Catalog 119, B
22. BELLOW, Saul. The Adventures of Augie March. NY: Viking, 1953. The first edition, first issue, of the Nobel Prize winner's third novel, and the first of his three National Book Award winners -- an unprecedented accomplishment in American literature. Trace tanning to spine cloth and faint erasure on half-title; else fine in a very close to fine dust jacket with subtle color added to the spine extremities. A very nice copy of one of the high spots of postwar American fiction.
23. BENCHLEY, Nathaniel. Side Street. NY: Harcourt, Brace (1950). The author's first book, a novel. Benchley, the son of writer Robert Benchley -- of Algonquin Round Table fame -- and father of Peter Benchley -- author of Jaws, among others -- is most noted for his many children's books. This copy is inscribed by the author: "For:/ Michael Stone/ What are you/ doing after the/ show?/ Nathaniel Benchley/ 23 February, 1950." Dusty top edge; else fine in a very good dust jacket with small chips at the spine extremities, rubbing at the folds, and some small staining to the rear panel. An uncommon book signed.
24. BLAZEK, Douglas. Two Poems. San Francisco: Cranium Press, 1970. A broadside printing two poems from his then-forthcoming twowindows press book. 11-1/2" x 20". Folded once; light edge creases; near fine.
25. (Book Collecting). AHEARN, Allen and Patricia. Collected Books: The Guide to Values, 2002 Edition. NY: Putnam (2001). The latest edition of the standard guide to book values by the authors of Book Collecting. This volume updates their 1991 and 1998 Collected Books, with values for more than 20,000 books and a section for identifying first editions. The Ahearns have put together the most useful single-volume reference books in the book trade. The listings in this guide include not only estimated prices but details regarding issue points where applicable. This is probably the only book that virtually every dealer in the U.S. owns a copy of and is indispensable, both for dealers who must assess a wide range of material and for collectors who focus in one or a few areas. Just the changes in values since the last edition was published in 1998 are an invaluable reference and can easily repay the cost of the book. An essential guide. Signed by the authors. New. List price:
26. BOOTH, Stanley. Rythm Oil. A Journey Through the Music of the American South. London: Jonathan Cape (1991). The first U.K. edition, with a suite of color photographs by William Eggleston at the front of the book, and black-and-white photographs throughout, that do not appear in the American edition. Signed by Booth. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
27. BORGES, Jorge Luis. Ficciones. Buenos Aires: Sur (1944). The first edition of Borges' most famous work, the book which, when translated into French won the Prix Formentor and when translated into English won Borges an immediate following and placed him at the head of a whole generation of writers experimenting with the forms and structures of fiction: Barth, Barthelme and the other (North) American writers of the Sixties drew inspiration form Borges' "fictions." He has been called the greatest writer not to win the Nobel Prize -- an honor that was reportedly denied to him for political reasons in the early 1970s. Beloved in his native country as a poet, admired worldwide for his "fictions," he was also a formidable scholar and translator. He translated Kafka from the German and Faulkner from English -- both of them writers of extreme subtlety and depth in their respective languages. He wrote introductions to American and English literature which are unparalleled in their succinctness and erudition. More than a decade after his death, he ranks as one of the half-dozen greatest figures of world literature of the Twentieth Century. Faint tape shadows to endpages, trace rubbing to corners and light vertical creasing to the spine; still a very near fine copy in original wrappers, with no fading to the spine and no rubbing to the pale blue wrappers: extremely scarce thus, and the nicest copy of this book we have seen in years. A beautiful copy of what is generally considered Borges' most important book.
28. -. Same title, the first American edition. NY: Grove Press (1962). Small ownership stamp front flyleaf; near fine in a very good, rubbed dust jacket with a little chipping to the spine extremities.
29. BOWDEN, Mark. Black Hawk Down. NY: Atlantic Monthly Press (1999). The advance reading copy of this surprise bestseller, a nonfiction work about a U.S. military raid in Somalia that left 18 American soldiers dead and altered the parameters for American military action elsewhere in the world since. Compared by critics to Michael Herr's Dispatches for its realistic account of soldiers in the heat of battle, and basis for the recent successful movie, which was highly praised for its intense and realistic combat scenes. Fine in wrappers.
30. BOWEN, Peter. Notches. NY: St. Martin's (1997). A mystery novel by this Montana author, in his series featuring Gabriel du Pré, a Montana native of Métis ethnicity and, as such, a vehicle for exploring issues of race, heritage and individuality in the New West. Signed by the author. Fine in fine dust jacket.
