Literature

Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1st , 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. Author's third book, very good in a bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. UK, Aquarian Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Black & white illustrations, 256 pages. "Arthur Machen (1863-1947) .was acclaimed in his day as one of the finest stylists in English prose.The sequences of letters to his friends A.E.Waite, Colin Summerford, and John Galsworth, and to fellow authors and publishers, illuminate Machen's courageous struggles against poverty and adversity, while reflecting his lifelong preoccupations with literature, the occult, the Christian faith, and Celtic myth."

Hardcover. Watertown, MA, Charlesbridge, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, non-paginated. Extensive b&w woodcut illustrations throughout. Gilt titles on spine and cover. Color illustration on front cover. Clean, unmarked copy.

Hardcover. Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press, 1st, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 429 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY EDITOR, JULIA COLLIER HARRIS. Light edge wear to covers, dust jacket. Inscribed on front fly leaf to Dr. Small from the Harrises. Tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2nd printing, 1939, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 597 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Faded spine. Tight copy.

Hardcover. Gloucester MA, Peter Smith , reprint, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 342 pages. Beige cloth with black lettering on spine. Light underlining to about 10 pages, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Hawthorn Books, 3rd pr., 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 279 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 2nd pr., 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 671 pages. Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord. Drawing on a vast amount of new material, including correspondence among the Emerson brothers, Richardson gives us a rewarding intellectual biography that is also a portrait of the whole man. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 554 pages. This compilation of correspondence is aptly titled. British travel writer and novelist Chatwin traveled widely, constantly, and obsessively--everywhere under the sun, in other words. He possessed a restless soul, to be sure. And to a large degree, he was secretive; information about his homosexuality and his affliction with the AIDS virus was closely guarded. He cast a personal spell with his charm and a lasting one through his works, which are so imaginative they are pure excitement to read; at the same time, however, it can be confusing to determine whether to see them as fiction or nonfiction. Nevertheless, beginning with his first published book, In Patagonia (1977), Chatwin maintained a reputation among discerning readers for his riveting characters--invented or not is unimportant, even in his travel books--and his rigorously precise writing style. Chatwin's wife and his biographer (Bruce Chatwin, 2000) combined efforts over a two-decade period to retrieve more than 90 percent of Chatwin's correspondence from childhood to immediately before his untimely death at 48. Chatwin's many appreciators will see the compilation in its overall significance as a personal visit with one of their literary heroes, as much as that is possible now. Remainder line on bottom edge otherwise like new.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, cream color cloth stamped in blue, 308 pages. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, WW Norton , 1st US, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 382 pages.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 867 pages. Over the course of a nearly sixty-year career, Norman Mailer wrote more than 30 novels, essay collections, and nonfiction books. Yet nowhere was he more prolific or more exposed than in his letters. All told, Mailer crafted more than 45,000 pieces of correspondence (approximately 20 million words), many of them deeply personal, keeping a copy of almost every one. Now the best of these are published most for the first time in one remarkable volume that spans seven decades and, it seems, several lifetimes. Together they form a stunning autobiographical portrait of one of the most original, provocative, and outspoken public intellectuals of the twentieth century. Compiled by Mailer s authorized biographer, J. Michael Lennon, and organized by decade, Selected Letters of Norman Mailer features the most fascinating of Mailer s missives from 1940 to 2007 letters to his family and friends, to fans and fellow writers (including Truman Capote, James Baldwin, and Philip Roth), to political figures from Henry Kissinger to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and to such cultural icons as John Lennon, Marlon Brando, and even Monica Lewinsky.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Effortlessly blending biography, criticism, and memoir, National Book Award-winning poet and best-selling memoirist Mark Doty explores his personal quest for Walt Whitman. Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman's bold, perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul and what it means to be a self. In What Is the Grass, Doty--a poet, a New Yorker, and an American--keeps company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet's life and work. What is it then between us? Whitman asks. In search of an answer, Doty explores spaces--both external and internal--where he finds the poet's ghost. He meditates on desire, love, and the mysterious wellsprings of the poet's enduring work: a radical experience of transformation and enlightenment, queer sexuality, and an obsession with death, as well as unabashed love for a great city and for the fresh, rowdy character of American speech. In riveting close readings threaded with personal memoir and illuminated by awe, Doty reveals the power of Whitman's persistent presence in his life and in the American imagination at large. Clean copy.

