1987 Archives - Page 2 of 3 - The Vintage Contemporaries Bibliography

Maxine Chernoff – BOP (1987)

Bibliographical Description

87.09.W037: Chernoff – BOP

STORIES BY MAXINE CHERNOFF | BOP | V_INTAGE C_{ONTEMPORARIES}| Vintage Books | A Division of Random House | New York

64 leaves, pp. [6] 9-126 [4]

Pagination note: Although the first numbered page is “9”, there are only 6 pages (3 leaves) preceding it

First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, September 1987

Contents: π1a author photo with blurbs, π1b blank, π2a title, π2b imprint, π3a contents, π3b dedication, 9-126 BOP: 9-12 ‘THE SPIRIT | OF GIVING’, 13-29 ‘BOP’, 30-39 ‘INFINKS’, 40-48 ‘THAT SUMMER’, 49-54 ‘PHANTOM | PLEASURE’, 55-64 ‘DEGAN DYING’, 65-80 ‘DON’T SEND POEMS, | SEND MONEY’, 81-94 ‘HEROES’, 95-104 ‘THE HILLS | OF ANDORRA’, 105-109 ‘TWO TIMES TWO’, 110-118 ‘ENOUGH’, 119-126 ‘RESPECT | FOR THE DEAD’; 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 Carole Harmel.

Copies: JDP 1.1

Blurbs

(front cover) Chernoff’s stories have the wise, witty, wonderful heart of 1950s popular songs….A brilliant book. – Jayne Anne Phillips
In twelve beautifully articulated stories Maxine Chernoff’s characters seek explanations for many of life’s circumstances. Products of a dwindling counterculture, they find very little has gone the way they planned, but they are able, and sometimes even joyful, improvisers. Chernoff employs a range of narrative techniques as she explores cultural totems and examines the irrational fears and faltering marriages of her highly individual, if not eccentric, characters. / Chernoff’s sympathetic sense of humor and marvelous ear for the rhythms of contemporary dialogue distinguish the stories in this most impressive debut collection.
Maxine Chernoff has an eye for detail that is simultaneously sharp and compassionate. BOP is generous with its moments of recognition and pleasure. – Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review

Gore Vidal – Myra Breckinridge and Myron (1987)

Bibliographical Description

87.07.W036: Vidal – Myra Breckinridge / Myron

214 leaves, pp. i–vi vii-x 1–2 3-213 214–216 217-417 [5]

First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, July 1987

Contents: i author photo and blurbs, ii ‘BOOKS BY GORE VIDAL’, iii half-title, iv blank, v title, vi imprint, vii-x ‘INTRODUCTION’, 1 divisional title ‘MYRA | BRECKINRIDGE | [decorative rule 89 mm]’, 2 blank [with running title ‘MYRA BRECKINRIDGE’], 3-213 Myra Breckinridge, 214 blank, 215 divisional title ‘MYRON | [decorative rule 89 mm]’, 216 blank [with running title ‘MYRON’], 217-417 Myron, χ1b blank, χ2a-χ2b about the author, χ3a Vintage Contemporaries order sheet, χ3b Vintage Contemporaries list.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Chris Moore; interior author photo by Look magazine.

Copyright: © 1968, 1974, 1986. ISBN: 0-394-75444-1. Price: $8.95. Myra Breckinridge was first published by Little, Brown & Co. 1968; Myron was first published by Random House 1974; the collected edition of Myra Breckinridge and Myron was first published by Random House 1986.

Copies: JDP 1.1

Blurbs

(front cover) A comic masterpiece. – Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review
Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge (chosen by the British Book Marketing Council as one of the 20 best novels of the last 50 years) and Myron now appear together for the first time in paperback, with a new preface by the author.
After many readings, Myra Breckinridge continues to give wicked pleasure, and still seems to have fixed the limit beyond which the most advanced aesthetic neo-pornography ever can go…The polemic of Myra remains the best embodiment of Vidal’s most useful insistence as a moralist, which is that we ought to cease speaking of homosexuals and heterosexuals. There are only women and men, some of whom prefer their own sex, some the other, and some both. This is the burden of Myra Breckinridge, but a burden borne with lightness, wildness, abandon, joy, skill. – Harold Bloom, The New York Review of Books
Has literary decency fallen so low? – Time
Vidal’s development is crowned with great success, not only for the density of comic effects, but because this book holds its own built-in theory, that which the author calls his ‘après-post-structuralism.’ I consider Vidal to be a master of that new form which is taking shape in world literature and which we may call the hyper-novel or the novel elevated to the square or the cube. – Italo Calvino, La Repubblica (Rome)

James Crumley – One to Count Cadence (1987)

Bibliographical Description

87.06.W035: Crumley – One to Count Cadence

176 leaves, pp. [8] 1–3 4-25 26 27-46 47 48-58 59 60-76 77 78-92 93 94-115 116 117-150 151 152-165 166 167-194 195 196-221 222 223-251 252 253-272 273 274-300 301 302-311 312 313-323 324 325-333 334 335-338 [6]

