Catalog 100, N-O
83. NAIPAUL, V.S. The Mystic Masseur. (London): Andre Deutsch (1957). First book by this Trinidadian author of Indian descent, who has since come to be regarded as one of the giants of contemporary English literature, and the most astute, if acerbic, Western commentator on Third World issues. Naipaul won the Booker Prize for his collection, In a Free State, and has won numerous other literary awards over the course of his 40-year writing career. Light crown bump and offsetting to endpapers; near fine in a near fine dust jacket with a tear at the rear flap fold. A nice copy of an uncommon first book.
84. NAIPAUL, V.S. In a Free State. (London): Deutsch (1971). Uncorrected proof copy. A collection of three related pieces, including the title novella, which bear on issues of freedom and colonialism in modern Africa. Winner of the Booker Prize. Mild spotting to covers; about near fine in wrappers. While the book itself is not particularly uncommon, the proof is very scarce.
85. (New Mexico Territory - Americana). A File of Letters from Indian Agent Captain Edmund A. Graves to David Meriwether, Governor of the New Mexico Territory. August 22 to December 23, 1853. Twelve manuscript letters, one manuscript report, one manuscript copy of a summary report, and one voucher, totaling 44 pages, from the Indian Agent for the northern part of the New Mexico Territory to the Governor of the Territory in his role as Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Written on ruled stationery of a variety of types. One letter and the accompanying report edgeworn from rough handling (contemporary, it would appear), otherwise generally fine. Most are creased from folding for filing and are docketed on the outside leaf.
In mid-1853, David Meriwether was appointed Governor of the New Mexico Territory, at the same time that a territorial dispute with Mexico was threatening to undo the borders established in the wake of the Mexican War in 1848 by the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo. As Meriwether was traveling to New Mexico to assume the Governorship, James Gadsden was negotiating with Mexican President General Santa Ana. The results of their negotiations, finalized in December, 1853, was the Gadsden Treaty, which established the present-day boundaries between Mexico and the United States in what is now the state of New Mexico.
Meriwether appointed his son-in-law, Edmund A. Graves, as an Indian Agent to the Territory, in the northern agency. However, when James M. Smith, the agent for the southern Indians, died in December of 1853, Graves took over that agency, and Kit Carson was appointed to Graves's old post in the north.
The letters in this archive date from soon after Graves's arrival on the job in August, 1853 and continue through December, 1853, the exact period of the time that the Gadsden Treaty was being negotiated and finalized. They are filled with specific historical detail, and give a clear view of a man coming to grips with the rigors and challenges of the territory. The first letter describes an attack on a party of Mexicans by "thirty or forty Utahs [Utes] who succeeded in taking some five or six of their horses and killing as many more...There seems to be but little room to doubt, that the Utahs intend both robbery and murder against our citizens and most especially the Americans, both of which they have recently committed..." However, by his next letter, just five days later, he is beginning to apprehend the complexity of the local antagonisms: when a party of Mexicans reports that they were set upon by Utahs, resulting in one killed and two others drowned, he is skeptical because nothing was stolen. In an interesting postscript he adds that the Indians had given the party of Mexicans permission to fish in the river near their camp, "[h]ence the 8th Section of the Intercourse Act does not reach this case."
Included in the archive is a manuscript document that appears to be an "off-the-record" report to the Governor (it is neither addressed nor signed but is in Graves's handwriting and comes from these, the Governor's papers), in which Graves summarizes the Indian problem and offers advice: "I trust it will not be considered officious in me should I offer a few suggestions in regard to the Indian policy...[T]hat the tribes of Indians of this territory should be brought to terms admits of no question... but as they must live and as both civilized as well as the savage man will plunder and rob before he will die by starvation when the means of subsistence is within reach, it is nothing remarkable or strange [that there are ongoing crimes]..." Graves indicates that the choice between the U.S. either taking responsibility for the Indians' welfare or fighting a war of extermination is becoming ever more clear, and he favors the former approach.
Several letters deal in detail with the case of a Mexican boy who escapes from the Navajos, who then press a claim for return of the horse he stole to effect his escape. Other details mentioned include: an ongoing conflict, spanning several letters, between Jicarilla Apaches and Navajos over a number of horses stolen from the Apaches by the Navajos, one of which turns out to have been stolen by the Apaches from the U.S. Government; a land claims conflict between the Utes and the Mexicans over a stretch of fertile ground on the Rio Conejos, which brought up the issue of the legality of old titles granted when the territory was under the control of Mexico, an issue that was settled with the Gadsden Treaty but at this point was still unresolved.
