Product Description
Paula Fox's stunning first novel--available for the first time since its initial publication in 1967. Poor George gives us George Mecklin, a restless, soft-spoken teacher at a private school in Manhattan. Depressed by his life of vague moral purpose, George discovers a local adolescent named Ernest breaking into his house. Rather than hand the boy over to the police, as his nagging wife insists, George instead decides to tutor him. His life consequently implodes. Filled with vividly acid portrayals of American life in the 1960s, prescient explorations of suburban anomie, and a riotously disturbing cast of supporting characters, Poor George is a classic American novel--further reminder of Paula Fox's astonishing literary gifts. Introduction by Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The uncovering of the wastelands of the spirit.
George Mecklin is a teacher of English in New York. He is married to Emma, they're both in their early thirties and they live in the country, a small place called Harmon. George has got an unemployed and divorced sister, Lila. Claude is her young son. George goes to work, attends staff meetings, spends his evenings with Emma, worries about money...
It is precisely this uneventful way of life that makes Mrs Fox's novel interesting. It is the tedious and habitual way George leads his life, the utter emptiness and uselessness of his daily activities, almost as though he were living against his own volition. An "attitude of defeat" is a description used for Emma but it may equally adequately be applied to George, an attitude also shown by his clothes which hang on their hangers "like humble effigies of himself". Even his trying to help a lost youth, Ernest Jenkins, fails because George, "the goddamned fool", can only offer him dead heroes and dead poets. But George is lucid enough to be aware that he suffers from a profound disaffection with his life. "Poor George! I guess you have as many troubles as the rest of us" says one of the characters. Indeed, it is a novel about all the troubles one has to cope with in one's dreary everyday existence, masterfully put down on paper by Mrs Fox.

If you read nothing else read Paula Fox
Where has Paula Fox been all of my life? How was I to know her sentences listened and heard so clearly. She's so precise with her language and has no place for cant or the vocabulary of 'hyper realism'. If you read nothing else read Paula Fox. Thank you for reminding us how important the social novel is; some of us seem to have forgotten.

A Man's Agonizing Search for Meaning
Like Fox's masterpiece, Desperate Characters, the main character, George, is eviscerated from a lack of meaning in his life, in spite of his job as a teacher and his decent wife. A life devoted to provisionalism, prudence, hoarding, reason, the same kind of life embraced by the narrator in Melville's "Bartleby," proves to result in a spiritually bankrupt soul. George earnestly seeks in vain for meaning and in doing so the novel sheds light on the bleakness of provisionalism as the modernist philosophy which the American middle class championed so blindly in the 1960s, the era in which this novel is written. George may fail in his search for meaning, but the novel is a triumph of vigorous prose, muscular syntax, and an uncompromising, angry critique of the smug middle-class complacency that afflicts too many of us.

Fox On The Run
Sentence for sentence, Paula Fox is the genuine article. This is the book you want to read on the subway, the commuter rail, in the coffee shop, your place of preference. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Really Enjoyed this little book
I really enjoyed this little book.I read it in one Saturday afternoon and wished for more. The stories are unusual, but I found them fun and interesting.Lent this book to my mother who called to say it was weird and she couldn't find a message in it, but that was part of the fun for me.The artwork is great and it is an attractive volume to display on your book shelf.Happy I bought it and will most likely read it again.

Remaining the Purveyor of Originality
This little book carries the same unique charm that Lethem's other short works have displayed.Being most similar, I think, to his novella "This Shape We're In", they share the strange atmosphere of mystery and prohibition.The strange subject matter or as sci-fi as his writing can tend to get, it's always harnessed and made palatable (and literary) by Lethem's prose and creativity--two aspects that keep me coming back to his work, no matter the subject, length, or critical press (which has usually been positive).

The two stories presented, "How We Got In Town and Out Again" and "The Insipid Profession of Jonathan Horneboom", are firmly set in two worlds that let the readers in through relatable narrative, but paint pictures (almost literally inthe case of "Hornebloom") of inhospitable cultures.It's this distance created by this overwhelming sense of caution that gives poignancy to the stories that wouldn't be there if they were open-armed and welcoming.

