Faulkner, William - Pylon - Harrison Smith & Robert Haas: New York, 1935 - First Edition / First Printing / First State Dust Jacket - “First Printing” stated on the copyright page as required in order to denote the first printing of the first edition. First state dust jacket with title list on the rear panel.
“It would be there—the eternal smell of the coffee the sugar the hemp sweating slow iron plates above the forked deliberate brown water and lost lost lost all ultimate blue of latitude and horizon; the hot rain gutterfull plaiting the eaten heads of shrimp; the ten thousand inescapable mornings wherein ten thousand airplants swinging stippleprop the soft scrofulous soaring of sweating brick and ten thousand pairs of splayed brown hired Leonorafeet tigerbarred by jaloused armistice with the invincible sun: the thin black coffee, the myriad fish stewed in a myriad oil—tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow; not only not to hope, not even to wait: just to endure.”
The book is sunned to the spine and edges, lightly soiled, shelf worn, and is missing about half of the gilt. The boards remain mostly straight, the binding is still square, and the top stain is dark. The dust jacket is soiled, tanned, and edge worn. There is a long diagonal tear to the front panel which has been tape mended on the verso. A flawed example but it does retain the original first state dust jacket which is increasingly uncommon. A novel about the golden age of aviation, and, more specifically, barnstorming— a pursuit which killed Faulkner’s own brother. This novel served as the basis for the well received 1957 film The Tarnished Angels which starred Rock Hudson and Robert Stack.