Hardcover. Gloucester MA, Peter Smith , reprint, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 342 pages. Pink cloth with black lettering on spine. Light pencil marking to about 15 pages, spine fading, otherwise very good.
Hardcover. Berkeley, California University Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 164 pages. Hardcover. Illustrated with full color and black & white photographs. Dust jacket with light wear. Clean tight copy.
Hardcover. New York, Knopf, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 219 pages. Clean, bright copy. "I doubt very much that I'm the only person who's finding it more and more difficult to want to read or write novels," David Shields acknowledges in Reality Hunger, then seeks to understand how the conventional literary novel has become as lifeless a form as the mass market bodice-ripper. Shields provides an ars poetica for writers and other artists who, exhausted by the artificiality of our culture, "obsessed by real events because we experience hardly any," are taking larger and larger pieces of the real world and using them in their work. Reality Hunger is made of 600-odd numbered fragments, many of them quotations from other sources, some from Shields's own books, but none properly sourced--the project being not a treasure hunt or a con but a good-faith presentation of what literature might look like if it caught up to contemporary strategies and devices used in the other arts, and allowed for samples (that is, quotation from art and from the world) to revivify existing forms. Shields challenges the perceived superiority of the imagination and exposes conventional literary pieties as imitation writing, the textual equivalent of artificial flavoring, sleepwalking, and small talk. I can't name a more necessary or a more thrilling book.
Hardcover. NY, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1st US, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 226 pages, illustrated in b&w by Edward Ardizzone. Blue cloth with an edgeworn, chipped dust jacket. The book is a very good, clean, tight copy. White's account of life on the west coast of Ireland. The author comments on the front flap: "God knows what this book is about. I suppose it's a bit of autobiography really. But it's about living on the West Coast of Ireland, in 'the parish nearest to America' -- they all are, I mean the parishes -- and it is about the people and things there, more than about me."
Softcover. Cambridge UK/US, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 321 pages. Virgil's agricultural poem, the Georgics, forms part of a long tradition of didactic epic going back to the archaic poet Hesiod. This book explores the relationship between the Georgics and earlier works in the didactic tradition, particularly Lucretius' De Rerum Natura ("On the Nature of Things"). It is the first comprehensive study of Virgil's use of Lucretian themes, imagery, ideas and language; it also proposes a new reading of the poem as a whole, as a confrontation between the Epicurean philosophy of Lucretius and the opposing world views of his predecessors. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf , 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket, 408 pages. In this illuminating study of the "crucial century" (1830-1930), Alfred Kazin views the major figures in American writing, beginning when Ralph Waldo Emerson left the church and inspired a national literature on the basis of a religious revolution, and ending with the triumph of modernism - Eliot, Pound, Hemingway, Fitzgerald - and with the revelation after World War I of the "postponed power" of those who had been modern before their time: Henry Adams, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson.
Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 236 pages. The contradictory nature of the work of Benito Perez Galdos, Spain's greatest modern novelist, is brought to the fore in Catherine Jagoe's innovative and rigorous study. Revising commonly held views of his feminism, she explores the relation of Galdos's novels to the "woman question" in Spain, arguing that after 1892 the muted feminist discourse of his early work largely disappears. While his later novels have been interpreted as celebrations of the emancipated new woman, Jagoe contends that they actually reinforce the conservative, bourgeois model of frugal, virtuous womanhood-the angel of the house.
