Oranges

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. A layered and compelling association copy, inscribed "For Sir Peregrine Henniker-Heaton, from Sara Spencer, with assistance from John McPhee, 3/26/71." McPhee has a wonderful habit of naming the intermediary of a gifted book, so we ll start with Sara Spencer. Her married name became Sara Lippincott, and she was John McPhee s copyeditor at The New Yorker for 25 years before she became a nonfiction editor at the magazine. He wrote about her in his essay "Checkpoints which first appeared in Silk Parachute and then was properly collected in Draft #4, and it s fair to say that "Checkpoints" kicked off the series of reflections on writing that became Draft #4. "Checkpoints" begins, "Sara Lippincott, who now lives in Pasadena, having retired as an editor at The New Yorker in the early nineteen-nineties, worked in the magazine s fact-checking department from 1966 until 1982. She had a passion fo science, and the pieces of writing about science came in to the magazine they were generally copied to her desk. In 1973, a long piece of mine called 'The Curve of Binding Energy' received her full-time attention for three or four weeks and needed every minute of it. Explaining her work to an audience at a journalism school, Sara once said, 'Each word in the piece that has even a shred of fact clinging to it is scrutinized, and, if passed, given the checker s imprimatur, which consists of a tiny pencil tick.'" And so on. On the publication of Silk Parachute, McPhee wrote to her, "That piece was written so that I could write the part about you." Almost every book John McPhee has written passed through Sara and her checkpoints on its way to FSG, making her a key figure in his writing life. // As for Sir Peregrine Henniker-Heaton: Here's where this association takes a bizarre and slightly macabre turn, and it also explains why this book remained in Sara Lippincott's library until she sold or commissioned the book to a Pasadena shop. His relationship to Lippincott is unknown, but in any case he was a British spy and baronet who suddenly went missing in London in October of 1971. A wing‐commander in the Royal Air Force, he had been in head of security in Palestine during the British mandate and had already escaped three assassination attempts. When he went missing after apparently going out for a walk, it was assumed that someone had finally got him, and Scotland Yard made a big effort to find him. Three years later, his skeleton turned up in a pile of rumpled clothes in a locked study of his West London home, where he had taken his life and left a note. It was sensational news and embarrassing to Scotland Yard, which hadn t even bothered to thoroughly search the house. Though this book was inscribed in March of 1971, apparently Sara wasn t able to visit or send it before Henniker-Heaton disappeared. It's the kind of weird story John McPhee might have been tempted to write about himself, if only some sort geology were involved in the evidence. A very good book with some fading to top edges of boards, with a very good jacket with general wear, a few dark scuffs to pale back, and a small water stain at base of spine. All in all, a rare and fantastic copy, a wonderful conversation piece. Please inquire for photos.