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Frederick Exley – Pages from a Cold Island (1988)

Bibliographical Description

88.09.W053: Exley – Pages from a Cold Island

144 leaves, pp. [10] 1–2 3-274 [4]

First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, September 1988

Contents: π1a blurbs, π1b “ALSO BY FREDERICK EXLEY”, π2a title, π2b imprint, π3a dedications, π3b blank, π4a epigraphs, π4b blank, π5a note to the reader, π5b blank, 1 fly-title, 2 blank, 3-274 Pages from a Cold Island, χ1a about the author, χ1b blank, χ2a Vintage Contemporaries list, χ2b Vintage Contemporaries list, continued, with order form.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Dave Monteil; exterior rear author photo by Mark Jury.

Copies: JDP1.1

Blurbs

(front cover) Like A Fan’s Notes, this is a glory of a book, a heart’s needle under your skin. – Boston Globe
The second volume in Frederick Exley’s trilogy of autobiographical novels is in every way a worthy sequel to the much-acclaimed A Fan’s Notes. Pages from a Cold Island begins with the death of Edmund Wilson, a devastating event that sends Exley on an obsessive personal odyssey from Alexandria Bay on the St. Lawrence River to a resort island off the coast of Florida to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Our hero lurches from one outrageous encounter to another in a chronicle full of irrepressible energy and no-holds-barred confession.
Lunatic, funny, sad, and infuriating. A work of art. – Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
Even better than A Fan’s Notes…marvelously funny. One of the truly remarkable personal chronicles of our time. – William Styron
Exley matters because beneath the surface of a life seemingly given over to too much booze and random sex and aimlessness, there is a true writer, an artist unseduced by fad and fashion. – Jonathan Yardley, New Republic

Frederick Exley – A Fan’s Notes (1988)

Bibliographical Description

88.09.W009: Exley – A Fan’s Notes: A Fictional Memoir

200 leaves, pp. [12] 1-385 [3]

Edition statement: Vintage Contemporaries Edition, September 1988 [i.e. second Vintage Contemporaries edition]

Contents: π1a blurbs, π1b ‘_{ALSO BY} F_REDERICK E_XLEY’, π2a title, π2b imprint, π3a dedication, π3b blank, π4a ‘A Note to the Reader’, π4b blank, π5a epigraphs, π5b blank, π6a fly-title, π6b blank, 1-385 A Fan’s Notes: 1-28 ‘1 | [diagonal rule 19 mm] | The Nervous Light | of Sunday’, 29-71 ‘2 | [diagonal rule 19 mm] | Cheers for Stout | Steve Owen’, 72-118 ‘3 | [diagonal rule 19 mm] | Straw Hat for | a Madman’, 119-175 ‘4 | [diagonal rule 19 mm] | Onhava Regained | and Lost Again”, 176-226 ‘5 | [diagonal rule 19 mm] | Journey on a | Davenport’, 227-298 ‘6 | [diagonal rule 9 mm] | Who? Who? Who | Is Mr. Blue?’, 299-357 ‘7 | [diagonal rule 19 mm] | Lament for a | Conspiracy’, 358-385 ‘8 | [diagonal rule 19 mm] | A Dream of | Sanguinary Ends’; χ1b blank, χ2a about the author, χ2b Vintage Contemporaries ad with three blurbs.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Dave Monteil; exterior rear author photo by Mark Jury.

Copies: JDP 2.22, JDP 2.25

Blurbs

(front cover) A Fan’s Notes is strong, beautiful, American, one of a kind. – Kurt Vonnegut
The best novel written in the English language since The Great Gatsby. – Newsday
This is the horrible, hilarious account of a long failure, but a failure which turns into success: the success that this book is. A Fan’s Notes is one man’s life, written with brilliance and insight. No one should have had Exley’s life, and no one who has read it can ever forget it. – James Dickey
A singularly moving, entertaining, funny book. – The New York Times
Writers of every kind of aesthetic and cultural persuasion talk about it with one another, and press it on their friends to read….When I urge A Fan’s Notes on a friend who asks what is it about? or what is it like? I say read it, just read it. – Geoffrey Wolff, Los Angeles Times
A welcome reminder of what the basic business of literature and of living really is. All fans of art and life should read it. – Jack Kroll, Newsweek

Trey Ellis – Platitudes (1988)

Bibliographical Description

88.07.W052: Ellis – Platitudes

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.

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

Joy Williams – Breaking and Entering (1988)

Bibliographical Description

88.06.W051: Williams – Breaking and Entering

144 leaves, pp. [6] 1–2 3-127 128–130 131-279 [3]

A Vintage Contemporaries Original, June 1988, First Edition

Contents: π1a author photo with blurbs, π1b ‘A_{LSO BY} | J_OY W_ILLIAMS’, π2a half-title, π2b blank, π3a title, π3b imprint, 1-279 Breaking and Entering: 1-127 ‘[triple wave motif 14 x 43 mm] I | Then the strangest questions | are asked, which no human | being could answer: Why there | is only one such animal; why | I rather than anybody else | should own it, whether there | was ever an animal like it | before and what would happen | if it died, whether it feels | lonely, why it has no children, | what it is called, etc. | — Franz Kafka, “Cross Breeze”’, 128 blank, 129-278 ‘[triple wave motif 14 x 43 mm] II | It is living and ceasing to live | that are imaginary solutions. | Existence is elsewhere. | — André Breton’, 279 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 Thomas Victor.

