Catalog 127, P-R
320. PALEY, Grace. The Little Disturbances of Man. Garden City: Doubleday, 1959. The first book, a collection of stories, by a writer who has helped define the role of women and politics in contemporary literature: engaged without being didactic, Paley focuses on both the ordinariness and the wonder of everyday life. Inscribed by the author in 1998. Offsetting to endpages, small spot to top stain; near fine in a very good, spine-tanned dust jacket with modest surface soiling and edge wear.
321. PALEY, Grace. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. NY: FSG (1973). The second collection of stories by one of the most highly acclaimed contemporary masters of the short story. Nominated for the National Book Award. Inscribed by the author. Foxing to top edge and light offsetting to endpages; else fine in a near fine, price-clipped dust jacket creased across the lower front panel.
322. PALEY, Grace. Later the Same Day. NY: FSG (1985). Later printing of her third collection of stories, which was a finalist for the PEN Faulkner Award. Inscribed by the author in 1989. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
323. PALEY, Grace. Leaning Forward. Penobscot: Granite Press (1985). A collection of poetry. This is the trade paperback edition, following a limited edition of 125 hardcover copies. Inscribed by the author in 1989 "on a happy occasion." Fine in wrappers.
324. PALEY, Grace. New and Collected Poems. Gardiner: Tilbury House (1992). Inscribed by the author. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
325. PALEY, Grace. The Collected Stories. NY: FSG (1994). Collects all the stories from her first three volumes of short fiction. Inscribed by the author in the year of publication. Fine in a fine dust jacket, with a photograph of Paley laid in.
326. -. Same title, second printing. Inscribed by the author in 1994. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
327. PALEY, Grace. Just As I Thought. NY: FSG (1998). Her first book of nonfiction, a collection of articles, reports, talks and essays written over a thirty year period and touching on family and literary activities as well as the author's well-known social activism. Inscribed by the author. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Laid in is an autograph postcard signed from March, 1998. The image on the postcard is a photo of Paley taken by Jill Krementz in 1974.
328. (PALEY, Grace). Conversations with Grace Paley. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press (1997). The hardcover issue of this collection of interviews with Paley. Inscribed by the author in 1998. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
329. PHILLIPS, Jayne Anne. Sweethearts. Carrboro: Truck Press, 1976. Her first book, a collection of poems. This is one of 400 copies in wrappers, of a total edition of 410. Inscribed by the author to another writer in 1978. Faint general age-toning; very near fine. A nice copy of the author's first book, and a good literary association copy.
330. POWERS, J.F. Morte D'Urban. Garden City: Doubleday, 1962. His third book and first novel, winner of the National Book Award. Inscribed by the author in 1965. Fine in a very near fine dust jacket.
331. PRITCHETT, V.S. Books in General. London: Chatto & Windus, 1953. A collection of literary essays, whose subjects include Faulkner, T.E. Lawrence, Tolstoy, Poe, Zola, and others. Inscribed by the author in 1977. Foxing to top edge, trace crown bump; very near fine in a very near fine dust jacket with one creased edge tear and a new price sticker on the front flap. A very nice copy.
332. PRITCHETT, V.S. London Perceived. London: Chatto & Windus, 1974. First thus, revised from the 1962 edition, with a new preface by the author and lacking the photographs of the original edition. Inscribed by Pritchett in 1977. Trace top edge foxing; still fine in a near fine dust jacket with one small chip at the upper rear spine fold.
333. PYNCHON, Thomas. V. Philadelphia: Lippincott (1963). The fourth printing of Pynchon's first book, winner of the Faulkner Foundation Award for best first novel of the year, and the debut of one of the most important American writers of the postwar era. One slight corner bump, else a fine copy in a near fine dust jacket with rubbing on the spine and the statement of "fourth printing" on the front flap. A beautiful copy.
