YOU DON'T LOVE ME YET

New York City, NY: Doubleday, 2007. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. As New/As New Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Doubleday, 2007. Hardcover. As New/As New. First Edition/First Printing. 224 pages. The author's seventh novel. Now considered a contemporary classic. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The brilliant DJ design by Jennifer Ann Daddio (the author is always closely involved in the production of his books) shows the then completely unknown, 24-year-old Jonathan Lethem looking very much like his novel's protagonist. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Jonathan Lethem's "You Don't Love Me Yet". His tribute to rock music and its resonances with his youth. Lethem temporarily leaves his beloved Brooklyn behind and moves to Los Angeles in his beguiling comic novel about a girl, a boy, their band, and a sea of hipsters. The band doesn't have a name, hasn't played any shows (yet), and has a handful of lyric-less songs. "Lucinda takes a job on the side in an installation-art piece in which random callers register complaints. Lucinda takes an arousing, near-feral rumination about seducing women to Bedwin, the band's savant song-crafter, and the result sounds uncannily like a hit. Lethem understands the pathology of a great pop song (familiar emotional depth masked by clever wordplay and some saccharine hooks), and gamely re-creates it in novel form. The result is lithe and perceptive" (Ian Chipman). Comic novels are very hard to write well (like great comic films). They navigate the minefields of irony, satire, and parody, that is to say, of the bittersweet, "neither-here-nor-there" truth about our lives, and are therefore either easily dismissed or worse, completely misunderstood (like Woody Allen's great films). Lethem is one of very few adepts of both High and Low American cultures, and here, he plumbs the depths of the contemporary rock n' roll scene but, unlike most other writers' forays (notably the talented and very knowledgeable David Foster Wallace's) into the same territory, he does not wallow or drown in it. An absolute "must-have" title for Jonathan Lethem collectors. This copy is very boldly, uniquely, and beautifully signed in black charcoal pen-marker on the title page by Jonathan Lethem. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. We have never before seen the unusual pen Lethem used. It is an artist's charcoal-pen, not a felt-tip pen, and it stands out even more as his signature fills up the page. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce signed copy thus. Winner of the Crawford Award for Best Fantasy Novel and the Locus Award for Best First Novel in 1994 for "Gun, With Occasional Music". Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999 for "Motherless Brooklyn". Selected as one of the "Best Books of The Year" by the New York Times in 2003 for "Fortress of Solitude". Winner of the MacArthur Genius Grant in 2005. One of the most brilliant new voices in American literature. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER JONATHAN LETHEM TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 038551218X.