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Mash

Mash

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Mash

by Hooker, Richard [Pseudonym of Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr.]

  • Used
  • near fine
  • Signed
  • first
Condition
Near Fine/Near Fine
Seller
Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Portland, Oregon, United States
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About This Item

New York: William Morrow and Company, 1968. First Edition. Near Fine/Near Fine. First edition, first printing. Signed by author as Richard Hooker on the title page with quote marks around his name; Richard Hooker is the pseudonym of Dr. Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr. Near Fine, with light edge wear, toning to spine ends, small evidence of tape removal to recto of half-title page, hinge at title page over-opened. In a Near Fine unclipped dust jacket, with light shelf wear and toning. A laid-in note in a former owner's hand reads, "Dr. Hornberger autographed this book as "Richard Hooker" while still employed as a doctor at Thayer Hospital in Waterville, Maine." Signed copies are scarce.

Synopsis

Before the movie, this is the novel that gave life to Hawkeye Pierce, Trapper John, Hot Lips Houlihan, Frank Burns, Radar O'Reilly, and the rest of the gang that made the 4077th MASH like no other place in Korea or on earth.The doctors who worked in the Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals (MASH) during the Korean War were well trained but, like most soldiers sent to fight a war, too young for the job. In the words of the author, "a few flipped their lids, but most of them just raised hell, in a variety of ways and degrees."For fans of the movie and the series alike, here is the original version of that perfectly corrupt football game, those martini-laced mornings and sexual escapades, and that unforgettable foray into assisted if incompleted suicide--all as funny and poignant now as they were before they became a part of America's culture and heart.

Reviews

On Apr 19 2011, Feeney said:
I found Richard Hooker's 1968 novel MASH disappointing. I think of it as "poor man's Rudyard Kipling." Like Kipling's immortal SOLDIERS THREE tales of British India and his fictionalized school boy reminiscences in STALKY & CO., Hooker's MASH is about male bonding among a trio of people engaged in the same occupation: whether, as for Kipling, soldiering for Queen Victoria in an alien sub-Continent, or atttending together in England a prep school for future government servants or, in the case of Hooker's MASH, surgeoning together north of Seoul during the 1950s Korean War. Part of the glory of Kipling's depictions (like Shakespeare's) is that Kipling had a very good ear for English as it is really spoken. Richard Hooker, alas, does not. And this is the most annoying single fault in a frequently disappointing novel. *** The novel's title, MASH, is an acronym for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. The MASH about which the tale revolves is the 4077th, located in 1951 and 1953 45 miles north of Seoul, capital of South Korea, and on the 38th Parallel of Latitude separating the two warring Koreas. The tale begins in November 1951. Enter forthwith two newly assigned surgeons, both draftees, "Captains Augustus Bedford Forrest and Benjamin Franklin Pierce." Pierce aka Hawkeye is 28. Forrest aka Duke is 29. Soon Captain Forrest commits for the first time an authorial tin-ear malapropism to be pointlessly repeated hundreds of time before novel's end. Speaking to the only other person in a Jeep driving north from Seoul, Duke asks Hawkeye, "What are y'all anyway? ... A nut?" "Y'all" is supposed to let the reader know that Captain Forrest is a Southerner, specifically a Georgian. Trouble is, of course, we Southerners do not use "you all" or its variants when addressing single individuals. *** Whereas Shakespeare and Kipling individualize their characters through accurate reproduction of the sounds they make speaking English, almost every single character in MASH sounds as if he was born and raised in the same Midwestern neighborhood -- despite Hawkeye's being from Maine and Trapper John's being from Boston. Obvious exceptions are Captain Forrest and a late in the yarn black football star whose father had been a sharecropper on a farm owned by Forrest's father. And they both sound like tin-ear parodies. *** In Chapter 3 there enters chest surgeon John McIntyre, formerly a famous high school and college athlete nicknamed Trapper John. He moves into a tent called the Swamp completing the third of the three Swampmen, the novel's heroes. The rest of MASH is about their growing companionship as unusually good but eccentric surgeons performing "hurry-up, short-cut or call-it-what-you-will surgery you have to do in a place like this" (Ch. 14). Like SOLDIERS THREE and STALKY & CO., MASH is essentially a string of short stories focusing on Hawkeye, Duke and Trapper John at work and at play, in depression and exaltation until each one's 15 months of front line surgery are over. *** The novel spun off a movie directed by Robert Altman which followed the book fairly well, albeit with exaggerations of the mayhem that the surgical Musketeers strewed about them. An eleven-seasons television series was more popular than either novel or movie. If you must read MASH the novel, do it as the price of admission to the movie or television MASH. --OOO--

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Details

Bookseller
Burnside Rare Books, ABAA US (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #
140938312
Title
Mash
Author
Hooker, Richard [Pseudonym of Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr.]
Book Condition
Used - Near Fine
Jacket Condition
Near Fine
Quantity Available
1
Edition
First Edition
Publisher
William Morrow and Company
Place of Publication
New York
Date Published
1968
Bookseller catalogs
Literature;

Terms of Sale

Burnside Rare Books, ABAA

30 day return guarantee, with full refund including shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.

About the Seller

Burnside Rare Books, ABAA

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2010
Portland, Oregon

About Burnside Rare Books, ABAA

Burnside Rare Books specializes in literary first editions and works of cultural and historic significance. We are located in Portland, Oregon and welcome visitors by appointment.

Glossary

Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

Fine
A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
Jacket
Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
First Edition
In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
Recto
The page on the right side of a book, with the term Verso used to describe the page on the left side.
Laid-in
"Laid In" indicates that there is something which is included with, but not attached to the book, such as a sheet of paper. The...
Title Page
A page at the front of a book which may contain the title of the book, any subtitles, the authors, contributors, editors, the...
Hinge
The portion of the book closest to the spine that allows the book to be opened and closed.
Shelf Wear
Shelf wear (shelfwear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. This damage is...
Spine
The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....

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