| | FEATURED LITERATURE TITLES Esther McCoy (1904–1989) is one of the twentieth century’s foremost architecture historians, and one of the greatest chroniclers of the architecture of midcentury southern California. Her 1960 book Five California Architects has long been acknowledged as an indispensable classic, and as Reyner Banham famously observed of her, “no one can write about architecture in California without acknowledging her as the mother of us all.” Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader is the first anthology of McCoy’s writing. It features a selection of some 70 pieces--ranging from her 1945 article “Schindler, Space Architect” to “Arts & Architecture: Case Study Houses,” a 1989 essay commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. From fiction for The New Yorker to seminal essays on new architectural forms, McCoy charts the progressive edge of American idealism, from the collective utopian spirit of Jazz Age Greenwich Village, through the Depression and the war years, to the optimism of the 1950s and 1960s. In preparing this volume, writer and editor Susan Morgan extensively researched the McCoy papers at the Archives of American Art. Her editorial decisions were based, in part, on McCoy’s original selections for an unrealized anthology solicited by W. W. Norton in 1968. Expanding on that project, Morgan has included essays, articles, lectures, correspondence, memoirs and short stories that illuminate the breadth and complexity of McCoy’s writing and the southern California region that inspired her groundbreaking work. > more
PIECING TOGETHER LOS ANGELES: AN ESTHER MCCOY READER
US $34.95 CAN $34.95 / TRADE
ISBN 9780615528236 / In stock
 Raymond Queneau called it the “most poignant love story of our time,” and Julio Cortázar said of its author: “I can’t think of another writer who can move me as surreptitiously as Vian does.” Boris Vian (1920–1959) was a songwriter, trumpet-player, poet, playwright and pataphysician, but is best remembered for his 1947 novel, Foam of the Daze, a jazz-fueled science-fiction romance that mingles bittersweet and surrealist absurdity with a melancholic meditation on the frailty of life. It tells the tale of Colin, a wealthy young dandy, and Chloe, his newly wedded wife who develops a terrible illness: a water lily in her lung. The supporting cast includes Chick, an obsessive collector of Jean-Sol Partre memorabilia; Colin’s libertine manservant Nicolas, a Jeeves for the jazz-age; the philosopher Jean-Sol Partre himself, Vian’s rib-poking tribute to his friend Jean-Paul Sartre and the pianocktail: a cocktail-mixing piano whose individual notes are tuned to liqueurs that mix incredible cocktails. Michel Gondry’s film adaptation of the novel, to star Audrey Tautou, will begin production in 2012. > more
FOAM OF THE DAZE
US $18.00 CAN $18.00 / TRADE
ISBN 9780966234633 / In stock
| | | | |