334. PYNCHON, Thomas. Autograph Letter Signed. January 21, 1974. Two tightly printed pages, on both sides of one sheet of graph paper, written to his friends, authors David [Shetzline] and his wife Mary [M.F. Beal]. Last paragraph written in pencil, including the signature "Love, Tom." A lengthy letter, over 1000 words, to two friends who date back to his college days 15 years earlier. Both Shetzline and Beal were students at Cornell, and a part of the group that came to be known as the "Cornell School" of writers, including Pynchon, Richard Fariña, Shetzline and Beal. Shetzline published two novels in the late 1960s -- Heckletooth 3 and DeFord, which is dedicated to the memory of Fariña -- and Pynchon wrote blurbs for both of them. Pynchon also wrote a blurb for M.F. Beal's novel, Amazon One, about a group of radical activists of the 1960s. She also wrote what many consider to be the first lesbian/feminist detective novel, Angel Dance. All of these elements come into play in this remarkable letter, which deals with literary matters, political matters, and the correspondents' longtime friendship. Written four months after Gravity's Rainbow was published, the letter sheds light on Pynchon's state of mind in the aftermath of the work of writing that novel. The letter starts out apologizing for writing to them together instead of "one by one but haven't been able to write anything to anybody for a couple years, and will be lucky even to get through this one letter here..." He goes on to tell them that his agent, the legendary Candida Donadio, "turns out to be a closet MF Beal freek [sic] and would really dig to establish contact..." He advises Mary to write to Candida but says "don't ask me what about, though, I can't understand any of this literary stuff" -- a remarkable comment from someone who has just finished writing Gravity's Rainbow. A long paragraph details events in New York City, where he is living, including an "Impeachment Rally" in Greenwich Village. Pynchon is self-consciously disdainful of this round of political activism: "Maybe I am wrong not to show up, after all think of all that great neurotic pussy that always shows up at things like -- oh, aww, gee Mary, I'm sorry! I meant 'vagina,' of course! -- like that, and all the biggies who'll be there..." He goes on to describe that he is having "what the CIA calls a 'mid-life crisis,' looking for another hustle, cannot dig to live a 'literary' life no more..." A "lump of hash I lost somewhere in Humboldt County 3 years ago" figures into what becomes an increasingly textured, complicated narrative, much the way his fiction does, at the same time that it represents his side of an obviously ongoing dialogue, and elicits further contact from the recipients: in referring to stories of bad LSD circulating, he asks "You might as well tell me. How many times'd you end up sucking on the rug?" A dissection of the general state of mind among the self-proclaimed hip in New York City follows, and he waxes nostalgic for the West a couple of times: "Last fall I rode around on the 'Hound for a while. Would've dropped by [their place in northern California] except by the time I got in your neighborhood I was bummed out..." Future "master plan" was "to go across the sea, but now I don't know. I've sort of been keying my plans on Geraldine, part of general resolution not to impose shit on her, also cz I'm lazy and can't make decisions... so maybe we will head west, and then again maybe not, but if we do we'll be by your place, OK?" A remarkable letter, exhibiting all of the characteristics for which Pynchon's writing is known, and many of the concerns that he raises in his writings, and addressed to two of his closest and oldest friends. Pynchon even used Shetzline's name in Gravity's Rainbow: Shetzline was credited with having written the "classic study" of "the property of time-modulation peculiar to Oneidine." Folded in twelfths for mailing, else fine in hand-addressed envelope folded in fourths. In content and style, probably the best Pynchon letter we have ever seen.
335. (PYNCHON, Thomas). BARTHELME, Donald. The Teachings of Don B. NY: Turtle Bay Books, 1992. A posthumous collection of short pieces by Barthelme, most of them previously uncollected and some previously unpublished. Eight-page introduction by Pynchon. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
336. RIEFENSTAHL, Leni. Schönheit Im Olympischen Kampf. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag, 1936. A book of photographs of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by the photographer and filmmaker who produced Olympia, the film chronicle of those Olympics and, by some accounts, the greatest sports film ever made and, by others, one of the great pieces of Nazi propaganda. Olympia won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival, where it was shown in 1938, and has always been judged a magnificent example of cinematography. This volume was put together after the Olympics and while the film was in production, and a number of the photographs at the end of the book show Riefenstahl working on the film. Large quarto. Slight splaying to front board; still fine in a very good dust jacket with several internally tape-mended edge tears and a few water spots to the spine. A very nice example of this book, much nicer than usual: the jacket is itself rare and, because of the size of the book and the thin paper of the jacket, usually turns up badly worn.
337. ROBISON, Mary. Days. NY: Knopf, 1979. Her first book, a collection of stories that established the author as one of the foremost writers of the "minimalist" school of fiction. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with a crease on the rear flap.
