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Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation (Pyramid Books, 1975) – BLOOD’S BARGAINS

$7.50

BLOOD’S BARGAINs  are books that have sustained cosmetic damage but are still readable. From badly aligned spines and miscut covers to serious bumps, bruises, and scuffs, think of these as books Blood salvaged from the post-apocalyptic wastes in an effort to civilize Vic.

Among the 30 books written by Harlan Ellison (of whom the great American novelist Howard Fast has said, “He is always original, always exciting…one does not simply read an Ellison story. One experiences it”) this is his rarest. Among those who say it is his best book are the bidders who recently spent $80 at a West Coast auction to obtain one copy of the original 50¢ first edition. Now, for the first time in almost 15 years, this superlative collection is available again. With a new Introduction by the author, a Foreword by Frank Robinson, co-author of THE GLASS INFERNO, and the first book appearance of “Turnpike,” a small gem accessible nowhere else, this is a major collection that will delight and horrify you: stories of the lost, the damned, the helpless, trying to get a handle on life. Tales dealing not merely with the fantasy constructs of other Ellison books, but chillers that slice and rend and fear at the very real nightmare world we move through every day. Stories of racial prejudice, narcotics addiction, juvenile delinquency, anti-Semitism, alienation, violence. If you can cope with it, take a deep breath and plunge into Harlan Ellison’s world: strange and dark…but always your world!

Out of stock

Description

1975 Pyramid mass market paperback; 2nd printing.

Cover by Leo & Diane Dillon.

HEY! PAY ATTENTION!

ESQUIRE:
FOR JANUARY, 1962

BOOK REVIEWS
DOROTHY PARKER
It is not the province of this department to take up recent paperbacks. In the first place, there are too bloody many of them; in the second place, the covers are adorned, or something, by naked young ladies writhing in death agonies which will go on drearily through the book; and in the third place—well, I really don’t believe there is any third place. But lately there has come into my weary hands a paperback of short stories by Harlan Ellison, a young writer whose name I had not known before. The book is horribly titled, Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation, the Gentleman Junkie being one of its least-distinguished stories; on the cover, as is the way, the stories are exploited as raw, vital, uncompromising, startling, “torn from the shadows of a twilight world”—oh, you know how they go on.

But it turns out that Mr. Ellison is a good, honest, clean writer, putting down what he has seen and known, and no sensationalism about it.

In the collection is a story called Daniel White for the Greater Good. It is without exception the best presentation I have ever seen of present racial conditions in the South and of those who try to alleviate them. I cannot recommend it too vehemently, and if you can steel yourself to ask for Gentleman Junkie, I do not think you will be mad at me.

Incidentally, the other stories in Mr. Ellison’s book are not so dusty, either.

This is the review that took Harlan Ellison to Hollywood, it was the only paperback ever reviewed by the legendary Dorothy Parker. For almost fifteen years copies of this small-printing collection have passed from hand-to-hand. When they surfaced at rare book auctions, the prices were sky-high. Now you can find out what literary wonders delighted the incomparable Ms. Parker.

Contents:
Foreword, by Frank M. Robinson
Introduction: The Children of Nights
Final Shtick
Gentleman Junkie
May We Also Speak? (Four Statements From the Hung-Up Generation [1. Now You’re in the Box 2. The Rocks of Gogroth 3. Payment Returned, Unopened. 4. The Truth ]
Daniel White for the Greater Good
Lady Bug, Lady Bug
Free With This Box!
There’s One on Every Campus
At the Mountains of Blindness
This Is Jackie Spinning
No Game for Children
The Late, Great Arnie Draper
High Dice
Enter the Fanatic, Stage Center
Someone Is Hungrier
Memory of a Muted Trumpet
Turnpike
Sally in Our Ally
The Silence of Infidelity
Have Coolth
RFD #2 (with Henry Slesar)
No Fourth Commandment Murder
The Night of Delicate Terrors

2nd Printing. ISBN: 0515039330.

Additional information

Weight .3125 lbs
Dimensions 7 × 4.25 × .75 in
Format

Limited Edition

No

Signed

No