THE BOOK OF GETTING EVEN

Hanover, New Hampshire: Steerforth Press, 2008. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. Hanover, New Hampshire: Steerforth Press, 2008. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 166 pages. The author's second novel. One of Benjamin Taylor's finest achievements. 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 by a small, independent press. The First Edition is now rare. Presents Benjamin Taylor's "The Book of Getting Even". A tour-de-force, pulled off in a mere 166 pages. "Among the most original novels I have read in recent years" (Philip Roth) . "Gabriel Geismar grows up in mid-20th-century New Orleans as the only son of a rabbi, maturing into a brilliant mathematician who is gay. Gabriel meets the twins Daniel and Marghie Hundert, the children of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Gregor Hundert, one of the so-called 'Hungarian Eight', who immigrated to America and worked with Robert Oppenheimer on the bomb. Fascinated by the stately, Old World professor and his kindly wife, Lilo, and deeply attached to Marghie, a cinema-obsessed vegetarian, and Daniel, an angry counterculture figure" (Publishers Weekly) . Benjamin Taylor is well-known as a scholar, literary critic, editor, and essayist, which multi-faceted achievement may have (negatively) affected his reception as a novelist. As a "nonfiction" writer so-called, he is a major figure: "Into The Open: Reflections On Genius And Modernity" (1995) and "Proust: The Search" (2015) , among others, are regarded as masterpieces. But as a serious novelist, he is unjustly underrated, a so-called "writer's writer" with an esoteric following, admired by Philip Roth. An absolute "must-have" title for Benjamin Taylor collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the half-title page by Benjamin Taylor. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. Laid-in is a pristine copy of the Souvenir Material of the event during which his signature was obtained. 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. One of the most brilliant writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER BENJAMIN TAYLOR TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 1586421433.