Featured Titles:

BURGESS, ANTHONY. A Clockwork Orange. London, Heinemann, (1962).

First edition, first binding, first issue dust wrapper with the price of "16s." Burgess's novel, narrated by Alex, a young thug from the future, presents a troubling philosophical view on the nature of punishment and rehabilitation. In his memoir, You've Had Your Time, Burgess notes that the germ for this story grew from an attack on his first wife by American deserters during World War II. A noted linguist, Burgess drew upon Russian to create the language spoken by Alex and his band of "Droogs". This book served as the basis for the acclaimed, controversial film by Stanley Kubrick. A fine copy in boards and a near fine dust wrapper with slight fading to the spine and three short closed tears. A superior copy of this highspot of modern literature. (Barron 3-41; Pringle 36). (18475)
$6,000.

HEMINGWAY, ERNEST. The Old Man and the Sea. NY, Scribner, 1952.

First edition. Widely regarded as the pinnacle of Hemingway's minimal narrative style, this short novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and factored greatly in Hemingway's Nobel Prize, which he received in 1954. A fine copy in blue cloth, with nearly fine first issue dust wrapper, which shows just a couple of tiny nicks at corners and spine ends and a small closed tear to upper rear panel. Spine lightly toned. (Hanneman A24). (19489)
$1,650.

KEROUAC, JACK. On the Road. NY, Viking, 1957. Octavo. (iv), 310 pp.

First edition. Author's second book, which stands quite firmly as the quintessential work of beat literature. The subject of Kerouac's rhapsodic novel is well known, as are the stories surrounding its composition. Less often cited is Kerouac's intended audience, which Ann Charters reveals in her bibliography: in a later interview, Kerouac admits that the book was written for his second wife "to tell her what I'd been through. It's directed toward a woman ... it's sexy because it's addressed to a woman." Fine and bright in black cloth stamped in white, and with unrestored dust wrapper, which shows a small triangular chip to spine head at rear crease with a consequent half-inch closed tear, and several small nicks and closed tears at extremities. (Charters A2.a) (17534)
$5,000.

STEINBECK, JOHN. Autograph letter, signed. No date. Eight pages in pencil on 8 by 12 1/2 inch ruled yellow legal paper, folded once.

Unpublished. Addressed to Nancy Pearson, Steinbeck's personal assistant. Together with A Writer's Credo, an illustrated reprint of Steinbeck's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which includes a Russian translation side-by-side with the English. In the letter, Steinbeck presents a keen understanding of the Soviet political machine. At issue is the reprinted Nobel Prize speech and a letter from Steinbeck that accompanied it. Steinbeck had given the two items as mementos to some of the people he had met while on a tour of Russia, but the gift was spurned and criticized as impersonal. "(T)he discovery that "The Letter" was a form letter shocked everyone deeply....," Steinbeck writes. "It was mass produced and sent generally which proves that I am a phony, and not the dear and sincere colleague they had thought me." Steinbeck goes on to link this gaffe and its fallout with a writer's exchange that he and Edward Albee were proposing, for which "five of the best writers in Russia" were invited to the U.S. Steinbeck observes that by inviting younger "dissident" writers, they had professionally and politically undermined conservative members of the Soviet Writers' Union -- the "Old Boys," he calls them -- and that the Union's bluster about his form letter was a calculated move made in conjunction with the Supreme Soviet to discredit him and, by extension, advance their agenda: "Apart from my own connection with the affair as an accident(al) provocateur, I would look for a stepped up campaign for re-establishing close ties with Mao. But this is only possible if the regime goes back to Stalinist ideas. And thus you see how an unimportant writer is grist for a mill he never wrought." After briefly alluding to "a job of great sensitiveness (sic)" in which he is engaged, Steinbeck closes the letter with a report on the progress of some pine seedlings he has cultivated by deep freezing. Fine. (16526)
$12,500.