Bukowski, Charles (Crumb, Robert)

There's No Business

Santa Barbara, CA, USA: Black Sparrow Press, 1984. First Softcover Edition. “Manny Hyman had been in show business since he was sixteen. Four decades of it and still he didn’t have a pot to puke in. He was working one of the lounges at the Sunset Hotel. The small lounge. He, Manny, was the “Comedy.” Vegas wasn’t what it used to be. The money had gone to Atlantic City where things were fresher, newer. Then, too, there was the god-damned recession.” One of the collaborations between two icons of the underground, Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), the great American cult favorite poet-denizen of the dive bar & racetrack, and counterculture comix creator Robert Crumb (b. 1943). There’s No Business is a short story following Manny Hyman, a tired-out hack comic performing his last act before being replaced by a younger competitor. Crumb illustrates the scenes throughout. From the collection of Richard Cupidi (b. 1945), our esteemed friend in the UK who managed the fabled Unicorn Bookshop in Brighton, England with Bill Butler (1934-1977, the famed American-expatriate bookseller & publisher). From the late 1960s through the early 1970s, Unicorn proffered & published many outstanding productions by William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard et al., some of which have become the scarcest, all-but-unobtainable Beat-&-Beyond collectibles (see an example with our item no. 8217). After prevailing against censorious harassment efforts, Unicorn closed & Butler died in short order. Cupidi went on to found the Public House Bookshop in Brighton, which had a long & successful run but is also now closed, & he still resides there. We have been honored to obtain what Cupidi has termed "The Last Hurrah," all the remaining treasures of Unicorn & Public House, some of which have become the stuff of myth. Trade-format softcover. First Softcover Edition, First Printing; a series of cloth and hardbound copies were simultaneously released, per colophon. (Debritto, A88, p. 48) In Fine condition with light scratching and minor pencil marking to front, back covers; minor creasing to edges, corners of same; some spotting along textblock. Interior Fine with some spotting to leaves. Fine. [Item #8310]

Price: $45.00