Middle C [SIGNED, 1ST EDITION, 1ST PRINTING]
Language: English
Published by Knopf, New York, 2013
- First Edition
- Signed
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: Plot Twist, Baltimore, MD, U.S.A.Plot Twist
AbeBooks seller since January 19, 2026
Condition: Used - Fine
£ 543.10
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
** SIGNED, 1ST EDITION, 1ST PRINTING ** Hardcover, signed flat first edition, first printing, 395 pages; gray-green boards with blue-gray quarter binding A Fine copy of this book with a dust jacket that is also Fine. The pages are sharp clean and crisp with sharp page corners. Tight clean boards and text block, bright gilt lettering on spine. Fore edge is not trimmed as per publication production. Not price clipped and with original price of "U.S.A. $28.95 (As always, please review the photos) Signed by the author on title page without dedication, no other inscriptions and no owner's name, 1st impression, unread, mint condition, not price clipped, no stickers. The dust jacket is protected in a removable Brodart mylar sleeve. This copy is the best that I could find. It was purchased new and only had one owner. Enjoy.
Seller Inventory # 712
- Title
- Middle C [SIGNED, 1ST EDITION, 1ST PRINTING]
- Author
- Gass, William H
- Publisher
- Knopf, New York
- Publication year
- 2013
- Condition
- Fine
- Dust jacket
- Fine
- Signed
- Signed by Author(s)
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0307701638
- ISBN 13
- 9780307701633
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- Printing
- 1st Printing
- Item weight
- 743.891 grams
- Dimensions
- 16.71 centimeters width by 24.16 centimeters height by 3.35 centimeters depth
- Seller catalogs
- Fiction
Gasss new novel moves from World War II Europe to a small town in postwar Ohio. In a series of variations, Gass gives us a mosaic of a lifefutile, comic, anarchicarranged in an array of vocabularies, altered rhythms, forms and tones, and broken pieces with music as both theme and structure, set in the key of middle C.
It begins in Graz, Austria, 1938. Joseph Skizzen's father, pretending to be Jewish, leaves his country for England with his wife and two children to avoid any connection with the Nazis, who he foresees will soon take over his homeland. In London with his family for the duration of the war, he disappears under mysterious circumstances. The family is relocated to a small town in Ohio, where Joseph Skizzen grows up, becomes a decent amateur piano player, in part to cope with the abandonment of his father, and creates as well a fantasy selfa professor with a fantasy goal: to establish the Inhumanity Museum . . . as Skizzen alternately feels wrongly accused (of what?) and is transported by his music. Skizzen is able to accept guilt for crimes against humanity and is protected by a secret self that remains sinless.
Middle C tells the story of this journey, an investigation into the nature of human identity and the ways in which each of us is several selves, and whether any one self is more genuine than another.
William Gass set out to write a novel that breaks traditional rules and denies itself easy solutions, cliff-edge suspense, and conventional surprises . . .Middle C is that book; a masterpiece by a beloved master.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
William H. Gassessayist, novelist, literary criticwas born in Fargo, North Dakota. He is the author of six works of fiction and nine books of essays, includingLife Sentences, A Temple of Texts, and Tests of Time. Gass is a former professor of philosophy at Washington University. He lives with his wife, the architect Mary Gass, in St. Louis.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Plot Twist
Baltimore, MD, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since January 19, 2026
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