Description

“SOMETHING APPROACHING THE SUBLIME”: THE SWEET HEREAFTER, SIGNED BY BANKS

BANKS, Russell. The Sweet Hereafter. New York: Harper-Collins, 1991. Octavo, original half blue cloth, original dust jacket. 

First edition, signed by Banks on the title page.

Banks’ widely praised novel, which became the basis for an acclaimed 1997 film starring Ian Holm, sprang from the author’s reflections on several tragic news stories, “including an incident in Texas in which a school bus plunged into a flooded quarry. ‘I was struck, in following that story,’ [Banks] said, ‘by the voices of the survivors and of the parents, by their struggle to make some sense of this awful event. I was reminded that the death of someone close is significant beyond telling?’ While fiction cannot dissipate the pain of loss, he said, it does ‘dramatize the weight of such moments, lending significance to the struggles of ordinary people to deal with them” (New York Times). “This catastrophe was villainless? This fact, and Banks’ subtle handling of it, are what lift the novel up out of ordinary gritty realism toward something approaching the sublime” (Chronology of American Literature).

A fine signed copy.