Muse
by Galassi, Jonathan
- Used
- near fine
- Hardcover
- Signed
- first
- Condition
- Near Fine/Near Fine
- ISBN 10
- 0385353340
- ISBN 13
- 9780385353342
- Seller
-
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Knopf, 2015. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Near Fine/Near Fine. Author signed on the title page. Gilt on grey covers in a grey & red dust jacket. "Autographed Copy" label on the dust jacket. Tall 12mo, 258pp. Top corners bumped, remainder mark on the bottom edge. The dust jacket has a 3/8: closed tear on the top edge.
Reviews
On May 27 2015, CloggieDownunder said:
“It was not where or who you came from but what you did with your own grab bag of advantages and disadvantages that made you remarkable. He’d learned early on in his work that the real writers hadn’t gone to Yale or Oxford; they came from everywhere - or nowhere – and their determination to dig down, to matter, whatever the odds against them, was the only key to their succeeding”
Muse is the first novel by American poet, translator and publisher of iconic Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Jonathan Galassi. The only literature-appreciating member of his decidedly non-literary family, a teen-aged Paul Dukach takes refuge in Pages, the local bookstore. When proprietress, Morgan Dickerman introduces him to the poetry of Ida Perkins, it is the beginning of a life-long passion. He devours her work and becomes a fanatical expert on all there is to know about this elusive woman who was”… literally enamored with art – arguably less so with the individuals who created it, who often turned out to have inconvenient needs and egos of their own, which on occasion dwarfed even hers”
On graduation from college, Paul eventually finds employment with independent publisher, Purcell and Stern, learning a great deal from his boss, the brash but knowledgeable Homer Stern: “Sexual activity for Homer was an index of moral fallibility and vitality at one and the same time. It didn’t matter what people did; he was sure they did something illicit. It meant they were alive, like him. Maybe he was simply looking for companionship in transgression”. Paul also gets to know Stern’s arch-rival, Sterling Wainwright, Ida’s second cousin and publisher of all her works.
On the way home from a European book fair (“Frankfurt [Book Fair] was anything but social; it was carnivorousness at its most rapacious, with a genteel European veneer. The dressy clothes, the parties, the cigars, the jacked-up prices in the hotels and restaurants, the disappointing food were all of a piece. It was exhausting and repetitive and depressing – and no one in publishing with any sense or style would have missed it for the world”), Paul finally gets the opportunity to meet his idol, now reclusive for many years in Venice.
He finds that Venice “… wasn’t dead at all. Venice was a Platonic beehive buzzing with covert vitality. Its fabulous gilt-encrusted past wasn’t the point; it was how the past kept gnawing away at the present, digesting and fermenting and reforming it, and extruding it into the future”. And for some reason, Ida takes him into her confidence, entrusting him with an explosive secret. “Ida had surely been no saint…Ida had been guileless and wilful, passionate and snobbish, generous, great-hearted, self-seeking, myopic, petty” This he knew, but now he faces a dilemma.
Galassi’s extensive experience in both the publishing industry and as a poet are apparent on every page. He peoples his novel with a cast of highly believable authors, editors and publishers that, no doubt, bear more than a passing resemblance to figures in the actual literary industry. Of his publishers, he says: “Their authors and their work had been the ultimate raison d’etre for whatever they themselves had done. Beyond their petty self-aggrandizing, Homer and Sterling and their kind had been true to their writers’ gifts. …Their authors were their gods…”. He completes the effect with a bibliography of Ida’s works and books about her. This is a quite debut novel, one that will have a broad appeal, but in particular to those involved in the industry. Outstanding.
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Details
- Bookseller
- NWJBOOKS (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 014988
- Title
- Muse
- Author
- Galassi, Jonathan
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Near Fine
- Jacket Condition
- Near Fine
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- ISBN 10
- 0385353340
- ISBN 13
- 9780385353342
- Publisher
- Knopf
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2015
- Pages
- 272
- Keywords
- fiction
Terms of Sale
NWJBOOKS
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
NWJBOOKS
Biblio member since 2021
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
About NWJBOOKS
Specializing in signed, rare and out of print books.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Title Page
- A page at the front of a book which may contain the title of the book, any subtitles, the authors, contributors, editors, the...
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Remainder Mark
- Usually an ink marking of some sort which indicates that the book was designated a remainder. In most cases, it can be found on...
- Gilt
- The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...
- 12mo
- A duodecimo is a book approximately 7 by 4.5 inches in size, or similar in size to a contemporary mass market paperback. Also...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...