Novel Archives - The Vintage Contemporaries Bibliography

Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road (1989)

Bibliographical Description

89.05.W062: Yates – Revolutionary Road

176 leaves, pp. [12] 1–2 3-116 117–118 119-209 210–212 213-337 [3]

Edition statement: First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, May 1989

Contents: π1a blurbs, π1b blank, π2a half-title, π2b blank, π3a ‘ALSO BY RICHARD YATES’, π3b blank, π4a title-page, π4b imprint, π5a dedication, π5b blank, π6a epigraph, π6b blank, 1-337 Revolutionary Road, χ1b about the author, χ2a- χ2b Vintage Contemporaries list.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Theo Rudnak; exterior author photo by Jill Krementz.

Copies: JDP 1.1

Blurbs

(front cover) A deft, ironic, beautiful novel that deserves to be a classic. – William Styron
From the moment of its publication in 1961, Revolutionary Road was hailed as a masterpiece of realistic fiction and as the most evocative portrayal of the opulent desolation of the American suburbs. It’s the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple who have lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.
The Great Gatsby of my time…one of the best books by a member of my generation. – Kurt Vonnegut
Beautifully crafted…a remarkable and deeply troubling book. – Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Gloria Naylor – Mama Day (1989)

Bibliographical Description

89.04.W059: Naylor – Mama Day

168 leaves, pp. [18] 1–3 4-10 11-13 14-165 166-169 170-312 [6]

Edition statement: First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, April 1989

Contents: π1a blurbs, π1b blurbs, π2a half-title, π2b blank, π3a “Also by Gloria Naylor”, π3b blank, π4a title, π4b imprint, π5a acknowledgment, π5b blank, π6a dedication, π6b-π7a map, π7b blank, π8a fly-title, π8b blank, π9a family tree, π9b blank, 1 bill of sale, 2 blank, 3-312 Mama Day: 3-10 prologue, 11-165 part one, 166 blank, 167-312 part two; χ1a about the author, χ1b blank, χ2a Vintage Contemporaries list, χ2b Vintage Contemporaries list, continued, χ3a blank, χ3 blank.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by David Montiel; exterior author photo by Donna DeCesare.

Copies: 1.6

Blurbs

(front blurb) Resonates with genuine excitement…a big, strong, admirable novel. – The New York Times Book Review
This is a wonderful novel, full of spirit and sass and wisdom, and completely realized. – Washington Post
The bestselling new novel from the American Book Award-winning author of The Women of Brewster Street is set in a world that is timeless yet indelibly authentic—the Georgia sea island of Willow Springs, where people still practice herbal medicine and honor ancestors who came over as slaves. On Willow Springs lives Mama Day, a matriarch who can call up lightning storms and see secrets in her dreams. But all of Mama Day’s powers are tested by her great-niece, Cocoa, a stubbornly emancipated woman whose life and very soul are now in danger from the island’s darker forces. Mama Day is a powerful generational saga at once tender and suspenseful, overflowing with magic and common sense.
Naylor has a dazzling sense of humor, rich comic observation and that indefinable quality we call ‘heart.’ – Rita Mae Brown, Los Angeles Times
A moving tale of love, pride, power, healing and belief in the unbelievable that combines the poignancy of an old woman’s past with the urgency of a young woman’s future. – Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Christopher Coe – I Look Divine (1989)

Bibliographical Description

89.01.W057: Coe – I Look Divine

64 leaves, pp. [12] 1 2-109 [7]

Edition statement: First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, January 1989

Contents: π1a author photo with excerpt and blurb, π1b blank, π2a half-title, π2b blank, π3a title, π3b imprint, π4a dedication, π4b blank, π5a epigraph, π5b blank, π6a fly-title, π6b blank, 1-109 I Look Divine, χ1b blank, χ2a about the author, χ2b blank, χ3a- χ4b Vintage Contemporaries list.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Michael Christman; interior author photo by Tom Victor.

Copies: JDP 1.2

Blurbs

(front cover) Laconic, subtle and full of lyrical effects…Coe is an icy and acute observer. – The New York Times Book Review
I Look Divine is Christopher Coe’s first novel, but it is written with the sort of terrifying, dizzy genius and driven confidence that most writers—if they’re lucky—only achieve somewhere in the middle of their careers. This book is brilliant, demanding, funny, and shocking, and even now I can’t shake its impact. – David Leavitt
Nicholas was exquisite. Vain, clever, wealthy, and extravagant, he lived for his beauty and the pleasures it brought him. As a young man he travels the world with his older brother; as Nicholas flirts and poses in the stylish bars of Rome, Madrid, and Mexico, his brother becomes his witness and his victim, enchanted and repelled by Nicholas’s spectacular artifice. But by his thirties, Nicholas’s life, as he has known it, is over. / I Look Divine’s precise yet deeply felt narrative tells the dark tale of a man conquered by his one great love—himself.
Brilliant and riveting. Every word is as perfect as the fascinating Nicholas. It’s like a novel in lacquer. – Diane Johnson
I Look Divine…a fascinating account of the relationship between brothers. – The Village Voice
By the author of Such Times

