The Vintage Book of Amnesia
Jonathan Lethem is perhaps our most active literary voice mining the genre margins of our culture. In this unique collection he creates an anthology that no one else could. He draws on the work of such unforgettables as Julio Cortazar, who presents a man caught between the ancient and modern worlds unable to say which is real; Philip K. Dick, who tells the story of a man trapped on a spaceship of the somnolent, unable to sleep and slowly losing his mind; Shirley Jackson, who takes us on a nightmarish trip across town with a young secretary; and Oliver Sacks, who presents us with an aging hippie who possesses no memory of anything that has taken place since the early seventies. What Lethem has done is nothing less than define a new genre of literature-the amnesia story-and in the process he invites us to sit down, pick up the book, and begin to forget. Also including: John Franklin Bardin, Donald Barthelme, Thomas M. Disch, Karn Joy Fowler, David Grand, Anna Kavan, Haruki Murakami, Flann O'Brien, Edmund White, and many others. Includes: Dream science by Thomas Palmer The night fave up by Julio Cortazar Other people by Martin Amis Nightmare by Shirley Jackson Memories of amnesia by Lawrence Shainberg Warm by Robert Sheckley Soul walker by Brian Fawcett Cowboys don't cry by L.J. Davis The second coming by Walker Percy Funes, his memory by Jorge Luis Borges The black curtain by Cornell Woolrich The third policeman by Flann O'Brien Five fucks by Jonathan Lethem Forgetting Elena by Edmund White Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler The last hippie by Oliver Sacks Notes toward a history of the seventies by Geoffrey O'Brien Ticket to ride by Dennis Potter The fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian uprising, Hitler's invasion of Poland, and the realm of raging winds by Haruki Murakami Geoffrey Sonnabend's obliscence: theories of forgetting and the problem of matter-an encapsulation by Valentine Worth I hope I shall arrive soon by Philip K. Dick The zebra struck by Anna Kavan The squirrel cage by Thomas M. Disch Louse by David Grand Game by Donald Barthelme The affirmation by Christopher Priest by Kleinzeit by Russell Hoban Days between stations by Steve Ericson That in Aleppo once by Vladimir Nabokov Carnation, lily, lily, rose by Kelly Link