Joseph Cornell A Convergence of Birds Signed Jonathan Safran Foer First Edition

Description

A Convergence of Birds begins with a marvelous idea: take the mysterious box constructions of Joseph Cornell and ask writers to respond to them with new fiction and poetry. Jonathan Safran Foer assembled an extraordinary group—including Lydia Davis, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Coover, Siri Hustvedt, Rick Moody, Barry Lopez, Robert Pinsky, Diane Ackerman, John Yau, Mary Caponegro, Bradford Morrow, Dale Peck and others—and paired their work with tipped-in color reproductions of Cornell’s assemblages. The result feels less like a conventional literary anthology than another Cornell box: individual objects, voices and images arranged until unexpected connections begin to appear.

Published by D.A.P. in 2001, this is the first trade edition and an especially appealing early Jonathan Safran Foer book: he edited the volume, contributed to it, and has signed this copy on the title page. It appeared the year before Everything Is Illuminated made Foer widely known, giving the book an additional place in his bibliography. But Cornell remains its center—the birds, hotels, maps, compartments, found objects and private little universes that made his boxes unlike anyone else’s art. Beautifully designed and illustrated, this is one of those rare books that works equally well as literature, an artist book, and a book about art.

A wonderful meeting of Joseph Cornell and contemporary American literature—and a particularly nice signed first edition from the beginning of Jonathan Safran Foer’s career.