Here for your delectation is the SPECTACULAR RARE---------------------EPISODE WITH ERIKA by Chandler Brossard. As Erika warns, "I don't believe in relationships where there isn't any passion, or even violence.... They aren't real." The bloodless narrator, college boy caught up in an inevitably destructive relationship, enjoys the present sex, even when being exploited, without heeding the dangers inherent in this futureless affair. He himself gains perception at a price-used up and all passion spent. The themes of hip versus square, integrity versus betrayal, and the quest for identity, recur against a background of mistrust and loss of belief, of McCarthyism and bogus psychoanalysis. It contains some lurid and witty touches. Chandler Brossard was an American novelist, playwright, editor, and teacher. Brossard was chiefly self-educated, having left school at age eleven. He worked as a journalist for the Washington Post before attaining a writing position with The New Yorker at age nineteen, where editor William Shawn encouraged him to write fiction. His first published novel, Who Walk in Darkness (1952), focused on the bohemian life of 1940s Greenwich Village and is sometimes considered the first beat novel, thus earning Brossard an association with early Beat Generation writers such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg -- an association Brossard neither sought nor desired. Reviewers who characterized Who Walk in Darkness as a beat novel, Brossard said, "totally missed getting the book. They thought it was a realistic novel, which of course it wasn't. The French critics knew better. They perceived it as the first 'new wave' novel, a nightmare presented as flat documentary." Brossard received little critical support for his novels in the United States (though they were well-received abroad, particularly in France). In 1971 Anatole Broyard wrote a scathing review of Wake Up. We're Almost There for the New York Times: "Here's a book so transcendently bad it makes us fear not only for the condition of the novel in this country, but for the country itself." Brossard responded in kind and a small controversy festered between them for a time. Two of Brossard's novels -- The Wrong Turn and The Double View -- were published under the pseudonym "Daniel Harper." In addition to producing novels, plays and short stories, Brossard worked as an editor for Time magazine (1944), executive editor for American Mercury (1950-1951), and senior editor for Look magazine (1956-1967). He also wrote criticism for The Nation, Commentary, and The Guardian. From 1968-1970, he was a professor at the experimental Old Westbury College on Long Island and subsequently held brief teaching appointments as a visiting professor, writer-in-residence, or lecturer at universities in the United States and abroad, including the University of Birmingham in England, the New School for Social Research in New York, and Schiller College in Paris. This is the softcover stated Belmont First Edition from July 1963. Both the cover and the book are in excellent condition. There are no rips, tears, markings, etc.---and the pages and binding are tight (see photo). **Note: All books listed as FIRST EDITIONS are stated by the publisher in words or number lines--or--only stated editions that include only the publisher and publication date. Check my feedback to see that I sell exactly as I describe. So bid now for this magnificent, impossible-to-find LITERARY COLLECTIBLE. ALL OF MY LISTINGS ARE BETTER THAN AN AUCTION!! NAME THE REASONABLE PRICE YOU WANT TO PAY WHEN YOU CLICK BEST OFFER AND CHANCES ARE THE ITEM WILL BE YOURS--IMMEDIATELY!! NO WAITING FOR AN AUCTION TO END!! NEW!! NEW!! NEW! EVERY DAY WILL BE MARKDOWN SALE DAY IN MY STORE!!! HUGE DISCOUNTS WILL BE FOUND ON SPECIFIC ITEMS THAT CELEBRATE THE CALENDAR DAY ALL MARKDOWNS WILL LAST ONLY 24 HOURS---SO CHECK BACK EVERY DAY!! CLICK HERE-------- _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ WANT TO SEE MORE?? FOR EXTRA-SPECIAL SAVINGS GO TO: BARRYS BARGAIN BIN for BOOKS THOUSANDS OF UNIQUE TITLES (no duplication) ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY FIRST EDITION ! MUSIC IN ALL GENRES AND FORMATS (lps, 45s, 78s, and cassettes) ASSORTED RARE CURIOSITIES EVERYTHING (except death and taxes) IS NEGOTIABLE! MAKE ME AN OFFER I CAN'T REFUSE!! (NO HORSE'S HEAD IN THE BED, PLEASE!) ALL REASONABLE OFFERS WILL BE ACCEPTED!!! (EVEN THE OCCASIONAL UNREASONABLE OFFER) GO AHEAD---YOU'RE HERE ALREADY!! Be sure to add me to your favorites list 122108