Roth, Philip

Indignation

ISBN: 9780547054841
New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008. First Edition. Hardcover. "It is 1951 in America, the second year of the Korean War. A studious, law-abiding, intense youngster from Newark, New Jersey, Marcus Messner, is beginning his sophomore year on the pastoral, conservative campus of Ohio's Winesburg College. And why is he there and not at a local college in Newark where he originally enrolled? Because his father, the sturdy, hard-working neighborhood butcher, seems to have gone mad- mad with fear and apprehension of the dangers of adult life, the dangers of the world, the dangers he sees in every corner for his beloved boy." (from front flap) A deep & disturbing later short novel by Philip Roth (1933-2018), the great, award-winning & prolific Jewish-American author whose writings have been enshrined in the Library of America series (since during his lifetime, a particular honor) along with his canonical contemporaries Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud et al. As noted elsewhere in front flap copy quoted above, this work is "...at once a startling departure from the haunted narratives of old age and experience in (Roth's) recent books and a powerful addition to his investigations of the impact of American history on the life of the vulnerable individual." This novel was the basis for the well-received 2016 film version starring Logan Lerman as the bedeviled young protagonist Marcus Messner & Sarah Gadon as Olivia Hutton, his very troubled first-love interest. Among other things, this novel (as faithfully depicted in the film version) is probably Roth's most memorable conjuring of pre-revolutionary sexual repression & its consequences since his legendary Portnoy's Complaint (1969, see our item No. 4756). Hardcover in unclipped first-issue dust jacket (with $26 price & "0908" printed on front flap), first edition, first printing as indicated by number sequence on copyright page. An essential collectible from the late oeuvre of the incomparable Philip Roth, in its rarest original form. Book in very fine condition with only a hint of rubbing to black blank front & rear covers; otherwise substantially mint inside & out. Dust jacket very fine with only a bit of rubbing & some faint scratching to front, back covers & spine; a few tiny bumps, creases at/near edges & corners of same. Very Fine / Very Fine. [Item #5512]

Price: $50.00