Sign-In
Cart
L.A. Breakdown (Deluxe Edition)
Paperback
General FictionLiterary Fiction
Publisher Price: $17.99
Please select the version of book you would like to purchase.
ISBN10: 1684429781
ISBN13: 9781684429783
Publisher: Tiger Van Books
Published: Jun 13 2023
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.65
Height: 1.10 Width: 5.40 Depth: 8.40
Language: English
ISBN13: 9781684429783
Publisher: Tiger Van Books
Published: Jun 13 2023
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.65
Height: 1.10 Width: 5.40 Depth: 8.40
Language: English
A 1999 LOS ANGELES TIMES BEST BOOKDELUXE EDITION, WITH NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN RECOVERED CHAPTERS--Los Angeles, 1967--With gleaming detail and blinding precision, Lou Mathews freeze-frames a hidden corner of L.A.'s outlaw culture in the moments before it becomes extinct. The heart of the culture is the drive-in, where street racers meet to challenge their rivals and place their bets. This world comes to life after dark, lit by headlights and street lamps, a moveable feast of drag races, peopled with its own lost generation: young men and women who have left high school but have no thoughts of college.
Drifting from one dead end job to another, supplementing their income through thieving, doing the occasional stint in prison, and reluctantly entering the armed services when there is nothing else left, they live, and sometimes die, for the excitement, the danger, the money of racing. In the world of drag racing--fleeting and bittersweet, like the end of summer--the stakes the stakes grow higher and higher as, one by one, each player spins out and disappears from the scene: Here, we meet Vaca, crippled in soul and body, prefers the armor of his car to a wheelchair. The ex-con Brody--Vaca's driver--is the best street racer in town. Reinhard, a loner who has no one and nothing but the exquisite machines he builds and races. Charlie, the race organizer who tells the story. And Connie, who rolls her eyes at the whole parade, never without a sarcastic riposte, but who can't stay away from the boys and their toys. Stunning, bleakly beautiful, and laugh-out-loud funny, L.A. Breakdown paints a riveting portrait of 1960s Los Angeles, frozen in time yet disintegrating before our eyes with all the reckless speed of romantic era.Mathews keeps the reader so firmly focused on horsepower, hand-rubbed black lacquer paint jobs and custom pinstripes that the small epiphanies that unfold here really do sneak up, as surprising and pungent as burning oil. --Los Angeles Times
Also from
Mathews, Lou
Also in
Literary Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
$38.00
James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales Vol. 1 (Loa #26): The Pioneers / The Last of the Mohicans / The Prairie
Cooper, James Fenimore
Hardcover
From $19.99
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Paperback
$5.99
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
From $17.99
The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk
St Aubyn, Edward
Paperback
From $9.99