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, Allen Lane, 2008, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The writings of Lewis Carroll have inspired and entertained generations of readers and have influenced the work of everyone from James Joyce to John Lennon. But the extraordinary imagination that created Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass, was not limited simply to fantasy, logic and word play. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, was for many years lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, and published works in the fields of geometry, logic and algebra. He also made significant contributions to subjects as varied as voting patterns and the design of tennis tournaments, and he created large numbers of imaginative recreational puzzles based on mathematical ideas. For the first time, Lewis Carroll in Numberland explores both his serious and his recreational work and places it in the context of his many other activities, mathematical and otherwise. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, William Pickering, 1st, 1835, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 298 pages. Black leather covers with gilt rules, faded gilt title on ribbed spine. All edges gilt. Covers with edgewear and the top 6th of the spine leather is gone. Marbled endpapers with bookplate inside front cover. Rear flyleaf with a chunk cut out. Interior is very good. Medieval and Renaissance French poetry, translated into English by an acclaimed poet, travel writer, historian, and painter. Louisa Costello (1799-1870), was an accomplished Anglo-Irish artist and prolific poet and author. She was also a fine miniature painter, and her illustrations show her exquisite sensibility. 4 beautifully hand-colored lithograph plates by the author. Not all copies contain these plates.

Hardcover. London, Hutchinson, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lughtly worn dust jacket. 589 pages. Light shelf wear, chipping and closed tear to dust jacket. Review slip laid in.

Hardcover. Chicago, Regnery Gateway, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, faded dust jacket. 191 pages. John Chamberlain, a veteran newspaperman and reviewer for the New York Times and other prestigious publications, shares the story of his career. INSCRIBED BY CHAMBERLAIN on the front fly leaf. Introduction by William F. Buckley.

Hardcover. London, W. H. Allen & Co., 1st, 1883, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark green cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to spine and gilt titles and gilt rules to front board. Prefatory note by Bertha Thomas plus 247 pages plus four-page publisher's advertisements for titles in the Eminent Women Series to the rear. Previous owner's name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

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. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul , 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 366 pages. This book concerns itself with the different ways in which money is used, the relationships which then arise, and the institutions concerned in maintaining its various functions. Thomas Crump examines the emergence of institutions with familiar and distinctive monetary roles: the state, the market and the banking system. However, other uses of money - such as for gambling or the payment of fines - are also taken into account, in an exhaustive, encyclopedic treatment of the subject, which extends far beyond the range of conventional treatises on money. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Faber & Faber, 1st UK, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 251 pages. Translated from the French by Ralph Manheim.(London): Faber and Faber, (1982). First edition in English, first printing. "First published in 1982" statement to the copyright page. In this in-depth study of his life and his works, Robert explores Kafka's loneliness, his omission of the words 'lonely' and 'Jew' in his writings, compares his life with his allegories, and more. Clean copy.

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. UK, Oxford University Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Two hardcover volumes in bright dust jackets, 408 and 388 pages. The secular Latin poetry of the Middle Ages is at once great in bulk and interesting in kind, embracing as it does lyrical, epical, satirical, philosophical, grammatical, and historical verse. The rhetorical tradition of the ancient world can be traced throughout its development, from the fifth to the thirteenth century, when the tradition passes over into the new literary vernaculars. No adequate English survey of this delightful and historically important literature has hitherto been made. These volumes form a sequel to the same author's 'History of Christian-Latin Poetry', and the two works together offer a complete introduction to the whole field of medieval Latin poetry. First published in 1934. Clean copies.

