The Violated (Signed)

Vance Bourjaily

Published by The Dial Press, New York, 1958

About this Item

First Edition (Dial Press, NAP). A rare signed copy. Signed and inscribed by the author on the first front end paper ( 'For Bob & Happy, a new book for a new house, Fondly, Vance' ). And below that 'Vance Bourjaily, August 29, 1958.' (See photo). As you can see from the photos, the covers have held up pretty nicely. There's a bit of white discoloration just off the middle edge of the front cover. The spine is somewhat lightened. There's a bit of wear at the spine ends, no tears. The edges are in very good shape. Only one corner has a small spot of rub-through. The cloth at the top of the spine is somewhat pulled away from the textblock as is often the case with very thick books. The Violated runs 599 pages. However, the book is solidly bound from cover to cover. I'm not seeing any cracks or spaces, including between the covers and end papers. There's a bit of soiling on the signed end paper. You can see it in the photo just off the middle page edge across from the word 'Fondly'). That same colored stain can be seen just off the edge of five consecutive pages in the first chapter, the result of a sliiver of a stain on the middle page edge. I've scrolled through the pages many times. I saw a similarly colored spot on four consecutive pages later in the book, very small. And I saw one other page with a sliver of a dark spot just off its edge. That appears to be the totality of the soiling on the pages, none of it reaching the print. The rest of the pages look very clean. I found one instance where the bottom corner of around a dozen consecutive pages had a very minor crease. I'm not seeing any turned- down corner creases or other kinds of creases anywhere in the book. There are no markings on any of the pages. There are no attachments of any kind. And with the exception of the author's signed inscription, no one has written their name or anything else anywhere in the book. From the author's New York Times obituary: 'Not only a serious novelist, Mr. Bourjaily was also a teacher who spent more than two decades at the Iowa Writers? Workshop and five years at the University of Arizona before becoming the first director of the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at Louisiana State University. He worked as a journalist and an editor. He wrote short stories, essays and reviews. He was also a serious literary socialite. "Everyone came to Bourjaily?s parties in the early 1950s," Esquire magazine said about him in the 1980s, naming Mailer, Jones, William Styron and others as attendees. At one party Mr. Bourjaily introduced Jones to the actor Montgomery Clift, a pairing that would lead to one of Clift?s signature roles, the brooding bugler Prewitt in the film version of Jones's novel "From Here to Eternity." His third novel, "The Violated" (1958), a psychologically astute profile of four characters over 25 years-- a period with World War II at its center-- prompted the critic Irving Howe to write that Mr. Bourjaily was "one of the few serious young novelists who has tried to go directly toward the center of postwar experience." Tidbit: Raymond Carver named his only son, Vance, after Bourjaily. Carver was a student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop where he became friends with Bourjaily. Seller Inventory # 002599

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Violated (Signed)

Publisher: The Dial Press, New York

Publication Date: 1958

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good

Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition