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The Naked and the Dead
by Mailer, Norman
- Used
- Hardcover
- Signed
- Condition
- Very good minus/fair
- Seller
-
Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Rinehart and Company, 1948. Later printing. Hardcover. Very good minus/fair. SIGNED. 721pp. Octavo [21.5 cm] Black textured paper covered boards with a white ink stamped title and 2 single ruled lines on the spine. The spine is rolled, and the edges of the spine and covers are abraded. There are several small splits in the backstrip at the foot. In a worn, price-clipped dust jacket, with 4 pieces of tape backing long tears in the front panel and the jacket's spine. Signed edition of the author's highly successful, and Pulitzer Prize winning, first book that was based on the author's own wartime experiences. Signed by Mailer on the title page.
"I came out of the Army with an idea for a novel about a long patrol, an idea which had been bound in its origins to a mountain which was to serve as both an actual mass of stone and as a symbolic base for the book. The original conception was allegorical. The mountain was a consciously ambiguous symbol, something too complex, too tangible, to be defined by language." - Norman Mailer.
"I came out of the Army with an idea for a novel about a long patrol, an idea which had been bound in its origins to a mountain which was to serve as both an actual mass of stone and as a symbolic base for the book. The original conception was allegorical. The mountain was a consciously ambiguous symbol, something too complex, too tangible, to be defined by language." - Norman Mailer.
Synopsis
Acclaimed as a successful expression of the futility of war, Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead follows the story of an army platoon of foot soldiers fighting for the possession of the Japanese-held island of Anopopei during World War II. The novel, which embodies wartime disillusionment, is partly based on Mailer’s own experiences with the 112th Cavalry in the Pacific. Through its four parts, The Naked and the Dead addresses themes of loneliness, death of fear and dying, and brotherhood. The novel is written in gritty, journalistic detail. However, this tone was dialed back as publishers persuaded Mailer to use to euphemism “fug” in lieu of the mother of all curse words — the “F” word — in his novel. The Naked and the Dead sold 200,000 copies in its first three months and was a New York Times best seller for over a year. Despite some controversy among critics, the novel remains important in American literature. The Naked and the Dead is ranked 51st on Modern Library’s “100 Best” English-language novels of the 20th century. The novel was later adapted into a film of the same name in 1958.
Read More: Identifying first editions of The Naked and the Dead
Reviews
On May 21 2016, a reader said:
this is a book of the month issue
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Details
- Bookseller
- Ken Sanders Rare Books, ABAA
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 36510
- Title
- The Naked and the Dead
- Author
- Mailer, Norman
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very good minus
- Jacket Condition
- fair
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- Later printing
- Publisher
- Rinehart and Company
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1948
- Keywords
- Signed; Literature; Nobel Prize; War
Terms of Sale
Ken Sanders Rare Books, ABAA
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About the Seller
Ken Sanders Rare Books, ABAA
Biblio member since 2006
Salt Lake City, Utah
About Ken Sanders Rare Books, ABAA
Ken Sanders Rare Books is a full service antiquarian bookshop in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah. We carry an ever-changing inventory of art, ephemera, maps, photography, and postcards in addition to a vast selection of used and rare books along with a few new books. We actively purchase and appraise books in all fields.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Rolled
- rolled spine or spine rolled. Damage to a book created by pressure to the spine making it fold or crease in the cover. Damage...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Title Page
- A page at the front of a book which may contain the title of the book, any subtitles, the authors, contributors, editors, the...
- 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....
- Octavo
- Another of the terms referring to page or book size, octavo refers to a standard printer's sheet folded four times, producing...
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