About this Item
1st Printing. Signed. 145 pages. Published in 2017. The author's book-length account on subject. One of the most brilliant books on the essay form ever written in our time. The true First Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, particularly the American Edition. Published in a small and limited first print run as a softcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Brian Dillon's "Essayism". Elaborately re-titled in the American Edition as "Essayism: On Form, Feeling, And Nonfiction". The elegant single-word title is apparently insufficient and demands reassurances for its American readers that this is not another attempt to espouse a political ideology like Communism or Fascism. "A compelling ode to the essay form and the great essayists themselves, from Montaigne to Woolf to Sontag. A book about essays and essayists, a study of melancholy and depression, a love letter to belle-lettrists, and an account of the indispensable lifelines of reading and writing. Incorporates diverse features of the essay. His is a branching book of possibilities, seeking consolation and direction from Michel de Montaigne, Virginia Woolf, Roland Barthes, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Georges Perec, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Susan Sontag, to name just a few of his influences. Whether he is writing on origins, aphorisms, coherence, vulnerability, anxiety, or a number of other subjects, his command of language, his erudition, and his own personal history serve not so much to illuminate or magnify the subject as to discover it anew through a kaleidoscopic alignment of attention, thought, and feeling" (Publisher's blurb). It would surely be a shame if his neat little book were read only by a small group of cultists because it deserves to be read by every serious reader. Plus, the other great part of the book is surely its selection of titles, thoughtfully appended at the end, listing the books that Dillon was influenced by, joyfully, not anxiously. Many other literate readers may or may not know them. They will serve an important function: As a primary source of discovery and re-discovery, revelation and confirmation. An absolute "must-have" title for Brian Dillon collectors. This copy is very prominently, beautifully, and elaborately signed in blue ink-pen on the title page by Brian Dillon. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary classic. As far as we know, this is the only such signed copy of the true First Edition/First Printing (British) available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Precedes and should NOT be confused with the American Edition. A rare signed copy thus. One of the most brilliant essayist/writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER BRIAN DILLON TITLE IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 1910695416.
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