Berry, Wendell; Shahn, Ben

November Twenty Six Nineteen Hundred Sixty Three

New York, NY: George Braziller, 1964. First Edition. Hardcover. "Each one of us wanted to cry out, somehow to express our shock and horror at the assassination of the President. Each one of us tried to say in conversation what we felt, but essentially we were mute. Our gestures were helpless; our impulses somehow to monumentalize those days, to hold them and not let them sink into banality and acceptance- such impulses were doomed to failure, to that very acceptance which we wanted to avoid." (from preface by Ben Shahn) This month marks the fifty-seventh anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, a traumatic tear in the fabric of American & world history that still resonates & has never healed. Here we present one of the earliest-published artistic & literary reactions to this event in its wake. Wendell Berry, the canonical American author & environmentalist, wrote this series of prose-poetic vignettes, titled the day following Kennedy's funeral, after four days of wall-to-wall television coverage as the tragedy & its immediate aftermath unfolded. Each stanza begins with the line "We know." Ben Shahn (1898-1969), the great American artist, illustrated the pages opposite & lettered each stanza, & provided a preface (quoted above). Oblong hardcover in slipcase, first edition as stated on copyright page. We have seen references to a larger, slightly different & signed deluxe edition; therefore this copy is from the first trade edition. A moving tribute to President John F. Kennedy; a contemporary window into the American peoples' struggle to express its inexpressible grief through art & words. Book in exceptionally very fine condition with only the slightest rubbing & wear to edges & corners of front, back covers & spine; interior with only some spot-staining to blank areas of two pages (unpaginated, "We know/ the children..."); otherwise substantially mint inside & out. Slipcase very fine with only mild rubbing & scratching to surfaces esp. blank black back cover; a bit of wear at edges & corners. Very Fine / (Slipcase) Very Fine. [Item #3937]

Price: $50.00 save 20% $40.00