The summary of Graves's agency report of August 31st reflects his first weeks on the job and reveals much about both the objective conditions he encountered and also his attitudes toward the major issues confronting him as an Indian agent. "Since the annexation of the territory to the U.S. the tribe have committed robberies, murder and other crimes which in savage cruelty stand without a parallel in history... It is a notorious fact that citizens are robbed and plundered without any remuneration or restoration... Either complete and adequate protection should be afforded to the settlers, or they should be permitted fully to redress their own wrongs. It is hard, that the privilege of retaliation should belong only to the Indians, and that the whites should have to await the slow and uncertain remuneration of the Government. The lex talione [sic] is not a favorite doctrine of mine or of the Christian world, but it is well understood by the Indians themselves... The policy of feeding the Indians and of making presents, is at best of doubtful expediency, and here where the price of everything is high, it is extremely expensive...Ten thousand dollars, to the 30,000 hostile Indians of the Territory is just equal to no appropriation."
A interesting file of letters, full of specific details about a number of Indian tribes and covering specific incidents, while at the same time addressing larger issues of policy and principles of governance as they were being implemented, and at times developed, on the frontier.
86. O'BRIEN, Tim. Northern Lights. NY: Delacorte (1975). His second novel, a tale of two brothers in the wilderness of northern Minnesota, one of them a war veteran, the other a veteran of the protests against that war. A cheaply-made, "perfectbound" book, it is difficult to find in nice condition, rivaling his first book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, for scarcity. Inscribed by the author "with fond memories of Bread Loaf" and signed "Tim." This copy has had some imperceptible hinge work; edge-faded, as is usual with this title, with light wear at the spine extremities; very good in a fine dust jacket.
87. O'BRIEN, Tim. Going After Cacciato. (NY): Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence (1978). His third book, a magical realist novel about a recruit who decides to simply walk away from the Vietnam war and go to Paris, overland. Dreamlike and surreal passages alternate with vivid, straightforward writing about combat in Vietnam. In a front page review, the New York Times Book Review said that "to call Going After Cacciato a book about war is like calling Moby Dick a book about whales." Winner of the National Book Award. Inscribed by the author: "To ____ ____,/ A fellow "member" of/ the Americal Club./ Peace,/ Tim O'Brien." Faint spot to top edge; else fine in a very near fine dust jacket with a few tiny edge tears.
88. O'BRIEN, Tim. Speaking of Courage. Santa Barbara: Neville, 1980. His first limited edition, a chapter that was excised from Going After Cacciato and later appeared, in altered form, in The Things They Carried. Of a total edition of 326 copies, this is a presentation copy, so printed on the colophon, and inscribed by O'Brien: "To Mom and Dad,/ Love,/ Tim." Clothbound, mildly sunned; near fine. An excellent personal association copy.
89. O'BRIEN, Tim. The Nuclear Age. Portland: Press-22 (1981). A limited edition of an excerpt from O'Brien's work-in-progress at the time, later published with the same title. Of a total edition of 151 copies, this is one of 26 lettered copies signed by the author, the entire hardcover edition and, as such, the smallest hardcover issue of any of O'Brien's publications. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
90. -. Same title, the proof copy. This proof resembles the wrappered issue, but is unnumbered and stamped "Proof Set/ May 5 1981" on the front flyleaf and the colophon. Signed by the author. Fine. Presumably very scarce: for an edition as small as this, it's hard to imagine more than a handful of proof copies being created.
91. O'BRIEN, Tim. Typescript of "The Lives of the Dead." 23 pages of ribbon-copy typescript of an article that appeared in Esquire in May, 1989, and was later published as a chapter of The Things They Carried. With several holograph corrections, including two title changes. The first page is shorter than the others; otherwise the typescript is near fine, and signed by the author. Together with the galley sheets, again with several holograph corrections; coffee stained, only very good. And also with a copy of the Japanese issue of Esquire in which the story appeared. O'Brien is a relentless reviser of his work, and this manuscript and galley proof not only show the revisions involved in this version of the story, but the final version here differs substantially from that which was published in The Things They Carried. O'Brien manuscript material has seldom appeared on the market and in these days of word processed text, ribbon-copy manuscripts are becoming increasingly scarce.
