FREEDOM

New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 562 pages. The author's fourth novel. One of the best American novels of our time. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a regular first print run as a hardcover original only that sold out shortly after publication. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom". His first novel since "The Corrections" (2001) more than ten years ago. The great novelist Charles Baxter has observed that Jonathan Franzen is writing as if literary Modernism and Post-Modernism never happened, that his predecessor-models are Saul Bellow/contemporary realism on the one hand and Leo Tolstoy/the grand 19th-century novel on the other. While sometimes over-reaching, the praise lavished upon Franzen is still well-deserved. His novel describes, brilliantly, bitingly, and in a way that none of his contemporaries has, how the abstract idea called Freedom (a religious belief every American holds dear regardless of political persuasion) and the concrete freedoms every American feels entitled to (pretty much every modern entitlement: Sex and love, happiness and fulfillment, success, wealth, fame, power) permeate American society for good, not-so-good, and bad. In Franzen's worldview, a correction is long-overdue. An absolute "must-have" title for Jonathan Franzen collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Jonathan Franzen. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. It comes with a rare and pristine copy of the lovely Souvenir Material of the event during which his signature was obtained. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce signed copy thus. Selected by The New Yorker Magazine as one of "Twenty Writers for the 21st Century", a selection that was prescient because he had not written anything in almost a decade. Winner of the National Book Award in 2001 for "The Corrections". One of the most important and most influential writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER JONATHAN FRANZEN TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0374158460.