THE SHORT-TIMERS
Rare inscribed first edition of the ex-Marine's brief and brutal semi-autobiographical novel — basis for Stanley Kubrick's FULL METAL JACKET.
Near fine in a near fine jacket.
Price: $3,000.00
THE SHORT-TIMERS
"Our rifle is only a tool; it is a hard heart that kills."
Hasford joined the Marine Corps in 1966, shortly after having "refused to graduate from high school" because he "didn't want to validate what they were doing." Assigned to a North Carolina base as a military journalist, he applied to go to Vietnam — with only ten months left of service — out of curiosity; while still there, he joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War and contributed a poem to the first anthology of writings by veterans of that war.
During the several post-Marine years of writing THE SHORT-TIMERS, Hasford supported himself as a used bookstore clerk, editor of fetish magazines, and sometime roommate of Harlan Ellison, who had previously advised Hasford to give up and get out of the writing business (Ross). The manuscript endured several rounds of rejection due to subject matter most publishers then considered "box office poison" before its eventual acceptance by Harper. More good fortune followed with Kubrick's purchase of the film rights; Hasford struggled for and eventually won a co-writing credit for the FULL METAL JACKET screenplay, which closely replicates much of the novel's harrowing boot camp sequence. Especially rare signed (given Hasford's premature death in 1993), a exceptional copy of "the best work of fiction about the Vietnam War" (Newsweek).
Read more: Lewis, "The Several Battles of Gustav Hasford," Los Angeles Times Magazine
The Object
First printing. New York: Harper & Row, (1979). 8.25'' x 5.5''. Original quarter black cloth with red boards. Black endpapers. In original price-clipped pictorial dust jacket by John Sposato. 154 pages. Inscribed by Hasford on the half-title page: "for my friend / Bob / from Gus / Gustav Hasford / Silverlake Sept. 18, 1982." Some very faint soil to top edge of textblack. Trace sunning to jacket spine. Else bright, clean, and sharp.
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