Catalog 100, H-I
38. HARRISON, Jim. A Good Day to Die. NY: Simon & Schuster (1973). His second novel, which has long been considered his scarcest. This copy is signed by the author. Thin remainder line to top edge; else fine in a fine dust jacket with a slight crimp at the crown.
39. HARRISON, Jim. Selected and New Poems. (NY): Delacorte/Lawrence (1982). Humorously inscribed by the author to Seymour Lawrence, his publisher: "To Sam,/ Doubtless the/ best volume in/ yr publishing/ career./ luv/ Jim." Top edges faded; near fine in a very good spine- and edge-tanned dust jacket with a small chip on the lower rear panel. An excellent association copy: Lawrence, who published Harrison's collection of novellas, Legends of the Fall, in several unusual formats, including a signed, limited edition, was Harrison's publisher at the point at which he "broke through" and gained commercial and popular success commensurate with his critical reputation. Lawrence's support for his authors -- especially young, relatively unsung ones like Harrison -- was legendary, and his influence on contemporary American literature has been compared to that of Max Perkins, who was the editor for the young Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, among others, and whose editorship is credited, in part, with their subsequent success in the literary world.
40. (Harrison of Paris). MÉRIMÉE, Prosper. Carmen and Letters from Spain. Paris/NY: Harrison of Paris/Minton, Balch (1931). The deluxe issue of this title, the sixth publication by Harrison of Paris, an important expatriate fine press during the 1920s and 1930s, a period in which American expatriate writing of the "Lost Generation" flourished in Europe. This is one of fifty Roman numeraled copies on Imperial Japan vellum (28 for America); the regular edition was 595 numbered copies. Illustrated with monochrome water colors by Marice Barraud. Designed by Monroe Wheeler, one of the founders of the press, and with a quarter leather Huser binding. Fine in a fine slipcase with a tiny nick at the top. A beautiful copy of an attractive book by an important press.
41. HELLER, Joseph. Catch-22. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1961. Heller's first book, a humorous novel of World War II and military life whose title has become a part of the language, signifying a contradictory set of instructions or constraints. This book was both the basis for a well-received movie and also one of the novels that helped define the ethos of the 1960s -- funny, irreverent, and critical of established authority and bureaucracy. Warmly inscribed by the author in the year of publication. Some light wrinkling to the lower corner of the front free endpaper, evidence of earlier dampstaining, but still a near fine copy in a very good, lightly rubbed dust jacket with modest, internally tape-repaired edgewear. An attractive copy of a high spot of modern literature. A Modern Library, Radcliffe, Waterstone's and New York Public Library book of the century.
(HELLER, Joseph). See also item #147.
42. (HEMINGWAY, Ernest.) Ship's Log Signed. c. 1934. The passenger log for the private yacht, Minoco, from December, 1932 to March, 1937. Signed by Ernest and Pauline Hemingway. Hemingway has signed his name in full, with his street address and "Key West Florida." While the Hemingways' entry is undated, it is apparently from the winter of 1934-35. The Minoco was a large private yacht, apparently based near Chicago during the warm months of the year, which, along with various other yachts from the northern climes, wintered in Key West during the mid-1930s. Apparently, the owners hired out for private trips, ranging from day trips to two-week fishing trips, and kept a log for the passengers to sign and leave their comments. By the evidence here, it was quite a luxurious vessel, and many of the passengers, especially during the summer months, came from the wealthy suburbs of Chicago, Oak Park in particular. Hemingway grew up in Oak Park, and it may be this connection that prompted him to visit the Minoco in 1934, despite the fact that he already had his own boat, the Pilar, and had spent much of the summer and fall fishing on it, from a base in Havana. The log has also been signed by Jean Harlow, in 1933. Harlow has added, in the "Remarks" section, "What a man Dalling." Hundreds of other (nonfamous) signatures and also many character sketches, tipped in or laid in, most signed "Casey," and one sketch of Harlow by Dorothy M. Rohn, the wife of the skipper of the boat. Two snapshots of Minoco are also laid in, one of them showing a number of large fish hanging over the side of the vessel. An intriguing glimpse of a moment, hitherto undocumented, in Hemingway's life at a time when he was perhaps the most famous writer in America. Leatherbound, professionally rebacked, with a cut jade circular emblem laid in. 11" x 14". Near fine.
43. HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Autograph Letter Signed. January 24, 1959. Two full pages, addressed to his eldest son "Bum." Written from his home in Ketchum, Idaho, on stationery bearing his Cuban address, "Finca Vigia." A noteworthy letter, written the month that Fidel Castro toppled the Batista regime in Cuba, Hemingway's adopted home. The gravity of the political situation in Cuba is alluded to matter-of-factly, and only in passing: Hemingway writes at length about the death of his son's dog during the general strike that paralyzed Cuba during the revolution, and that "René writes all the village boys back from the Sierra," presumably a reference to the local young men supporting Castro's guerrilla troops in the Sierra Madres, the home base for the revolutionaries prior to the success of the revolt. Cuban President Batista fled Cuba on January 1, 1959; Fidel Castro took formal power on February 16. In other, more immediately practical matters, he gives instructions for Bum to buy Mary (Ernest's wife) 10 shares of AT&T stock, despite the fact that he already had 10 "in a certificate at either K.W. [Idaho] or Finca safe I bought when Roosevelt came in." Signed with a partly Spanish closing: "Sin mas nada - mucho love - Papa." The postscript is initialed "E.H." Folded in thirds for mailing, one edge nick; else fine. Pencilled annotations indicate that Hemingway included two checks with the letter, one for $108.75 and one for $8000, for the stock, with the leftover balance from the AT&T purchase to be held "to my account and I'll let you know what to buy with it." An interesting and revealing letter, written at a moment when world events were conspiring to change forever the life Hemingway had so carefully made for himself over the years. Hemingway committed suicide two years later at his home in Ketchum; Fidel Castro and the Cubans continued to treat his home at Finca Vigia as an historical site and to consider Hemingway -- who had fought on the side of the Communists in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s -- a cultural hero.
44. HERBERT, Frank. Dune. Philadelphia/NY: Chilton (1965). A classic science fiction novel, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best science fiction novel of the year -- an uncommon literary "double." Dune is a massive novel by a writer who, until its publication, had been a minor American science fiction author, and whose every novel after this was a bestseller upon publication. The obscurity of the author, and the unlikeliness prior to publication of the book's huge success is suggested by the fact that it was issued by a publisher, Chilton, more well-known for its auto repair manuals than for its fiction. Dune is a saga set on the windswept planet Arrakis, whose only export is the drug of immortality, Melange. While the labyrinthine plot includes court intrigue and romance, the two elements that made it a bestseller on college campuses in the Sixties were its depiction of a drug used to expand human awareness, and the interstellar jihad that drives the plot: an apocalyptic religious war and the use of hallucinogens found their clear analogues in the movements of the Sixties, and touched the nerve of the generation the way that Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, which also became a counterculture classic, had. This copy has slight foxing on the page edges and a small splatter on the top edge; still near fine in a slightly spine-faded, near fine dust jacket. A remarkably nice copy of this bulky, somewhat oversize book, whose jacket is very susceptible to fading and wear. One of the nicest copies we have seen in years of one of the scarcest science fiction novels of the past half century, the basis for an ambitious, if not altogether successful, movie by David Lynch almost two decades later. A Waterstone's book of the century.
45. HERR, Michael. Dispatches. NY: Knopf, 1977. Herr, reporting from Vietnam for Rolling Stone and Esquire, was -- along with such now-legendary figures as Tim Page, Sean Flynn and Dana Stone -- among the first of the young writers to bring the sensibilities of the 1960s and the conventions of the New Journalism to the "first rock-and-roll war" and nobody had told the tales Herr was finding in Vietnam and sending back in a riveting, and eagerly awaited, series of dispatches. "Hell Sucks," "Illumination Rounds," "Khe Sanh," and his other pieces told the stories of the war in the voices of the participants themselves, and their impact was shattering. With the barest sketch of a burned-out GI's reaction to one of the author's questions, Herr managed to suggest the indescribably hellish experience of the war for those who were its "grunts." The official picture of an orderly progression to the war -- Body Counts, Vietnamization, Winning Hearts and Minds -- bore no relation to the madness and hell, and the sometimes overwhelming sadness, that Herr found when he barely scratched the surface and got a glimpse of how the war looked from a grunts'-eye view. His writings helped define the Credibility Gap that made Vietnam so different from earlier wars, and that influenced an entire generation's skepticism toward the pronouncements of those in power. These are the individual "dispatches" -- short, separate pieces sent back from Vietnam at different times and from different places. Each is powerful and complete in itself, and the whole adds up to much more than the sum of its parts by virtue of its sheer intensity. Individual sentences in a single dispatch often seem to convey more meaning and sense than entire treatises on the conflict, and to do so more profoundly. Dispatches received a front-page review in the New York Times Book Review and went on to become a surprise bestseller, going through at least 10 printings in hardcover and being picked up by one of the major book clubs. Herr went on to contribute to two of the most ambitious, and highly praised, films of the Vietnam war -- Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now and Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. This is the uncorrected proof copy of Dispatches. Two pages of reviewer's (?) notes on the rear two blanks. Some staining to the first dozen pages; spine slant; one cover corner creased. Very good in tall wrappers. An extremely scarce proof: we've only seen a couple of copies in the 20+ years since the book was published.
