Clark, Tom

The Exile of Celine

ISBN: 0394553128
New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1986. First Edition. Hardcover. Signed by Tom Clark. "Written with ferocious intensity, this novel is a fictional re-creation of the seven-year exile of perhaps the most controversial figure in all of twentieth-century literature. Celine: author of Journey to the End of the night and Death on the Installment Plan...dedicated doctor, vociferous anti-Semite, accused Nazi sympathizer...on the lam, hunted and haunted by the French Resistance, as he wends his way through war-torn Germany...Here is Celine as he slowly descends into a paranoic hell in which the searing visions of his own fiction become his only reality." (from front flap) A biographical-historical novel by Tom Clark (1941-2018), the great American poet, editor, novelist, biographer & artist who exemplifies our category of "The Prolific & underappreciated." The subject of this work is Louis Ferdinand Celine (1894-1961), who along with the likes of Ezra Pound was certainly among the most problematic of writers- innovative as a novelist (an influence to the Beat Generation, he was visited by William S. Burroughs & Allen Ginsberg toward the end of his life), yet a monstrously virulent anti-Semitic Nazi collaborator during World War II in occupied France. Hardcover in unclipped dust jacket with appropriately sinister front cover artwork by John Sposato. First edition as stated on copyright page, possibly second printing per number sequence thereon beginning with "2." On the title page, Clark has hand-written his signature just above his printed name. A most singular collectible in the Clark oeuvre. Book in very fine condition with only very light rubbing to front, back covers & spine with slight loss of silver gilt lettering & graphics at spine & spine-edges; several very faint, thin vertical streaks at/ near upper edge of front cover black paper board. Interior very fine, substantially mint. Dust jacket very fine with only a bit of rubbing to front, back covers & spine; a few tiny bumps at edges & corners of same; very light browning esp. at/ near edges & corners of flaps. Very Fine / Very fine. [Item #3960]

Price: $35.00