Hardcover. NY, Frederick A. Stokes, 1st thus, 1890, Hardcover, 3/4 decorated white cloth with gilt stamped decorative pattern. Vignette edition with engraved frontispiece and 100 illustrations by Thos. McIlvaine. An Oriental romance, originally published in 1817, consisting of four narrative poems connected by a prose section. Small blank label on inside front cover, otherwise a tight, clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 351 pages. Green cloth with embossed gilt lettering on spine. With an Introduction by Peter Green and chapters including: The Meaning of Influence / Mr Eliot and the French Symbolist Poets / The Perspective of History / The Perspective of Language / The Perspective of Myth / etc. Short inscription on front fly leaf, darkening to dj, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 95 pages. Sontag's classic essay about the sociology of AIDS, published as an extension of her thoughts about the stigma of illness originally expounded in her book Illness as Metaphor. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a rubbed and edgeworn dust jacket. 433 pages, b&w illustrations. McClure was the father of the muckraking movement and brought about a revolution in American journalism in the days of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. His journalistic contributors included Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, and he introduced authors such as O. Henry, Booth Tarkington, Willa Cather, Stephen Crane and Jack London to the American public. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf , 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 314 pages. Contrasting the Victorian system of virtues - respectability, self-help, discipline, cleanliness, obedience, orderliness - with the opportunistic, superficial morality of modern society, an intellectual historian calls for a deeper commitment to moral responsibility. According to Himmelfarb, Victorian "manners and morals" created a society that emphasized a strong family life for all classes and gave rise to a prosperous economy and the early feminist and social service movements. Furthermore, the influence of these virtues caused the incidence of illegitimate births and violent crimes to drop significantly and remain low until the 1960s. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, W.W. Norton & Co., 1st pbk., 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 205 pages. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 76 pages. Annie Dillard's collection of observations of events over three days from her location on a small island in Puget Sound. Stated 1st edition, no number line (1st printing). There is soiling/discoloration to boards (not visible under dust jacket), small chip to bottom of dj spine, clean interior.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover 320 pages. The second volume in Frank's monumental five part biography of the great Russian writer. No date on copyright page. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Santa Rosa CA, Black Sparrow Press, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 67 pages. Printed paper over boards backed in brown cloth with matching paper spine label. Acetate dust jacket. Remainder mark to top edge.

