Wallant, Edward Lewis

The Human Season

New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1960. First Edition. Hardcover. "In this blunt, tender, powerfully affecting first novel, Joe Berman- immigrant at eighteen, fifty-nine now and a hard-working Connecticut plumber- takes on a stature and a rough-hewn dignity that make us feel better about the race of man. The months that follow the loss of his deeply loved wife- months of wrath and rebellion, during which he fights his way to a new concept of the mysteries called life and death and God- are part of the human season of Joe Berman. But so are the years behind him. In a series of graphic episodes, the narrative travels both back into the past and forward through the present. Beyond the burly, aging widower, we see a passionate and happy husband, a proud if sometimes baffled father, a diffident but determined lover, a youth exulting in the first realization of his manhood, an adolescent and then a small boy in a Ukrainian village." (from front flap) The debut novel by Edward Lewis Wallant (1926-1962), the great Jewish-American writer best known for his next work, The Pawnbroker (1961), which was made into the acclaimed 1965 film starring Rod Steiger as the haunted Holocaust-survivor protagonist Sol Nazerman. Wallant belongs in the canon of his great contemporaries including Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth et al., but is unfortunately less celebrated & with a smaller oeuvre since he died suddenly & tragically at the age of only 36. Hardcover in unclipped dust jacket, first edition as stated on copyright page. A foundational collectible in the brief but profound & impactful Wallant canon. Book in very fine condition with only a bit of wear, mild rubbing & fading to edges & corners of front, back covers & spine; moderate rubbing, browning & a few faint scratches at upper edge of text block; much less to side & lower edges of same. Interior very fine with only mild-to-moderate browning & sparse spotting to blank paste-downs & endpapers; otherwise substantially mint. Dust jacket relatively fine with mild rubbing, scratching & faint creasing to front, back covers & spine; slight wear & some tiny bumps, creases at thin edges & corners of same & flaps incl. short, closed tears & tiny chips with miniscule loss of paper esp. at spine-edges & corners, upper edges of front flap & back cover; moderate sunning-fading to spine; mild browning, spotting to flaps esp. at margins/ edges. Very Fine / Fine. [Item #4559]

Price: $100.00