Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTINTG]

Thurman, Judith

Verlag: Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1999

Beschreibung

Fine condition brown boards/dark brown spine/copper spine lettering contained in a fine condition non price-clipped photographic dust jacket. Includes Introduction; Notes and Sources; Selected Bibliography; Acknowledgments; and Index. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs. Also includes four (4) tipped-in reviews on the book, all of which are extremely neatly cut out of its respective newspaper or magazine and affixed to three blank rear endpapers and one article is affixed the rear inside board. Specifically: 1) The New Yorker magazine, from November 29, 1999 issue, containing about ten (10) original pages affixed to the inside rear board entitled "The Theatre: Brush Up YOur Porter: Reviving the best work of a naughty overachiever by John Lahr; 2) Time magazine from November 1, 1999 issue, containing one (1) original page affixed to a free rear blank endpaper entitled "Books, Vagabond of the Heart: A biography capture the charm, lust and joie de vivre of Colette; 3) The New York Times newspaper from Wednesday, November 3, 1999, Books of the Times section, containing an extremely neatly cut-out original article affixed to a free rear blank endpaper entitled "So Saucy, In Her Life and Her Work by Richard Bernstein; 4) The New York Times Book Review from October 17, 1999, containing an extremely neatly cut-out original article affixed to a free blank rear endpaper entitled: The Pursuit of Pleasure: A Biography of the Prolific French Writer Whose Life Was Spent in Defiance of Convention "No one has written with less cant about sex than Colette, and no one has written about Colette better than Judith Thurman. This essential biography by a stylish writer of great sympathetic understanding and intellectual authority will disappoint the ideologues and enthrall everyone else, as it did me." - Philip Roth. "In 1900, a provincial beauty best known as the child bride of a famous Parisian rake captivated the Belle Epoque by writing a story that invented the modern teenage girl. It was the first in a series of wildly popular but also critically acclaimed novels that, combined with a flamboyant career on the stage, made this former country girl the first authentic superstar of the century. But for all her celebrity as one of France's greatest and most notorious novelists and personalities, Didonie-Gabrielle Colette was a profoundly reticent and self-suspicious creature who fiercely resists being known. Now, following her acclaimed life of Isak Dinesen, winner of the 1983 National Book Award for biograohy, Judith Thurman gives us an incomparably nuanced and revealing portrait of the elusive woman, the prodigious writer, and the revered but misunderstood idol. As Colette redefines the conventions of loving and aging, she continues to live and write with Olympian vitality. Her principal subject is the bonds of love; her one true faith the consoling power of sensual pleasure. She opens a beauty institute and does makeovers in a lab coat; she produces a body of incisive journalism; she writes enchanting gems like Gigi and Sido, and provocative masterpieces like Cheri, Break of Day, The Ripening Seed, and The Pure and the Impure. Her wartime work remains the most controversial part of her legacy, and Thurman addresses the troubling questions it raises with a typically lucid and tenacous intelligence. Drawing upon a rich mine of new documents, candid interviews, and unpublished letters, Secrets of the Flesh evokes Colette in the fullness of her contradictions. A work of penetrating psychological insight, historical perspective, and literary discernment, superbly written, it is sure to reanimate our appreciation of its iconic subject.". Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 001226

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette [...

Verlag: Alfred A. Knopf, New York

Erscheinungsdatum: 1999

Einband: Hardcover

Zustand: Fine

Zustand des Schutzumschlags: Fine

Auflage: 1st Edition