Hardcover. London, G. Walker; others, reprint, 1820, Book: Very Good , Dust Jacket: None, A handsome set. 3/4 polished calf with marble pattern boards and end papers, spine with raised bands, gilt type and decoration. Volume 1 - Archival tape repair to final page (512), along foredge. Light foxing to preliminary pages. Fold-out intact. Volume 2 - Light foxing to preliminary pages. Fold-out intact. Volume 3 - Minor/light margin notes in pencil scattered throughout. Volume 4 - Minor/light margin notes in pencil scattered throughout. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. NY, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 266 pages. Christian religion's influence on secular Victorian culture, especially literature. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 375 pages. B&W photographs and illustrations. Pictorial dust jacket. Green cloth with gilt title to spine. Erratum laid-in. Overall, a clean, tight copy. ohn Betjeman was by far the most popular poet of the twentieth century; his collected poems sold more than two million copies. As poet laureate of England, he became a national icon, but behind the public man were doubts and demons. The poet best known for writing hymns of praise to athletic middle-class girls on the tennis courts led a tempestuous emotional life. For much of his fifty-year marriage to Penelope Chetwode, the daughter of a field marshal, Betjeman had a relationship with Elizabeth Cavendish, the daughter of the Duke of Devonshire and lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. Betjeman, a devout Anglican, was tormented by guilt about the storms this emotional triangle caused. Betjeman, published to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth, is the first to use fully the vast archive of personal material relating to his private life, including literally hundreds of letters written by his wife about their life together and apart. Here too are chronicled his many friendships, ranging from "Bosie" Douglas to the young satirists of Private Eye, from the Mitford sisters to the Crazy Gang. This is a celebration of a much-loved poet, a brave campaigner for architecture at risk, and a highly popular public performer. Betjeman was the classic example of the melancholy clown, whose sadness found its perfect mood music in the hymns of a poignant Anglicanism. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 145 pages. Gordimer examines the tension for a writer between life's experiences and narrative creations. She tries to unravel the mysterious process that breathes "real" life into fiction by exploring the writings of revolutionaries in South Africa and the works of Naguib Mahfouz, Chinua Achebe and Amos Oz. Ending on a personal note, Gordimer reveals her own experience of "writing her way out of" the confines of a dying colonialism.
NY, Crown, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY MOSHER on the title page. Documents the author's road trip across twenty-first-century America, where he shared personal encounters with homeless people, country performers, and readers and writers from all walks of life. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Burlington VT, Ashgate , 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 259 pages. Despite the growing critical relevance of Shakespeare's two Venetian plays and a burgeoning bibliography on both The Merchant of Venice and Othello, few books have dealt extensively with the relationship between Shakespeare and Venice. Setting out to offer new perspectives to a traditional topic, this timely collection fills a gap.
Hardcover. London, Jonathan Cape, 1st, 1934, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth faded on spine and cover edges, gilt lettering on spine. 315 pages, b&w photographic plates. Some fifty essays, reviews, studies and other short pieces, including a section devoted to Williamson's travels in North America and passages from 'The Sun in the Sands' which do not appear in the 1941 book of the same name. No markings.
Hardcover. London, Frederick Warne, Revised Ed., 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 173 pages. Illustrated with 8 color and 30 b&w plates. Although Beatrix Potter is known and loved by generations of children brought up on "Peter Rabbit" and others, her life began in great joylessness and solitude. Drawing was her once fascination and her creative genius was able to flourish in the loneliness and isolation of her early years. Despite the fame that her skill was later to bring, she nevertheless preferred to maintain her privacy and hide behind the persona of a Lakeland farmer. Margaret's Lane biography recounts, with reference to letters and photographs, Beatrix Potter's sad childhood, her struggle for independence, her ill-fated love affair and happy marriage. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Sheed and Ward, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with faded spine, 480 pages. Richard Kostelanetz's monumental evisceration of the American book world circa 1974--the self-appointed backslapping elites, the perpetual disdain for the unconventional, the laziness in book reviewing and fear of losing one's status when criticising the wrong thing--remains, as a final sadness, itself a rare out of print tome. Kostelanetz has written perhaps the most fearless exploration of literary politics in print, taking on and naming the titans at the top of the heap, dissecting the power structures that emerged in the 1950s and 60s, and the emergence of the plutocratic hierarchies that continue to dominate publishing. Outing the various cliques as mobs, and using apt and amusing mafia parallels, Kostelanetz is unrelenting in his meticulousness, and counteracts the status quo with a passionate defence of the avant-garde, using the second half of the book to bring light to the various emerging authors of experimental poetry, fiction, and mixed media works around the time. At times a touch long-winded and overfed with quotes, this nevertheless is an essential read for those requiring a hard slap as to the inherent evil of the corporate book world and why indie is the only way forward. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 309 pages. A collection of essays from the famed literary critic. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover, red cloth in a worn and chipped dust jacket with closed tears, 191 pages with index. Dr. Worcester presents a theory of satire, surveying the whole field since Dryden's Discourse of the Origin of Satire and drawing illustrations not only from English but from classical, French, German, and American literature. At the same time he makes a penetrating study of irony and its uses. Name on inside front cover otherwise clean.
