October 4th Newsletter

    No products in the cart.

Torn Light Records
1855 N Milwaukee
Chicago, IL 60647
312.955.0614
Open Everyday
10AM-7PM

FILTERS

Filter by

Filter by

Filter by

  • Peter McGough – I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going: The Art Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s
    Peter McGough – I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going: The Art Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    Brilliantly funny, frank, and shattering, this is the bittersweet memoir by Peter McGough of his life with artist David McDermott. Set in New York’s Lower East Side of the 1980s […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Constructing an Avant-Garde: Art in Brazil, 1949-1979
    Constructing an Avant-Garde: Art in Brazil, 1949-1979
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    Brazilian avant-garde artists of the postwar era worked from a fundamental but productive out-of-jointness. They were modernist but distant from modernism. Europeans and North Americans may feel [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • David Carrier – Aesthetics of the Margins / The Margins of Aesthetics: Wild Art Explained
    David Carrier – Aesthetics of the Margins / The Margins of Aesthetics: Wild Art Explained
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Wild Art” refers to work that exists outside the established, rarified world of art galleries and cultural channels. It encompasses uncatalogued, uncommodified art not often recognized as such, [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Fredric Jameson – The Ideologies of Theory: Essays, 1971-1986
    Fredric Jameson – The Ideologies of Theory: Essays, 1971-1986
    $8.00 | , , Add to cart

    A collection of Jameson’s essays related to literary theory. Book is in “Like New” condition. Some light superficial wear and/or remainder mark might be present.

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • William T. Vollmann – The Book of Dolores
    William T. Vollmann – The Book of Dolores
    $15.00 | , , Add to cart

    William T. Vollmann has travelled to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan with Islamic commandos, shivered out a solitary stretch at the North Magnetic Pole in winter, hopped freight trains, studied the [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Kamala Tiyavanich – In the Cool Shade of Compassion: The Enchanted World of the Buddha in the Jungle
    Kamala Tiyavanich – In the Cool Shade of Compassion: The Enchanted World of the Buddha in the Jungle
    $8.00 | , , Add to cart

    A fascinating collection of stories of the Thai forest monks that illuminates the Thai Forest tradition as a vibrant, compassionate, and highly appealing way of life. This work ingeniously [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test & The Power Of Seeing
    Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test & The Power Of Seeing
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    A popular misconception of the controversial Rorschach test, which requires subjects to interpret a series of ten inkblots, is that there are no wrong answers. For professional psychologists, [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Monstrous Bodies/Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe
    Monstrous Bodies/Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe
    $9.00 | , , Add to cart

    Multi-disciplinary in approach and cross-European in scope, this richly illustrated book features new links between the political and the monstrous in the early modern period. Emphasizing the [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Paul Davies – The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence
    Paul Davies – The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence
    $8.00 | , , Add to cart

    Fifty years ago, a young astronomer named Frank Drake first pointed a radio telescope at nearby stars in the hope of picking up a signal from an alien civilization. Thus […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Underground Movements: Modern Culture on the New York City Subway
    Underground Movements: Modern Culture on the New York City Subway
    $8.00 | , , Add to cart

    “For more than a century the New York City subway system has been a vital part of the city’s identity, even as judgments of its value have varied. It has […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Jonathan Strauss – Human Remains: Medicine, Death, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century Paris
    Jonathan Strauss – Human Remains: Medicine, Death, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century Paris
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    “The living and the dead cohabited Paris until the late eighteenth century, when, in the name of public health, measures were taken to drive the latter from the city. Cemeteries […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Verena A Conley – Helene Cixous
    Verena A Conley – Helene Cixous
    $8.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Reflecting the broad spectrum of modern European and American theory, this introductory series focuses on those cultural theorists who have had the most significant impact in the twentieth [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Hard to Be a Saint in the City: The Spiritual Vision of the Beats
    Hard to Be a Saint in the City: The Spiritual Vision of the Beats
    $8.00 | , , Add to cart

