The Afterlife.

UPDIKE, John [Erica Jong].

$400.00

Item Number: 142974

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.

First edition of this work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Erica J. These stories are more Jungian than Jongian, but then I’m older that you Best, John U.” Additionally signed three times by legendary jacket designer, on the front panel with the words, “I apologize Chip Kidd” (this is referencing his dislike for the jacket), on the front free endpaper with a humorous inscription and again on the rear panel jacket. The recipient, Erica Jong remains best known for her 1973 novel Fear of Flying which became famously controversial for its portrayal of female sexuality and figured prominently in the development of second-wave feminism. Written in the first person and narrated by its protagonist, 29-year-old American poet Isadora Wing, Fear of Flying was written in the throes of the Sexual Revolution of the 1970s and encapsulated the movement’s redefinition of female sexuality. In interviews, Jong stated: “At the time I wrote Fear of Flying, there was not a book that said women are romantic, women are intellectual, women are sexual—and brought all those things together… What [Isadora is] looking for is how to be a whole human being, a body and a mind, and that is what women were newly aware they needed in 1973.” The novel remains a feminist classic and has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. From the library of Erica Jong and Ken Burrows. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Chip Kidd and John Updike.

To the hero of the title story of this collection, all of England has the glow of an afterlife: “A miraculous lacquer lay upon everything, beading each roadside twig . . . each reed of thatch, each tiny daisy trembling in the grass.” All of these stories, each in its own way, partake of this glow, as life beyond middle age is explored and found to have its own exquisite dearness. As death approaches, existence takes on, for some of Updike’s aging characters, a translucence, a magical fragility; vivid memory and casual misperception lend the mundane an antic texture, and the backward view, lengthening, acquires a certain grandeur. “Marvelously moving . . . These tales evoke a certain peace and a definite wonder at what an astonishingly graceful writer Updike is" (USA Today).