These were stories published previously in "Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine" and "Full Spectrum S", respectively, though the real star is the longer "Horneboom".Published at the beginning of his career ("Horneboom" has echoes of "Gun, With Occasional Music") they are a great window looking back at the genesis of Lethem's professional writing.For those that know him from only "Motherless Brooklyn" and/or "Fortress Of Solitude", these two stories could be off-putting, but to actually shrink from them would be damaging to Lethem's character.Without weird stories such as these, or "Shape", or "Amnesia Moon", or "Gun", we wouldn't have the writer that Lethem is today, a man who (as evidenced by my title for the review) I hold in high regard.As the reader grows comfortable with these stories, it becomes apparent that the man that wrote these two stories, both overwhelmed by their quirkiness, is indeed the same man who wrote "Brooklyn" and "Fortress" as their respective quirks become even clearer in hindsight and with the reading of Lethem's other work.As Neil Young said of his own music, "It's all one song!" I think, in a way, the same could be said of what Lethem's trying to do with his work: everything is built around a stylistic thread continued from each previous endeavor, and even though the finished pieces don't necessarily look alike, the more you read the more of the thread you see.

These stories are weird, but worth the read even if you don't really understand them (I sure don't, I'm not much of a science-fiction aficionado).They are put into context by the sharp afterword Lethem wrote especially for the book.This short, four page conclusion gives more depth to the stories as it places them within the timeline of Lethem's career, as well as fleshing out what kind of person and writer Lethem is.He's not ashamed of revealing himself and his influences and does so with flags waving.He admits these are early examples of his work, but still finds the value in their existence (and points it out).

Packaged in a smart dust jacket adorned with artwork by (I'm guessing) his brother (who has work printed inside as well), this book would be enough to impress your friends and family just on looks alone.Luckily, with a writer like Lethem, what's inside will lead you to even more wonder, even if that wonder is more head-scratching than revelatory. ... Read more

Product Description
Growing up in Ohio in the 1970s, photographer Marc Joseph was first exposed to art, writing and music in the eccentric smaller book and record shops of downtown Cleveland. Most Saturday afternoons were spent combing through the stacks in anticipation of a major future purchase--like his first, London Calling by the Clash--or studying certain talismanic book covers like George Orwell’s Animal Farm or Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. This was the beginning of Joseph’s permanent fascination with books and records--both as public artworks and as formative private experiences.~New and Used is a collection of richly detailed color photographs of hardcovers, paperbacks, LPs, CDs and cassettes, either shelved, piled, boxed and stacked in their increasingly endangered natural environments--independent book and record shops--or individually silhouetted like artifacts pinned into shadow boxes. Together with editor Damon Krukowski, the artist has assembled a collection of short fiction, prose, poems and personal essays by writers and musicians including Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, novelists Dennis Cooper and Jonathan Lethem, critic and curator Bob Nickas, poet Eileen Myles and others, all of whom respond to the New and Used of their own experience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A remarkable insight
Lionel is one of four boys from a Brooklyn orphanage enlisted to help the young Frank Minna, Lionel is then thirteen years old. When the boys eventually leave school Franks takes the boys on full time as he establishes is rather shady detective agency which operates under the cover of a limo service. It is some fifteen years after Lionel first encountered Frank that they are on a surveillance which leads to Frank being murdered. Lionel takes on the task of seeking vengeance for the death of the nearest thing he has had to a father.

The story covers the early period of the boys employment and then picks up at the time of the ill fated surveillance, and Lionel's subsequent hunt for the murderer. Not sure who to trust, even amongst his three fellow orphans or anywhere else, Lionel works more or less alone, on more than one occasion putting himself in serious danger. Lionel narrates the account in the first person.

The plot alone would make an interesting novel, but what makes this story special is that Lionel is no ordinary boy, he suffers from Tourett'es syndrome, and is prone to tics, frequent verbal outbusts often of made up words, counting and obsessions with numbers, and touching people. A condition which confuses most people he meets as most are not familiar with the condition. In Lionel Jonathan Lethem has created a remarkable character, one who is appealing and who immediately engenders our sympathy. This is done entirely through the inner person that is Lionel; it would have been easy to make Lionel physically endearing, but rather Letham chooses to make him a large and rather ordinary looking person. The result is that his affliction becomes the source of his appeal.

