Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different
The Collected Stories of William Goyen
by William Goyen
- Used
- Hardcover
- Signed
- first
- Condition
- Very Good in Very Good- dust jacket
- ISBN 10
- 0385007345
- ISBN 13
- 9780385007344
- Seller
-
Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
E-003: Doubleday & Co.. Very Good in Very Good- dust jacket. 1975. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Hardcover. 8vo. Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1975. 296 pgs. First Edition/First Printing. Signed and inscribed by William Goyen on the half-title page to George Plimpton. DJ has light shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks, binding tight and solid, boards lightly rubbed and worn. Thirty years and 26 short stories of William Goyen, nineteen of them previously published in Ghost and Flesh and The Faces of Blood Kindred. Several of the best among them--"The White Rooster," "The Letter in the Cedarchest," "Figure Over the Town"--also appeared in last year's Selected Writings of William Goyen. Sometimes his narrator is a traveling man gone up north to New York City (where Goyen was a book editor for many years) or over to Europe, but it takes only the slightest suggestion, say a glimpse of a "Moss Rose" on an urban sidewalk, to carry him home to East Texas. He says in his preface that "for me, story telling is a rhythm. . . This pulse that beats in the material of life." He has taken the ringing speech of his kith and kin and created out of it a style, a place, a state of mind that is distinctly Goyen country. The impetus for his writing, he admits, is homesickness. Which may account for the mournful, crooning tone he adopts, as well as the recurring thematic search for "The Faces of Blood Kindred." Orphans abound--like the son of "Pore Perrie" doomed to wander yet always return--as do ghosts and every manner of enchanted being. Goyen's community of barely literate folk continually defy their own down-to-earth gravity (like Flagpole Moody whose forty-day vigil is a mystery to all and sundry). Sisters, husbands and children alternately are starved or stifled in their bonds and all would concur with the pensive grandson of "Old Wildwood" who learns "how melancholy and grand the history of relations was." These are hypnotic tales, indeed they seem almost somniloquous, as if the memories of childhood had to be enshrined by an increase of out-of-time otherworldliness. This book is Goyen's gift to his people and his inheritance. E-03; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 296 pages; Signed by Author .
Reviews
(Log in or Create an Account first!)
Details
- Bookseller
- Last Exit Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 60636
- Title
- The Collected Stories of William Goyen
- Author
- William Goyen
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good in Very Good- dust jacket
- Edition
- First Edition; First Printing
- ISBN 10
- 0385007345
- ISBN 13
- 9780385007344
- Publisher
- Doubleday & Co.
- Place of Publication
- E-003
- Date Published
- 1975
Terms of Sale
Last Exit Books
All sales considered final. All items described to the best of my ability. Returns considered if sent back within 10 days of reciept with an email explanation sent to me first or if the item fails to match description. Refunds processed upon the reciept of the book.
�
About the Seller
Last Exit Books
Biblio member since 2005
Charlottesville, Virginia
About Last Exit Books
Please call ahead if you are visiting. Also, please have the title or number of the book that you before you come to visit. Sorry, but no browsing.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- Inscribed
- When a book is described as being inscribed, it indicates that a short note written by the author or a previous owner has been...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...