92. O'BRIEN, Tim. Typescript of "The People We Marry." [1991-1992]. Eighteen-plus pages of typescript of this story, which is the first published version of a section of his novel In the Lake of the Woods, and bears the title that that book originally had. Published in Atlantic Magazine in January, 1992. The pages are folded in half vertically, slightly rumpled, with a large chip missing from the first page, not affecting text; near fine. The first page is marked, in holograph, "My reading copy," and is signed by O'Brien. Together with the author's copy of the galley sheets with numerous holograph corrections and revisions by O'Brien. Folded, with corner creases and with (authorial?) cup rings and coffee stains; very good. Also together with a copy of the Atlantic in which the published story appeared. The manuscript of the earliest version of an acclaimed novel -- Time magazine's book of the year for 1994.
93. O'BRIEN, Tim. Typescript of "Ambush!" [1993-1995]. Thirty-six pages of photocopied typescript of a story that appeared in Boston Magazine in April, 1993, with several holograph changes from 1993, and the author's holograph revisions to the story "(made in May 95) for any future publication." The pages are fine, as is the magazine, and each is signed by the author. The story recounts the British attack at Concord in the Revolutionary War and O'Brien's own experiences in Vietnam, drawing surprising parallels. The revisions done since the magazine publication of the story have not appeared in print to date.
94. O'NEILL, Eugene. The Emperor Jones. NY: Boni & Liveright, 1928. The limited edition of this experimental play by the Nobel Prize winning author and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner for drama. This edition, published eight years after the first edition, has illustrations by Alexander King, and is bound in an attractive Art Deco binding. Of a total edition of 775, this is one of 750 numbered copies signed by the author. A fine copy, in a fine dust jacket -- and very scarce thus -- in a fair slipcase cracked along two edges.
95. O'NEILL, Eugene. The Hairy Ape. NY: Horace Liveright, 1929. Another limited edition published several years after the first edition, again with illustrations by Alexander King and published in a format uniform with that of The Emperor Jones, in an attractive binding of cloth and handmade paste paper and illustrated dust jacket. Of a total edition of 775, this is copy #14 of 750 numbered copies signed by the author. A fine copy, in a near fine, spine-tanned dust jacket, in a (married) slipcase (#37) worn at the corners.
96. (Oglala Sioux). BROWN, Joseph Epes. The Sacred Pipe. Norman: U. of Oklahoma Press (1953). "Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux," recorded and edited by Brown. Dictated by Black Elk three years before he died, The Sacred Pipe gives a much more detailed description of the material Black Elk earlier recounted to John G. Neihardt, which was published in Black Elk Speaks, and it includes accounts of some ceremonies not described to Neihardt at all. One of the classic, seminal texts of Native American spirituality, which was rediscovered by the 1960s counterculture and helped to provide a view of the American Indian cosmology far more elaborate and refined than had previously been widely acknowledged. Fine in a somewhat spine-faded, very good dust jacket with modest wear to the edges and rubbing to the spine folds.
97. OLSON, Charles. This. Black Mountain: Black Mountain College, 1952. Folio, issued as Black Mountain Broadside No. 1. Designed by Nicola Cernovich, and produced while Olson was a teacher at the college. 18" x 25". An early piece by Olson, who became one of the most influential writers of his time both because of his own writing--as a poet and a critic, in particular his writings on poetic theory--and because of his position as a teacher at, and later Rector of, Black Mountain, a small, innovative Southern college, which invited a number of the leading figures in the arts to teach or study there and thus became an important avant garde cultural center during the years of its existence. This is a single long poem, on a sheet that is folded in fourths, as issued. The "cover" contains a multi-colored image of a sun or fireball, and the sheet opens vertically to present Olson's poem on a single, long vertical "page" -- 9" x 25". Olson had published only one book at this point in his career, a study of Melville entitled Call Me Ishmael. In 1952 he traveled to the Yucatan to study the hieroglyphic statuary of the ancient Maya, with a view toward attempting to understand those then-undeciphered writings as a form of concrete poetry. His volume, Mayan Letters, was published the following year, as was the first volume of what came to be his masterwork, the Maximus Poems. A scarce, attractive and early piece by one of the most important writers of his time. Fine.