Clark, Tom

Who is Sylvia?

Berkeley, CA: Blue Wind Press, 1979. First Softcover Edition. Softcover. "This fast-paced cinematic novel depicts a hip young American professor/poet's brief but deeply disturbing affair with an enigmatic Englishwoman named Sylvia. Set against the backdrop of the psychedelic 60s, the novel opens on the London literary scene where Bob and Sylvia become entangled. The action shifts to the art world and backwaters of the jet-set scene on the French Riviera, where the affair finally decays as Sylvia's drugged psyche disintegrates. Who is Sylvia? is a modern counterpart to the Classic American Expatriate genre of the 20s and 30s." (back cover) A novel by Tom Clark (1941-2018), the poet, novelist, editor & biographer with the title drawn from a line in “Two Gentlemen of Verona” by William Shakespeare. Clark was the editor of The Paris Review from 1963 to 1973 and an accomplished poet who also wrote biographies on Charles Olson, Jack Kerouac, Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn and other Beat & Beyond greats. He attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Third Mind Books' home. With front cover illustration by Clark and back cover contemporary photograph of Clark by Susanna Acevedo, per colophon. From the collection of Richard Cupidi (b. 1945) who managed the fabled Unicorn Bookshop in Brighton, England for founder 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 for example our item nos. 8217, 8366). 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. First trade softcover edition in unclipped dust jacket, published simultaneously with hardcover & limited, signed & numbered editions. Book in relatively Near-Fine condition with some rubbing and scratching to front, back covers & spine; light creasing and bumping to edges & corners of same; textblock has some spotting, scratching and age-toning. Interior near fine with light age-toning throughout and the beginnings of partial separation of cover from textblock. Near Fine. [Item #8360]

Price: $35.00