The Thin Red Line.

"For Anne- who (with her old man) shared one of the pleasantest nites of my life": First Edition of James Jones' The Thin Red Line; Lengthily Inscribed by Him To Writer and Editor Anne Geismar

The Thin Red Line.

JONES, James.

Item Number: 97578

New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962.

First edition of Jones’ sequel to his first novel, From Here to Eternity. Octavo, original black cloth, cartographic endpapers. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the title page, “For Anne- who (with her old man) shared one of the pleasantest nites of my life – last nite. Love Jim 5 Mar ’63 NYC.” The recipient Anne Geismar was a writer and editor, the wife of Jones’ close friend, noted literary critic and historian Maxwell Geismar. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Leonard Slonevsky. An exceptional association copy.

“The Thin Red Line is an ironic, disciplined war novel, plainly an attempt to show exactly what infantry combat was like in the Pacific” (Vinson, 733). British historian and military writer John Keegan nominated The Thin Red Line as, in his opinion, one of only two novels portraying Second World War combat that could be favorably compared to the best of the literature to arise from the First World War (the other was Flesh Wounds (1966) by British writer David Holbrook). Paul Fussell said that it was "perhaps the best" American WWII novel, better than A Walk in the Sun and The Naked and the Dead. The novel has been adapted for cinema twice, first by Andrew Marton in 1964, then by Terrence Malick in 1998.

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