Mosquitoes

New York: Boni and Liveright, 1927. First Edition. The Nobel Laureate’s 2nd novel. 8vo. Fine (none of the typical flaking to the yellow lettering) in the first printing dustjacket (there is a 2nd printing “cardplayers” jacket), some rubbing and a 3/8” tear else near fine. Cheaper than any copy close to this fine, and finer than any copy close to this cheap. Set aboard a yacht on Lake Pontchartrain over four days, the novel assembles a party of New Orleans artists, writers, dilettantes, and socialites whose endless, boozy, self-regarding talk amounts to very little—which is precisely Faulkner's point. A satire of the Vieux Carré literary scene he had recently inhabited, Mosquitoes is the last book Faulkner wrote before discovering Yoknapatawpha County and the voice that would carry him through The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and the great novels that followed. It is apprentice work by a genius on the verge.