Motherless Brooklyn is a well written and captivating and moving story, but more than that it is a story about a remarkable character. It also provides a vivid insight into the condition known as Tourette's syndrome. ... Read more

Product Description
Men and Cartoons is a place where superheroes take tenured positions at colleges, where innermost secrets are blurted in baroque dinner-party games, where a magical spray-product reveals that which two tormented lovers have concealed from one another, where sheep bred for suicide defy the imperatives of their creators, and where the smallest moments of life, from fitting a pair of glasses to choosing a record to play during a tryst, become unexpectedly revelatory, uncanny and hilarious. In these nine tales Lethem brings his quarry into the light: men, not boys, caught in the act of never completely growing up. ... Read more

Product Description
Unorthodox materials such as over-the-counter remedies, medicinal herbs, prescription pills, and psychoactive plants, are just some of the materials that make up artist Fred Tomaselli's collaged paintings. Others include cut-out photographs of flowers, insects, and leaves from field guides and seed catalogues that jostle for attention with their carefully-pressed and preserved real-life counterparts. Whole figures crafted from magazine cut-outs of animals and body parts--nightmarish, Archimboldo-esque hybrids--present Tomaselli's intensely personal vision of the universe. Monsters of Paradise, while moving between the artist's abstractions and figurations, presents 32 visually exuberant works reproduced in glorious color, and provides a comprehensive view of Tomaselli's work from 1995 to today.

Introduction by Fiona Bradley.

Essays by John Yau, Fred Tomaselli and Jonathan Lethem.

Hardcover, 9.5 x 11.75 in./95 pgs / Illustrated throughout. ... Read more

Product Description

"I envy your first encounter, if that is what it is, with Meeting Evil, one of Berger's most relentless and ingenious 'contraptions.'"
--Jonathan Lethem, from the Introduction

Meeting Evil tells an adrenaline-pumped, genuinely frightening tale of malevolence that swerves swiftly and irrevocably to a catastrophic climax.

John Felton meets evil late one Monday morning when the doorbell rings. Standing on the front porch is a stranger. He wears expensive running shoes and a baseball cap and calls himself Richie. He tells John his car has stalled and asks for help. An altercation at the gas station leads to a shocking crime as violence begets violence. At the end of this harrowing day, John returns home to find Richie ensconced in his living room, chatting up his wife. The evil has somehow seeped into his life. Thus begins the transformation of an unremarkable husband and father of two into a desperate man willing to go to any length to protect his family from the darkness that threatens them.

This is an extraordinary masterpiece and a chilling portrait of mounting menace played out against an everyday world of domestic routine, personified in a protagonist of basic decency grappling with both the immediate and existential meaning of true evil. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Hilarious Common Sense
Of all the major writers in American today, Thomas Berger is the only one who has his feet solidly on the ground. His books - from Little Big Man to Changing the Past - are not only funny, engrossing, intelligent and wise, they are also full of common sense, which is, of course, not common at all, but the rarest of commodities. He also takes his tales, however, and delves deeper into themes which others never consider.

Meeting Evil is the story of John Felton, a rather average guy who gets sucked into a crime spree by a stranger named Richie. John always has good, civilized reasons for letting evil occur and only towards the end does Felton pull himself decisively away from Richie. On one level, this is the novelization of Edmund Burke's warning about good men doing nothing. But as you think through the book, the reader notices something eerie. People keep mistaking John for Richie. Some witnesses see only John. Others think they look alike.

Evil is inside of each of us, Berger is saying, and we are all responsible for removing it from ourselves. How he can turn that message into hilarious, polished prose is what makes Berger unique in American letters and very very special.

Thomas Berger's "Meeting Evil"
Berger is one of our great writers who has never quite received the recognition he deserves. Perhaps that's for the best because he has consistently turned out perceptive, hilarious examinations of modern life while maintaining his integrity. "Meeting Evil" is about a good man's encounter with a serial killer. What transpires is an extraordinary black comedy about middle class complacency and how human beings only come to understand the value of what they have when it is placed under threat.

The Ballad of the Good Samaritan...
Thomas Berger is a master of turning the mundane into nightmare, as he proves once again in Meeting Evil. When John Felton, a real estate salesman, regular guy next door, answers his doorbell early one morning and a stranger with car trouble asks for assistance, he willingly obliges. This is Felton's first mistake.

