1986 Archives - The Vintage Contemporaries Bibliography

Thomas McGuane – Nobody’s Angel (1986)

Bibliographical Description

86.11.W029: McGuane – Nobody’s Angel

120 leaves, pp. [8] 1–3 4-78 79 80-86 87 88-118 119 120-142 143 144-149 150 151-153 154 155-171 172 173-227 [5]

First Vintage Books Edition, November 1986

Contents: π1a author photo with blurbs, π1b “BOOKS BY THOMAS MCGUANE”, π2a title, π2b imprint, π3a dedication, π3b blank, π4a epigraph, π4b blank, 1 fly-title, 2 blank, 3-227 Nobody’s Angel, χ1b blank, χ2a about the author, χ2b blank, χ3a Vintage Contemporaries order form, χ3b Vintage Contemporaries List.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Marc Tauss; interior author photo by Paul Dix.

Copies: JDP 1.1

Blurbs

(front cover) McGuane’s best book so far. – The New York Times Book Review
Skewed comic vision, rakish wit, recklessly zany invention…a writer of great extravagance whose elegance of style is laced with sarcasm, wisecracks, and wry irony….McGuane can also write with grace and with a poignance commingled with gallows humor….a novel of considerable compassion, strength and resonance, from an author who’s among the most arresting and fascinating of his generation. – San Francisco Chronicle
Nobody’s Angel is a masterpiece, not only McGuane’s best, but arguably one of the best serious novels of recent time….a mastery of style and invention, delighting the reader with his pure command of the language. – Indianapolis News
The thinking man’s Western….McGuane is meticulous with his metaphors, as precise and witty as a Renaissance poet. – Los Angeles Times
McGuane’s prose is witty and evocative….Montana, where he lives most of the time, it to McGuane what Yoknapatawpha County was to Faulkner, a mythic place [of discovery]. This is a rewarding book full of small truths. – People

Janet Hobhouse – November (1986)

Bibliographical Description

86.11.W028: Hobhouse – November

A Vintage Original, November 1986, First Edition

104 leaves, pp. [6] 1–2 3-198 [4]

Contents: π1a author photo with book-title, π1b “ALSO BY JANET HOBHOUSE”, π2a title, π2b imprint, π3a dedication, π3b blank, 1 fly-title, 2 blank, 3-198 November, χ1a about the author, χ1b blank, χ2a Vintage Contemporaries order form, χ2b Vintage Contemporaries List.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Rick Lovell; interior author photo by Jerry Bauer.

Copies: JDP 1.1

Blurbs

(front cover) A new novel by the author of Dancing in the Dark, “one of the most acute and serious novels on the theme of modern relationships in the last decade. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Through Janet Hobhouse’s third novel we follow Zachariah Quine, who at the age of forty—deserted by both his wife and his ambitions as a musician—flees New York City and its fragmented, bohemian lives, seeking to “crawl back into the camp of the human tribe.” His destination is London, where he stays with his expatriate brother and his “English” family—and meets Anne, whom his brother describes as “a walking disaster, alcoholic, manic-depressive, accident-prone, kleptomaniac, just what you need right now.” She crystallizes everything he yearns for, caught as he is between regret and desire, with only the illusion of freedom to sustain him. November is about the nature of love and loss, and the difficulties of making new ties when the old ones still hurt. Janet Hobhouse redefines our notions of freedom, change and escape, and examines the wariness with which all but the very young are bound to carry through life, in a narrative of clear and affecting power.
Janet Hobhouse writes in a beautiful and mannered style, full of glimmering and special lucidity, full of moments of instant and complete awareness. – The Los Angeles Herald Examiner
Janet Hobhouse is an original; yet whole paragraphs could have been written by Henry James—a Henry James who had taken a deep breath and entered his own sexual jungle….She employs English as if it were a dangerous power-tool. – Victoria Glendinning, The London Sunday Times

Cormac McCarthy – Suttree (1986)

Bibliographical Description

86.10.W027: McCarthy – Suttree

First Vintage Books Edition, October 1986

240 leaves, pp. [6] 1–3 4-5 6–7 8-29 30 31-35 36 37-62 63 64-86 87 88-90 91 92-106 107 108-118 119 120-136 137 138-147 148 149-161 162 163-179 180 181-182 183 184-194 195 196-206 207 208-219 220 221-240 241 242-252 253 254-255 256 257-258 259 260-277 278 279-282 283 284-297 298 299-305 306 307-363 364 365-373 374 375-378 379 380-415 416 417-420 421 422 423 424-430 431 432-434 435 436-439 440 441-447 448 449-471 [3]

Contents: π1a blurbs and author photo, π1b “B_{OOKS BY}C_ORMACM_CC_ARTHY”, π2a title, π2b imprint, π3a acknowledgements, π3b blank, 1 fly-title, 2 blank, 3-471 Suttree, χ1b about the author, χ2a Vintage Contemporaries order form, χ2b Vintage Contemporaries list.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Marc Tauss; interior author photo by Mark Morrow and the University of Georgia Press.

