If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: A Rare Vonnegut Gem
“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point,‘If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.’
-- Kurt Vonnegut, our patron saint
“If this isn’t nice, what is?” has become a motto around our shop and home over the past year, and when we look (read: gaze adoringly) at this scarce advance review copy of Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano, we can’t help but murmur it ourselves.
Drawing inspiration from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, and his own Post-WWII experiences working for General Electric, Vonnegut prognosticates a future of know-how and no labor. Player Piano is Vonnegut’s dystopian vision of automation, in which machines have replaced human effort, eradicating for many “the feeling of being needed and useful, the foundation of self-respect.” Charles Scribner’s Sons produced only 25 to 30 advance review copies, making this a treasure among our acquisitions of 2014.
Backed by a beloved author of ours, we urge you to make declaring your happiness a new year’s resolution for 2015.
We end with just one more point of advice from Vonnegut, from the closing remarks of his 1999 commencement address at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia:
“Don’t give up on books. They feel so good — their friendly heft. The sweet reluctance of their pages when you turn them with your sensitive fingertips. A large part of our brains is devoted to deciding whether what our hands are touching is good or bad for us. Any brain worth a nickel knows books are good for us.”
Vonnegut, Kurt
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952.
First Edition. Paperback. 295pp. Softcover. 8vo. Pale green stiff paper cover wraps, soiled and mottled. Corners bumped, with some losses at head and tail of spine, light splitting of front hinge. Text from two jacket flaps pasted in to front endpapers, with previous owner’s name and penciled prices/notations present (text otherwise clean). One of only 25 to 30 advance review copies were produced of Player Piano, his first book. A good copy of a rare Vonnegut gem. Good. Item #624
Price: $1,100.00
Click here to see this listing on UndergroundBooks.net
For more information on Kurt Vonnegut, his life, and his writings, we suggest the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, which we had the pleasure of visiting on our honeymoon in May of 2014, in Indianapolis, Indiana. You can find them online at VonnegutLibrary.org.
- from our guestbook at the shop