Description: • For Your Consideration: • A First Edition, First Printing in HARDCOVER: • “THE MAGIC KEYS: A NOVEL” (Pantheon, 2005) (Hardcover, First Edition, First Printing) • BY ALBERT MURRAY• “ALBERT MURRAY is a man whose learning did not interfere with understanding. An authority on soul form the days of old, he is right on right back to back and commands respect. He doesn’t have to look it up. He already knows. If you want to know, look him up. He is the unsquarest person I know.” —DUKE ELLINGTON • ABOUT THIS TITLE: • “THE MAGIC KEYS winningly evokes the coming to maturity of one of the great characters in contemporary American literature: Scooter, the central protagonist of ALBERT MURRAY’s highly acclaimed autobiographical novels TRAIN WHISTLE GUITAR, THE SPYGLASS TREE, and THE SEVEN LEAGUE BOOTS. Growing up brilliant and curious in Alabama, SCOOTER was told he was destined for greatness. Now newly married and a graduate student in humanities at New York University, he…makes the rounds of Manhattan’s libraries, jazz hangouts, galleries, skyscrapers, and endlessly fascinating streets, meeting the people who will help him find his way: dapper TAFT EDISON, who is setting their down-home dialect onto the pages of his novel-in-progress; JOE STATES, a drummer who brings old expectations to SCOOTER’s new life; and JEWEL TEMPLETON, no longer his girl but still a believer.”—THE PUBLISHER • “A fictional tale-spinner in the grand Southern tradition…. MURRAY’s small-town South is as perfectly and as personally captured as the larger worlds of JOYCE, FAULKNER, or PROUST…. ALBERT MURRAY is one of the best-kept secrets in contemporary American literature. He is our premier writer about jazz and blues, an incisive literary critic, and a scoeial commentator of wide-ranging vision.”—WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD • “Impressive…. [MURRAY’s] prose is stylistically dazzling…. His characters’ inner lives are explored in-depth, flaws and all…. A novel as affecting as it is provocative.” —LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW • “Extraordinary…. It deepens our knowledge of life…. MURRAY has created a novel which–grave yet exultant, brutal but compassionate–achieves its complex humanity, and its final affirmations of love and beauty, through a real reckoning with despair and heartbreak.” —NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS • “Crooning in tune with the ear and with life, MURRAY’s saga vamps, dancing, to a glorious end.”—KIRKUS REVIEWS • “Artful…and heartbreaking…. [MURRAY’s] prose is richly atmospheric, his tone engagingly introspective.” —NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • “A writer’s tour de force…. Powerful.” —SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE • MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR: • “He is his own man and has done things in his own way, and what he says demands to be heard. and he gives the pleasure that a good writer—a real writer—always gives.” —ROBERT PENN WARREN • “A lithe and dapper man with an astonishing gift of verbal fluency, by turns grandiloquent and earthy.”—HENRY LOUIS GATES, THE NEW YORKER • “[A] wonderful writer.” —KURT VONNEGUT • “One of America’s great cultural thinkers and one of our original champions.” —WYNTON MARSALIS • “The man of letters—the cultural critic who ranges over genres to effect ‘the meeting of literature with social actions and attitudes and manners,’ in the words of LIONEL TRILLING—has been a vanishing breed in American literature. Indeed, the species may well have gone extinct in 2013 with the death of ALBERT MURRAY.”—MICHAEL ANDERSON, NEW CRITERION • “The last of the giants.” —JAMES ALAN MCPHERSON • “One of the most original stylists in American letters, a philosopher of the blues, who championed resilience and improvisation against the cold certainty of life’s uncertainties, and helped articulate and explain the dynamic synthesis that is American culture, as much black as it is white, if not more.”—PAUL DEVLIN, SLATE • MURRAY is possessed “of the poet’s language, the novelist’s sensibility, the essayist’s clarity, the jazzman’s imagination, the gospel singer’s depth of feeling.”—ROBERT COLES, THE NEW YORKER • • For other details about this book, please see below. • TITLE: “THE MAGIC KEYS” AUTHOR: ALBERT MURRAY TYPE: HARDCOVER PUBLISHER, LOCALE, & YEAR: Pantheon (New York), 2005 EDITION: First Edition, First Printing* *RE: On the Copyright Page, the statement “First Edition” & this Number Row: “2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1.” PAGES: 242ISBN: 0-375-42353-2 NOTE: THIS BOOK is not an ex-library copy nor a Book-of-the-Month-Club edition.CONDITION OF DUST JACKET: VERY GOOD PLUS. DJ is clean & bright. Price (25.00) is unclipped. Corners & spine tips are bumped. Edges are fine. Light scratching & smudging (from normal handling) on sides. CONDITION OF BOOK ITSELF: VERY GOOD PLUS. Book is square. Boards are clean. Corners are sharp. Spine is tight & uncreased with bumped tips. Text-block edges are clean. There’s a faint, small damp-stain at the top edge of the front free endpaper but all the pages are otherwise are pointedly clean & bright—with no writing, no underlining, no highlight, no tears, no stains, no foxing, no foul odors, etc. LOOKS UNREAD. •• SHIPPING NEWS: This book will be wrapped with care before being shipped in a cushioned & sturdy box. THANK YOU! ********************** /\___/\=•ᆺ•= “We believe it’s good business to be good to our customers.” *********** FLAPPINCAT’s HOUSE RULES ***********1. GENERAL TREATMENT. We enjoy treating FLAPPINCAT customers with honesty & respect & warmth because that’s how we like to be treated when we buy things on eBay.2. GENERAL ATTITUDE. We are grateful you choose to trust us with your business. We aim for that gratitude to permeate every part of how we engage with you.3. OUR DESCRIPTIONS. We describe every item we sell as clearly and accurately as we can. When it comes to describing condition, we tend toward being conservative. 