A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables. By Randall Jarrell, Atheneum, New York, 1967.
 
Rare Nonfiction 
 
There are roughly two categories of material here: four essays on the plight of the intellectual and the artist in an America suffering the spiritual side-effects of abundance and mass communication; six essays on literary and artistic matters ranging from the evils that critics do to the great things that Kipling did. Along the way there is that variety of references to painting, sculpture, music, psychology, philosophy, French, German and Russian literature that one has learned to expect from the man Robert Lowell has called "the last of our great poet-critics."
 
Randall Jarrell was an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, and novelist. He was the 11th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—a position that now bears the title Poet Laureate of the United States. 
 
Blue cover with gilt spine title. Secure binding with clean pages and owner name at inside front free endpaper. The lightly rubbed jacket is in a nice protective cover and it has some smaller closed tears and creases at the bottom. Hardcover.