INSCRIBED BY STEINBECK: FIRST EDITION OF STEINBECK'S WAYWARD BUS, "IT IS A COSMIC BUS HOLDING SPARKS AND BACK FIRING INTO THE MILKY WAY"
STEINBECK, John. The Wayward Bus. New York: Viking, 1947. Octavo, original russet cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom cloth slipcase.
First edition of Steinbeck's 20th-century Canterbury Tales in California, a wonderfully allegorical novel about "driving a broken-down, battered world through time and space," this copy inscribed by Steinbeck on the front free endpaper to renowned bibliophile Norman Webb: "Norman Webb from John Steinbeck."
Steinbeck wrote of The Wayward Bus: "From the funny little story it is growing to the most ambitious thing I have ever attempted. Not that it still won't be funny, but funny as Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy and Don Quixote are funny… My bus is something large in my mind. It is a cosmic bus holding sparks and back firing into the milky way turning the corner of Betelguese without a hand signal. And Juan Chicoy the driver is all the god the fathers you ever saw driving a six-cylinder broken down, battered world through time and space" (Benson, 572). Dust jacket designed by Robert Hallock. Goldstone & Payne A23a. Salinas Public Library, 39. Valentine, 47. Bruccoli & Clark I:355.
Book near-fine, dust jacket with light creasing to head of slightly toned spine, minor toning to rear panel, front panel bright and clean, extremely good. A desirable inscribed copy.