    “It’s been said that Jack Kerouac made it cool to be a thinking person seeking a spiritual experience. And there is no doubt that the writers he knew and inspired—iconic […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo’s America
    Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo’s America
    $9.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo’s America is a fresh and engaging study of “last things” in Don DeLillo’s works-things like death, mourning, and the decline [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Algerian Imprints: Ethical Space in the Work of Assia Djebar and Hélène Cixous
    Algerian Imprints: Ethical Space in the Work of Assia Djebar and Hélène Cixous
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Born and raised in French Algeria, Assia Djebar and Hélène Cixous represent in their literary works signs of conflict and enmity, drawing on discordant histories so as to reappraise the [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles
    An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Paul Bowles’s seductive, terrifying, exquisitely detached fictions have inspired writers and iconoclasts from the Beats to the present day. In this brilliant and definitive [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Carol Off – Bitter Chocolate: Anatomy of an Industry
    Carol Off – Bitter Chocolate: Anatomy of an Industry
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Bitter Chocolate is both an absorbing social history and a passionate investigation into an industry that has institutionalized abuse as it indulges our whims. Award-winning journalist [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It
    Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It
    $9.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Over the last decade, blockchains and crypto have opened up a new terrain for political action. It is not surprising, however, that the crypto space has also become overrun by […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Picturing American Modernity: Traffic, Technology, and the Silent Cinema
    Picturing American Modernity: Traffic, Technology, and the Silent Cinema
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    “In Picturing American Modernity, Kristen Whissel investigates the relationship between early American cinema and the experience of technological modernity. She demonstrates how between the [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Kembrew McLeod – Downtown Pop Underground
    Kembrew McLeod – Downtown Pop Underground
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    “The 1960s to early ’70s was a pivotal time for American culture, and New York City was ground zero for seismic shifts in music, theater, art, and filmmaking. The Downtown […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture
    Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    “In this lively narrative, award-winning author Michael Kammen presents a fascinating analysis of cutting-edge art and artists and their unique ability to both delight and provoke us. He [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film, 1880-1910
    Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film, 1880-1910
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    “This publication explores the complex relationship between American art and early film. Depicting turn-of-the-century photographs, film stills, posters, prints and paintings, the struggle [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Gerhard Richter: Images of an Era
    Gerhard Richter: Images of an Era
    $25.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Among German painter Gerhard Richter’s best-known works are his large-scale paintings based on—and sometimes applied directly to—photographs. A transplant to West Germany mere months [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Abstracts of Karl Rahner’s Unserialized Essays
    Abstracts of Karl Rahner’s Unserialized Essays
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Excellent reference work to finding specific topics within the vast range of the writings of Karl Rahner. Using this book in tandem with the authors earlier Abstracts of Karl Rahners […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Music of Azerbaijan: From Mugham to Opera
    Music of Azerbaijan: From Mugham to Opera
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    “This book traces the development of Azerbaijani art music from its origins in the Eastern, modal, improvisational tradition known as mugham through its fusion with Western classical, jazz, [...]

    GENRE: International, Non-Fiction
  • The Henry Davis Gift: A Collection of Bookbindings
    The Henry Davis Gift: A Collection of Bookbindings
    $30.00 | , , Add to cart

    “This much anticipated third and final volume of The Henry Davis Gift focuses on South and East European fine bindings, with additional sections on Oriental and American bindings. It [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Gao Minglu – Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art
    Gao Minglu – Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    “To the extent that Chinese contemporary art has become a global phenomenon, it is largely through the groundbreaking exhibitions curated by Gao Minglu: “China/Avant-Garde” [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • In the Atelier: Erik Desmazières Printmaker René Tazé Printer: An Artistic collaboration 1978-2018
    In the Atelier: Erik Desmazières Printmaker René Tazé Printer: An Artistic collaboration 1978-2018
    $15.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Erik Desmazières’s first love was drawing and he began engraving in the Ville de Paris studios from 1971. René Tazé joined the Leblanc studio, a famous and ancient Parisian intaglio [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • American Modernism at Mid-Century: The Work of Morris Davidson
    American Modernism at Mid-Century: The Work of Morris Davidson
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    “This volume presents the first scholarly consideration of Morris Davidson (1898–1979), an influential painter and educator whose work has been neglected in the art history of [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • The Big Idea: Criticality and Practice in Contemporary Architecture
    The Big Idea: Criticality and Practice in Contemporary Architecture
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Scott Johnson is the highly acclaimed designer of some of L.A.’s most recognized architecture. As partner in the award-winning Los Angeles architecture firm Johnson Fain he was the [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Janet Malcolm – Iphigenia In Forest Hills
    Janet Malcolm – Iphigenia In Forest Hills
    $8.00 | , , Add to cart

    “She couldn’t have done it and she must have done it.” This is the enigma at the heart of Janet Malcolm’s riveting book about a murder trial in the insular […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • An Introduction To Modern Architecture (as-is)
    An Introduction To Modern Architecture (as-is)
    $5.00 | , , Add to cart

    “An explanation of what ‘modern’ architecture is all about, describing also the stages by which it has reached its present degree of development. With plans and diagrams and 48 [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Slavoj Zizek – How To Read Lacan (as-is)
    Slavoj Zizek – How To Read Lacan (as-is)
    $5.00 | , , Add to cart

    The How to Read series provides a context and an explanation that will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon. These books use excerpts from the […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Chain 6: Letters
    Chain 6: Letters
    $15.00 | , , Add to cart

    Issue six of Chain, featuring contributions from William Burroughs, Ron Silliman, Norma Cole and more. Chain, 1999 Softcover edition. Some discoloration/wear to wraps.