As the situation escalates into chaos, it is clear that something is very wrong. Ritchie, the stranger, is both obnoxious and obsequious, given to sudden flares of temper. John's go-along personality has gotten him into an untenable situation, one that seems to offer no immediate avenue of escape and Felton is confused about why he is with the volatile Ritchie. John's habitual tentativeness is a great disadvantage, leaving him as vulnerable as the proverbial lamb waiting for slaughter. "He was conscious of a lifetime of urge to do right."

What happens when a rational man finds himself in an ever more dangerous situation, where he is helplessly mired in moral perplexities? As more innocent bystanders are drawn into Ritchie's vortex, it is John's conscience that struggles with escape, at the mercy of a sociopath.Ritchie's escalating violence is intolerable and John Felton's life is seriously out of control.

John must decide if he can maintain his integrity and still remain a passive bystander, caught between adapting to Ritchie's unpredictable impulses and escaping without harm. All Felton's struggles are as yet internal; he is unable to take action for fear of the consequences. "To be no hero is shameful, but taking satisfaction in that state of affairs would be."

This is the story of a family man, a suburban Everyman, spending his days in comfortable rapprochement with his environment, never questioning his ethics in the world at large. John is complacent, his manhood unchallenged, in one sense a moral NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard). When evil threatens, John is immediately paralyzed, equivocating. But what works in every day situations may not provide the appropriate answer in extreme circumstances. Meeting Evil poses the philosophical dilemma of life in a civilized society pitted against aberrant behavior with no room for error. Luan Gaines/2003.

B. Explores Themes of Societal Insulation and Evil as Chaos
Meeting Evil is a great book.In it (like in Neighbors and TheHouseguest) Berger explores the themes of the limits of hospitality and theshield of insulation that we as members of society build around ourselves. However, in this novel, Berger uses the character of Ritchie to explore thenature of Evil more than he does with any other character.Ritchie'smotivations are random and surreal and chaotic in contrast to the overlyorderly and logical John Felton.It is as if Berger purposely makesRitchie as illogical as possible while simultaneously showing John (and thereader)to be completely unprepared to deal with or understand him. Preparation requires logic, and logic is useless in dealing with chaos.Ritchie does not seem as sinister as he does chaotic. ... Read more

Product Description
In the graffiti world it's the name that brings the fame, but what about the figural components of this urban typography? Some of the most iconic pieces in the history of graffiti have earned their place in the street art pantheon with the help of masterfully rendered figures that lend additional presence to these works. Mascots & Mugs, brought to you by the publisher of the best-selling sneaker encyclopedia Where'd You Get Those? is the first book to examine figurative elements in graffiti art: It traces the history of key characters from the earliest examples by writers such as Stay High, Cliff 170 and Blade, to those of later masters like Mode 2, Doze and Tack. Drawing inspiration from Saturday-morning television, printed comic strips and the dense urban landscape itself, graffiti writers created characters free from the constraints of their usual letterforms. The result is a host of outlandish visual sidekicks that, over time, have become so prevalent that any would-be king needs at least a few in his artistic arsenal. Filled with never-before-published photographs and rare artist interviews, this chronologically sequenced graffiti bible is a must-have reference work for anyone interested in cartoons, comics, graphic design or the myriad ways in which this self-taught urban street art has influenced today's contemporary art landscape. Also available in a deluxe, clothbound, slipcased limited edition with a signed screenprint of a classic "mug" from graffiti legend Doc TC5. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

a trip back in time
well what can i say.this book is dope.from start to finish it keeps the reader interrested.the interviews with some of new yorks king and pioneers of graffiti are well detailed with out dragging on.
the pictures are great even thoo some of them are over 30 years old.
this book is a trip back in time.
also i loved the fact that there was plenty of text.alot of graffiti books try to avoid this or just dont have much text.
this is part of the reason the book got 5 stars.for me i really like reading.so having alot of text is just a added bonus.
if you enjoyed books like dondi,t-kid,fuzz,hip hop files,then get this book.
my only gripe is that i didnt spring for the limited edtion...
oh and its pretty thick too,so lots of pictures,lots of text.
a great all round graff book,from the early graff times in new york city!

