High Sierra
by Burnett, W.R
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Clean, tight book but for dust-soiling to edges, endpapers. One small stain top edge. In dustjacket showing moderate wear along
- Seller
-
Austin, Texas, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Clean, tight book but for dust-soiling to edges, endpapers. One small stain top edge. In dustjacket showing moderate wear along edges with sunning and some loss to extremities of spine. An imperfect copy of the increasingly scarce first state.. Knopf New York 1940 1st Edition Hardback Cloth 8vo. 292pp. Gray-stamped red-orange cloth in pictorial jacket. First printing, so indicated on the copyright page, in a first-state jacket with the catalogue solicitation on the rear flap instead of reviews. The screenplay for the classic movie of the same name was adapted by the author and John Huston.
Synopsis
The tormented and exhausted man at the center of W.R. Burnett's High Sierra is a notorious criminal whom the newspapers call "Mad Dog" Roy Earle. Earle is every bit the criminal the newspapers depict, but he is a complicated soul who is the tragic hero of the novel -- a horribly flawed man, a violent criminal who still retains a bit of a conscience but never gets a decent break.As in most of Burnett's novels, High Sierra ostensibly describes a carefully plotted crime that is undermined by human nature. More interesting and important, perhaps, is its study of Roy Earle, who hardly seems the "Mad Dog" he is made out to be in the press. Pardoned from prison, he idealizes his childhood as he wearily makes his way across the California desert to meet up with two hoods named Red and Babe. Earle is dismayed to find they have with them a tough and brazen woman named Marie, though he begins to warm to her crude charm. He has been moved by the plight of a physically impaired woman he meets, Velma Goodhue, and he resolves to help her -- imagining, somehow, that she will be his. After a holdup he plans with Red, Babe and Marie (who has now fallen in love with him), Earle takes money to Velma for an operation to repair her clubfoot. But the holdup has disastrous results. Red and Babe are killed, and Roy goes on the lam with Marie. They have nowhere to turn and even Velma deserts him. Earle sends Marie away, to meet him eventually in a mountain pass in the High Sierras -- a rendezvous high in the sky that will not take place as planned.Much happens plotwise in High Sierra but it is Roy Earle who holds our interest. As remorseless as the book is -- the concluding chapter consists a few lacerating paragraphs of post-mortem chitchat from the police -- it makes Earle a rich and deeply compelling man, without sentimentalizing him at all. Reading High Sierra is close to the experience of reading James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, a tough, bleak and unforgiving narrative that works a dark and elusive magic.
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Details
- Bookseller
- 12th Street Books, ABAA
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- BOOKS 53009 I
- Title
- High Sierra
- Author
- Burnett, W.R
- Book Condition
- Used - Clean, tight book but for dust-soiling to edges, endpapers. One small stain top edge. In dustjacket showing moderate wear along
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- Knopf
- Date Published
- 1940
Terms of Sale
12th Street Books, ABAA
All books subject to prior sale. Returns accepted within 7 days of receipt with prior notification.
About the Seller
12th Street Books, ABAA
Biblio member since 2007
Austin, Texas
About 12th Street Books, ABAA
12th Street Books is an open bookshop in downtown Austin selling used, rare, and out-of-print books on scholarly subjects.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Copyright page
- The page in a book that describes the lineage of that book, typically including the book's author, publisher, date of...
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- First State
- used in book collecting to refer to a book from the earliest run of a first edition, generally distinguished by a change in some...
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