Inscribed first printing of this tragic cult crime novel that Michael Chabon praised as "[b]eautiful, powerful, even masterful," Oakley Hall's second book and the first published under his own name.
Very good plus in very good plus dust jacket.
Price: $3,000.00
"He had never understood what was wrong and what was right, good and bad, what he wanted and did not want; he had never been able to solve the knotted snarl of his life because of the very complexity of that snarl, because of his indecision, because of the double responsibility he felt, and when, finally he had become man enough to solve it, it was too late, and too many forces had been set in motion."
Before his tenure as a beloved western writer, Oakley Hall turned his pen to crime and tragedy. Though best known as an important West Coast writer, "a literary heir to fellow California writers like Wallace Stegner" (NEW YORK TIMES), Oakley Hall spent a pivotal few years in Iowa. Hall inscribed this copy of SO MANY DOORS in Iowa City, where he was attending the University of Iowa as a master's student and teaching – it was published in the same year he graduated. Oakley would go on to teach Ann Rice, Amy Tan, Richard Ford, among others, but this his second book remains scarce — and rare signed. Long considered something of a lost classic, it was republished in 2018 as part of the respected Hard Case Crime series. An important stepping stone in the career of the Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Read more: William Grimes, "Oakley Hall, 87, Novelist Attuned to the Old West, Is Dead," The New York Times 16 May 2008.
First edition. New York: Random House, (1950). 8'' x 5.25''. Original brown patterned boards. Original unclipped ($3.00) three-color pictorial dust jacket. Blue topstain. 302 pages. Inscribed by Hall to front flyeleaf "Best wishes / to / Stacy Jackson / Oakley/ Iowa City 1950." Owner names and address to front pastedown, dated July 14, 1950. Two newspaper clippings tipped onto front pastedown. Jacket with some edgewear, mild chipping; 1" closed tear to upper edge. Topstain a bit faded. Binding with light edgewear, slight offsetting to endpapers. Clean.
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