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The 158-Pound Marriage
by IRVING, JOHN
- Used
- Fine
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Fine/Fine
- Seller
-
Potomac, Maryland, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
First Edition, First Printing. Irving's third book. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Blue and gray cloth boards, spine stamped in gilt. Dustjacket with original price of $5.95 on the inside front flap; with photo of Irving on the rear panel and 3 blurbs praising his first three books. Octavo. 245 pages. A fantastic copy.
Synopsis
The 158-Pound Marriage, author John Irving's third published novel, revolves around an unidentified narrator, a college professor, and a mediocre novelist. The narrator met his wife Utch, an orphaned survivor of WWII, in Vienna while doing research. They are a relatively happy couple; their family rounded out by two children. At a faculty party, they meet Severin Winter, a Viennese-born professor and coach of the college wrestling team, and his wife, Edith. The couple's interests (Edith is an aspiring fiction writer, and Severin has a commonality with Utch's upbringing in Austria) and resulting infatuations between the couples lead to after-dinner partner-swapping. At first, the swinging goes smoothly, but eventually, uneven feelings and obsessions throw the couples off track. The title, The 158-Pound Marriage , refers to the 158-pound weight class in wrestling, which Severin, the coach, feels is the most competitive. The book is small, only 176 pages, compared to Irving's later weighty tomes, like the 610 page The World According to Garp ( 1978) and The Cider House Rules (1985), which is 973 pages.
Read More: Identifying first editions of The 158-Pound Marriage
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Details
- Bookseller
- Grinning Cat Books
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 14720
- Title
- The 158-Pound Marriage
- Author
- IRVING, JOHN
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Fine
- Jacket Condition
- Fine
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First Edition
- Publisher
- Random House
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1974
- Weight
- 0.00 lbs
- Keywords
- AMERICAN LITERATURE
- Bookseller catalogs
- LITERATURE;
Terms of Sale
Grinning Cat Books
Fourteen (14) day return guarantee, for any reason, and we pay return shipping costs if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Grinning Cat Books
Biblio member since 2020
Potomac, Maryland
About Grinning Cat Books
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Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Octavo
- Another of the terms referring to page or book size, octavo refers to a standard printer's sheet folded four times, producing...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Gilt
- The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
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