Copies: JDP 1.1

Blurbs

(front cover) Perhaps the closest we have to a genuine heir to the Faulknerian tradition…his novels have a stark, mythic quality that is very much their own. – The Washington Post
Reads like a doomed Huckleberry Finn. – The New York Times Book Review
All of McCarthy’s books present the reviewer with the same welcome difficulty. They are so good that one can hardly say how good they really are….Suttree may be his magnum opus. Its protagonist, Cornelius Suttree, has forsaken his prominent family to live in a dilapidated houseboat among the inhabitants of the demimonde along the banks of the Tennessee River. His associates are mostly criminals of one sort or another, and Suttree is, to say the least, estranged from what might be called normal society. But he is so involved with life (and it with him) that when in the end he takes his leave, the reader’s heart goes with him. Suttree is probably the funniest and most unbearably sad of McCarthy’s books…which seem to me unsurpassed in American literature. – Stanley Booth, St. Petersburg Times
Brilliant and powerful. – Shelby Foote
Yes, there are a lot of dead people in Suttree, but then people do die, especially poor and stubborn and violent ones. And Southerners, including Southern writers, don’t believe in abandoning their dead. If you read Mr. McCarthy’s book, you won’t escape his dead either. They will haunt you, which is what they are supposed to do. – Anatole Broyard, The New York Times

Leonard Gardner – Fat City (1986)

Bibliographical Description

86.10.W026: Gardner – Fat City

fat city | LEONARD GARDNER | VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES | VINTAGE BOOKS A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE NEW YORK

First Vintage Books Edition, October 1986

2 leaves, pp. [4] 1–3 4-13 14 15-17 18 19-22 23 24-27 28 29-30 31 32-37 38 39-45 46 47-51 52 53-61 62 63-68 69 70-77 78 79-84 85 86-87 88 89-98 99 100-106 107 108-115 116 117-120 121 122-127 128 129-133 134 135-139 140 141-156 157 158-168 169 170-171 172 173-183 [5]

Contents: π1a blurbs and author photo, π1b blank, π2a title, π2b imprint, 1 fly-title, 2 blank, 3-183 Fat City, χ1b blank, χ2a about the author, χ2b blank, χ3a Vintage Contemporaries order form, χ3b Vintage Contemporaries list.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Rick Lovell; interior author photo by Thomas Victor.

Copies: JDP 1.2

Blurbs

(front cover) A quintessentially American story of surpassing beauty and heartbreak…flawlessly rendered, unforgettable. – Joyce Carol Oates
Originally published in 1969, and subsequently made into a film by John Huston, Fat City is a true American classic—whose stature has only increased over the years—set in and around Stockton, California.
Fat City is about dreamers. – John Huston
Really a superior performance….Gardner takes us into the bitter fancies of two professional prizefighters…the first is a has-been, the second is learning to lose. A third character, their manager, links the pair in defeat and frustration….Gardner strips them of everything except the most important thing: their singularity….Of such a seemingly small gift is dignity born and success measured. – Newsweek
Fat City affected me more than any new fiction I have read in a long while, and I do not think it affected me only because I come from Fat City, or somewhere near it….He has got it exactly right…but he has done more than just get it down, he has made it a metaphor for the joyless in heart. – Joan Didion
Gardner has laid claim to a locale that others have explored, but seldom with such accuracy and control…in a tone that is both detached and lyrical. The triumph of the book is its action. Running, fighting, loving, weeding, harvesting, these men stay in motion in order not to be doomed. So powerfully does Gardner record their actions that we recall their lives, not their defeats. – The New York Times Book Review

Richard Russo – Mohawk (1986)

Bibliographic Description

86.09.W025: Russo – Mohawk

A Vintage Original, September 1986, First Edition

216 leaves, pp. [8] 1–2 3-230 231–232 233-418 [6]

Contents: π1a blurb and author photo, π1b blank, π2a title, π2b imprint, π3a dedication, π3b blank, π4a epigraph, π4b blank, 1-418 Mohawk: 1-230 “[within frame 6.3 x 10.7 cm] PART | ONE”, 231-418 “[within frame 6.3 x 10.7 cm] PART | TWO”; χ1a blank, χ1b blank, χ2a about the author, χ2b blank, χ3a blank, χ3b blank.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Rick Lovell; interior author photo uncredited.

Copies: JDP 1.1 (presumed)

Blurbs

(front cover) The book is too skillful for a first novel. – John Irving
What makes Richard Russo so admirable as a novelist is that his natural grace as a storyteller is matched by his compassion for his characters. Mohawk offers a reader the authority of a documentary—yet the novel is full of comic invention. Russo’s grim but loving sense of place, his understanding of the rural poor, provides this fine novel with as sympathetic a vision as Ernest Hebert’s The Dogs of March; Russo’s affection for lonely, unexpressed lives is as moving, and as sorrowful, as the work of Richard Yates. But Mohawk is also lively reading; it is a painful story, yet it is told with great mischief—and the triumphs and tragedies of the characters are enhanced, as victories and defeats always are, by wit. – John Irving
Richrd Russo is so good you never want the party to end, the band to quit….He has the firm touch of a growing master. – Barry Hannah
I know of no novel in recent years so truly American, so fully peopled, so traditional without the merest nostalgia for novels or times that never were, or so ascendant. Mohawk is singular, and brilliant. – Bill Buford, Granta