Signifying Rappers.

WALLACE, David Foster & Mark Costello.

$4,200.00

Item Number: 104837

New York: Ecco Press, 1990.

First edition of the first book to seriously consider rap and its position as a vital force in American culture. Octavo, original illustrated wrappers as issued. Boldly signed by David Foster Wallace on the title page. In fine condition. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box made by the Harcourt Bindery. Rare, especially signed by Foster Wallace.

Living together in Cambridge in 1989, David Foster Wallace and longtime friend Mark Costello discovered that they shared "an uncomfortable, somewhat furtive, and distinctively white enthusiasm for a certain music called rap/hip-hop." The book they wrote together, set against the legendary Boston music scene, mapped the bipolarities of rap and pop, rebellion and acceptance, glitz and gangsterdom. "Brilliantly written . . . (with) great wit, insight, and in-your-face energy" (Review of Contemporary Fiction).