O'Brien, Tim

The Nuclear Age

ISBN: 039454286X
New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1985. First Edition. Hardcover. "Going After Cacciato...was widely acclaimed as one of the most powerful and emotionally vivid novels about Vietnam. Now, writing with the same sharp, richly expressive language, the same edgy dark humor and complete honesty, and the same rawness of nerve and energy, Tim O'Brien gives us an equally powerful novel about growing up as a child of anxiety- the big anxiety, the one that's been with us since the fifties, when we finally realized that Einstein's theories translated into Russian...It's 1995 and William Cowling is digging a hole in his backyard. He is forty-nine, and after years and years of pent-up terror he has finally found the courage of a fighting man. And so a hole. A hole that he hopes will one day be large enough to swallow up his almost fifty years' worth of fear. A hole that causes his twelve-year-old daughter to call him "nutto," and his wife to stop speaking to him. A hole that William will not stop digging and out of which rise scenes of his past to play themselves out in his memory." (from front flap) The fourth novel by Tim O'Brien, the revered American author & Vietnam War veteran, following his Going After Cacciato (1978), winner of the National Book Award (see our item No. 4465). The story of William Cowling & his hole is a darkly comedic parable of the Cold War era when the spectre of nuclear annihilation hovered over the world. Hardcover in unclipped first-issue dust jacket (with $16.95 price printed near upper right corner of front flap, "10/85" printed near lower edge of rear flap), first edition as stated on copyright page. A desirable O'Brien collectible in its rarest original form. Book in fine condition with very light wear, fading to thin edges & corners of front, back covers & spine (slightly more area of lower edges & corners esp. at green-cloth spine, but with no effect on quite bright & intact gilt lettering thereon); mild-to-moderate spotting to upper edge of text block; small remainder mark in red felt-tip ink near spine at same; much slighter spotting to lower edge of text block. Interior very fine, substantially mint. Dust jacket fine with very light rubbing, mild sunning & fading to front, back covers & esp. spine; a bit of wear & some tiny bumps, creases at thin edges & corners of same & flaps; one mild vertical crease across length of front flap near right edge, not substantially effecting legibility of text. Fine / Fine. [Item #4594]

Price: $60.00