Softcover. Chicago, Chicago Review, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, literary journal with entire issue devoted to the poet. Fairly scarce. New and bright all around wraps. Poems by Dorn, plus an interview, correspondence to and from, LeRoi Jones and Tom Raworth, and Dale Smith, an interview with Eleni Sikelianos.
Hardcover. New York, Bowling Green Press, 1st, 1927, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 59 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. SIGNED and NUMBERED #824 of 1240. Pages darkening on edges, only light wear to cover boards.
Softcover. San Francisco, Last Gasp, reprint, 2001-06-01, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, unpaginated. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. A first hand account of the 60s and 70s counterculture seen through the eyes of pioneering photographer Charles Gatewood and legendary writer Williams S. Burroughs.
Hardcover. Milwaukie OR, M Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The third installment of Playboy interviews gives their claim some validity (although probably not enough). The first two collections were grouped under the topics of sports figures and film directors, while the latest simply has the designation "Larger Than Life," and indeed those interviewed were awfully big for their britches. The interviewees include Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Bette Davis, Bob Dylan, Mae West, and Muhammad Ali, among others. The interviews--in true Playboy fashion--are revealing, but also fascinating to realize are the periods in which they occurred. Sinatra was interviewed in 1963, and the cold war was definitely on his mind. Bette Davis, in 1982, had a long career of ups and downs to sound off about. But Muhammad Ali is the perfect example of how honest these personalities could become when allowed to digress; asked why he flunked the army's preinduction test, he replied, "I have said I am the greatest. Ain't nobody ever heard me say I was the smartest." 398 pages, clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Faber and Faber, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. 355 pages plus index. The first published book by George Steiner who was a noted 20th century literary critic, novelist and philosopher. A critical analysis of the two great masters of the Russian novel. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Applause, 1st pbk, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 896 pages. A facsimile edition of the original 1623 publication of the bard's works. Recounts the background of the first folio, the earliest and most authoritative collection of Shakespeare's thirty-six plays.
Hardcover. London, Hogarth Press, 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth covers with gilt lettering on spine. Twenty-seven essays on the art of fiction and the art of biography. No dust jacket, clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This book examines the far-reaching legacy of one of the great myths of classical antiquity. According to Greek legend, Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, secretly buried her brother in defiance of the orders of Creon, king of Thebes. Creon sentenced Antigone to death, but, before the order could be executed, she committed suicide. The theme of the conflict between Antigone and Creon - between the state and the individual, between young and old, between men and women - has captured the Western imagination for more than 2,000 years. Antigone and Creon are as alive in the politics and poetics of our own day as they were in ancient Athens. Here, Steiner examines the treatment of the Antigone theme in Western art, literature and thought, leading us to look again at the unique influence Greek myths exercise on twentieth-century culture.
Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 192 pages. Through the distillation of a lifetime of experiences, John Hay describes in The Undiscovered Country his quiet, profound search for our place in the natural world. In considering snails, alewives, terns, woodland moths, and other forms of natural life, Hay shares with his readers a discovery that few have experienced and no one has written about so eloquently. Clean copy.
 "Origen on First Principles. Being Koetschau's Text of the De Principiis Translated Into English, Together With an Introduction and Notesby: De Lubac Henri; Butterwort")
 "William Faulkner and the Tangible Past - The Architecture of Yoknapatawphaby: Hines, Thomas S.")
 "Godstone and the Blackymor, Theby: White/Edward Ardizzone, T.H.")
 "Belles Saisons: A Colette Scrapbookby: Phelps, Robert")
 "Life of Samuel Johnson - A New Edition (4 Vols.)by: Boswell, James")
 "Writing and Being: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1994 by: Nadine Gordimer")
 "The Tale of Beatrix Potter: A Biographyby: Lane, Margaret")
 "The Art of Satire by: David Worcester")
 "Making of an Immortal, The (SIGNED COPY)by: Moore, George")
 "Sidetrippingby: Gatewood, Charles and William S. Burroughs")
 "Apricots from Chernobyl (SIGNED COPY)by: Novakovich, Josip")
 "E. E. Cummings: A Life by: Cheever, Susan")
 "Letters from John Chinaman: A new edition with some other essaysby: Dickinson, G. Lowes")
