A Man In Full.

WOLFE, Tom.

$400.00

Item Number: 146476

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.

First edition, early printing of this “masterpiece” (The Wall Street Journal). Octavo, original illustrated boards. Presentation copy, lengthily inscribed by the author on the title page, including a large green exclamation mark hand drawn to Felix Dennis “To Felix Dennis, may you enjoy this book’s manliness to the max, to the maximum – Tom Wolfe.” The recipient, Felix Dennis was the owner of iconic men’s magazine ‘Maxim’ which made him a media tycoon. He was also a distinguished poet philanthropist, book collector and lover of trees (the Forest of Dennis). Loosely inserted a short note from Maxim’s editor, Clare McHugh. Fine in a fine jacket, bookplate of Dennis to the front pastedown. Jacket art by Daniel Lee. Jacket design by Susan Mitchell.

The setting is Atlanta, Georgia — a racially mixed, late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth and wily politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta conglomerate king whose outsize ego has at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 29,000 acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife, and a half-empty office complex with a staggering load of debt. “The novel contains passages as powerful and as beautiful as anything written — not merely by contemporary American novelists but by any American novelist. . . . The book is as funny as anything Wolfe has ever written; at the same time it is also deeply, strangely affecting" (The New York Times Book Review).