Desire and Pursuit of the Whole A Romance of Modern Venice
(New York): New Directions, (1953). Andy Warhol. First Thus. Hardcover with Dust Jacket. 8vo. Pp. [i-iv], v-xvi, [2], 299. Introduction by A. J. A. Symons. Foreword by W. H. Auden. Bound in teal cloth with silver lettering stamped on spine. The book appears to have once been improperly stored, with the rear board a bit bowed, but recovering. Cloth with dampstains and smudges. Dust jacket with edge-wear, and light, uniform dampstain on rear panel with a bit of mottling. (Please see photos.) Flap price of $4.00 intact. Good- / Good+. Item #5755
The allusive Warhol dust jacket illustration perfectly captures Auden's statement that the novel (first published some 40 years earlier) conveys a worldview “through the eyes of a homosexual paranoid.” By the time Warhol's illustration went into production, 1953, laws and public mores hadn't budged an iota. Dust jacket now enclosed in a removable, clear archival sleeve.
Price: $125.00