First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, June 1987

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

Copies: JDP 1.1

Blurbs

(front cover) A stunning narrative talent…one of the best novels of the year. – The New York Times Book Review
The time: late summer, 1962. The place: Clark Air Force Base, the Philippines. Sergeant Jacob “Slag” Krummel, a scholar by intent but a warrior by breeding, assumes command of the 721st Communication Security Deteachment, an unsoldierly crew of bored, rebellious, whoring, foul-mouthed, drunken enlistees. Surviving military absurdities reminiscent of those in Catch 22 only to be shipped clandestinely to Vietnam, Krummel’s band confront their worst fears while finally losing faith in America and its myths. Powerful, scathingly funny, and eloquent, One to Count Cadence is a triumphant novel about manhood, anger, war, and lies.
James Crumley is the James Jones of Vietnam. – Chicago Sun-Times
A brawling, romantic novel about the hell of war, the value of friendship, the difficulties of loving and how to be a man despite the price of it all. – Washington Post
A gutting, eloquent first novel. – Kirkus Reviews
A compelling study of the gratuitous violence in men…carefully molded, without a slack line, a fuzzy character or blurred incident. – The New York Times

Todd Grimson – Within Normal Limits (1987)

Bibliographical Description

87.05.W034: Grimson – Within Normal Limits

128 leaves, pp. [6] 1–3 4-28 29 30-36 37 38-45 46 47-52 53 54-57 58 59-67 68 69-75 76 77-92 93 94-105 106 107-110 111 112-123 124 125-139 140 141-144 145 146-154 155 156-161 162 163-178 179 180-184 185 186-191 192 193-200 201 202-206 207 208-219 220 221-231 232 233-243 244 245-246 [4]

A Vintage Contemporaries Original, May 1987, First Edition

Contents: π1a author photo with excerpt, π1b blank, π2a title, π2b imprint, π3a dedication and acknowledgements, π3b blank, 1 fly-title, 2 blank, 3-246 Within Normal Limits, 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 Beth Eldridge.

Copies: JDP 1.1

Blurbs

(front cover)A powerful new literary voice that speaks for—and to—a generation.
Darrell Patterson is a thirtyish West Coast emergency room doctor who’s got it all: job security, a house, an attractive, intelligent wife—and a slow-motion crisis in his emotional life that nothing in his years of medical experience has prepared him to handle. Secretly, he yearns for a catastrophe, a yield of casualties that might push him “to that point where it’s almost too much, where one is in a fine hysteria.” Failing that, he keeps himself “within normal limits” the only way he knows—by a careful orchestration of drugs. With a literary mastery whose cool force matches Patterson’s despair as the inadequacy of his “treatment” becomes apparent, Grimson traces his hero’s inner dissolution and the slow recovery of the unwieldy, irresolvable passions that sustain our lives. / Todd Grimson lives in Portland, Oregon. His short fiction has been published in Fiction/84, Minnesota Review, Mississippi Mud, Impulse, and other literary journals. Within Normal Limits is his first novel.
The world of Within Normal Limits is at the same time bleak and exciting, a world of medical and moral emergency that desensitizes even as it relentlessly ups the emotional ante, causing us to doubt the truth of St. Thomas More’s observation that the times are never so bad but that a good man can’t live in them. – Richard Russo, author of Mohawk

Susanna Kaysen – Asa, as I Knew Him (1987)

Bibliographical Description

87.04.W033: Kaysen – Asa, as I Knew Him

88 leaves, pp. [8] 1–4 5-12 13–14 15-37 38–40 41-77 78–80 81-136 137–138 139-147 148–150 151-159 [9]

A Vintage Contemporaries Original, April 1987, First Edition

Original publication: A Vintage Contemporaries Original

Contents: π1a author photo with excerpt, π1b blank, π2a half-title, π2b blank, π3a title, π3b imprint, π4a dedication, π4b blank, 1 fly-title, 2 blank, 3-159 Asa, As I Knew Him: 3-12 ‘ASA ENTERS’, 13-37 ‘DINAH PROVIDES | BACKGROUND’, 38 blank, 39-77 ‘THE ANGEL OF | MONADNOCK | I’, 78 blank, 79-136 ‘THE ANGEL OF | MONADNOCK | II’, 137-147 ‘THE DISCREPANCIES’, 148 blank, 149-159; χ1b blank, χ2a about the author, χ2b blank, χ3a Vintage Contemporaries list, χ3b Vintage Contemporaries order form, χ4a blank, χ4b blank, χ5a blank, χ5b blank.

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

Copies: JDP 1.1

Blurbs

(front cover) A wonderfully seductive investigation of the mysterious disparity between lust and passion, obsession and desire. – Robb Forman Dew
Dinah Sachs and Asa Thayer have had a love affair, but, as Dinah says, she’s not telling “that story but another, the skeleton, the essence within the story.” That essence is her imagined reconstruction of Asa’s youth. Her narrative reveals the events that shaped the “happy, handsome man,” the soulless persona he uses to keep the world—and Dinah—at a distance.
A book to touch both heart and mind, a story that reminds me of a sharp, sad memory. In a deep sense, Asa, As I Knew Him is about how love eventually—and inevitably—turns into fiction. – Josephine Humphreys, author of Dreams of Sleep, winner of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award for First Novel
Susanna Kaysen unravels her tale with great care and subtle lyricism. It is a pleasure to discover this new voice. – Robb Forman Dew, author of The Time of Her Life and Dale Loves Sophie to Death (winner of the American Book Award for First Fiction)