SKINNED ALIVE

New York City, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 254 pages. The author's debut collection of short stories. One of Edmund White's finest achievements. Now considered a contemporary classic. The first appearance of the title in the United States. 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 Edmund White's "Skinned Alive". Eight beautifully written and moving stories by one of very few great American writers of our time. Written in Edmund White's famously effortless, supple, and immaculate prose, which serves him well in this graceful act of sexual, emotional, and psychological exploration and disburdenment. "A wonderful collection. This is Edmund White at his most humorous and most personal, each story a time capsule, a re-telling, a reprise, another fiction of an autobiography. Most of all, White ends his stories brilliantly: What seems a series of haphazard comic episodes suddenly focusses, and we discover the sadness of a fable. When you put this book down, you know you've read a series of new maps. You've been deeply moved. You've been there" (Michael Ondaatje). Every Edmund White book is, deep down, a fable. Every fable, as Ondaatje observes, is marked by a melancholy beauty. An absolute "must-have" title for Edmund White collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in blue ink-pen on the title page by Edmund White. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page, as many copies available online are. This title is a late-modern classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (American) 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. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce signed copy thus. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1994 for "Genet: A Biography". Anointed by Vladimir Nabokov as his American successor. One of the finest writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER EDMUND WHITE TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0679434763.