Description

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR, INSCRIBED BY JOHN BARTH

BARTH, John. The Sot-Weed Factor. Garden City: Doubleday, 1960. Octavo, original half yellow cloth, original dust jacket.

First edition of Barth’s satirical novel of colonial America, inscribed on the half title, “For Paul Jacobs, best wishes. John Barth, 10/81,” accompanied by a typed note initialed “JB.”

“Barth’s exuberant comic novel depicting the American colonial experience? is an accomplished pastiche of the 18th-century novel, which blends fact and fiction into a dizzying meditation on the relationship between history, imagination and the nature of storytelling” (Chronology of American Literature). “The book squares off at the Ph.D. candidate, with his view that history is somehow redemptive and that progress is the natural order of things. Our early national aspirations were just as squalid as those of the next nation’s. The only difference is that we prefer delusions to illusions, Mr. Barth tells us, and he uses the technique of a doctoral dissertation to give the coup-de-grace” (Books of the Century, 236). This copy with publisher’s promotional bookplate, and with a typed note initialed “JB” (apparently in response to the previous owner’s request for an inscription) in its original envelope. Dust jacket designed by celebrated illustrator Edward Gorey. Bruccoli & Clark II:27.

Book fine, bright dust jacket near-fine with small vertical chip to front panel, short repaired closed tear to front flap. An excellent copy inscribed by Barth.