McClure, Michael

The Grabbing of the Fairy: A Masque

St. Paul, MN: Truck Press, 1978. First Softcover Edition. Softcover. "The Scene: The walls of the semicircular set are covered with giant, pink rose petals. The floor is covered with feathers. There are white feathers that float about and heavy brown feathers." (set description, unpaginated). A "masque" was a popular form of courtly entertainment in Renaissance Europe, particularly in England during the 16th & 17th centuries, though it originated in Italy. It typically included music, dance, singing & acting, often within elaborate stage designs & costumes. Masques were usually performed for royalty or aristocracy and frequently used mythological or allegorical themes to convey political or moral messages. Offered today is The Grabbing of the Fairy: A Masque, an early play by Beat Generation/San Francisco Renaissance poet & playwright Michael McClure (1932-2020), one of his first dramatic works, written around the same period as his participation in the famous Six Gallery reading in San Francisco of 1955. The play is a short, surrealist piece that reflects McClure's preoccupations at the time: the body, biology, & the boundary between the human, the animal & the mythological. The "fairy" figure (played by Beat Generation Founding Father Allen Ginsberg [1926-1997] for a March 21, 1974 performance directed by the "Poet Laureate of Deep Ecology" Gary Snyder [b. 1930]) operates less as a whimsical creature and more as an embodiment of something wild, instinctual, or otherworldly being seized by human hands, which can be read as a metaphor for the violence done to imagination, nature, or the nonrational when subjected to force or possession. McClure was deeply influenced at this stage by Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich's (1897-1957) ideas about bodily energy and repression; British mathematician Alfred North Whitehead's (1861-1947) process philosophy; and the nascent mammal-consciousness themes that would define his later work. The play fits within a broader McClure aesthetic of visceral, biological surrealism, the body as a site of spiritual and political meaning. It's a minor work in his canon but an interesting early marker of where his dramatic writing was heading, toward pieces like his The Blossom; or Billy the Kid and eventually The Beard, which caused notable controversy. Photographs from performances by co-founder of American counterculture magazine Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand (b. 1938). From the collection of Richard Cupidi (b. 1945), our esteemed mate in the UK 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 (1914-1997), J.G. Ballard (1930-2009) et al., some of which have become the scarcest, all-but-unobtainable Beat-&-Beyond collectibles (see for example our Item No.s 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 gems of Unicorn & Public House, including this jewel. Trade-Format Softcover: First Softcover Edition, first printing though neither explicated as such at copyright page. A most collectible McClure obscurity in one of its rarest contemporary forms with highly relevant association & very distinguished provenance. In relatively fine condition with mild age-toning, rubbing, scratching & mild bumping of corners to front, back covers & spine; moderate spot-staining to same; moderate age-toning, rubbing & spot-staining to text block. Interior relatively fine-to-very fine with mild age-toning to blank margins & fine edges of pages leaves; mild spot-staining mostly at fine edges of same; mild bumping of corners to some of same. Fine. [Item #8876]

Price: $40.00 save 15% $34.00