PLAYERS
Rare uncorrected proof of Delillo's fifth novel, sent by his editor to Joan Didion.
Very good.
Price: $2,500.00
PLAYERS
"I do hope you like it." — editor Lee Goener to Didion
Though in many ways their projects were very different (Didion's West Coast counterculture elegy, Delillo's East Coast paranoia), during the 1970s these contemporaries, both of whose fiction investigate politics and power, were often mentioned in the same breath. They shared an agent (the legendary Lois Wallace) and Delillo has spoken highly of Didion: "there's the work of Robert Stone and Joan Didion, who are both writers of conscience and painstaking workers of the sentence and the paragraph [...] These [...] writers show us that the novel is still spacious enough and brave enough to encompass enormous areas of experience" (quoted in Begley). Sent to Didion more than two months before publication (May, 1977) with a letter from Knopf editor Lee Goener, who writes: "It's also true that Lois Wallace who represents Don, said it was okay to send it. In fact, she said she would be curious to know what you think of the book." Early Delillo proofs are scarce, and rare with such a significant association.
Read more: Begley, "The Art of Fiction: Don Delillo," The Paris Review.
The Object
First edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977. 10.5'' x 5.25''. Original blue printed wrappers. [4], 138, [2] pages. With original typed letter signed, from Delillo's editor Lee Goerner, 150 words approx., dated May 26, 1977. Toning, sunning to spine. Minor edgewear, cup ring (Didion's?) to front cover. Else sound.
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