[BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT] FAIR, Ronald L.

Many Thousand Gone

New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965. First Edition. First printing. Octavo (21cm). Green cloth hardcover, spine titles stamped in gilt and black; dustjacket; 114pp. Tight, straight copy, very slightly rubbed at bottom board edges, else Near Fine. In the original dustwrapper, unclipped (with correct price of $3.50 on front flap), slightly rubbed and worn, chip at upper front panel; spine sunned as usual; Very Good.

Fair's first book, an unjustly forgotten masterpiece of alternative-history fiction, praised by George Davis as "...one of the most beautifully written books of the last decade [i.e.,1960's]. Nowhere in our language is there a more tightly controlled and bitterly humorous treatment of brutal scenes such as rapes and lynchings and racist murders" (see Davis's review of Fair's "We Can't Breathe" in the New York Times, Feb. 6, 1972). The novel chillingly portrays a small pocket of the American South where the institution of slavery has survived into the mid-20th century; where the county's Black residents are hunted down and killed if they attempt to leave, but where ancient customs and individual dignity have never been extinguished. The book went into several printings in the Sixties, but fell out of view for decades until its recent reissue by the Library of America. Donald Fair (1932-2018) began writing in the Fifties as a reporter for the Chicago Defender; following Many Thousand Gone he published a number of well-received novels (including Hog Butcher, 1966, which would be adapted for the 1975 feature film Cornbread, Earl, and Me, which featured Lawrence Fishburne in a childhood role). Despite his considerable early success, Fair stopped writing in 1977, when he emigrated to Finland to dedicate the rest of his life to sculpture.

Price: $450.00

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