Instant Lives

New York: Saturday Review Press / E.P. Dutton, (1974).

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Hardcover. First edition. Drawings by Edward Gorey. Foredge a little foxed, else near fine in near fine dustwrapper with a tear on the rear panel. This copy Inscribed by Moss to his editor at *The New Yorker* Rachel MacKenzie: "For Rachel – with love, and in exchange... Howard. April 1974." Rachel MacKenzie replaced Katherine White as the fiction editor at *The New Yorker* on the recommendation of May Sarton. During her tenure at the magazine MacKenzie was noted for her nurturing and editing of, among others, Sarton, Philip Roth, Muriel Spark, and especially Isaac Bashevis Singer. MacKenzie's enthusiasm led to the magazine devoting an entire issue to Spark's *The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie*. However, the magazine wouldn't publish *Goodbye, Columbus* as she recommended because William Shawn was too squeamish over the more "frank" aspects of the novella. A nice association.

Item #314631

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Item #314631 Instant Lives. Howard MOSS.

Edward Gorey
birth name: Edward St. John Gorey
born: 2/22/1925
died: 4/15/2000

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Biography

Writer, illustrator, and designer, noted for his arch humor and gothic sensibility. Gorey drew a pen-and-ink world of beady-eyed, blank-faced individuals whose dignified Edwardian demeanor is undercut by silly and often macabre events. His nonsense rhymes recalled those of Edward Lear, and his mock-Victorian prose delighted readers with its ludicrous fustiness. Gorey's work evoked the cozy sensibilities of childhood reading while subverting that feeling with its often grisly humor. - Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literaturemore

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