BAUMAN RARE BOOKS 32 Augustus, Inscribed By John Williams “One Of The Best I Ever Wrote” (Graham Greene) 37GREENE, Graham. Brighton Rock. New York, 1938. Octavo, original black and rose boards, dust jacket, custom slipcase. $4000 First edition of Greene’s electrifying noir novel, preceding the English edition by one month, in scarce unrestored dust jacket. Greene’s questioning of good and evil makes this “his first Catholic novel, his first enquiry into the ways of man and God… It was to lead on to Power and the Glory [1940] and End of the Affair [1951]” (Sherry I:637-649). Text fine, very lightest rubbing to silver-stamped boards, toning to cloth spine; dust jacket with light edge-wear, toning to spine with shallow chipping to spine ends, minor tape reinforcement to verso. An extremely good copy in scarce unrestored dust jacket. V., Thomas Pynchon’s First Novel 38PYNCHON, Thomas. V. Philadelphia, 1963. Octavo, original lavender cloth, dust jacket. $4200 First edition of Pynchon’s first novel, a beautiful copy in the elusive first-issue dust jacket. “Inconclusive, gripping, confusing in outline but convincing in detail, V. is a blackly comic odyssey into the occult corners and bizarre anxieties of 20th-century Europe and America” (Parker, 403). Faint toning to book edges and spine; dust jacket spine very slightly toned, with minor rubbing to spine head. A lovely, near-fine copy. 36WILLIAMS, John. Augustus. New York, 1972. Octavo, original half green cloth, dust jacket. $5500 First edition of Williams’ “spectacular historical saga,” his last book published in his lifetime, inscribed: “For Raisie Rifkin, with the best wishes of John Williams.” Williams’ exploration of the life of the Roman emperor, praised as a “spectacular historical saga,” was his only National Book Award winner, sharing the honor with John Barth’s Chimera in 1973. As in all of Williams’ extraordinary work, Augustus explores how “the lives we end up with are the often unexpected products of the friction between us and the world itself” (Daniel Mendelsohn). Book and dust jacket with light wear to extremities. A near-fine signed copy.
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