Search Results for: vintage contemporaries

Blog about acquiring a Vintage Contemporaries edition of Barry Hannah’s Airships. (Special guest appearance by David Berman.)

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I’ve been a big fan of the Vintage Contemporaries 1980s series for ages now. The books were easily available, cheap and used, in the nineties, and I first read Raymond Carver and Jay McInerney in VC editions, later adding novels by Denis Johnson, Don DeLillo, Jerzy Kosinski to the burgeoning collection. I was thrilled to… Continue reading Blog about acquiring a Vintage Contemporaries edition of Barry Hannah’s Airships. (Special guest appearance by David Berman.)

A Short Riff on Those Horrid, Wonderful Vintage Contemporaries Paperbacks of the 1980s

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I’ve been a fan of Vintage Contemporaries for years. I’m pretty sure the first one I ever picked up was Raymond Carver’s Cathedral. I recall being vaguely dismayed about the cover and trying to find another used edition, but thrift won out. This was in the early or mid nineties, and book design was trending toward a… Continue reading A Short Riff on Those Horrid, Wonderful Vintage Contemporaries Paperbacks of the 1980s

A review of Trey Ellis’s polyglossic satire Platitudes

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Trey Ellis’s 1988 debut novel Platitudes begins with a typical metatextual conceit: the novel-within-a-novel gambit. Our story starts with Earle, a nerdy, idealistic high school sophomore who lusts after True Love (and some sex if he can get it). After about a dozen pages though, the “author” shows his hand. Depressed divorced Dewayne Wellington is… Continue reading A review of Trey Ellis’s polyglossic satire Platitudes

Under the Volcano and elsewhere (Books acquired, week of 10 March 2023)

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My family and I had a wonderful time vacationing in Mexico City last week. We rented an apartment in Condesa, a friendly, walkable neighborhood marked by shade trees, lush gardens, and robust parks. And dogs. Lots of lovely dogs. Over eight days, we took in as much of the city as we could (as well… Continue reading Under the Volcano and elsewhere (Books acquired, week of 10 March 2023)

Trey Ellis’s Platitudes (Book acquired, 6 June 2022)

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I had a full 90 minutes to browse the second, downtown location of my favorite bookshop today, while my daughter completed onboarding at City Hall for her summer job. I picked up assigned summer reading for both of my kids, and came across a Vintage Contemporaries edition I’d never seen before: Trey Ellis’s debut novel Platitudes. The… Continue reading Trey Ellis’s Platitudes (Book acquired, 6 June 2022)

Joy Williams’s State of Grace (Book acquired, 22 Feb. 2021–and some covers of books unacquired)

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I did a Big Clean a weekend or two past, including a thorough dusting of shelves. I always try to purge titles that I know I’ll never read, reread, or that I have no real attachment to. I filled a box with about 25 books, mostly novels, mostly paperbacks, and took it to my favorite… Continue reading Joy Williams’s State of Grace (Book acquired, 22 Feb. 2021–and some covers of books unacquired)

Leonard Gardner’s Fat City (Book acquired, 12 Nov. 2020)

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I’ve been wanting to read Leonard Gardner’s Fat City for a while, and how could I pass up this Vintage Contemporaries edition? I think I first heard of the book years ago in conjunction with its influence on Denis Johnson. In Salon, in 1996, Johnson wrote, or gushed, really– Exactly which year of the 1960s the book came out,… Continue reading Leonard Gardner’s Fat City (Book acquired, 12 Nov. 2020)

John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (Book acquired, 28 Aug. 2020)

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I usually allow myself to peruse my favorite used bookstore every other Friday, poking around for weird finds and etc. I had no luck this week—nothing like a Vintage Contemporaries Barry Hannah—but they did have a copy of John Brunner’s 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, which I’d been searching (not-too-hard) for for a few years now.… Continue reading John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (Book acquired, 28 Aug. 2020)