STATES OF DESIRE: TRAVELS IN GAY AMERICA

New York City, NY: E. P. Dutton, 1980. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: E. P. Dutton, 1980. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 336 pages. Book-length account on subject. One of the most important books of the 20th century. Promotional Copy of the First Hardcover Edition. Promotional Pamphlet laid-in. 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 rare. Presents Edmund White's "States of Desire: Travels In Gay America". His ground-breaking - and unsurpassed - account of America After Stonewall (1969) and Before AIDS (1980), on the verge of both unprecedented change and calamity. By the time he wrote the book, Edmund White was already established as the finest gay American writer of his (and our) time. His book vividly captures the vitality and brilliance as well as the anxieties and disappointments of gay life. In order to do so, he did what the great French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville ("Democracy In America") did in the 19th century: He travelled throughout the country, talking to people he had never met before in cities and towns. When it was first published in 1980, one of the accusations hurled against White was that he went out of his way to find gays in every nook and cranny of his United States; his critics actually believed that some states were "gay-free" (a la Iran and the Middle East). The book remains a "must-read" for educated Americans, not just gay readers, reinforcing one of the points he presciently makes about post-Stonewall America: The emergence of gays as a political force. White asserts that the Reagan Administration was slow to respond to, indeed denied, the very existence of AIDS in order to undermine the power gays had gained in every aspect of American life: In Hollywood, the arts, business, religion, and most ominously of all, the insular beltway itself. Still, his main - and lifelong - subject is not political power, but the power of desire. There is no other living American writer who captures what it means to desire another human being and what one is capable of doing, both good and evil, to attain that desire as movingly as Edmund White does. An absolute "must-have" title for Edmund White collectors. This is a Promotional Copy. Laid-in is the pristine and lovely Promotional Pamphlet. It is very prominently and beautifully signed and inscribed in black ink-pen on the half-title page by the author: "To Jack, with fraternal love, Ed White". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. The recipient, who is named, was unmistakably a close friend of the author. This title is a late-modern classic. As far as we know, this is the only such signed and inscribed copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws or are subsequent printings. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1994 for "Genet: A Biography". Anointed by Vladimir Nabokov as his American successor. One of the finest writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER EDMUND WHITE TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 9998062365.