SPECIMEN DAYS by Cunningham, Michael - 2005

New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. As New/As New Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005. Hardcover. As New/As New. First Edition/First Printing. 308 pages. The author's fifth novel. Now considered a contemporary classic. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Michael Cunningham's "Specimen Days". His first novel since the enormous critical and popular success of "The Hours" (1998) . Cunningham moves from strength to strength. "The Hours" was inspired by Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway", and the great author is the main character of the novel. "Specimen Days" is the title of an early masterpiece by Walt Whitman, who appears as an aura, an invisible presence hovering over New York City in the past, the present, and an imagined future (150 years from today) . Whitman did write prophetically: "It avails not, neither distance nor place. I am with you, and know how it is". A tribute to the genre novel, "Specimen Days" is in three parts: Part-mystery/ghost story, part-thriller, and part-science fiction, corresponding to its three different time periods. "Brilliantly conceived, empathetic, darkly humorous, and gorgeously rendered, Cunningham's novel about the quest for justice and freedom, the parameters of the soul, the hunger for beauty, and the fluid interface between the natural and the engineered is a genuine literary event" (Booklist) . "A smashing literary tour-de-force and an utterly invigorating reading experience. If this book does not make you jump up from the sofa, looking at life and literature in new ways, check to see if you have a pulse" (USA Today) . An absolute "must-have" title for Michael Cunningham collectors. This copy is very boldly and beautifully signed in black pen-marker on the title page by Michael Cunningham. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page or bookplate. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. The black DJ, in particular, rubs very easily and so many copies in stores were already deeply flawed within days of their arrival. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce signed copy thus. "A Home At The End of The World" was selected as one of "The 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950" by The Modern Library, the most prestigious list of its kind for the period 1950-1999. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature and The Pen/Faulkner Award in 1999 for "The Hours". One of the finest American writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0374299625.