31. BOWLES, Paul. The Hours After Noon. London: Heinemann (1959). His second collection of stories, never published here, in part because Bowles was afraid of the reaction that one of the stories -- about a black housekeeper -- would engender in the racially sensitive U.S. Slight bowing to front board; else fine in a fine dust jacket. A beautiful copy of one of Bowles's scarcest trade titles.
32. BOYLE, T. Coraghessan. Water Music. Boston: Little Brown (1981). His second book, first novel. Fine in a very near fine, slightly dusty dust jacket.
33. BOYLE, T. Coraghessan. Budding Prospects. NY: Viking (1984). A humorous novel of marijuana growing in the northern California wilds. For whatever reason, this is one of his least common titles. We suspect that Water Music did not sell as well as its publisher had hoped, and the print run for this, his second novel, was cut back considerably from his first. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
34. BOYLE, T. Coraghessan. World's End. (NY): Viking (1987). His acclaimed third novel, which won the PEN Faulkner Award. Signed by the author. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
35. BOYLE, T. Coraghessan. If the River Was Whiskey. NY: Viking (1989). His third collection of short fiction. Signed by the author. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
36. BOYLE, T. Coraghessan. East is East. (NY): Viking (1990). An extravagant novel of a Japanese seaman who jumps ship and arrives on an island off the coast of Georgia. Signed by the author. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
37. BOYLE, T. Coraghessan. "There was no exchange of body fluids on the first date..." San Francisco: San Francisco Examiner/Okeanos Press, 1991. A broadside excerpt from If the River Was Whiskey, printed in honor of the Eleventh Annual Friends of the San Francisco Public Library Literary Events. 7" x 13". Signed by the author. Fine.
38. BOYLE, T. Coraghessan. The Road to Wellville. (NY): Viking (1993). An elaborate, satirical historical novel based on the life of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a turn-of-the century health crusader and inventor of Kellogg's Corn Flakes (along with "peanut butter...[and] some seventy-five other gastrically correct foods"). Signed by the author. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Together with the paperback release, packaged in the style of a cereal box and containing "enriched humor, certified nuts (from historical extracts), saturated facts...dried wit, natural genius, partially amalgamated Faulkner, Waugh, García Márquez, and Dickens..." Also fine, in sealed box.
39. BOYLE, T. Coraghessan. The Tortilla Curtain. (NY): Viking (1995). A comic novel that brings two illegal Mexican immigrants into contact with a wealthy Southern California yuppie couple, and explores the culture clashes that ensue. Signed by the author. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
40. BRAMAH, Ernest. The Specimen Case. NY: Doran (1925). The first American edition of this collection of stories mostly spoofing the detective genre, of which Bramah was a respected practitioner, especially for his Max Carrados stories, featuring a blind detective. He is also the author of the Kai Lung series of books, and both a Max Carrados story and Kai Lung story appear in this volume. A fine copy in a near fine dust jacket with a small abrasion on the spine and chip at the crown. A very attractive copy of this volume, in a striking pictorial dust jacket.
41. BRAUTIGAN, Richard. The Galilee Hitch-Hiker. (San Francisco): (White Rabbit Press) (1958). His extremely scarce second book, published in an edition of 200 copies the same year as his nearly-impossible-to-find first book, The Return of the Rivers, and a decade before he achieved fame and celebrity as an icon of the youth counterculture of the 1960s. Fine in saddle-stitched parchment wrappers with a cover illustration by Kenn Davis. A very nice copy of this small, fragile volume.
42. BRAUTIGAN, Richard. The Octopus Frontier. San Francisco: Carp Press, 1960. Brautigan's uncommon fourth book, and his third collection of poems. Although there is no indication of the size of the edition either in the book itself, in Lepper, or in the bibliography published in 1990, all of Brautigan's books that precede Confederate General from Big Sur are exceptionally scarce and seem to have either been done in very small quantities or to have disappeared over the years as such slight, fragile volumes are wont to do. Signed by the author. Small spot rear cover; else fine in stapled wrappers. An uncommon book, and rare signed.
43. BRAUTIGAN, Richard. All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace. [San Francisco]: Communication Company [1967]. Broadside poem, printed in black on white. Like the other Communication Company broadsides, this was printed to be distributed free on the streets during the Summer of Love. This is the second issue, with the bold illustration of hand-drawn animals and a photograph of a computer bank. 8-1/2" x 11". Two creases; several small spots; near fine. Uncommon ephemeral piece.
44. BRAUTIGAN, Richard. Trout Fishing in America. London: Jonathan Cape (1970). The uncorrected proof copy of the first British edition of this collection first published in the U.S. in 1967 as Writing 14 and which was Brautigan's commercial success, becoming an underground classic and later, among other things, lending its title to the name of an acclaimed folk-rock duo. A little creasing to the spine, apparently from the glue; else fine in wrappers.
