The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other

Signed and inscribed by the author in black ink on front free endpaper. First Edition, First Printing. Original publisher's orange cloth binding in a multicolored dust wrapper. Dust wrapper features the colors of red, orange, yellow, white, and black. Dust wrapper protected in a paper-backed Brodart sleeve. 6" x 8 1/2." 335 pages, complete. Bibliography in back. The author's signed inscription reads, "For Terry F[.?], with all best wishes, Walker Percy, New York, May 1975." Dust wrapper and pages and covers of the book are virtually pristine and intact. Binding is tight. Pages are slightly age-toned. A mark is on the back panel of dust wrapper. Dust wrapper is not price-clipped. No remainder marks. A Fine book in a Fine dust wrapper. Walker Percy (1916-1990) was an American author whose areas of study comprised philosophy and semiotics. This collection of essays is an examination of symbols and how they relate to the human mind. The following are the chapter titles: "The Delta Factor," "The Loss of the Creature," "Metaphor as Mistake," "The Man on the Train," "Notes for a Novel About the End of the World," "The Message in the Bottle," "The Mystery of Language," "Toward a Triadic Theory of Meaning," "The Symbolic Structure of Interpersonal Process," "Culture: The Antinomy of the Scientific Method," "Semiotic and a Theory of Knowledge," "Symbol, Consciousness, and Intersubjectivity," "Symbol as Hermeneutic in Existentialism," "Symbol as Need," and "A Theory of Language." Excerpt from back flap: "[Percy] points out that, since language is part of man's singularity, symbolization may be an essential act of the mind. In a period when most psychology textbooks omit the word 'symbol' he discusses the relations of symbol and meaning in 'Symbol, Consciousness, and Intersubjectivity,' 'The Symbolic Structure of Interpersonal Process,' and 'Symbol as Need.'". …