4. PACKING & SHIPPING. We know from experience that items, when not thoughtfully packed, can be damaged during shipment. To avoid that real danger, FLAPPINCAT wraps & cushions your purchase(s) mindfully—and sometimes zealously—in a sturdy package. WARNING: In our zeal, we sometimes over-tape containers and you may need a penknife to unseal our shipments. NOTE: Though we often recycle shipping materials, we do NOT stint on protection. 5. OUR PRICES. We try to offer the lowest prices on eBay for items we sell. Even our most expensive offerings tend to be lower than what others are asking. “You could look it up!” —to quote baseball immortal JACK KEEFE. SUMMARY: We know you have many buying options on eBay. FLAPPINCAT tries to be distinctive by being accurate, mindful, and friendly. *********** How We GRADECONDITION ***********DETAILS. The condition of every item we sell will be described in detail.FLAWS. All discernible flaws will be noted, if not emphasized. Of course, the grading of condition can be subjective. And since no grader is perfect, it is possible that we may at times miss a flaw. It is also possible that we may miss some perfections! Should we make a mistake, you will find FLAPPINCAT eager to fix things with you. Just send us a note and we’ll get on it.GRADING SYSTEM. For books and magazines (and even other items), we use these terms (in order of desirability): VERY FINE or LIKE NEW FINE (or EXCELLENT) NEAR FINE (or NF) VERY GOOD PLUS (or VG+) VERY GOOD (or VG) GOOD FAIR ACCEPTABLE POOR “POOR.” Except in rare cases, for rare items, we tend to avoid selling items that are in utterly “POOR” condition. It is more likely that on a rare item, only one part of an item (out of numerous parts) will be described as “POOR.”RETURNS. We accept that you may wish to return a purchase because you genuinely think we haven't described and graded its condition properly. We accept that we our* imperfect. We also accept that people can see things differently—and still be civil! (*Get it?)POP QUIZ. Please feel free to ask questions at any time about condition (or anything else, except math). EXTRA VISUALS. Although we include multiple photographs in our listings, we usually have others we could share with you. (These extra photos also help to establish a paper-trial in the rare case that an item is damaged en route to you.)*********** SHIPPING ***********Every item is individually priced for postage. That price can be found in the listing, not here. UNITED STATES: In the USA, we ship books via MEDIA MAIL. Magazines are generally shipped PRIORITY MAIL; the Post Office does not permit magazines which carry advertising to be shipped MEDIA MAIL.INTERNATIONAL DESTINATIONS: To those international countries to which we ship (please see list), the cost of postage is calculated by eBay and individually listed with each item.EXPEDITED SHIPPING: In the United States, EXPEDITED SHIPPING is available if you request, and pay, for it BEFORE we ship your item. *********** HOW TO PAY ***********PAYMENT: As we ship promptly, we ask that you please pay promptly—via PAYPAL. With auctions, payments should be made before 3 days (72 hours) from the time an auction for an item closes. After 4 days—and independent of us!—eBay automatically begins a process for unpaid action. NEED MORE TIME? If you need more time to pay, PLEASE just contact us in advance of the deadline. We understand how life happens, so we don't mind being reasonable. Thank you!*********** LASTLY ***********What more can we say? Haven't we said enough? Well…we can always repeat ourselves. In summary: FLAPPINCAT is genuinely grateful for your patronage and we aim to express that gratitude in every way we can. Thanks for trusting FLAPPINCAT! *********** P.S. COMINGSOON *********** /\___/\=•ᆺ•= FLAPPINCAT’s BIG BARN SALE of RARE VINYL & RARE CDS Featuring the best from a long-running collection of psych, garage, folk, private press, blues, gospel, world, xian, & oddities. *********** ***********
Price: 29.5 USD
Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina
End Time: 2024-01-15T14:42:17.000Z
Shipping Cost: 5.99 USD
Product Images
Item Specifics
Restocking Fee: No
Return shipping will be paid by: Seller
All returns accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 30 Days
Refund will be given as: Money Back
Binding: Hardcover
Place of Publication: United States
Signed: No
Publisher: Pantheon
Subject: Literature & Fiction
Modified Item: No
Original/Facsimile: Original
Year Printed: 2005
Language: English
Illustrator: N/A
Special Attributes: 1st Edition, Dust Jacket
Personalized: No
Author: Albert Murray
Region: North America
Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
Topic: Literature, African American, Southerner
Character Family: Southerners, African Americans, Scooter