The Thin Red Line.
First Edition of The Thin Red Line; Finely Bound by the Harcourt Bindery and Signed by James Jones
The Thin Red Line.
JONES, James.
$1,750.00
Item Number: 147502
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962.
First edition of Jones’ sequel to his first novel, From Here to Eternity. Octavo, bound in full morocco by the Harcourt Bindery, gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, gilt inner dentelles stamp-signed by the Harcourt Bindery, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Boldly signed by James Jones on a page bound in. In fine condition. An exceptional presentation.
“The Thin Red Line is an ironic, disciplined war novel, plainly an attempt to show exactly what infantry combat was like in the Pacific” (Vinson, 733). British historian and military writer John Keegan nominated The Thin Red Line as, in his opinion, one of only two novels portraying Second World War combat that could be favorably compared to the best of the literature to arise from the First World War (the other was Flesh Wounds (1966) by British writer David Holbrook). Paul Fussell said that it was "perhaps the best" American WWII novel, better than A Walk in the Sun and The Naked and the Dead. The novel has been adapted for cinema twice, first by Andrew Marton in 1964, then by Terrence Malick in 1998.