Proust Marcel White Edmund (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. 1st Printing. Signed. 228 pages. Published in 1988. Biography on subject. The single most popular title in the now-legendary Penguin Lives Series. One of Edmund White's best books. Review Copy. Review Material laid-in. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only that sold out shortly after publication. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents "Marcel Proust". A masterpiece of biographical portraiture, on the ultimate literary subject, the greatest novelist of the 20th century. "Proust documented his existence so lavishly that many of his biographers have functioned as little more than code-breakers, doggedly translating art back into life. It's a great pleasure then to welcome Edmund White's superbly artful account. Proust's life cannot truly be separated from his art. Every biography of him is bound to operate in the shadow of 'In Search of Lost Time', and White has some shrewd things to say about that mammoth work, whose style he describes as 'an ether in which all the characters revolve like well-regulated heavenly bodies'. Yet the focus remains on Proust and on his unlikely transformation from Momma's boy to social climber to world-class genius" (James Marcus). "Proust may be telling us that love is a chimera, a projection of rich fantasies onto an indifferent, certainly mysterious surface. Nevertheless these fantasies are undeniably beautiful, intimations of paradise, the artificial paradise of art" (Edmund White). An absolute "must-have" title for Marcel Proust and Edmund White collectors. This is a Review Copy. The Review Material is laid-in. It is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the half-title page by Edmund White. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary classic. As far as we know, this is the only such signed Review Copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws (because they were read) or are in multiple subsequent printings. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. One of the finest writers of our time on one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER MARCEL PROUST AND EDMUND WHITE TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 0670880574. Signed by Author.