Copies: JDP 1.1 (two copies)

Blurbs

(front cover) Breaking & Entering is in the company of Céline, Flannery O’Connor and Margaret Atwood….Joy Williams demolishes other writers. – James Salter
Willie and Liberty are drifters. They break into Florida vacation homes while the owners are away, stay a while, and then move on. They have been lovers since they were teenagers, yet Liberty now senses that Willie is drifting away from her—that their search, so relentless and mysterious, is becoming increasingly dangerous. An exhilarating cast of characters reflects this search, which is not just for home, but for self.
This compassionate and original book is about love and loneliness and courage in the new wilderness of our atomized society. It is also funny, awful and gruesomely Floridian without sacrificing its seriousness. Joy Williams is as fine a writer as you heard she was. – Thomas McGuane
An ominous and enthralling novel…truly significant fiction, of which there is not very much around. Breaking and Entering reminds me again that life is short; it is also very wide. – Jim Harrison
To put it simply, Joy Williams is the most gifted writer of her generation. For her, the human personality is of most interest and most truth when it is under the most extreme pressure….This notion of truth emerges in Joy Williams’s work in a complete Americanness of setting, language, and psychology that I find to be of great beauty and meaning. – Harold Brodkey

Jill Eisenstadt – From Rockaway (1988)

Bibliographical Description

88.06.W050: Eisenstadt – From Rockaway

112 leaves, pp. [6] 1–3 4-18 19 20-31 32 33-53 54 55-63 64 65-69 70 71-77 78 79-98 99 100-120 121 122-134 135 136-149 150 151-167 168 169-174 175 176-179 180 181-198 199 200-210 211 212-214 [4]

First Vintage Books Edition, June 1988

Contents: π1a author photo with blurbs, π1b blank, π2a title, π2b imprint, π3a dedication, π3b blank, 1 fly-title, 2 blank, 3-214 From Rockaway: 3-18 ‘Prom Night’, 19-31 ‘THE BLOOD [vertical rule extending two lines 29 mm] | [on gutter side of rule on second line] PART | [on fore-edge side of rule on first line] 1’, 32-53 ‘2 [vertical rule 15 mm] AUTHORITY’, 54-63 ‘3 [vertical rule 15 mm] BEING “IT”, 64-69 ‘4 | [vertical rule 15 mm] | LETTERS’, 70-77 ‘5 [vertical rule extending two lines 29 mm] THREE’S | [on gutter side of rule] A CROWD’, 78-98 ‘6 [vertical rule 15 mm] TILT-A-WHIRL’, 99-120 ‘VACATION [vertical rule 15 mm] 7’, 121-134 ‘AT THE MOVIES [vertical rule 15 mm] 8’, 135-149 ‘HAT WALK [vertical rule 15 mm] 9’, 150-167 ’10 [vertical rule extending two lines 29 mm] MOVING | [on gutter side of rule] MATTERS’, 168-174 ‘11 [vertical rule extending two lines 29 mm] CRUISE | [on gutter side of rule] TO NOWHERE ‘, 175-179 ‘LIMBO [vertical rule 15 mm] 12’, 180- ’13 [vertical rule extending two lines 29 mm] THE MURDERERS’ | [on gutter side of rule] CLUB’, 199-210 ‘THE BRASS BALLS [vertical rule extending three lines 44 mm] 14 | [on gutter side of rule] BRIDGE JUMPERS | [on gutter side of rule] ASSOCIATION’, 211-214 ‘July 6, 1987’; 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 1.2

Blurbs

(front cover) From Rockaway has wit and intelligence, and its theme is an important one…the burnout of a generation. Eisenstadt’s material is compelling and dramatic. – Brent Spencer, San Francisco Chronicle
In Jill Eisenstadt’s savvy, heartfelt novel we enter the world of working-class kids in Rockaway, New York, a beach community where beer cans and cigarette butts stud the sand instead of seashells. Peg, Alex, Chowderhead, and Timmy play, drink, and dream together. Their circle breaks apart when Alex gets a scholarship to a “rich kids’ school” in New England. Soon the rituals described in her anthropology text seem less bizarre than the games in the dorms around her. It is back in Rockaway, reunited with the old gang for the summer, that the explosive depth of feeling in kids with no options beyond the local deli and the lifeguard stands shows Alex what it means to face adulthood.
Eisenstadt is fabulous at working the wavy borders between friendship and love, childhood and adolescence, loyalty and peer pressure…a novel with jukebox charisma. – Glamour
Like ‘Saturday Night Fever’ it pushes the energy of desire against the low ceiling of possibility. – Sven Birkerts, Chicago Tribune
An affecting exploration of class and ambition, family ties, friendship and the way people grow into and out of different feelings about love…magical. – Alida Becker, Newsday