A Nice Literary Association
Paper Trail: Selected Prose, 1965–2003
Publication: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. First Edition.
Notes: A late-career collection of essays by a Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning poet and translator, inscribed to his friend Robert Gottlieb, an acclaimed editor at Knopf and the New Yorker. Gottleb and Howard were classmates at Columbia University.
In his memoir, Avid Reader, Gottlieb writes about his friendship with Howard. "Real life was at Columbia, not in the classrooms but in the surround, as I started meeting people I could talk to. The crucial encounter was with Dick Howard (now Richard, but never to me). He was a year older and a year ahead, but that never really registered... From the start, then, Dick and I were bound together by books. But also by other things—mostly, I suppose by shared tastes and interests (and snobberies)... We shared an aristocracy of taste that was acute, impassioned, and snobbish—perfect glue for a young friendship... Dick went on to become America's leading translator from the French (as well as a superb critic, teacher, and Pulitzer Prize–winning poet)."
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing, with a numberline ending in 1). A fine copy in a fine dust jacket. This copy is inscribed, "Our beginnings, dearest Bo, never know our 'ends' (though this is hardly that, except purposed), but follow this yellow brick road to an old union (if not unity) of minds. Lovingly, Richard. 2004 NYC." The book is also signed in full on the title page. A nice association between two important New York literary figures.
Item No: #364150
Price: $250