2006, ISBN: 9783406393358

Gebundene Ausgabe

London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1979. BR3 - A first UK edition hardcover book SIGNED by author on a laid in bookplate/card from the 2006 Texas Book Festival in Austin in very good conditi… Mehr…

London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1979. BR3 - A first UK edition hardcover book SIGNED by author on a laid in bookplate/card from the 2006 Texas Book Festival in Austin in very good condition in very good dust jacket that is mylar protected. Dust jacket has less than half inch tears with chipping on the top of the back inside flap and back top left corner, some wrinkling and chipping on the edges and corners, some foxing, old price label on the front inside flap, discoloration, and light shelf wear. Book cocked, some light smudge and stains on the page edges, light discoloration and shelf wear. Re-issue of his famous novel. First Published in Great Britain by William Heinemann Ltd in 1979. 8.75"x5.5", 179 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, patrician manner, and polished style of writing. Vidal was born into a political family; his maternal grandfather, Thomas Pryor Gore, served as United States senator from Oklahoma (1907-1921 and 1931-1937). Vidal himself was a Democratic Party politician who twice sought elected office; first to the United States House of Representatives (New York, 1960), then to the U.S. Senate (California, 1982). As a political commentator and essayist, Vidal's principal subject was the history of the United States and its society, especially how the militaristic foreign policy reduced the country to a decadent empire. His political and cultural essays were published in The Nation, the New Statesman, the New York Review of Books, and Esquire magazines. As a public intellectual, Gore Vidal's topical debates on sex, politics, and religion with other intellectuals and writers occasionally turned into quarrels with the likes of William F. Buckley Jr. and Norman Mailer. Vidal thought all men and women are potentially bisexual. As a novelist, Vidal explored the nature of corruption in public and private life. His polished and erudite style of narration readily evoked the time and place of his stories, and perceptively delineated the psychology of his characters. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), offended the literary, political, and moral sensibilities of conservative book reviewers, the plot being about a dispassionately presented male homosexual relationship. In the historical novel genre, Vidal re-created the imperial world of Julian the Apostate (r. AD 361-63) in Julian (1964). Julian was the Roman emperor who used general religious toleration to re-establish pagan polytheism to counter the political subversion of Christian monotheism. In social satire, Myra Breckinridge (1968) explores the mutability of gender role and sexual orientation as being social constructs established by social mores. In Burr (1973) and Lincoln (1984), the protagonist is presented as "A Man of the People" and as "A Man" in a narrative exploration of how the public and private facets of personality affect the national politics of the United States. . Signed. First UK Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall., William Heinemann Ltd., 1979, 3, Beck, München, 1995. XII,408p. Original blue gilt titled cloth with dust wrps. Series: Vestigia, 46. ?The emperor Julian is one of the historical figures that every generation feels impelled to examine anew. Like Alexander the Great, he had a brief but meteoric career, full of passionate action and visionary plans. Unlike Alexander he ultimately had little impact upon the world around him. Also unlike Alexander, he can be seen directly through abundant contemporary writings - both his own and detailed impressions of him recorded by one of his admiring contemporaries. The huge funeral speech by the rhetor Libanius and the six speeches he composed either for or about the emperor constitute a major historical source from a highly intelligent observer. Amazingly, in spite of all the attention that has been devoted to Julian, the world has had to wait until now for a systematic study of his relationship with Litanies as mirrored in the Julianic speeches. (?) W.?s book (?) has a clear and reasonable structure that puts Libanius? oeuvre in the foreground rather than the life of Julian. The argument is lucid and convincing. The author has mastered the scholarly literature down to 1994 and deploys it judiciously. After a detailed review of all the evidence for contact between Julian and Litanies from the schooldays of the future emperor until his death, W. discusses, one by one, the six Julianic speeches (?). What is most impressive is W.?s understanding of the special character of each of the Greek texts he is interpreting and the unerring good sense that he brings to them. This is not just another look at Julian. It is a real advance. W. concludes his work with a large dividend in the form of a long discussion of the economic crisis at Antioch in 362/3. He treats this issue as a case-study (?). The analysis is enriched by W.?s interest in the social as well as economic forces that subverted Julian?s attempts to remedy a grain shortage at Antioch (?). W. cleverly uses the failure of Julian?s economic measures at Antioch as s means of assessing the rhetorical strategies of Libanius. (?) Litanies cultivated and admired Julian, but he was a political creature, whose speeches have to be judged in terms of their rhetorical purpose and their intended public. Rhetoric is often treacherous as a historical source but, as W. has demonstrated here, it can sometimes provide unparalleled access into individual moments of historical time. His attempt to analyse each Julianic speech as a reflection of a rhetorical strategy under particular circumstances is triumphantly vindicated by the time we reach the end of his book. (?) One comes away from this book with a deeper understanding of Libanius.? (G.W. BOWERSOCK in Gnomon, 2000, pp.640-642)., 0<