This is a classic, MUST HAVE
Let me just start off by saying this book is OFF THE HOOK! This book is up there with Subway Art, Dondi White and Freight Train Graffiti. This is a book written by real artist that influenced the graff game at a whole other level. I was lucky enough in my youth to have met Todd "Reas" James and he was one of the coolest writers I ever met. He gave me outlines and would just kick it with me even though I was new to the scene. His style is still seen today in so many writers doing their thing today. The interviews in this book are amazing! The photos are clear and I like how they show the writers at that time and what influenced them. For anyone a fan of graffiti or any new writers looking to get schooled this is a must have.

A Must Have
In the same league as classic books like

watching my name go by
getting up
subway art
spraycan art
dondi white ... Read more

Product Description
Daylight Noir: Raymond Chandler's Imagined City comprises photographs of all those ominous, forbidding Los Angeles locations so hauntingly described by Chandler in his novels. From Malibu Pier to the Hollywood Sign, from Union Station to the Beverly Hills Hotel, from MGM Studios to Musso and Frank's Grill, these locales form the geography of Chandler's imagination, and conjure a world not yet entirely vanished. Clive James wrote of Chandler's fascination with Los Angeles that "when he said that it had as much personality as a paper cup, he was saying what he liked about it." But Chandler was also drawn to the Hopperesque loneliness of the city, to that sense of isolate existences that never merge. In these photographs, Catherine Corman (editor of Joseph Cornell's Dreams) has given us, as Jonathan Lethem writes in his preface, "a supremely evocative catalogue of haunted places... these streets and buildings we have erected in order to give order to our solitudes." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

No better than "Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles"
Sorry. This book which has the MSRP of $39.95 plus tax for a paperback (which you can now buy on Amazon for about 25% of that) is no bettter than the 1998 work referenced above. This kind of junk can be slap-dashed together with a few Phillip Marlowe books and modern boring black-and-white pictures of mainly downtown high-rises, is boring, just plain boring.
If you weren't there, you'll never know. If you want to let your imagination run wild into places that no longer exist, see "Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved" and my related review.
This one falls flat on its face. Where is the romance, the intrigue, the "real noir"? Not here.

The Black and White of Chandler's Los Angeles
Raymond Chandler set his stories and novels in a Los Angeles that sometimes seemed to me to be part of an alternate universe.The city was still recognizable but something was always just a little off about it.Chandler created his striking version of Los Angeles so successfully, in fact, that it often seemed more real, if rather more odd and dangerous, to me than the real city streets of L.A.

I followed Chandler into his Los Angeles before I ever saw the real thing for myself and I was somewhat disappointed by what I saw when I finally got there.The two cities, real and imagined, just did not match up all that well for me.After having read Catherine Corman'sphoto-filled "Daylight Noir," I know for sure that the problem was entirely my own."Daylight Noir" is filled with moody black and white photographs of many of the locations prominently featured in Chandler's work, photos as arresting as the images created by Chandler himself.

My problem was that I was looking at Los Angeles through modern eyes and in living color.Corman solves that problem by producing all of her photos in high contrast black and white, just as they might have been photographed in Chandler's heyday.The reader will note, too, that there are no people in any of the pictures, a tactic that further enhances the feeling of big city loneliness so common in Chandler's work. Catherine Corman has an artistic eye and her photographs reflect that artistry.They are shot from unusual angles, only rarely straight on, and yet have the look of pictures that could have been taken in the early decades of the last century.

Corman's photos tell me more about Los Angeles than any of those thousands of self-promoting, touristy, pictures I have seen over a lifetime.As a bonus, they also remind me why I love Raymond Chandler's work so much and they make me anxious to revisit his stories for the first time in a long while."Daylight Noir" is the perfect companion piece to Raymond Chandler's mysteries and I plan to keep it near my Chandler collection so that I can refer to it the next time I crack open one of his hardboiled stories.

"Daylight Noir" should appeal equally to fans of photo collections and to fans of the remarkable work of Raymond Chandler.

beautiful photos and excellent tribute to Chandler's noir Los Angeles
Catherine Corman's "Daylight Noir" photos of Los Angeles landmarks from
Raymond Chandler's novels capture the palpable unease that permeated the
landscape of LA during the Depression and WWII. As LA and the rest of the
country face the worst economic crises since WWII and a chronic state of low
level warfare in the Middle East, "Daylight Noir" uncannily speaks to our
times with its message that no illusion is kept without a price, and whether
we can afford this price remains to be seen. ... Read more