45. BRAUTIGAN, Richard. The Tokyo-Montana Express. NY: Targ Editions (1979). An attractive limited edition of a portion of the book of the same name, which was published the following year. Short prose-poem vignettes, centered on the axis of the author's life in his later years, when he lived in Montana and traveled regularly to Japan. One of 350 copies signed by the author. Fine in a glassine dust jacket.
46. BRAUTIGAN, Richard. I Watched the World Glide Effortlessly Bye, and Other Pieces. (n.p.): Weiss and Musser, 1996. A posthumously issued collection of short pieces from Brautigan's youth, discovered by a childhood friend to whom he had given them when he was a teenager and an aspiring writer. Of a total edition of 100 copies, this is copy "Z" of 26 lettered copies. Fine, in acetate dustwrapper. Lacking the "Phantom Kiss" bumper sticker.
47. (Broadsides). The Orange Bear Reader, Nos. 1-4. (Toronto): (Coach House Press) (n.d.). Four broadsides, by Paul Goodman, Joyce Carol Oates, Douglas Blazek and Irving Layton, each issued as a monthly edition of The Orange Bear Reader as an individually wrappered broadside printed in an edition of 500 copies. Each approximately 10" x 13", fine, with original envelopes. For all:
48. BUKOWSKI, Charles. Crucifix in a Deathhand. NY: Lyle Stuart/Loujon Press (1965). Designed and elaborately hand-printed and bound in an edition of approximately 3100 copies by Loujon Press: multi-colored, deckle-edge pages, in stiff pictorial wrappers, extensively illustrated by Noel Rockmore. All copies were signed by Bukowski, this one being dated 3-17-65, or about a month before the books began to be distributed. Slight wear to the folds; else fine. Loujon Press was the creation of "Gypsy Lou" and Jon Webb, who published The Outsider magazine for a time and had published an earlier book by Bukowski, It Catches My Heart in Its Hands, both that title and this one being very early publications for Bukowski, well before he had even become well-known in the counterculture, let alone penetrated the mainstream.
49. BUKOWSKI, Charles. Gold in Your Eye. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow, 1986. A single, short poem published in a small volume as a New Year's Greeting from Black Sparrow Press. One of 226 numbered hardbound copies signed by the author. Fine, without dust jacket, as issued.
50. BUKOWSKI, Charles. Luck. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1987. Again, a single, short poem published in a small volume as a New Year's Greeting. One of 226 numbered hardbound copies signed by the author. Fine, without dust jacket, as issued.
51. BUKOWSKI, Charles. The Movie Critics. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1988. Copy #5 of 226 numbered hardbound copies signed by the author. Again, a small New Year's greeting issued by the press, never formally offered for sale. Fine, without dust jacket, as issued.
52. BUKOWSKI, Charles. If You Let Them Kill You, They Will. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1989. Copy #4 of 226 numbered hardbound copies signed by the author. Fine in plain white dust wrapper. Another New Year's greeting. Bukowski was, by this time, the most high-profile, and commercially successful, of the authors being published by Black Sparrow, which had successfully carved out a niche printing poetry (and some fiction) by relative outsiders to the mainstream, and issuing the volumes in both trade editions for general distribution and signed limited editions for collectors.
53. BUKOWSKI, Charles. We Ain't Got No Money Honey, But We Got Rain. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow, 1990. Another of the press's New Year's greetings, printing a poem by Bukowski in a special limited edition. Copy #9 of 226 numbered hardbound copies signed by the author. Fine.
54. BUKOWSKI, Charles. In the Shadow of the Rose. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow, 1991. Issued in an edition of 776 copies, this is a presentation copy (so stated on the colophon) signed by the author. The bibliography indicates that there were only 20 copies of this title marked "Presentation Copy." Fine in acetate dust jacket.
55. (BUKOWSKI, Charles). Sparrow 61-72. (Santa Barbara): Black Sparrow (1977-1978). A bound edition of twelve issues of Sparrow, the literary journal published by Black Sparrow Press, this being one of 50 copies signed by 13 authors including Bukowski, Michael Davidson, Eve Shelnutt, William Everson, Edouard Roditi, Clayton Eshleman and José Rubia Barcia (translating César Vallejo), Gerard Malanga, Nathaniel Tarn, Robert Kelly, Tom Clark, Stephen Stepanchev, and Diane Wakoski. Bukowski's "We'll Take Them," was issued as Sparrow 72. Fine, in a mildly rubbed acetate dust jacket.
