THE HUMBLING

New York City, NY: Houghton And Mifflin, 2009. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/As New Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Houghton And Mifflin, 2009. Hardcover. Fine/As New. First Edition/First Printing. 145 pages. The author's twenty-sixth novel. Now considered a contemporary classic. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Philip Roth's "The Humbling". The third in Philip Roth's "Nemeses" cycle of short novels, which includes "Everyman" (2006) , "Indignation" (2008) , and "Nemesis" (2010) . A meditation on (and confrontation of) life-as-performance, that is, as humbling performance. A legendary actor feels his once-formidable powers suddenly deserting him and goes through a late-life, epic crisis. Roth writes what amounts to a spare and unsparing examination of the self. Throughout his entire oeuvre and especially so in his Late Period, Philip Roth's narratives on the vitality/mortality theme are "told with inimitable urgency, bravura, and gravity; all the ways that we convince ourselves of our solidity, all our life's performances - talent, love, sex, hope, energy, reputation - are stripped off" (Publisher's blurb) . In this sense, he (and the Rothian universe) reminds us, dare one say it, of both Shakespeare and Ingmar Bergman. Philip Roth died on May 22, 2018 of congestive heart failure, literally of heartbreak, at the age of 85. An absolute "must-have" title for Philip Roth collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Philip Roth. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. 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 rare signed copy thus. Six of Philip Roth's novels were selected as among the Top 20 works of American fiction of the last 25 years: "American Pastoral", "The Counterlife", "Operation Shylock", "Sabbath's Theater", "The Human Stain", and "The Plot Against America". One of the greatest writers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER PHILIP ROTH TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0547239696.