HOW BEAUTIFUL IT IS AND HOW EASILY IT CAN BE BROKEN - Rare Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed by Daniel Mendelsohn - SIGNED ON THE TITLE PAGE

Mendelsohn, Daniel

ISBN 10: 0061456438 / ISBN 13: 9780061456435

Published by New York City, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, 2008

About this Item

1st Printing. Signed. 456 pages. Published in 2008. The author's debut collection of literary and personal essays. Now considered a contemporary classic. 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. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Daniel Mendelsohn's "How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken". His dazzling retrospective collection, which he followed up with "Waiting For The Barbarians: Essays From The Classics To Pop Culture" (2012) and "Ecstasy And Terror: From The Greeks To Game of Thrones" (2019). Written in effortless, impeccable prose with a paradoxical mix of wit and ardor, it demonstrates his unique, profound, and indispensable understanding, not just expertise, of the distant past as well as contemporary popular culture, particularly the latter's atavistic re-imaginings of the ancient world that Mendelsohn knows so well and loves so much. "Writing with a lively intelligence and arresting originality, he brings his distinctive combination of scholarly rigor and conversational ease to bear across eras, cultures, and genres. Passionately articulates the themes that have made Daniel Mendelsohn a crucial voice in today's cultural conversation on the vital importance of the great literature of the past for a meaningful life in the present. No other contemporary thinker is as engaged with as many aspects of our culture as Mendelsohn is, and no one practices the vanishing art of criticism with more acuity, humor, and feeling" (Publisher's blurb). The title is from Tennessee Williams, on the fragility of beauty as he tried to capture it in his great play, "The Glass Menagerie". For Mendelsohn, Williams' great play represents the distillation of his own worldview. An absolute "must-have" title for Daniel Mendelsohn collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Daniel Mendelsohn. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and despite its imperfection (browning on the edges because of the inferior paper used by the publisher, as may be found in almost every surviving copy) is still in especially fine condition: Every single internal page is clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Precedes and should NOT be confused with all other subsequent editions. A rare signed copy thus. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2007 for "The Lost". One of the most brilliant writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER DANIEL MENDELSOHN TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 0061456438.

Seller Inventory # 23283

Bibliographic Details

• Title: HOW BEAUTIFUL IT IS AND HOW EASILY IT CAN BE BROKEN - Rare Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed by Daniel Mendelsohn - SIGNED ON THE TITLE PAGE
• Publisher: New York City, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061456438
• ISBN 13: 9780061456435
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author

About this title

Synopsis

A volume of critical interpretations of significant modern films features the writer's scholarly and cultural observations about such works as Brokeback Mountain, World Trade Center, and Troy, accompanied by his insights into the theater and literature, from Euripides to Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex. By the author of The Lost. 25,000 first printing.

About the Author

Daniel Mendelsohn a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker, is the author of the international bestseller The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. He teaches at Bard College.