muse
by galassi, jonathan
- Used
- Hardcover
- Condition
- See description
- ISBN 10
- 0385353340
- ISBN 13
- 9780385353342
- Seller
-
RIVER FALLS, Wisconsin, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Hard Cover. Knopf. Clean Text, No Water Damage, Strong Binding. Unless Listed in this decription, VG or Better.
Reviews
On May 27 2015, CloggieDownunder said:
“It was not where or who you came from but what you did with your own grab bag of advantages and disadvantages that made you remarkable. He’d learned early on in his work that the real writers hadn’t gone to Yale or Oxford; they came from everywhere - or nowhere – and their determination to dig down, to matter, whatever the odds against them, was the only key to their succeeding”
Muse is the first novel by American poet, translator and publisher of iconic Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Jonathan Galassi. The only literature-appreciating member of his decidedly non-literary family, a teen-aged Paul Dukach takes refuge in Pages, the local bookstore. When proprietress, Morgan Dickerman introduces him to the poetry of Ida Perkins, it is the beginning of a life-long passion. He devours her work and becomes a fanatical expert on all there is to know about this elusive woman who was”… literally enamored with art – arguably less so with the individuals who created it, who often turned out to have inconvenient needs and egos of their own, which on occasion dwarfed even hers”
On graduation from college, Paul eventually finds employment with independent publisher, Purcell and Stern, learning a great deal from his boss, the brash but knowledgeable Homer Stern: “Sexual activity for Homer was an index of moral fallibility and vitality at one and the same time. It didn’t matter what people did; he was sure they did something illicit. It meant they were alive, like him. Maybe he was simply looking for companionship in transgression”. Paul also gets to know Stern’s arch-rival, Sterling Wainwright, Ida’s second cousin and publisher of all her works.
On the way home from a European book fair (“Frankfurt [Book Fair] was anything but social; it was carnivorousness at its most rapacious, with a genteel European veneer. The dressy clothes, the parties, the cigars, the jacked-up prices in the hotels and restaurants, the disappointing food were all of a piece. It was exhausting and repetitive and depressing – and no one in publishing with any sense or style would have missed it for the world”), Paul finally gets the opportunity to meet his idol, now reclusive for many years in Venice.
He finds that Venice “… wasn’t dead at all. Venice was a Platonic beehive buzzing with covert vitality. Its fabulous gilt-encrusted past wasn’t the point; it was how the past kept gnawing away at the present, digesting and fermenting and reforming it, and extruding it into the future”. And for some reason, Ida takes him into her confidence, entrusting him with an explosive secret. “Ida had surely been no saint…Ida had been guileless and wilful, passionate and snobbish, generous, great-hearted, self-seeking, myopic, petty” This he knew, but now he faces a dilemma.
Galassi’s extensive experience in both the publishing industry and as a poet are apparent on every page. He peoples his novel with a cast of highly believable authors, editors and publishers that, no doubt, bear more than a passing resemblance to figures in the actual literary industry. Of his publishers, he says: “Their authors and their work had been the ultimate raison d’etre for whatever they themselves had done. Beyond their petty self-aggrandizing, Homer and Sterling and their kind had been true to their writers’ gifts. …Their authors were their gods…”. He completes the effect with a bibliography of Ida’s works and books about her. This is a quite debut novel, one that will have a broad appeal, but in particular to those involved in the industry. Outstanding.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Sixth Chamber Used Books/Fox Den Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 1480326
- Title
- muse
- Author
- galassi, jonathan
- Format/Binding
- Hard Cover
- Book Condition
- Used
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 0385353340
- ISBN 13
- 9780385353342
- Publisher
- Knopf
- Place of Publication
- New York
- This edition first published
- 2015
Terms of Sale
Sixth Chamber Used Books/Fox Den Books
Books not matching listed description may returned for full refund within 30 days of original sale.
About the Seller
Sixth Chamber Used Books/Fox Den Books
Biblio member since 2005
RIVER FALLS, Wisconsin
About Sixth Chamber Used Books/Fox Den Books
Sixth Chamber Used Books is located in St. Paul, MN. Currently, our inventory consists of over 60,000 hardcover and paperback books in most major categories.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- VG
- Very Good condition can describe a used book that does show some small signs of wear - but no tears - on either binding or...