"PART SHOCKING REALITY, PART FEVERISH DREAM": SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF A SPORT AND A PASTIME, SIGNED BY SALTER

SALTER, James. A Sport and A Pastime. Garden City: Doubleday, 1967. Octavo, original half black cloth, original dust jacket. $2800.

First edition of the award-winning writer's intensely erotic third novel, signed by Salter on the title page.

To author Richard Ford, "Sentence for sentence, Salter is the master." Critically renowned for "his manifest devotion to craft, the acuity of his observation, the maturity of his vision," James Salter described this, his third novel, as "'the first good thing I wrote'… In a less dispassionate vein, Reynolds Price announced in The New York Times Book Review, 'Of living novelists, none has produced a book I admire more than Salter's A Sport and a Pastime… [It is] as nearly perfect as any American fiction I know… part shocking reality, part feverish dream.'" Yet this highly erotic novel was reluctantly issued by its publisher. "According to Salter, Doubleday felt 'ill at ease' with the book, printed only a small number of copies and was 'quite happy to see it disappear without a trace.' Eight years would pass before the publication of his next novel" (New York Times). In 1989 Salter was awarded the prestigious Pen/Faulkner Award for his work.

Book about-fine, with just a bit of sunning along upper edge; dust jacket with closed tear and creasing to upper corner of front panel, shallow wear to spine head, light rubbing along folds, extremely good.