Thomas Pynchon is the most famous literary recluse of our time. Very little is known about Pynchon, the author of some of the most mysterious and generally difficult works of 20th century fiction. His work demonstrates a strong affinity with the practitioners and artifacts of low culture, including comic books, animated cartoons, pulp fiction, popular films, television programs, urban myths, conspiracy theories, and folk art. He often delves deep into the realms of human sexuality, psychology, sociology, mathematics, science, and technology, and these themes recur throughout Pynchon’s work. This blurring of the conventional boundary between “high” and “low” culture,  is one of the defining characteristics of postmodernist writing. With novels that some critics have called “unreadable”, paired with his highly reclusive nature, Thomas Pynchon has obtained a mythic cult-like status as a writer.

Description: TRUE FIRST EDITION. Hard bound with dust jacket. True 1st printing of the first edition. Blind stamped pale lilac cloth, with title in silver to spine edge. Wear and some sunning to edges of boards. The un-clipped dust jacket shows some wear, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding sound. The first novel by Thomas Pynchon, who is  widely considered the best writer of the latter Twentieth Century. V. is Thomas Pynchon’s, published in 1963. It describes the exploits of a discharged U.S. Navy sailor named Benny Profane, his reconnection in New York with a group of pseudo-bohemian artists and hangers-on known as the Whole Sick Crew, and the quest of an aging traveler named Herbert Stencil, to identify and locate the mysterious entity he knows only as “V”.  Pynchon’s V. won the William Faulkner Foundation Award for best first novel of the year, and was nominated for the National Book Award. This novel introduced his signature style: strange characters (often with stranger names), obscure references and oddball humor, all piled into a story presented in an often complicated style. The novel has gone on to achieve a sort of cult status, and the first edition is highly sought after.

Bookseller inventory #33676

V.
Pynchon, Thomas

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Anias Nin, feminist icon, diarist, model and dancer is probably one of the finest writers of female erotica of the last century. Known for her elegant and sensual style, she has the ability to convey the most intimate of thoughts in a way that we can almost feel. Winter of Artifice, a trio of novellas, the second work of fiction by Nin, was first published by the Obelisk Press in Paris during the summer of 1939. Shortly after the book’s publication, her publisher, Jack Kahane died, and World War II broke out. Nin moved to New York; taking a few copies of the book with her. Knowing censorship laws would prevent her from issuing an unexpurgated version in America, she deleted one of the stories and revised the other two. Still unable to find a publisher, she acquired a used printing press, and, with the help of Gonzalo Moré, her current companion and lover, she produced the book herself. Although Nin would later publish a few books, written by herself and some friends, under the name of the Gemor Press, this title was the first she produced, and, like much that happened in those early years of the Second World War, more an accident of fate than an intentional act. Accordingly, there is no publication information.

Description: Hard bound with printed boards. Limited edition of 500 printed copies self published by the author. No dust Jacket, as issued. The colophon states: “The present edition is limited to five hundred copies. It has been set by hand and printed by the author in Spartan type of twelve points on Copper Plate paper.” Line engravings by Ian Hugo.  Scarce!

Bookseller Inventory #28966

Winter Of Artifice
Nin, Anais

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Pablo Picasso was the most influential artist of the 20th century. He is widely known for co-founding the Cubist movement. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortune, making him one of the best-known figures of the 20th century art world. Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. Picasso’s final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. From 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. Only later, after Picasso’s death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.

Description: INSCRIBED & SIGNED BY PABLO PICASSO! Black paper covers with gilt design of a bird, white lettering, with each plate on a separate page, 2 pages of English text. Published on the occasion of the November 1971 exhibition in association with The Weintraub Gallery, New York. Mild edge wear, mild interior foxing. Text block is separating from spine, visible at interior front hinge. Minor wear to wrappers and 2 small creases, otherwise very good. Inscribed to the previous owner and signed with Love, Picasso!

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Picasso: Histoire Naturelle De Buffon
31 Cancelled Original Copper Plates
Picasso, Pablo

Publisher: Weintraub Gallery, New York, New York
Publication Date: 1971
Signed: Inscribed & signed by Pablo Picasso
Size: 9 & 1/4 inches – square

· Category: Sold ·

Edward Gorey was an American writer and artist noted for his macabre pen-and-ink drawings of beady-eyed Edwardian characters. He was first noticed in The New Yorker in 1959. His work has been described simultaneously as both an artist who wrote and a writer who drew. By the age of 20, Edward Gorey was studying French Literature at Harvard where he was befriended by future poet Frank O’Hara, who called Gorey “the oddest person I’ve ever seen”. One thing that Edward Gorey was decidedly fond of was ballet. He spent 30 years attending very nearly every performance by the New York City Ballet. His costume design for the Broadway production of “Dracula” won a Tony Award in 1978. Mr. Gorey also wrote at least 90 books and illustrated 60 others. Gorey left the bulk of his estate to a charitable trust benefiting cats and dogs, as well as other species including bats and insects.

Description: HAND SIGNED AND LETTERD BY EDWARD GOREY. Copy ‘C’ of the 26 lettered copies reserved for the author. Part of the of the deluxe edition, signed by the artist and specially bound, and limited to 100 copies. Hard bound, no dust jacket, and housed in publishers slipcase, as issued. Blue cloth over boards with paste-down title label to spine edge. A Gorey favorite, with fifty numbered cats, pictured in color, and posed in various settings and manners. The original drawings of these cats were done to accompany the limited edition of Amphigorey. Spine edge of blue cloth faded, otherwise very good with interior pages bright and clean.  Some minor soiling and age toning to slipcase, otherwise very good. RARE!

Bookseller Inventory # 32092

Category
Gorey, Edward

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Steinbeck based this novella on his own experiences working alongside migrant farm workers as a teenager. The title is taken from Robert Burns’ poem “To a Mouse”, which reads … “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley“…. or “The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.”

Description: True First Edition. Hard bound in dust jacket. First edition / First state. A Covici Friede “sample copy” with the publisher’s stamp to front free end page. Meets points of issue for the true first edition ( Bullet between 8s on page 88) and ( “pendula” on line 21 of page 9 ) $2.00 price to jacket flap. Previous owners name to front free end page. Some wear to edges and corners of boards. Minor age toning throughout. Wear to jacket that shows some minor chipping to corners and one large chip to upper spine edge, otherwise good. Interior clean, binding sound. RARE!

Bookseller Inventory # 60153

Of Mice and Men
Steinbeck, John

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·