Midnight Cowboy
by James Leo Herlihy
- Used
- Hardcover
- Condition
- Very Good +/Very Good +
- Seller
-
WINFIELD, Kansas, United States
Item Price
A$22.77A$15.94
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1965 Simon and Schuster, New York. 1965. Hardcover. Book Club Edition. Book is tight, square, and unmarked. Book Condition: Very Good+; light bumping to head and tail; scant shelfwear to head, tail, and tips. DJ: Very Good +; small closed tears on top of front panel; light toning to rear panel and spine. Blue grained vinyl over boards and spine with bright black lettering on the spine. 254 pp 12mo. This novel chronicles the naive Texan, Joe Buck's odyssey from Texas to New York City, where he plans on realizing his dream of becoming a male prostitute servicing rich women but instead gets trapped into another world of male prostitution where he falls in love with his pimp, Rizzo, who dies, again leaving him all alone in the world. A clean very presentable copy in a Brodart mylar jacket.
Synopsis
In some ways, it was unfortunate for author James Leo Herlihy that his novel Midnight Cowboy was adapted into the landmark film of the same name starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. Although the film, which won several Oscars including Best Picture, certainly brought the rising author a new level of regard and notice, its almost legendary status in the history of American filmmaking has somewhat overshadowed its literary progenitor. This is especially unfortunate since Herlihy's work is considered by many to be one of the best American novels published since World War II. The novel's protagonist is Joe Buck, a naive young Texan who decides to leave his dead-end job and find a grander, more glamorous life in New York City. The city, of course, turns out to be a much harder place to conquer than Joe expected, and he soon finds his dream compromised. Buck's fall from innocence and his relationship with the crippled street hustler Ratso Rizzo form the novel's emotional nucleus, and the unlikely pair is one of the most sensitively-drawn and complex portraits of friendship in recent literature.The focus on male friendship is in fact a longstanding motif in American literature: Twain's Huck and Jim, Melville's Ishmael and Queequeg, Fitzgerald's Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby, and Kerouac's Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarity are some of the notable examples. Herlihy's Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo continue this venerable tradition in their unique, starkly-drawn fashion. Midnight Cowboy also takes a well-deserved place among a group of distinguished American novels that write-often with unnerving candor-about people living on the "margins" of society: Nathaniel West's Miss Lonleyhearts, John Fante's Ask the Dust, Kerouac's On the Road, and William Burroughs' Junky, to name a few. Midnight Cowboy, written by Herlihy with a unique mixture of severe realism and sensitivity, may well prove to be the best and most durable of these accomplished works of fiction.
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Details
- Seller
- Walnut Valley Books/Books by White
(US)
- Seller's Inventory #
- 016776
- Title
- Midnight Cowboy
- Author
- James Leo Herlihy
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good +
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good +
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- Book Club Edition
- Publisher
- Simon and Schuster
- Place of Publication
- New York, NY
- Date Published
- 1965
- Size
- 12mo - over 6¾ - 7¾
- Keywords
- Midnight Cowboy, Hollywood movie, gay life style, LGBTQ, male prostitute, New York City, Ratso Rizzo, Joe Buck, Times Square, homosexuality,
- Bookseller catalogs
- Art/Music/Motion Pictures/Television; LGBT Issues;
Terms of Sale
Walnut Valley Books/Books by White
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or in the unfortunate event, damaged. All books are packed and wrapped with care to avoid shifting during shipment and edge/tip strikes during the mailing process.
About the Seller
Walnut Valley Books/Books by White
Biblio member since 2018
WINFIELD, Kansas
About Walnut Valley Books/Books by White
Walnut Valley Books is a small independent home-based business with the bulk of my holdings being of an American military nature covering everything from the Revolutionary War to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I also have holdings of books on the Middle East, the southwestern United States (New Mexico especially, Kansas related titles, Oklahoma related titles, and other regionally specialized books. All of my holdings are hand-selected to be good quality books of interest to the reader, historian, or the collector. In addition to the above, you will also find a wide range of other topics such as Medical, US History, autobiographical, biographical, sports, women's studies, and many other eclectic topics.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Brodart
- Generally used to refer to a clear plastic cover that is sometimes added to the dustjacket or outside covering of a book. The...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- Book Club Edition
- A generic term denoting a book which was produced or distributed by one of any number of book club organizations. Usually the...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Tail
- The heel of the spine.
- Shelfwear
- Minor wear resulting from a book being place on, and taken from a bookshelf, especially along the bottom edge.
- 12mo
- A duodecimo is a book approximately 7 by 4.5 inches in size, or similar in size to a contemporary mass market paperback. Also...
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