Spending: A Utopian Divertimento

New York: Scribner, 1998. First Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Near Fine. 6x1x10. Signed by author. First edition. Signed by author without inscription. A very nice copy. 1998 Hard Cover. 301 pp. One of two jacket variants (no priority), this one with button-down shirt on front panel and purple top on rear panel (the other variant reverses these). "An erotic and highly intelligent new novel about women, art, sex, and money—from the award-winning author of the New York Times bestsellers Final Payments and Men and Angels. Newsweek has called Mary Gordon a "humane, masterly novelist whose great gift is making us care about her people."Monica Szabo, a middle-aged, moderately successful painter, encounters B, a wealthy commodities broker who collects her work. B volunteers to be her muse, offering her everything that male artists have always had to produce great art: time, space, money, and sex. (He is even willing to pose for her.) Soon after she and B become lovers, Monica starts work on a controversial new series of paintings based on her perception that the deposed Christs of Renaissance art were not dead, but post-orgasmic. The show of her new work, championed by the critics and picketed by the Christian Right, makes her a media darling and makes her rich. B, meanwhile, suffers a sudden loss of fortune. Will she take care of him as he took care of her? How does he handle his loss of power? How does she? What happens in the bedroom? Passionate, provocative, and highly engaging, Spending displays Gordon's maverick feminism, her extraordinary wit, and her unique perspectives on art, money, men, sex—and the desires of women.