Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$65.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: First Edition. Original boards, fine, in near fine dust jacket with the original price intact on the front flap. Flat SIGNED on the second endpaper.
Seller: sonalsorises, los angeles, CA, U.S.A.
John Gardner. Nickel Mountain [Signed 1st edition]. Knopf, New York, 1973.
Price: US$70.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: Hardcover with dust jacket. Price present on dust jacket. First Edition stated with no indication of later printing. Signed without inscription on the front free endpaper by Gardner. Mild bumping to the psine ends of the book; some wear around the edges of the dust jacket: about NF/VG or so. Jacket could be replaced, I think. Signed copies not getting easier to find.
Seller: Chancery Hill Books, Columbus, OH, U.S.A.
GARDNER, John. NICKEL MOUNTAIN. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1973.
Price: US$70.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: INSCRIBED AND SIGNED by John Gardner. Fine, appears unread. In a very near fine, price-intact dust jacket.
Seller: RON RAMSWICK BOOKS, IOBA, CARLSBAD, CA, U.S.A.
GARDNER, JOHN.. NICKEL MOUNTAIN, A PASTORAL NOVEL. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1973.
Price: US$70.00 + shipping
Description: SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR on a front preliminary page. Quite a clean and crisp copy throughout. Illustrations by Thomas O'Donohue. 315pp. Size: Octavo
Seller: Glenn Books, ABAA, ILAB, Prairie Village, KS, U.S.A.
GARDNER, John.. Nickel Mountain: A Pastoral Novel.. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1973.
Price: US$75.00 + shipping
Description: With etchings by Thomas O'Donohue. 314 pp. 8vo, publisher's coarse white cloth in dust jacket. First edition. Some light use to the cloth; in a jacket with a faded spine. Signed and dated March 25, 1975, by John Gardner on the front free endpaper.
Seller: Jeffrey H. Marks, Rare Books, ABAA, Rochester, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$75.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: SIGNED by the Author on the free front endpaper, 8vo, beige cloth with gold lettering on spine & embossed cover, Mylar-protected pictorial dust jacket (unclipped) with etching by Thomas O'Donohue & 9 more in-text full page sepia illustrations, 312 numbered & deckled pages + [313-14] sepia-toned illustration by O'Donohue + [315-16] + [2] A Note on Type. John Gardner (1933 - 1982) was an American novelist, essayist, literary critic and university professor. He is best known for his 1971 novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth from the monster's point of view. A tour de force! Gardner's other highly respected novels include The Sunlight Dialogues, about a disaffected policeman asked to engage a madman fluent in classical mythology; Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf legend from the monster's point of view, with an existential subtext; and October Light, about an embittered brother and sister living and feuding with each other in rural Vermont (the novel includes an invented "trashy novel" the woman reads). This last book won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1976. Nickel Mountain is his Gothic novel about backcountry folks from the Catskill Mountains of New York State. Set during the mid-1950's, they struggle through ordeals of despair and religious doubt. Middle-aged Henry Soames, who is overweight and suffering from heart trouble, runs a diner where locals gather. After teenage Callie Wells begins working there, she becomes pregnant by a boy she had trusted--but who abandons her. She and Henry come to one another's aide and decide to marry. Unfortunately, after her son is born, their relationship becomes strained on several levels. Dread pervades the gloomy mountain and characters. A dark lesson seems to be that despite one's protectiveness for loved ones, ultimately, we can't protect them. People destroy one other without meaning to. It's a lesson from the author's youth, when he felt protracted guilt for his brother's accidental death on a farm. Even so, suggestions of Redemption slowly emerge from this wild heart of the Catskills. Gardner was killed in a motorcycle accident on September 14, 1982. SUPERIOR COPY: clean, tight, bright in a spotless dust jacket. The book has two small defects: the free front endpaper has its upper right corner clipped; there is a small red remainder stamp on the bottom of the pages.
Seller: Borg Antiquarian, Lake Forest, IL, U.S.A.
Price: US$75.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 312 p. 22 cm. Etchings. Cream cloth in mylar-covered dustjacket. Signed by author on front free endpaper. Jacket design by Earl Tidwell. Minor edge wear to jacket. Bottom edge of covers spotted and faint ink stamp on bottom of text block.
Seller: Attic Books (ABAC, ILAB), London, ON, Canada
GARDNER, JOHN. NICKEL MOUNTAIN. A PASTORAL NOVEL. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973.
Price: US$125.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: First edition. Signed by Gardner. Illustrations taken from original etchings by O'Donohue. Slight fading to spine of dust jacket, otherwise, fine. 8vo. Bound in off-white cloth with blind stamped scene on front cover and title stamped in copper on spine.
Seller: Peter Keisogloff Rare Books, Inc., Brecksville, OH, U.S.A.
Price: US$155.29 + shipping
Description: 15 cm x 22 cm. 313 pages. Original hardcover with original dustjacket in protective Mylar. Excellent condition with only very minor signs of external wear. Signed by John Gardner. Includes the following etchings by Thomas O'Donohue: Everything burned but the door, which fell free and lay in a blackberry thicket / Go slow, said the room / Bittner had been sitting ritched back on two legs of his red wooden chair / The Goat Lady sat up in front like a midget stagecoach driver . etc. "At the heart of John Gardner's "Nickel Mountain" is an uncommon love story: when at 42, the obese, anxious and gentle Henry Soames marries seventeen-year-old Callie Wells--who is pregnant with the child of a local boy--it is much more than years which define the gulf between them. But the beauty of this novel is the gradual revelation of the bond that develops as this unlikely couple experiences courtship and marriage, the birth of a son, isolation, forgiveness, work, and death in a small Catskill community in the 1950s. The plot turns on tragic events--they might be accidents or they might be acts of will--involving a cast of rural eccentrics tha includes a lonely amputee veteran, a religious hysteric (thought by some to be the devil himself) and an itinerant "Goat Lady." Questions of guilt, innocence, and even murder are eclipsed by deeds of compassion, humility, and redemption, and ultimately by Henry Soames' quiet discovery of grace." (Amazon) Sprache: english.
Seller: Inanna Rare Books Ltd., Skibbereen, CORK, Ireland
Gardner, John. Nickel Mountain. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1973.
Price: US$295.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: 312 pages. First edition, first printing with the dark orange title page. Illustrated by Thomas O'Donohue. His sixth book & finalist for the National Book Award in 1974. Signed by Gardner on the half title page. Fine book in a fine dust jacket. A beautiful copy!
Seller: Fireproof Books, MINNETONKA, MN, U.S.A.
GARDNER, John. Nickel Mountain. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1973.
Price: US$400.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: First edition. Fine in near fine dustwrapper with some fading to the spine. Signed and dated by the author: "John Gardner April 17, 1974." From the collection of author Nicholas Delbanco, this book is dated the day after the two met. Gardner and acclaimed novelist and critic Delbanco first forged a friendship when Delbanco hosted Gardner during a reading tour at Bennington College in 1974. Delbanco ended up hiring Gardner for the English Department at the College. They and their families began a close professional and personal relationship in which each of the authors strove to critique the other's works in private and promote them in public, Gardner touting Delbanco as "one of the country's best novelists." Each acknowledged the contribution of the other in developing both their theories of literature and for specific elements of their respective works, whether it be Delbanco using Gardner's title *Stillness* for one of his novels or Gardner using Delbanco's writing to help clarify the husband-wife relationship in one of his own works. Delbanco's home and family became a refuge for both Gardner and his first wife during their messy divorce. Following Gardner's death in a 1982 motorcycle accident, Delbanco became Gardner's literary executor; editing and contributing an introduction to Gardner's posthumously published *Stillness and Shadows*. Delbanco's daughter Francesca, who was an occasional babysitter of Gardner's children, and who has herself published two well-received novels, *Ask Me Anything* and *Midnight in Manhattan* was the Dedicatee of one of Gardner's acclaimed children's books, *The King of Hummingbirds*.
Seller: Between the Covers-Rare Books, Inc. ABAA, Gloucester City, NJ, U.S.A.