56. BURROUGHS, William S. "LEE, William." Junkie. Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict. NY: Ace (1953). Burroughs' pseudonymous first book, a paperback original bound back-to-back with Maurice Helbrant's Narcotic Agent. Signed by the author. Burroughs, along with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, came to be viewed as the leaders of the Beat Movement, widely considered to be the most influential literary movement of the postwar era. Small ink date (2/6) inside front cover; spine and cover creasing; very good in wrappers.
57. BURROUGHS, William. The Soft Machine. Paris: Olympia (1961). The true first edition, published in Paris by Maurice Girodias' press five years before it came out in the U.S. Only issued in wrappers. "Olympia Press/9 Francs" sticker to rear cover; very near fine, lacking the jacket. An influential book, part of the sequence that includes The Naked Lunch and The Ticket That Exploded. The title also lent its name to one of the underground psychedelic rock bands of the 1960s, as did Burroughs' book Dead Fingers Talk.
58. BURROUGHS, William. Roosevelt After Inauguration. (NY): (Fuck You Press) (1964). One of approximately 500 copies of this little pamphlet, printed by mimeograph by poet Ed Sanders' influential underground press, which was one of the links between the Beat movement of the 1950s and the counterculture underground of the 1960s. Sanders was a poet, musician (The Fugs), proprietor of the Peace Eye Bookshop, as well as a publisher, and was closely associated with the Free Speech Movement of the early 1960s, not to mention the burgeoning drug culture of that era -- and thus a highly appropriate publisher for Burroughs, whose writings stretched the limits of publishing at that time. Fine in stapled wrappers.
59. BURROUGHS, William. Dead Fingers Talk. London: Tandem Books (1966). The first British paperback edition of this drug novel, which consists of an amalgam of sections from The Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine and The Ticket that Exploded, as well as some material not reproduced elsewhere. There was no U.S. edition of this title. Signed by the author. Page and cover edges darkening; near fine in wrappers.
60. BURROUGHS, William S. APO-33. San Francisco: City Lights/(Beach Books), 1968. The third edition of this title, but only the second one published: the project had originally been scheduled to be done by Fuck You Press in 1965, but was abandoned (although about 20 copies made it into circulation); the second (first published) edition was done in 1966 and this "second printing" of 3000 copies was done in 1968. Quarto, printed on brown paper in brown wraps. A bit of age-darkening; else fine in stapled wrappers.
61. BURROUGHS, William S. The Last Words of Dutch Schultz. London: Cape Goliard, 1970. A film script fantasy based on the dying words of a 1930s New York gangster. One of 100 numbered copies signed by the author, and one of Burroughs' earliest and scarcest limited editions. No corresponding U.S. edition: the much later American edition was substantially different in both format and content. Fine in the glassine dustwrapper.
62. BURROUGHS, William S. Doctor Benway. Santa Barbara: Morrow, 1979. The first publication of this variant passage from Naked Lunch, here printed as a limited edition with a new introduction by Burroughs. Of a total edition of 500, this is one of 150 numbered copies in boards, signed by the author. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
63. BURROUGHS, William S. Ah Pook is Here and Other Texts. London/NY: John Calder/Riverrun Press (1979). This is the issue in wrappers, and contains "Ah Pook is Here," "The Book of Breeething," and "Electronic Revolution." Signed by the author. One faint corner crease, else fine in wrappers. A scarce book and especially uncommon signed.
64. BURROUGHS, William S. The Book of Breeething. Berkeley: Blue Wind, 1980. Second edition, and first hardcover edition. This is one of 175 numbered copies signed by the author. Small oblong quarto; fine without dust jacket, as issued. With illustrations by Robert Gale.
65. BURROUGHS, William S. Cities of the Red Night. NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston (1981). One of 500 numbered copies signed by the author. Fine without dust jacket, as issued, in a cloth slipcase. Still sealed in publisher's box. An immaculate copy (or presumably so).
66. BURROUGHS, William and ODIER, Daniel. The Job. London: John Calder (1984). First thus, including an introduction that did not appear in the original 1970 edition. Signed by Burroughs. Fine in wrappers.
67. BURROUGHS, William. The Naked Lunch. London: Paladin (1986). First Paladin edition, which includes material published in the 1982 John Calder edition but not in any earlier ones, including an appendix reprinting a number of reviews, letters to the editor, and editorials from the T.L.S. following the book's first publication in the U.K. in 1964. Signed by the author. Fine in wrappers.
68. (BURROUGHS, William S.). The Hombre Invisible. Atticus Books Catalogue Eight. San Diego: Atticus Books, 1981. One of 50 numbered copies signed by Burroughs. With a foreword by Burroughs, "The Future of the Novel," revised from a 1962 reading. Fine in saddle-stitched wrappers. An important catalog, which goes a long way toward updating the Maynard & Miles bibliography of Burroughs by several years.