Bibliographical Description
88.07.W052: Ellis – Platitudes
[title page divided vertically in two solid panes of white and black] [across both panes] PLATITUDES | [remainder of text on left white pane] TREY ELLIS | VINTAGE | CONTEMPORARIES | VINTAGE BOOKS | A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE | NEW YORK
95 leaves, pp. [2] 1–2 3-88 89–92 93-183 [5]
A Vintage Original, July 1988, First Edition
Contents: π1a author photo with blurbs, π1b blank, π2a title, π2b imprint, 1 fly-title, 2 epigraph, 3-183 Platitudes, χ1b dedication, χ2a about the author, χ2b blank, χ3a Vintage Contemporaries list, χ3b Vintage Contemporaries list, continued, with order form.
Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Rick Lovell; interior author photo by Kristine Larsen.
Copyright: © 1988. ISBN: 0-394-75439-5. Price: $6.95. Platitudes was first published by Vintage Contemporaries 1988.
Copies: JDP 1.1
Blurbs
- (front cover) Funny and dark and devilish…There’s great comic intelligence in Platitudes and daring narrative technique. – Alexander Theroux
- Dewayne Wellington, a failing black experimental novelist, and Isshee Ayam, a radical feminist author, collaborate on Dewayne’s latest sexist comedy. Alternately narrating the story of the relationship between Earle and Dorothy—two middle-class teenagers, sex-starved in New York City—Dewayne and Isshee sneak ever, and dangerously, closer to reconciling their differences. / Sparklingly iconoclastic—informed by newly invented song lyrics, menus, photographs, et cetera—Platitudes marks the exciting debut of Trey Ellis.
- I was zapped by Trey Ellis’s humongous talent. His book, Platitudes, is delightfully rad. He dares to have the gumption to write comically about American literary politics. – Ishmael Reed
- The novel takes off like love at first sight. In its wonderfully comic atmosphere, it is smart and sassy, sensitive and intelligent. The author understands and cherishes his literary ancestors, and manages, at the same time, to be absolutely himself—in his own voice, and of his generation. – Clarence Major
- Cracklingly inventive and seriously comic; maybe we have here an older, wiser and darker Holden Caulfield. – John A. Williams