46. -. Same title, the trade edition. While not particularly uncommon, the unlaminated dust jacket and the gold foil lettering make the book difficult to find in top condition. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Laid in are reviews of the book by Geoffrey Wolff and Alfred Kazin and a 1983 Esquire article by Herr, "Sending the War Home."
47. (Human Be-In). Handbill. San Francisco: [1967]. Handbill for one of the defining events of the 1960s counterculture, the "Human Be-In" held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in January, 1967. The handout sheet announces: "POW-WOW/A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In" and lists some of the participants -- Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Snyder, Rubin, Leary, Dick Gregory, "All SF Rock Bands," etc. along with the pertinent details: "Saturday Jan 14 1-5 P.M. Free, Polo Grounds, Golden Gate Pk." 8 1/2" x 11" on beige-colored stock, printed by Double H Press in San Francisco. The Human Be-In was conceived as another of the unstructured celebrations of the San Francisco hippie community, in the tradition of the earlier Trips Festival. The presence of a roster of superstar figures -- Leary, Ginsberg, Alan Watts, Richard Alpert -- was intended to help draw out the largest possible crowd, but the star of the event was intended to be the crowd itself. Indeed, the speakers could not be heard much of the time but no one much cared. The bands played in the afternoon, and included Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, and others. After the sound system broke down at one point, it was announced that the generator would hereafter be guarded by the Hell's Angels. The event went smoothly: tens of thousands of people showed up, many smoking pot or tripping on LSD, but the police kept a low profile and didn't bust any of the people openly smoking pot; a priest from the San Francisco Zen Temple meditated on stage throughout the day. At the end of the day, Gary Snyder blew a conch shell -- a traditional Japanese Buddhist ritual instrument -- and Allen Ginsberg led a Buddhist chant, at which point the crowd drifted apart. The Human Be-In became one of the milestone events of the emerging counterculture and, in retrospect, one of its high points. It succeeded for a time in bridging the gap between the San Francisco hippie culture and the Berkeley-based radical political movement, finding some common ground for the two -- a joining of two disparate, and sometimes divergent, movements that has had repercussions to the present day: today, cultural experimentation and alternative lifestyles go hand in hand with political critique, a trend that was considerably more uncommon prior to this occasion. Of the various handbills announcing the Human Be-In, this is the scarcest (Art of Rock, 2.216). Fine.
48. IRVING, John. The 158-Pound Marriage. NY: Random House (1974). The uncorrected proof copy of the third novel by the author of The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany, among others. Spine slant, and paper clip imprint on front cover; else fine in wrappers. A scarce proof, predating the era in which proofs have routinely been collected, and offered for sale in the rare book market. Very few copies of this proof have ever turned up on the market, to the best of our knowledge.
49. IRVING, John. The World According to Garp. NY: Dutton (1978). The uncorrected proof copy of the author's fourth novel, and his breakthrough book. The first printing of Garp was reported at 35,000 copies; none of Irving's previous books had sold even 5,000 copies, with one of them having had sales under 2000. Irving switched publishers for this book, and his new publisher decided to promote the novel heavily. Dutton issued two sets of proofs in small numbers for early readers and reviewers and an advance reading copy for wide distribution to the book trade. It worked in bringing attention to Irving's novel, which became a bestseller and National Book Award finalist (it won a watered-down version of the "American Book Award" the next year as a paperback reprint). Since then, Irving's books have had six-figure first printings and his reputation as one of the major novelists working in America today has been secure. This is the first issue proof, in mustard-colored wrappers. There was also a later issue proof, in blue-green wrappers. This is the earliest printed version of one of the landmark novels of the 1970s, and it is inscribed by the author. Near fine. A Radcliffe book of the century.
The Book of the Century