EXTRA! EXTRA!: DEADLINES and JOSSLYN. With a Preface by Burton Rascoe

Chicago: Sterling North, 1934. Limited Edition. Hardcover. Good. 8vo, 233, 250, [i] pages, blue cloth, cover spotted.

This is Copy Number 3 of this combined Special Edition. It is inscribed by Smith to Marion & Joy W, "and many happy / returns - from Europe! / June 19/34". Laid in is an obituary of Smith "By any standards, Smith is one of the more important figures in the history of Chicago journalism and literature. ... " the title fits the hero of this novel perfectly. Although his adopted city (Josslyn is from a Chicago suburb) become ugly and foul, Josslyn sees it always through the eyes of an idealist. Later in Paris, he weighs his religious and aesthetic values and Chicago as well against Europe." [ Chicago In Story, p.181 ]. HOWEVER, this edition has a new, one-page Footnote. Josslyn also appears in DEADLINES "a fictional series of sketches of life in the big city newsroom." [ Chicago In Story, p.181 ]. So it goes, the dim procession of the days and nights, illumined by great flares from the world beyond. The presses roar endlessly, in time with the eternity of the news." Those are the final lines of this book, ironically, soon to be dead lines. They are followed by the coda: "The End". One character was inspired by Carl Sandburg, the "young-man-going-somewhere".