ACT OF DARKNESS [WELDON KEES AND LARRY MCMURTRY'S COPY]
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, 368 pages; G/Fair; spine beige with black; dust jacket protected with a mylar covering, price uncut '$2.50,' while intact, the jacket suffers from numerous flaws, including thick and scotch tape to the interior, rubbing and wear along extremities; dust jacket flaps were at one point glued to the endpapers, and while they have been carefully detached, the majority of the flaps are covered with glue and paper; spine lightly cocked; very light toning to text block; no marginalia;
ex-library, 'Timms & Howard, Inc' Circulating Libraries in Syracuse, N.Y., with a stamp to the ffep; First Edition, First Printing, with Scribner's 'A' and seal;
Ink ownership name and date to ffep, 'Weldon Kees Chicago 1940', pencil ownership name and date to ffep, 'Larry McMurtry 1979'; sfep with ink ownership and date of 'Frederick J. Hoffman The University of Wisconsin December 18, 1950';
A fantastic association copy, linking two influential American novelists and a professor who studied their like.;
CX consignment; shelved case 2.
1346977
Shelved Dupont Bookstore
Sold
NOTES
Bishop's novel Act of Darkness was based on the true story of the rape of a prominent Charles Town social figure by a local Charles Town man.
Harry Weldon Kees (1914-1955) was an American poet, painter, literary critic, novelist, playwright, jazz pianist, short story writer, and filmmaker. While he had been published in journals and literary magazines, his first book was not published until 1943. His paintings were often shown with and compared to abstract expressionists, including William de Kooning. In the introduction to Kees's Collected Poems (1960), Donald Justice called Kees "among the three or four best of his generation...Kees is original in one of the few ways that matter: he speaks to us in a voice or, rather, in a particular tone of voice which we have never heard before." Unfortunately for his work, he is known as much for his mysterious disappearance as his artistic endeavors.
Frederick J. Hoffman (1909-1967) was a professor who taught at Ohio State University, University of Oklahoma, University of Wisconsin-Madison (1948-1960), and University of California, Riverside. The author of twenty-one books and approximately 250 essays, his primary field of interest was American literature, especially that of the modern era. He was particularly interested in psychoanalysis and modern literature, and in the literary and cultural history of the 1920s. He had extensive correspondence with various literary figures of the 1920s, to 40s, including Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Ezra Pound, Lionel Trilling and Thomas Mann.
Larry McMurtry (1936-2021) was an American novelist, essayist, bookseller, and screenwriter, perhaps best known for 'Terms of Endearment' and 'Lonesome Dove.';