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Cinema And Art As Archive: Form, Medium, Memory
    Cinema And Art As Archive: Form, Medium, Memory
    $15.00 | , Add to cart

    As Jacques Derrida wrote in 1995, while considering Archive Fever, nothing is less reliable or less clear today than the word “archive”. Nevertheless, the historic-cultural dimension of the [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Early Cinema: Space, Frame Narrative
    Early Cinema: Space, Frame Narrative
    $8.00 | , , Add to cart

    In the twenty years preceding the First World War, cinema rapidly developed from a fairground curiosity into a major industry and social institution, a source of information and entertainment for [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Patrick Farmer – Close Eclogues On Tiptoe, Vol 1.
    Patrick Farmer – Close Eclogues On Tiptoe, Vol 1.
    $18.00 | , , Add to cart

    Close Eclogues on Tiptoe is an epistolary experiment that recalls the author’s visit to Mass an exhibition by the artist Lotti V Closs in 2016. Drawing on the ‘character’ inherent in Closs’s [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Princeton Field Guides: Caterpillars Of Eastern North America
    Princeton Field Guides: Caterpillars Of Eastern North America
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    “This lavishly illustrated guide will enable you to identify the caterpillars of nearly 700 butterflies and moths found east of the Mississippi. The more than 1,200 color photographs and [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • The Cradle Of Erotica
    The Cradle Of Erotica
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    “This book examines African and Asian sexual behavior. It is a sequel to The Jewel in the Lotus, a survey of the sexual culture of the East. An immensely readable […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Michelle Remembers: The True Story Of A Year-Long Contest Between Innocence And Evil (as-is, rare)
    Michelle Remembers: The True Story Of A Year-Long Contest Between Innocence And Evil (as-is, rare)
    $35.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Michelle Remembers is a book published in 1980 co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his psychiatric patient (and eventual wife) Michelle Smith. A best-seller, Michelle [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Manson: In His Own Words
    Manson: In His Own Words
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    “We have called him a devil and quarantined him behind such labels as “the most dangerous man alive.” But Charles Manson remains a shocking reminder of our own humanity gone […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Anal Pleasure & Health: A Guide For Men And Women
    Anal Pleasure & Health: A Guide For Men And Women
    $8.00 | , , Add to cart

    “For many years the focus of fear and disgust, the anus is actually one of the human body’s most wondrous creations–elegant, efficient, and richly supplied with pleasure nerves. [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Sam Rohdie – Fellini Lexicon
    Sam Rohdie – Fellini Lexicon
    $15.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Federico Fellini (1920-93) was one of the most inventive of film-makers and he remains one of the best loved. Director of a whole series of celebrated films – among them […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Susan Sontag: Mind As Passion
    Susan Sontag: Mind As Passion
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Susan Sontag has been a major figure in American intellectual life for over thirty years. She has consistently broken fresh ground in cultural analysis and provocatively engaged a wide [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Susan Sontag – Against Interpretation
    Susan Sontag – Against Interpretation
    $8.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag’s first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Jean Baudrillard – Spirit of Terrorism
    Jean Baudrillard – Spirit of Terrorism
    $8.00 | , , Add to cart

    In dealing all the cards to itself, the system forced the Other to change the rules of the game. And the new rules are ferocious, because the game is ferocious. […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • More Fun in the New World: The Unmaking & Legacy of L.A. Punk
    More Fun in the New World: The Unmaking & Legacy of L.A. Punk
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    Picking up where Under the Big Black Sun left off, More Fun in the New World explores the years 1982 to 1987, covering the dizzying pinnacle of L.A.’s punk rock […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction, Punk / Hardcore
  • Masculine Singular: French New Wave Cinema
    Masculine Singular: French New Wave Cinema
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    Masculine Singular is an original interpretation of French New Wave cinema by one of France’s leading feminist film scholars. While most criticism of the New Wave has concentrated on the […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • After Fellini: National Cinema in the Postmodern Age
    After Fellini: National Cinema in the Postmodern Age
    $10.00 | , , Add to cart

    Over the past twenty-five years, Italy’s film industry has produced a remarkable number of award-winning international art-house hits, among them Cinema Paradiso and Life Is Beautiful. [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Kate Brideau – Typographic Medium
    Kate Brideau – Typographic Medium
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    An innovative examination of typography as a medium of communication rather than part of print or digital media. Typography is everywhere and yet widely unnoticed. When we read type, we […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction