; the Buick was his fourteenth car.” / Alex Housman and his father live alone in a city much like Detroit. Alex is a kid who hides his many hurts, who seems to fade into his environment while raging inside; his father is an alcoholic who is losing his grip on life even as he wants the best for his son. The Car Thief explores the love Alex and his father share, in a tremendously poignant story that is filled with unusual triumphs.
- A remarkable, gripping first novel….Incredibly sympathetic and revealing in its portrayal of a kind of life, and a kind of human personality, that are totally foreign to most of us. – Joyce Carol Oates, Chicago Tribune
- A story so precise and so movingly inevitable that before I knew what was happening to me, I felt I was in the grip of some kind of thriller….The climactic episode is one of the most profoundly powerful in American fiction. – Joseph McElroy, The New York Times Book Review