The Winter of Our Discontent [SECOND PRINTING BEFORE PUBLICATION, VINTAGE 1961]

Steinbeck, John

Published by The Viking Press, New York, 1961

About this Item

Fine condition blue cloth boards with a blind-stamped front cover illustration, a black and silver spine block enclosing silver lettering, contained in a very good condition non price-clipped color illustrated and photographic dust jacket. Includes List of Books by John Steinbeck; Dedication; and Preliminary Note regarding "people and places here described". The Copyright page states: "Second Printing Before Publication" with a "1961" publication year listed on the title page. The lower front right jacket tip has a one inch closed edge tear and much smaller closed tear at the lower center edge, upper jacket spine edge rubbing and some additional scattered small chips (see photographs). All pages are in fine condition and the spine is tight and square. The upper right corner of the blank first free front endpaper contains a neatly scripted vintage 1961 former owner signature and date written as "'61". "Steinbeck's versatility should no longer cause astonishment. Each of his books is apt to be a new departure, differing sharply from the one before. Yet this new novel will probably surprise even his warmest admirers. Instead of being set in the Far West, the scene of most of his books, this one takes place on the northeastern seaboard; instead of depicting simple, uneducated people, this deals chiefly with a well-to-do society with long traditions. But it deals with it in a way that reveals the continuity within Steinbeck's diversity: through the lives of one family and their friends, he has taken that society apart, shown its frightening shams and shortcomings, and measured it against true human decency. The result is a novel in its very different way as powerful as anything he has done, and certain to stand as a major work in the Steinbeck canon. Ethan Allen Hawley, an heir to the upright New England tradition, is the focus of this story, which takes place between Good Friday and just after the Fourth of July, 1960. Ethan, whose forebears had numbered sea-captains and men of property, is working in a grocery store. His wife is restless; his teen-age children, along with all the other problems of their age-group, are impatient for more of the worldly goods they see about them. Ethan is aware of the shady tricks, the cheating and underhandedness, that seem to permeate life today in matters of money and success. He knows, too, that the way to wealth of many of the town's respected ancestors would not bear close scrutiny. Why not have some of it for his loved ones? He decides to take a holiday from his scrupulous standards; to trade temporarily, as he thinks, "a habit of conduct" for "a chshion of security." He never assumes a mask of righteousness for what he is doing, but he knows what he wants and goes after it with great ingenuity. How his plots work out one after the other; how he finds success within his grasp only to have it turn to ashes when his own son falls into the same patern of dishonesty; and how he finally finds a bitter salvage in hope for his daughter, for whom his deep-seated lover overrides the impatience that she sometimes causes him - this is the beautifully plotted core of the novel, whose overtones carry far beyond it. Mature, disturbing, fascinating, The Winter of Our Discontent attacks unsparingly some of our shoddy attitudes toward honesty and success. This theme of the loss of integrity in our world - the decline in our standards of personal, business, and political morality - has been waiting for a novelist worthy of it, and it is fortunate that Steinbeck, with his warm humanity, was the one to choose it." - excerpt from the inner front and rear jacket flaps. From Preliminary Page Note: "Readers seeking to identify the fictional people and places here described would do better to inspect their own communities and search their own hearts, for this book is about a large part of America today.". Seller Inventory # 000529

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Winter of Our Discontent [SECOND ...

Publisher: The Viking Press, New York

Publication Date: 1961

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good