1996, ISBN: 9780899194899

Hardcover

New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1987. First Edition . Hardcover. Fine in Near Fine Dust Jacket/Near Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Dust Jacket Illustration By … More...

New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1987. First Edition . Hardcover. Fine in Near Fine Dust Jacket/Near Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Dust Jacket Illustration By Dan Reed. First edition. xii, 180pp. Navy blue quarter-cloth, tan/gray paper boards, gilt spine lettering and design, maroon endpapers. Dust jacket price 15.95. SIGNED BY AUTHOR to first blank page. Fourth Book. Difficult title to find with dust jacket in pristine condition because of flimsy, poor production. Book is very tight in the binding and appears unread. Dust jacket has the typical slight rubbing to extremeties, but is very crisp and fully intact. No remainder markings. "Madison Smartt Bell was born and raised near Nashville and attended Ensworth School and Montgomery Bell Academy before going to Princeton University, where he studied in the creative writing program, working with, among others, George Garrett and William Goyen. He has taught at a number of institutions including Johns Hopkins, the Iowa Writers Workshop, the Poetry Center at the Ninety-second Street YMHA, and Goucher College, where he was awarded the Chair of Distinguished Achievement in 1995. Among his other honors are the Lillian Smith Award (1989), Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and nominations as a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. He was named by Granta magazine as one of "the best American novelists under 40" in 1996. Bell is clearly a southern writer by inheritance and in his love for language, emphasis on storytelling, fondness for eccentric characters, and sense of the mysterious power of place. Although Bell has written both novels and stories set in the South, most of his work is placed elsewhere. Prolific, imaginative, brilliant, and compassionate, Bell has already created an impressive body of work by any standards and seems more than likely to become a major figure in contemporary American literature." - George Garrett. First short story collection. "New York [is] the locale for most of his early work. In "Zero db," the title story of Bell's first story collection, a sound man in a bar on 14th Street ends the story by advising, into his recording device, "Listen. Listen. Listen. We can never be too attentive to our world." The two novels that preceded the book of stories, 'The Washington Square Ensemble' and ' Waiting for the End of the World', showed that Bell had already taken this advice. These two New York novels put a twenty-something Tennessean on the New York map. His characters represented everything about New York that scares (or used to scare) so many away: junkies, dealers, prostitutes, anarchists. At a time when 'Bright Lights, Big City' was getting an abundance of attention, Bell was writing about a world that didn't come and go in a decade, a night world that told the rest of the story. His characters, he says, "are the guys that would have been mugging McInerney's characters as they stumbled out of the Odeon at three in the morning." - Wyn Cooper. " Bell, author of the critically well-received novel ' Waiting for the End of the World', among others, writes with razor-sharp precision of grim doings in the rural South and the seamy side of urban New York. His stories have sharply delineated characters who generally seem to be unhappy or desperate. In "Irene," for instance, a man who has settled in a forlorn Puerto Rican neighborhood of Newark watches, as an outsider, a young girl learning to survive in her own world. As observers of life, the people in these stories possess a clarity of vision that startles the reader, but the dreariness of their realities is what lingers in the mind. For serious fiction collections." - Ann H. Fisher, Library Journal., Ticknor & Fields, 1987<

ISBN: 9780899194899

Ticknor & Fields. Hardcover. VERY GOOD. Light rubbing wear to cover, spine and page edges. Very minimal writing or notations in margins not affecting the text. Possible clean ex-library… More...

Ticknor & Fields. Hardcover. VERY GOOD. Light rubbing wear to cover, spine and page edges. Very minimal writing or notations in margins not affecting the text. Possible clean ex-library copy, with their stickers and or stamp(s)., Ticknor & Fields<