LOVE DISHONOR MARRY DIE CHERISH PERISH: A NOVEL - Rare Pristine Review/Promotional Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: With Publisher's Review Letter - ONLY REVIEW COPY ONLINE

Rakoff, David (Author); Kidd, Chip (Book Design) & Seth (Artist/Illustrator)

ISBN 10: 038553521X / ISBN 13: 9780385535212

Published by New York City, NY: Doubleday, 2013, 2013

About this Item

1st Printing. 113 pages. Published in 2013. The author's debut novel, published the same year he died. Together with "Fraud", David Rakoff's masterpiece. Review Copy. Review Material laid-in: (poignant) Letter from Doubleday Publisher. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, of which there are several. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover/flexi-board original only. The production is a labor of love by Doubleday, featuring an ingenious die-cut design by Chip Kidd and brilliant caricature-drawings by the artist known simply as Seth. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in the United States to the highest standards. Without DJ, as issued. Presents David Rakoff's "Love Dishonor Marry Die Cherish Perish". His masterly novel-in-verse, a triumphant departure from his satirical essays, and his "closing-time" statement. Attempted as such by only one other contemporary poet/novelist, Vikram Seth ("The Golden Gate"). "A poignant, beautiful, witty, and wise novel in verse whose scope spans the twentieth century. Written with humor, sympathy, and tenderness, this intricately woven novel proves him to be the master of an altogether different art form. Leaps cities and decades as Rakoff sings the song of an America whose freedoms can be intoxicating, or brutal. The characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty" (Publisher's blurb). An absolute "must-have" title for David Rakoff collectors. This is a Review Copy. The Review Material is laid-in. This title is a great book. This is the only 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 or are in multiple subsequent printings. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare copy thus. One of the most brilliant writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER DAVID RAKOFF TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 038553521X.

Seller Inventory # 23547

Bibliographic Details

• Title: LOVE DISHONOR MARRY DIE CHERISH PERISH: A NOVEL - Rare Pristine Review/Promotional Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: With Publisher's Review Letter - ONLY REVIEW COPY ONLINE
• Publisher: New York City, NY: Doubleday, 2013
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 038553521X
• ISBN 13: 9780385535212
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: None, As Issued
• Signed: no

About this title

Synopsis

From the incomparable David Rakoff, a poignant, beautiful, witty, and wise novel in verse whose scope spans the twentieth century

Through his books and his radio essays for NPR's This American Life, David Rakoff has built a deserved reputation as one of the finest and funniest essayists of our time. Written with humor, sympathy, and tenderness, this intricately woven novel proves him to be the master of an altogether different art form.

LOVE, DISHONOR, MARRY, DIE, CHERISH, PERISH leaps cities and decades as Rakoff sings the song of an America whose freedoms can be intoxicating, or brutal. 

The characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty. A daughter of Irish slaughterhouse workers in early-twentieth-century Chicago faces a desperate choice; a hobo offers an unexpected refuge on the rails during the Great Depression; a vivacious aunt provides her clever nephew a path out of the crushed dream of postwar Southern California; an office girl endures the casually vicious sexism of 1950s Manhattan; the young man from Southern California revels in the electrifying sexual and artistic openness of 1960s San Francisco, then later tends to dying friends and lovers as the AIDS pandemic devastates the community he cherishes; a love triangle reveals the empty materialism of the Reagan years; a marriage crumbles under the distinction between self-actualization and humanity; as the new century opens, a man who has lost his way finds a measure of peace in a photograph he discovers in an old box—an image of pure and simple joy that unites the themes of this brilliantly conceived work.

Rakoff's insistence on beauty and the necessity of kindness in a selfish world raises the novel far above mere satire.  A critic once called Rakoff "magnificent," a word that perfectly describes this wonderful novel in verse.

About the Author

David Rakoff was the New York Times bestselling author of the books Fraud, Don't Get Too Comfortable, and Half Empty. A two-time recipient of the Lambda Literary Award and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, he was a regular contributor to This American Life. He died in August 2012 at the age of forty-seven, shortly after finishing this book.