Hardcover. Boston, David R. Godine, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 391 pages. INSCRIBED BY PAYNE on the half-title page and also SIGNED on the title page. In Orion on the Dunes, the first biography of Beston, scholar Daniel Payne-granted unrestricted access to the writer's archives and drawing on interviews with friends and family-has crafted a scrupulously researched narrative; one presenting a masterful portrait that traces the intellectual growth and tumultuous life of a vital American writer whose work and thought have exerted a tremendous pull on poets, naturalists, and novelists alike. This is the story of a life, at once hidden and transparent, that is here finally revealed. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Twayne Publishers, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 177 pages. Perhaps the most significant and influential figure in this century's wave of American realism, Raymond Carver (1938-1988) is credited not only with reviving the short story as an artistically legitimate form, but also with perfecting minimalist fiction. Moving chronologically through Carver's complete short fiction canon and examining key stories in depth, Ewing Campbell traces the author's development through and beyond literary minimalism, into the tradition of tragic allegory. He explores Carvers persistent use of myth and archetype; motifs of the grotesque; religious iconography; and oppressed, spiritually paralyzed characters. From the earliest stories through the latest, Campbell illuminates Carvers constant fascination with the way individuals connect or fail to connect with one another. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 531 pages. Martha Gellhorn's reporting career brought her to the front lines of virtually every significant conflict from the Spanish Civil War to the end of the cold war. While Gellhorn's wartime dispatches rank among the best of the century, her personal letters are their equal: as vivid and fascinating as her reporting was trenchant. Gellhorn's correspondence introduces us to the woman behind the often inscrutable journalist, chronicling her friendships with twentieth-century luminaries as well as her tempestuous marriage to Ernest Hemingway. Caroline Moorehead, Gellhorn's critically acclaimed biographer, was granted exclusive access to the letters. This expertly edited volume contextualizes Gellhorn's correspondence within the arc of her entire life; the result is an intimate portrait of one of the most accomplished women of modern times.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st pbk, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 279 pages. Much recent critical theory has dismissed or failed to take seriously the question of the self. French theorists--such as Derrida, Barthes, Benveniste, Foucault, Lacan, and Levi-Strauss--have in various ways proclaimed the death of the subject, often turning to German intellectual tradition to authorize their views. Stanley Corngold's heralded book, The Fate of the Self, published for the first time in paperback with a spirited new preface, appears at a time when the relationship between the self and literature is a matter of renewed concern. Originally published in 1986 (Columbia University Press), the book examines the poetic self of German intellectual tradition in light of recent French and American critical theory. Focusing on seven major German writers--Holderlin, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Mann, Kafka, Freud, and Heidegger--Corngold shows that their work does not support the desire to discredit the self as an origin of meaning and value but reconstructs the allegedly fragmented poetic self through effects of position and style. Offering new and subtle models of selfhood, The Fate of the Self is a source of rich insight into the work of these authors, refracted through post-structuralist critical perspectives. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Charlottesville VA, University of Virginia Press, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 476 pages, b&w illustrations. Rollyson has drawn on an unprecedented amount of material to present the richest rendering of Faulkner yet published. In addition to his own extensive interviews, Rollyson consults the complete and never fully shared research of pioneering Faulkner biographer Joseph Blotner, who discarded from his authorized biography substantial findings in order to protect the Faulkner family. Rollyson also had unrivaled access to the work of Carvel Collins, whose decades-long inquiry produced one of the greatest troves of primary source material in American letters. This first volume follows Faulkner from his formative years through his introduction to Hollywood. Rollyson sheds light on Faulkner's unpromising, even bewildering youth, including a gift for tall tales that blossomed into the greatest of literary creativity. He provides the fullest portrait yet of Faulkner's family life, in particular his enigmatic marriage, and offers invaluable new insight into the ways in which Faulkner's long career as a screenwriter influenced his iconic novels. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Saint Paul MN, Paragon House, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 231 pages. Nearly twenty years of letters beginning with the poet's encouragement of guidance, and the sharp critic's mentoring, developing into a sparring intellectual relationship discussing philosophies of literature and culture, and then mental dueling, and finally a rejection of one another. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Twayne Publishers, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 162 pages. The first full-length critical treatment of this significant and neglected figure in American realism. Arguing that raw naturalism and subtle craftsmanship - seemingly incompatible qualities join to make Yates one of the most accomplished writers of the post - World War II period, the authors provide a comprehensive survey of his life and work. An introductory chapter outlines the historical, literary, and social contexts important to Yates's writings, comparing him, for example, with his contemporaries Philip Roth and Mary McCarthy and articulating strong lines of continuity between his themes and the ideas of the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville, the Marxist-oriented socialist C. Wright Mills, and the social theoretician Erving Goffman. Next a thorough biographical portrait illuminates Yates's obsession with the American middle class and its dislocated, disordered, and psychologically stifled populace, followed by sharp readings of the novels and story collections, including unfinished and minor works. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, New Directions, 1st, 1969, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, lightly wrinkled dust jacket that's unclipped. This is Snyder's first essay/excerpt collection, "Earth House Hold" being a play on the roots of the word "ecology. 143 pages. Dust jacket with foxing, tanning. No markings.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 204 pages. This is a book of essays, including: On Paul Goodman, Approaching Artaud, Fascinating Fascism, Under the Sign of Saturn, Syberberg's Hitler, Remembering Barthes, and, Mind as Passion. This particular book was printed in a small initial run. 'Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 - December 28, 2004) was an American writer, film-maker, teacher, and political activist. She published her first major work, the essay 'Notes on 'Camp'', in 1964. Her best-known works include On Photography, Against Interpretation, Styles of Radical Will, The Way We Live Now, Illness as Metaphor, Regarding the Pain of Others, The Volcano Lover, and In America. Remainder mark to top edge otherwise a tight, clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and chipped dust jacket, 391 pages. "The two aims of this vast work are to present for the first time a catalogue raisonne of the Pope portraits and to tell the story of his life as a valued friend, constant associate, and willing subject of the artists of his day." More than 200 illustrations, over 45 published here for the first time. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st English, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 131 pages. With an introduction by award-winning author Alberto Manguel, Milongas is Edgardo Cozarinsky's love letter to tango, and the diverse array of people who give it life. Argentine writer and filmmaker Edgardo Cozarinsky traces [tango's] fascinating journey through time and the seedy brothels and rough Argentine and European bars where the dance could be quite mannered or could spark with theatrical violence . . . Cozarinsky takes us through the ebbs and flows of the popularity of the tango, and also through a number of its evolutionary adaptive speciations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1926, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, 130 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Purple and orange striped boards with orange wrap-around title label. In a worn, chipped dust jacket currently covered in plastic. Chunk missing from dust jacket on rear bottom. Tight copy.

Hardcover. Gutersloh GR, C. Bertelsmann,, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 438 pages, chipped dust jacket. GERMAN TEXT. JULIA CHILD'S COPY with her signature, address and 1956 on the front fly leaf.

Hardcover. Saint Paul, Minn., Graywolf Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 245 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Spotless and tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon and Schuster, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 249 pages. Light edgewear and tanning to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Baker and Taylor, 1st, 1910, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. 348 pages. Contains some black & white illustrations and color frontispiece with tissue-guard. Green cloth covers with gold lettering and decoration. Color illustration pasted on front cover. Gilt top edge. Light rubbing to front cover, corners, spine. Both hinges starting to crack.

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.