AMERICAN GHOSTS: A MEMOIR

Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2005. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2005. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 288 pages. The author's second memoir. One of David Plante's finest achievements. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run by a Christian publisher, the Beacon Press Boston, as a hardcover original only and as part of the publisher's 150th Year Anniversary. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents David Plante's "American Ghosts: A Memoir". His second memoir, following his now-classic "Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three" (1983). Dedicated, meaningfully, to Philip Roth. Preceding and anticipating the contemporary peak in literary memoir writing (Annie Ernaux, Rachel Cusk, etcetera), there was, among a few others, David Plante, whose "Francoeur" trilogy is, after all is said and done, memoiristic. As such, a central running theme of his body of work is the personal struggle - one might say, his self-induced agony - with his French-Canadian ethnicity, as lived and experienced in its "le petit Canada"/Roman Catholic enclave in Providence, Rhode Island, where he was born and grew up. Plante uses the word "ancestry" (instead of the presently fashionable "ethnicity"), and it is a more poetic word. He comes to terms, after a lifetime of reflection and remembrance, with his upbringing and with God "in a stunning spiritual and physical journey that brought him back to Providence, to Canada, to France, and finally, to a new understanding of God" (Beacon Press). David Plante's conviction, if that is the right word, is that God is both spiritual and sensual Presence, that transcendence and physical desire are NOT inherently incompatible, that there is precisely, "physics" and "metaphysics", co-existing as continuum as well as dichotomy. Plante's "difficulties" with God put his infamously vicious treatment of the three women in his first memoir to shame. "Physics" is the daily life of senses and sensations both ordinary and extraordinary. "Metaphysics" is how, as human beings, we move away from everyday life towards an exalted, transcendent state of being. We leave temporal reality - "physics" - behind through reading, through the experience of a work of art or a transformative musical experience, through the awareness of a spiritual presence, and through love. In David Plante's case, also through writing that is elegant and eloquent. An absolute "must-have" title for David Plante collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed and inscribed in black ink-pen on the title page by the author: "With all thanks! David Plante". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. The recipient, who is named, is a fellow author who cannot be named here at his request. This title is a contemporary classic. This is the only such association-signed copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: David Plante is an anomalous character: An expatriate most of his adult writing life, he was both reclusive and sociable at the same time. He did NOT do public signings. Signed copies of his books come pre-signed from his publishers or signed and inscribed for friends, colleagues, and fellow artists and writers. A rare signed copy thus. One of the most brilliant writers of the 20th century and our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER DAVID PLANTE TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0807072648.