"A FABULOUS 'THINKING' MACHINE… A MODERN VAMPIRE": FIRST EDITION OF KENNETH FEARING'S LONELIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD, 1951, TOGETHER WITH A FIRST EDITION OF ITS RE-PUBLICATION AS SOUND OF MURDER IN MERCURY MYSTERY NO. 173
FEARING, Kenneth. Loneliest Girl in the World. WITH: The Sound of Murder. New York: Harcourt, Brace ; Mercury, 1951. Octavo, original gray cloth, original dust jacket; quarto, original pictorial blue wrappers. $1200.
First edition of Fearing's novel about a "thinking" machine in America's cybernetic future, his first novel after Big Clock (1946), published at the height of McCarthyism, this little known work resonating with "the sincere irony of his message," which cleaves "closest to the Kafka mode." This copy with a first edition of its re-titled publication in Mercury Mystery as The Sound of Murder, rarely found together.
Fearing's first novel after his noir classic, Big Clock (1946), Loneliest Girl is a hybrid science fiction/thriller that offers a glimpse of America's cybernetic future. As critics have noted: "Fearing's novels all have something of a 'film noir' quality—a pervasive and even perverse suspicion of a conspiratorial" society" (Barnard, Great Depression, 50). In this novel Fearing's "loneliest girl" is a reclusive rich girl who "comes into possession of a fabulous 'thinking' machine" named Mikki and thousands of recordings made by her father that may "hold a powerful and valuable secret" (Atlantic). After she "holes up like a recluse with the infernal machine," she comes to view Mikki as "a modern vampire sucking the life out of all human relationships" (Time).
Published amidst the drumming of the Cold War, McCarthyism and HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee), this often overlooked novel nevertheless stands out as a a signal work that affirms Fearing's "deep-rooted radicalism… [and] the sincere irony of his message"—one that cleaves "closest to the Kafka mode" (Wald, American Night, 31-33, 47). Fearing's allegorical and ironic impulse is especially realized in the "thinking" machine. In an essay published not long after, Fearing links it, in effect, to HUAC, which he calls "a system of surveillance and espionage [that] had its rise in the theaters of communication." Like Mikki in Loneliest Girl and Janoth Enterprises in Big Clock, HUAC represents "a national panopticon… a glittering, noisy substitute for… total silence, total secrecy" (Reading, Writing and the Rackets). Loneliest Girl: first edition, first printing with "First Edition" stated on copyright page. This copy is accompanied by a first edition of Mercury Mystery No. 173, which contains the novel's re-republication under the title, The Sound of Murder. Bruccoli & Clark I:130.
Book fine, scant edge-wear mainly to spine ends of near-fine price-clipped dust jacket. Sound of Murder: text generally fresh with small bit of marginal dampstaining at rear; fragile wrappers with light edge-wear, soiling, a very scarce near-fine copy.