Apple, Max

Zip: A Novel of the Left and the Right

ISBN: 0670796921
New York, NY: The Viking Press, 1978. First Edition. Hardcover. Signed & dated by Max Apple. "So what's a nice Jewish boy like Ira Goldstein doing managing a flashy Puerto Rican middleweight named Jesus? What is his mother, a vital but previously chaste widow, doing in the brutal arms of Solomon, the scrap-metal king of Detroit? How is Ira's skeptical grandmother going to cope with a boxer in the house who is also a Communist? And what, for toppers, is J. Edgar Hoover doing in a chair suspended over a boxing ring in Havana, Cuba? Charge it all to zip. Zip, an elusive form of human energy that makes hearts leap, cash flow, ideologies tremble, the world go round." (from front flap) The second novel by Max Apple (b. 1941), the acclaimed & popular Michigan-born Jewish-American novelist, short story writer & academician whose alma mater is the University of Michigan here in Ann Arbor. A topical, imaginative & hilarious yarn- as the beloved author Tom Robbins (see esp. our item No. 3726) writes in his laudatory blurb on dust jacket back cover, "Zip is a zap. They ought to name a town in North Dakota after it." Hardcover in unclipped first-issue dust jacket (with $8.95 price & "0778" printed on front flap), first edition, first printing (though neither are noted on copyright page). On blank front endpaper, Apple has hand-signed & dated in brown ink: (signed) Max Apple/ 4-18-85." An essential & rewarding Apple collectible in its rarest original form, further enriched with the author's signature & date fairly close to publication. Book in fine condition with very slight rubbing, fading & faint scratching to front, back covers & spine (yellow, black letters at spine completely bright & intact); mild wear & a few tiny bumps, creases at edges & corners of same; slight bend of spine toward front; mild-to-moderate spotting to edges of text block; remainder mark in brown felt-tip ink across much width of lower edge of same near spine (another indication of first edition/printing along with jacket). Interior very fine with only very slight bleeding of spots noted above onto edges/blank margins of a few page leaves. Dust jacket near-fine with mild rubbing, browning, faint scratching & occasional spotting to front, back covers, spine & flaps; mild wear & some tiny bumps, chips, creases & very short, closed tears at edges & corners of same with miniscule loss of paper. Fine / Near Fine. [Item #5536]

Price: $50.00