338. ROTH, Philip. Our Gang. NY: Random House (1971). Roth's send-up of Nixon and the Nixon administration. Inscribed by the author in 1989. Fine in a fine dust jacket. A beautiful copy, and uncommon signed.
339. ROTH, Philip. The Breast. NY: HRW (1972). A short, comic fantasy -- "the story of a man who turned into a female breast." Fine in a near fine dust jacket with fading to the spine lettering.
340. -. Another copy. Inscribed by the author in 1989. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with a small edge tear on the rear panel and a book store stamp on the front flap.
341. ROTH, Philip. The Great American Novel. NY: HRW (1973). Probably Roth's most ambitious comic novel to that point in his career. In the past decade or so, Roth has elevated the comic novel to a new level, and in doing so has won every major literary prize given out in this country, some of them more than once. This copy is inscribed by the author in 1989. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with several small edge chips. Trade editions signed or inscribed by Roth are uncommon.
342. ROTH, Philip. Reading Myself and Others. NY: FSG (1975). His first book of nonfiction, a collection of essays published over the previous fifteen years. Inscribed by the author in 1989. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with a touch of fading to the spine lettering and a clean tear at the lower rear spine fold.
343. ROTH, Philip. The Professor of Desire. NY: FSG (1977). Second printing of this novel. Inscribed by the author in 1989. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
344. ROTH, Philip. The Ghost Writer. NY: FSG (1979). Fourth printing of the first novel in his Zuckerman sequence. Nominated for the National Book Award. Inscribed by the author in 1989. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
345. ROTH, Philip. A Philip Roth Reader. NY: FSG (1980). A somewhat uncommon compendium that includes selections from all the previous novels; "Looking at Kafka" from Reading Myself and Others; and the entire, newly revised, text of "The Breast." Inscribed by the author in 1992. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
346. ROTH, Philip. Zuckerman Unbound. NY: FSG (1981). The first trade edition of this novel featuring Nathan Zuckerman, one of Roth's fictional alter egos and the second book in the Zuckerman trilogy, which is considered one of Roth's most significant accomplishments and also the point at which his writing went beyond mere comedy and became more self-reflexive and postmodern. Inscribed by the author in 1989. Fine in a fine jacket.
347. ROTH, Philip. The Anatomy Lesson. NY: FSG (1983). The first trade edition of the third book in the Zuckerman trilogy. Inscribed by the author in 1989. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
348. ROTH, Philip. Zuckerman Bound. NY: FSG (1985). The Book Club edition of this one-volume collection of the Zuckerman trilogy: The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound and The Anatomy Lesson. (Note: "First printing" is explicitly stated in the Book Club edition). With the novella-length epilogue "The Prague Orgy." Signed by the author on the half-title and additionally inscribed by the him in 1989 on the front flyleaf. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with small corner bumps.
349. ROTH, Philip. Patrimony. NY: Simon & Schuster (1991). Nonfiction, a memoir. Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award. Inscribed by the author in 1992 and just signed "Philip." Fine in a fine dust jacket.
350. ROTH, Philip. Operation Shylock. NY: Simon & Schuster (1993). A review copy of this winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and Time magazine's Book of the Year. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with one edge tear.
351. ROTH, Philip. I Married a Communist. Boston/NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. A novel set in the McCarthy era, and the second book in a trilogy that includes American Pastoral and The Human Stain. Signed by the author. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with some scratches to the rear panel.
352. -. Same title, the advance reading copy. Fine in wrappers.
353. RUSHDIE, Salman. Midnight's Children. London: Jonathan Cape (1981). The first British edition of Rushdie's second book, winner of Britain's Booker Prize and the first book in his ambitious sequence of novels of the Muslim world, which culminated in The Satanic Verses and the death sentence that was imposed on him by Muslim fundamentalists. The American edition is the true first, preceding the British (they were both printed in the U.S.). This British edition is the more desirable edition for "following the flag" and it is also considerably scarcer than the U.S. edition, with 2500 copies printed (the British book market being approximately one-fifth the size of the U.S. market). An important book that launched Rushdie's literary career as it represented a quantum leap from the subject matter and accomplishment of his first novel. This title was later named as the outstanding title among all the Booker Prize winners -- the so-called "Booker of Bookers." Fine in a fine, price-clipped dust jacket with a hint of sunning to the spine.