The Hungry Ghosts by Joyce Carol Oates. 1974 Black Sparrow Press, first paperback edition, 200 pages. Oates has been one of America's most prolific authors since her first book in 1963. As for Hungry Ghosts, the New York Times had this to say in a review: "In her new book, she is frankly murderous. The anger which might have been justified in her earlier books by her charatters’ poverty or traumatic childhoods is now clearly her own. “The, Hungry Ghosts” is a series of slashing satires on writers, critics, reviewers, poets and academics whom she sees as utterly without nobility, grace or pitch: Oates's vendetta is wonderfully mean on the malice of writers."

Condition: VG, creasing and sunning  on the back cover

"It was the worst of times---so she had been warned, and it should not have alarmed her to see so many intoxicated people---alcohol, drugs?---here in the elegant lobby of the Palmer House."