IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

New York: The Dial Press, 1974. Very good.. Rare uncorrected galleys of the first edition, made up from sheets from the limited edition (and with an unsigned limitation page), of Baldwin's great novel centered around a Harlem love story. With every year that passes since Barry Jenkins's shimmering and triumphant 2018 film adaptation of Baldwin's love story, the contemporary critical reaction to the novel — hostility to the very concept of a love story, that base and contemptible form; contempt for the unmistakable stamp of human affections and the ineradicable stain of sentimentality on every page — becomes trickier to understand in context. Anatole Broyard, vibrating with absolute contempt in THE NEW YORK TIMES, brought out the biggest gun of 1974 when he wrote that BEALE STREET "could make it equally well as a 'gothic novel'" — so successful has been the genre's rehabilitation that the word, like "romance," no longer functions lethally as an unanswerable insult. The firing pin is rusty, the trigger is stuck, the gun will not go off. A deeper reading came from the unfailing Joyce Carol Oates, who likewise noted the "very traditional celebration of love" at the novel's heart, but found nothing there to mock or denigrate: "IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK is a moving, painful story. It is so vividly human and so obviously based upon reality, that it strikes us as timeless—an art that has not the slightest need of esthetic tricks" (Oates). Rare in this format. 8.5'' x 5.25''. Original blue printed wrappers. Publicity leaf, dated December 1973, lists publication date as May 24, 1974 with price of $6.95 for trade and $25 for signed limited edition. [14], 189, [1] pages. Spine toned and titled "Baldwin" in pen; some mild creasing, soil to wraps. Penned notes, marginalia, and other reader marks, presumably a contemporary reviewer's, throughout. A few unobtrusive stains internally. Overall sound.