London, England: John Calder, 1964. First UK Edition. Hardcover. (Maynard & Miles, A2c, pgs. 11-14; Shoaf, Section I, No. 2t, pg. 20; Schottlaender, A2d, pg. 3). “The Naked Lunch is one of the most important and most controversial novels to have appeared since the war…Burroughs is at the same time the central figure in the ‘beat’ movement and the principal American post-Joycean, using and creating language in a new way..... More
[Item #4521]
New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1928. First Edition. Hardcover. "If I could have/ Two things in one:/ The peace of the grave,/ And the light of the sun;" ("Moriturus," first stanza, pg. 3) A vintage, classic collection of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), the canonical American poet, quintessential Greenwich Village bohemian & LGBT icon. Hardcover in boards with cloth spine & corners, first edition as stated on..... More
[Item #4520]
New York, NY: Evergreen Review, Inc., 1968. First Printing. Glued Wrappers. This vintage number of the legendary literary, cultural & arts journal chiefly edited by Barney Rosset features "Johnny 23," a short story by William S. Burroughs exemplary of the tail-end of the great(est of them all in our estimation) writer's cut-up phase segueing into his later, (relatively) lucid style- & with WSB's favorite number of personal-mythological significance in its..... More
[Item #4519]
New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1970. Limited First Edition. Hardcover. Signed by David Quammen. "Color is the subject of this serious, funny, scary, and human novel- color as a signal for tragic hostility and for farcical misunderstanding, color as a test for the young who want to change the world. The author tells the story of a young white Ivy Leaguer who makes an awkward alliance- built on..... More
[Item #4518]
New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2000. First Edition. Hardcover. “What a wonderful book is ‘Deliberate Prose,’ the selected essays of Allen Ginsberg! It is the work of a great poet, a great American, and a great friend of literature who more than any bard in history helped shape social thought and political change in his era. Brilliance suffuses the collection, beginning with the opening essay, his prophetic ‘Independence Day Manifesto’..... More
[Item #4517]
New York, NY: Harper & Brothers; Oxford University Press, 1959; 1996. First Editions Thus. Hardcovers. Two intermediate, collectible editions of autobiographical writings by Samuel Langhorne Clemens a/k/a Mark Twain (1835-1910), the canonical American humorist & author: (1) The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Harper & Brothers (among Twain's original publishers), 1959. "One of the classics of American writing, including manuscript material and photographs never before published, arranged and edited by Charles..... More
[Item #4516]
New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988. First Trade Edition. Hardcover. "Isaac Bashevis Singer portrays Methuselah at the age of 969- "and when you pass your nine hundredth birthday, you are not what you used to be." This fable of Noah's grandfather, longing for death at the very moment when the Deluge is about to be unleashed, represents the Nobel Prize author at his best. "The Death of Methuselah"..... More
[Item #4515]
Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1990. First Edition. Hardcover. "In Edward Abbey's critically acclaimed bestseller, The Monkey Wrench Gang, George Washington Hayduke- ex-Green Beret and "wilderness avenger, industrial development saboteur, night-time troublemaker, barroom brawler, free-time lover"- was last seen clinging to a cliff, under fire from both a helicopter and a posse. Now presumed dead by all who stalked him, whereabouts unknown to those who knew him best...HAYDUKE LIVES!-..... More
[Item #4514]
New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1955. First American Edition. Hardcover. "This is the autobiography of a remarkable Irish boy who wanted only to be ordinary. Christy Brown was the "strange one" in a family which had 22 children. The only controllable part of his body was his left foot, so it became his one means of communication. His personal story is an epic of cheerful courage, portraying on..... More
[Item #4513]
Cherry Valley, NY: Cherry Valley Editions, 1974. First Edition. Stapled Wrappers. Signed by Barbara Holland. If one is led by a Google Search to the Wikipedia page of Barbara Holland, they are greeted with the following hilarious statement: “Barbara Murray Holland (April 5, 1933-September 7, 2010) was an American author who wrote in defense of modern-day vices such as cursing, drinking, eating fatty food and smoking cigarettes.” Is such an..... More
[Item #4512]
New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1973. First Edition. Hardcover. "Nickel Mountain, in its simplicity and warmth, seems at first a startling departure from the complexity of The Sunlight Dialogues, the darkness of Grendel, the virtuosity of Jason and Medeia. Here is a moving story of two people: a fat, gentle, middle-aged man who runs a rural diner, and the young, plain girl who drifts into his life and..... More
[Item #4511]
New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961. First Edition. Hardcover. "This is the story of S. Levin, thirty, a bearded man with a burdensome past, who comes from New York to a small town in the Pacific Northwest, to live a new life." (front flap) The third novel by Bernard Malamud (1914-1986), the great Jewish-American author in the acclaimed twentieth-century canon along with his contemporaries including Saul Bellow &..... More
[Item #4510]
New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1988. First Edition. Hardcover. "Last Notes from Home is the long-awaited and triumphant third volume of Frederick Exley's trilogy, which began with A Fan's Notes. Exuberant, witty, perceptive, paranoid, outrageous- half fantasy, half fact- Last Notes from Home is ostensibly the story of Exley's journey to Hawaii from upstate New York to visit his brother, "the Brigadier," an Army officer who is dying of..... More
[Item #4509]
New York, NY: The Philosophical Library, Inc., 1948. First American Edition. Hardcover. "Madame de Beauvoir, novelist, dramatist, and philosopher, is the most distinguished woman writer in present-day France. A leading exponent of French existentialism, her work complements, though it is independent of, that of Jean-Paul Sartre. The present work, which introduces her to the English-speaking public, penetrates at once to the central ethical problem of modern man: what shall he..... More
[Item #4508]
New York, NY: Grove Press, Inc., 1961. First American Trade Edition. Hardcover. " "For me," says Lawrence Durrell, "Tropic of Cancer stands beside Moby Dick." T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, George Orwell, and Edmund Wilson- these and many other leading writers of our time have characterized Tropic of Cancer as a modern American Classic. Yet it has taken twenty-seven years for Henry Miller's most important and, in the opinion of some..... More
[Item #4507]