Loot of the Month - May 2019

Three first editions this month. The 2019 Pulitzer was announced in April, and Richard Ford's Overstory won the fiction prize. I've been looking out for a copy but have decided to wait and see for now. So Pulitzers get obscenely cheap over the years, and I'm not sure about Overstory, or 2018's winner Less for that matter.

Chris Rush's The Light Years is a non-fiction selected by the A Capella First Edition club. I don't collect non-fiction first edition, but am willing to tolerate the odd few astrays from a subscription book club, but will bow out if the selection gets annoying. This is not a judgement on the book, which I'm sure is very good (an assumption since I haven't read it). It is more of an indictment against the book club.

Then there is Neil Gaiman's American Gods. This is a deliberate deviation from my literary collection, but when a copy of the limited signed first edition came up at auction, I couldn't help snap up this acclaimed fantasy novel. Gaiman is a British, so the question of which is the true first edition - the UK release by Headline, or US one by William Morrow - comes relevant. I chose to go with the US first edition. After all, it is American Gods. There is a separate slipcased deluxe limited signed edition issued, aka the author's preferred text with 12,000 additional words, by Hill Point in 2003 that should be distinguished from the true first edition.

Finally, a lamentable delight, which is the first edition of Flannery O'Connor's 1972 Complete Stories. O'Connor passed away in 1964, and this posthumous publication won the National Book Award for its gifted author who was sort of overlooked in her lifetime. I bought this from an eBay auction, on which the seller claimed that the book was Near Fine with a sunned spine as the only major problem. The auction was not well received, received 3 bids in total, and I got the book for $27.51, a bargain for 555 pages of crafted stories. Except that when the book arrived, there is a deep closed tear at the joint of the back flap that the seller conveniently omitted in the description and skillfully avoided in the 5 pictures provided. Sure, the book is still a bargain regardless, except that this is not the point for a book collector. I'm perfectly happy to pay a premium for pristine copy of a first edition, and expects book sellers to be accurate in their description. The fact that the price is so low is fortuitous and in no way absolves the seller's mispresentation, whether deliberate or negligent. This is the collector's lament. It is never about refunds. I expressed by displeasure with a bad rating for the seller on eBay.