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White, Edmund (Author) & Sorin, Hubert (Artist).
OUR PARIS: SKETCHES FROM MEMORY.
New York City, NY:
Alfred A. Knopf,
1995.
Hardcover.
First Edition/First Printing.
122 pages.
As New/As New.
Signed. The author's account on subject. The first appearance of the title in the United States. Published in a small and limited print run as a hardcover original only. Precedes and should not be confused with the paperback edition. A lovely production by Alfred A. Knopf: Small-size volume format. Red hard boards with metallic-silver titles embossed on cover and spine, as issued. Text by Edmund White. Illustrations by Hubert Sorin. In ribbed pictorial DJ, which utilizes one of Hubert Sorin's sketches, and titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Presents one of the most autobiographical, most alluring, and most moving celebrations of Edmund White's adoptive, beloved, and legendary city. The author lived for the better part of his adult life (and at the peak of his creative powers) as an expatriate American, following in the footsteps of predecessors like Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, among countless other great figures. The book is charmingly illustrated with witty and delightful sketches of the city by one of its adoring residents, the immensely talented Hubert Sorin, an accomplished architect and artist, who was the author's lover until he died of AIDS in 1994. As Edmund White revealed in subsequent interviews, this gem of a book was a collaborative act of love. He wrote about his romance with Sorin (who left his French wife to live with White) in his masterly and elegiac novel, "The Married Man", where the married character is really two people: Hubert Sorin and Edmund White. Written in White's effortless, supple prose, which serves him well in this graceful celebration of life's most civilized pleasures, the greatest being Paris itself. A "must-have" title for Edmund White completists. This copy is prominently and beautifully signed in black pen on the title page by Edmund White. It is signed directly on the page, not on a tipped-in page, as many copies online are. At the time of the book's publication, Edmund White was based in Paris, suffering from AIDS, and believed he would never return to America. He was one of the first prominent figures to be diagnosed with the illness, and after more than twenty-five years, remains one of its longest-living survivors (through a cocktail regimen). This title has been out-of-print as a hardcover for a very long time. This is one of very few signed copies of the First American Edition still available online and has no flaws, a pristine beauty. A very scarce signed copy thus. 30 black-and-white plates. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1994 for "Genet". Anointed by Vladimir Nabokov as his American successor. One of the finest living American writers. A flawless copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER EDMUND WHITE TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0679441662. $50.00 |
