Rick Lovell Archives - The Vintage Contemporaries Bibliography

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].

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