STORE FRONT: The Disappearing Face of New York - Rare Book Insider
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Murray, James T.; Murray, Karla L.

STORE FRONT: The Disappearing Face of New York

Gingko, (Corte Madera, CA): 2008
First edition of this monograph on New York City's remaining storefronts, arranged by neighborhood - with vibrant full page photos (including a few fold-outs), accompanied by short histories gathered from interviews with the owners. 11.5'' x 12.75''. Original grey paper boards, white lettered front board and spine. In original photographic wrappers, no price (as issued). Grey typographic endpapers. Illustrated in color throughout. 336 pages. Jacket with some light rubbing and edgewear. Small bump to spine foot. Interior bright.
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LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

García Marquez, Gabriel Signed limited first English edition of García Marquez's ode to the persistence of romantic memory. Gorgeously designed edition of the author's acclaimed novel, first published in Spanish in 1985. The English translation was praised by Thomas Pynchon to the utmost reaches of superlative adjectives, and was the recipient of less frenzied but still glowing compliments from Michiko Kakutani. García Marquez's theme - romantic love that never fades, vows never broken; or, seen another way, the nightmare impossibility of permanently dismissing a determined suitor - struck Pynchon as "revolutionary," though his judgment that working in "love's vernacular" is a "daring step for any writer" may raise eyebrows among those familiar with genres and modes of writing in which these themes and treatments have never fallen out of fashion. García Marquez himself once said, with perhaps greater perception, that the revolutionary part of writing consists simply of doing it well: and he did. A beautiful copy of this signed limited US edition, which preceded the UK edition by several months. 9.25'' x 6.25''. Original quarter pink cloth with black cloth boards, gilt-stamped spine. In original decorative black lace-printed mylar protective jacket. With original yellow and black slipcase. Bright pink endpapers, fore-edge machine deckle. Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. [10], 348, [4] pages. Signed by Garcia Marquez at colophon and numbered 107 of 350 signed and numbered copies of the first edition. Bright, sharp, clean, and tight overall. Fine in fine jacket and slipcase.
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  • $5,000
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THREE LIVES

Stein, Gertrude First edition of Stein's masterpiece of modernism - stories of three working-class Baltimorean women, written under the influence of Flaubert and Cezanne. By the time her first book was completed, Stein was well educated, well-traveled, and well connected in the art world, sitting for a Picasso portrait in 1906 even as she composed THREE LIVES with self-consciously painterly technique. Though retrospectively classed as one of her most accessible works, the book was difficult for contemporaries, none of whom consented to publish it without being paid, and even the vanity press she settled on was hesitant to accept Stein's money without trying to correct her "pretty bad slips in grammar" (Beal). "I want to say frankly that I think you have written a very peculiar book and it will be hard thing to make people take it seriously," wrote Grafton publisher Frederick Hitchcock, who hadn't seen anything yet. In later years James Weldon Johnson acknowledged "Melanchtha" as perhaps the first instance of a white author writing a "story of love" between Black characters with humanity and dignity; not to be outdone in praise for her own works by anyone, Stein herself called it "the first definite step away from the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century in literature." Of THREE LIVES as a whole, "it would perhaps be enough to state that it is a masterpiece" (Carl Van Vechten). A lovely copy, difficult to find in collectible condition. 7.25'' x 5''. Original gilt-lettered blue cloth. No dust jacket as issued. 279, [1] pages. Light edgewear to boards and fore-edge, minor soil to top edge of text block. Hinges starting. Spine lightly sunned.
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THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN

Baldwin, James First edition of this essay on the Atlanta Child Murders, which a contemporary review at the time called "nothing less than an update on the progress-or lack of it-of the American Dream." Baldwin first began researching the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979-1981 on assignment from Walter Lowe, the first Black editor at PLAYBOY, where an earlier version of this essay was first published and won the magazine's Best Nonfiction award for 1981. Sensitive to his burden of responsibility to victims, survivors, and the truth, Baldwin rejected the creative license employed by Truman Capote and his many lesser true-criminal successors, explaining: "Tolstoy has every right to throw Anna Karenina under the train. [.] But the life of a living human being, no one writes it. You cannot deal with another human being as though he were a fictional creation." Rather, EVIDENCE is a deep examination of the still-unresolved crimes and investigation in the context of the many failures and spoiled promises of a post-Civil-Rights-era South, the broken relations between the police and the Black community of Atlanta, and the fatal corruption of city administrators and the American justice system. 8.25'' x 5.5''. Original quarter black cloth, black paper boards, silver-lettered spine. In original unclipped ($11.95) glossy color typographic dust jacket with photo of Baldwin by J. Phil Samuell on rear panel. Fore-edge machine deckle. xvi, 125, [1] pages. Purple printed review slip, listing publication date as October 28, 1985 and price as $11.95, laid in. Bright, sharp, and sound. b.