CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST.

UK,slim 8vo p/back,1st edn thus.[First published in the UK by METHUEN Paperbacks Ltd.,1979.This the first PALADIN/GRAFTON BOOKS issue.] FINE.No owner inscrptn and no price removal to rear cover - wrapped and protected from day of issue.Publisher's original,sharp-cornered - top,rear corner with a couple of faint,accidental corner creases excepted which have diminishingly affected page corners to/of pp241-272; bright,crisp,clean,colour pictorial artwork by Ean Taylor,illustrated front panel of dw/dj with orange+black lettering, sunned/faded orange title and bright black letters to white spine/backstrip,rear panel with white background to story precis and critics' reviews,with colour thumbnail front cover illustration repeated. Negligible shelf-wear,bumping,creasing to edges and corners - no nicks or tears present,NO reading creases to spine/backstrip.Top+fore-edges very lightly toned through ageing,but without any blemishes or thumbing; contents bright,tight,clean,solid and sound - no intentional dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners - unread, apart from my own collation.UK,slim 8vo p/back, 1st edn thus,7-272pp [paginated] includes an introduction by Paul Williams,20 chapters; plus [unpaginated] author's potted biog and critics' reviews,title page and a dedication.
In Dick's own opinion he regards this easily as the finest of his non-science fiction novels.Written by the author whilst living in Point Reyes,California.Shortly after it's completion,he married the woman who had inspired him to create Fay Hume and they lived together for the next five years.Like the ten other mainstream (non-science fiction) works in the previous five years,it went unpublished at the time it was written.In the sequence of Dick's work,this work was written before 'The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike' - see my book ID rja8975 for UK,p/back Original,1st edn - and the next book that Dick wrote was 'The Man in the High Castle' the Hugo-Award winning science fiction novel that ushered in the next stage of Dick's career.
Jack Isidore was a tyre regroover by trade,but his true vocation lay in collecting items of amazing information (did you know that the Sargasso Sea actually exists? that the Japanese are not really human beings?) and observing the behaviour of those around him from a detached, 'scientific' viewpoint.
His sister's husband had described Jack as a crap artist, but when he found himself homeless,Fay let him move into their luxury ranch house in Marin County,California.There Jack was able to play with the children - and bring his analytical turn of mind to bear on Fay's strange marriage to foul-mouthed factory owner Charley Hume . . .
'A funny,horribly accurate portrait of life in California in the 1950s' - ROLLING STONE.
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