First edition, signed, inscribed with teasingly private annotations intended for the book’s recipient alone. Plante has written on the half title “To Frank / with countless / years of devotion / and love! / David / Cambridge, 2009”, and again in blue ink to the title page: “To Frank once / again, with even / more devotion and / love, / though we / may[?] say[?] also / a lover! / and, ok, love, too, / to Heather and Muir / our first meeting! / David (Plante) / Cambridge, 2010”, along with several words in Greek.
The author has also annotated 20 text pages in blue ink, with verbal notations augmenting the printed text with additional details. For example, where in the text Plante states that “Stephen Spender visited us secretly in Italy” where “he took photographs of us in an olive grove”, he adds in manuscript alongside “I have these photographs”. Elsewhere, regarding his partner’s no-nonsense approach in debates with W. H. Auden, he adds “Everyone else but Nikos, even Stephen [Spender], deferred to Auden”. Plante also further probes the content of his work, jotting a questioning note – “is this possible?” – next to his printed assertion that “grief demands a grand, timeless expression”. Some of the notes are particularly touching, particularly one describing Plante’s dreams of his partner following his death. The recipient of the present work was possibly the author’s friend, the British literary critic Frank Kermode (1919-2010), who spent his final years in Cambridge.
The American novelist and diarist David Plante’s memoir of Nikos Stangos, his partner of forty years, written in the form of a series of intimate fragments describing and exploring their life together.
Publisher’s original quarter dark-blue cloth over dark-blue paper-covered boards with titles in silver to the spine, in dustwrapper. Illustrated with a black and white photographic frontispiece. A near fine copy, the binding square and tight, the contents clean and crisp throughout. The unclipped dustwrapper is also near fine, with just a touch of shelf wear.
