It's also in yesterday's New York Times, although in small size in black and white on an inside page -- page A11 in my edition -- with the caption "A Turkish gendarme on Wednesday carried the body of a child who drowned en route to the Greek Island of Kos".
My tested Performance edition, with the all-wheel-drive option, cost $45,820.
And that year the book was Alphonse Daudet's Letters from My Windmill, the Penguin Classics edition with the farm cart from Van Gogh's Harvest at La Crau on its cover, and inside Edward Ardizzone's illustrations tempering Daudet's often harsh entries.
My Penguin edition comes with page after page of orgasmic appreciation: a tidal wave of "impressive", "smart", "wildly exuberant", "wonderful", "extraordinarily brilliant", "extraordinarily moving", "achingly heartbreaking", "shocking", "linguistically brilliant", "rambunctious tour de force of inventive intelligent storytelling".
My copy, a gently worn edition with a gauzy cover illustration of a locket and a slightly melancholy blonde, was lent to me by my friend Rachel, which is to say it had been spirited away in a low-tech but high-anxiety operation to a spot beneath the pillow of my water bed (remember, this was the '80s).
So I wasn't quite expecting how new and vibrant it would feel, how I would keep battling in my brain to compare the 2012 edition with the 1992 edition I thought was emblazoned on my imagination forever.
But I've never read the novel and will take the Penguin edition with me on my travels to Turkey.
Joel Meyerowitz, New York City, 1963 from Joel Meyerowitz: Taking My Time (Phaidon Press, $750.00 Limited Edition with signed print, November 2012) © Joel Meyerowitz, courtesy Phaidon.
Joel Meyerowitz, Roseville Cottages, Truro, MA, 1976 from Joel Meyerowitz: Taking My Time (Phaidon Press, $750.00 Limited Edition with signed print, November 2012) © Joel Meyerowitz, courtesy Phaidon.
I bought my copy about 10 years ago, secondhand, a Folio Society edition with a faded grey cover.
When I was 19, my father gave me an Oxford English Dictionary, the 1971 compact edition with the 1987 supplement.
