Muse
by Galassi, Jonathan
- Used
- Very Good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good/Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 0385353340
- ISBN 13
- 9780385353342
- Seller
-
Cadillac, Michigan, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 2015. First Edition . Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Dj has very light edgewear. Liight wear. Very light soiling. Marker dot on bottom page edges.
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
- Book Nook (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 024306
- Title
- Muse
- Author
- Galassi, Jonathan
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First Edition
- ISBN 10
- 0385353340
- ISBN 13
- 9780385353342
- Publisher
- Alfred A. Knopf, Inc
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2015
- Size
- 8vo - over 7¾" - 9&f
Terms of Sale
Book Nook
Forms of payment accepted: checks, money orders & Paypal- credit cards accepted only if ordering through Biblio. PAYPAL CUSTOMERS- Prompt payment upon ordering is appreciated. Our paypal account is: cadillacbooknook@gmail.com Shipping: $4.95 for the first book, $1.00 each additional book (unless otherwise specified)inside USA. Outside USA, please contact us. Returns policy: 7 days to e-mail request to return.
About the Seller
Book Nook
Biblio member since 2006
Cadillac, Michigan
About Book Nook
The Book Nook is a complete bookstore with over 8000 sq. ft. showroom floor offering new, used and rare books from a stock of more than 70,000 volumes. Ken and Cheryl Haysmer, co-owners, have started and operated the store since 1981 in downtown Cadillac, the heart of Michigan. We have a strong speciality in used paperbacks with minors in new and used hardcovers. The store is open from 9:30AM to 5:00PM, Monday through Saturday, year round.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...