James Crumley – The Last Good Kiss (1988)

Bibliographical Description

88.11.W056: Crumley – The Last Good Kiss: A Novel

128 leaves, pp. [8] 1 2-14 15 16-26 27 28-34 35 36-46 47 48-55 56 57-68 69 70-82 83 84-99 100 101-117 118 119-130 131 132-139 140 141-148 149 150-160 161 162-181 182 183-199 200 201-216 217 218-226 227 228-238 239 240-244 [4]

First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, November 1988

Contents: π1a author photo with blurbs, π1b ‘ALSO BY JAMES CRUMLEY’, π2a title, π2b imprint, π3a dedication ‘for Dick Hugo, | good old detective of the heart’, π3b blank, π4a epigraph, π4b blank, 1-244 The Last Good Kiss, χ1a about the author, χ1b- χ2b ‘Also available from Vintage Contemporaries” blurbs

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

Copies: JDP 1.6

Blurbs

(front cover) The last good mystery. – Rolling Stone
Tough, hard-boiled, and brilliantly suspenseful, The Last Good Kiss is an unforgettable detective story starring C. W. Sughrue, a Montana investigator who kills time by working at a topless bar. Hired to track down a derelict author, he ends up on the trail of a girl missing in Haight-Ashbury for a decade. The tense hunt becomes obsessive as Sughrue takes a haunting journey through the underbelly of America’s sleaziest nightmares.
For fans of private eye novels, this is right up there with the best! – People
What Raymond Chandler did for the Los Angeles of the Thirties, James Crumley does for the roadside west of today. – Harper’s
Potent…utterly right! – Wall Street Journal
The Last Good Kiss carries more weight than any private-eye story since Ross Macdonald’s The Chill. – Rolling Stone
One of the sternest voices in narrative fiction today. – Detroit News

Paul Hoover – Saigon, Illinois (1988)

Bibliographical Description

88.09.W055: Hoover – Saigon, Illinois

120 leaves, pp. [8] 1 2-5, 6 7-21 22 23-31 32 33-38 39 40-55 56 57-69 70 71-80 81 82-87 88 89-96 97 98-108 109 110-119 120 121-139 140 141-153 154 155-167 168 169-182 183 184-198 199 200-211 212 213-229 [3]

A Vintage Original, September 1988

Contents: π1a blurbs, π1b blank, π2a title, π2b imprint, π3a dedication ‘IN MEMORY OF OPAL CATHERINE HOOVER | AND FOR | MAXINE, KOREN, JULIAN, AND PHILIP’, π3b blank, π4a acknowledgments ‘ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | I AM INDEBTED TO | PAT MULCAHY FOR HER ENCOURAGEMENT | AND ASTUTE EDITING; LIKEWISE TO | VERONICA GENG OF THE NEW YORKER. | I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO THANK | MAXINE CHERNOFF FOR | HER EARLY READINGS OF THE NOVEL.’, π4b blank, 1-229 Saigon, Illinois, χ1b about the author, χ2a Vintage Contemporaries list and order form, χ2b Vintage Contemporaries list, continued, with order form.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Rick Lovell; designed by Barbara M. Bachman.

Copies: JDP 1.1

Blurbs

(front cover) A superb premier novel, a story brimming with life’s wonder and chance. Filled with sharp and canny, kindly wit. – Larry Heinemann, author of Paco’s Story
Classified as a conscientious objector by his draft board in Malta, Indiana, Jim Holder sets out for Chicago to perform alternative service to his country at a large municipal hospital. The time: 1969. The backdrop: a city where daily life swerves wildly back and forth between lazy days and baseball games to violent demonstrations in the streets. The cast of characters: Holder’s roommates, and their pals (poets manqué, revolutionary hustlers, rich boys turned Trotskyite), and his motley crew of co-workers at the hospital. How many lives can holder touch and still keep his pacifist center in its place? How many bodies can he count—on TV, in the morgue, in the cemeteries of the small towns that surround his own—and still stay clean? In this funny, moving, richly populated novel, Paul Hoover recaptures an era and raises issues still unanswered in our national awareness.
You can call me Holder. It’s one of your basic names like Gold, Paper, and Anxious. Most of us belong to the Church of Peace, which is German Protestant—Midwestern and rural. We refuse to kill anyone with a gun, or with anything else except good intentions [excerpt].