FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH
An exceptionally beautiful first printing of this classic portrait of elder (sorry) Gen-Xers.
Fine in a fine dust jacket.
Price: $1,250.00
FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH
"Jeff Spicoli, a Ridgemont legend since third grade, lounged against the doorframe. His long dirty-blond hair was parted exactly in the middle. He spoke thickly, like molasses pouring from ajar. Most every school morning, Spicoli awoke before dawn, smoked three bowls of marijuana from a small steel bong, put on his wet suit and surfed before school."
Crowe gathered material for his novel while a 22-year-old reporter for Rolling Stone, attending high school classes undercover to record the unfiltered speech and social lives of his classmates; he also wrote the screenplay for Amy Heckerling's 1982 adaptation. Both book and film endure as unfiltered and sharply realistic portraits of the "double life" of American teenagers. The film is now arguably better known than the book, but only John Hughes captured the zeitgeist 1980s adolescents (and adolescence) more accurately and poignantly.
Increasingly scarce in any format: FAST TIMES was published simultaneously in hardcover and paperback in 1981, and again in a 1982 movie-tie-in edition, but has not been reissued since. Crowe has said of this situation: "It's the one thing that I still have the rights to, and I like that there's one thing that's not readily available. I like knowing that if you really want it, you can find it, but nobody's pushing it in your face. I have been approached about republishing, but I haven't done it. I like it too much as a kind of bootleg."
Read more: Kim Masters, Finding "Fast Times At Ridgemont High," The Hollywood Reporter.
The Object
New York: Simon & Schuster, (1981). 8.5'' x 5.5''. Original quarter beige cloth with blue boards. In original unclipped ($14.95) dust jacket with photograph by Sigrid Estrada, colored by Bob Felsenstein. 253, [1] pages. Barest toning to edges of jacket. Else bright, sharp, and clean overall. An exceptional copy.
The Fine Print
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