Catalog 157, V-X
232. (Vietnam). BARR, John. Veterans Day 1985. (n.p.): Ives Street (1989). A short poem about the Vietnam Memorial, bound in a handsome pamphlet that resembles the monument. The author is a Vietnam vet, a poet for 40 years, a longtime banker and financial analyst, and in recent years the president of the Poetry Foundation, a position he took after the foundation received a $100 million bequest. 6" x 4". Fine.
233. (Vietnam). EHRHART, W.D. A Generation of Peace. San Jose: Samisdat, 1977. An early collection of poetry by Ehrhart, one of the prominent soldier-poets of the Vietnam war. This is a somewhat different collection from the 1975 New Voices volume of the same name, with four poems about the war that do not appear in that volume, and without twelve civilian poems that do appear there. Near fine in stapled wrappers.
234. (Vietnam). EHRHART, W.D. Rootless. San Jose: Samisdat, 1977. A collection of poems, none of them overtly about Vietnam, but many of them about war and death, and the aftermath of war. A publication of an important small press, which issued a number of significant works of literature by veterans, many of them antiwar, at a time when they could not be published elsewhere. Near fine in stapled wrappers.
235. (Vietnam). EHRHART, W.D. Empire. Richford: Samisdat, 1978. A collection of poems, one of which describes the author's experience in Hue, during the Tet offensive in 1968, nearly getting killed by a rocket propelled grenade. Spine and edge-sunned; near fine in stapled wrappers.
236. (Vietnam). HARDCASTLE, Paul. 19. (London): Chrysalis, 1985. 7" record, with side one, "19," being a song about Vietnam: 19 was the average age of the combat soldiers in Vietnam. Fine in original sleeve, illustrated with photographs from the war. An unusual example of Vietnam war commentary in popular culture.
237. (Vietnam). HEFLY, James and Marti. No Time for Tombstones. Life and Death in the Vietnamese Jungle. Harrisburg: Christian Publications (1974). Nonfiction, about two American missionaries who were captured during the Tet offensive and died of malnutrition in captivity after months of forced marches through the jungle. Owner name on title page, foxing to boards; about very good in a very good, spine-faded dust jacket with internal foxing and an external tape repair to a lower edge tear. Uncommon.
238. (Vietnam). HERR, Michael. Dispatches. NY: Knopf, 1977. The uncorrected proof copy. Herr, reporting for Rolling Stone and Esquire from Vietnam, 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." Herr sent back a riveting series of dispatches, legendary at the time and now viewed as classics of war reporting. His pieces, written largely in the words of the grunts (GIs) he visited, shattered the official picture of an orderly progression to the war and helped define the "credibility gap" that made Vietnam war reporting so different from that of earlier conflicts. Publication date written on front cover; "H" (for Herr) written on the lower edge of the text block. Promotional information stapled inside the front cover. Near fine in tall wrappers. One of the scarcest proofs of its era and one of the most important books in its field. This book was reprinted in its entirety in the Library of America volume on Vietnam war reporting.
239. -. Another copy. This copy was used for review and has some marginal markings and the word "Hemingway," written by the reviewer, who has also written the likely date of several of the dispatches on the front cover, beneath the publication date, which is written in another hand. Circumstantial evidence points to this copy as perhaps having belonged to Ward Just, who reviewed Dispatches for the Washington Post: comparisons with Just's handwriting place it in the realm of possibility, and Just's review located Herr's book "in the great line of Crane, Orwell and Hemingway." There is some offsetting from a book mark on the page after the Hemingway reference; near fine in tall wrappers, with slight spine lean.
240. (Vietnam). JOHNSON, Lyndon B. The Third Face of War. Washington, D.C.: Agency for International Development (1965). An excerpt from an address by Johnson to the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists at the White House on May 13, 1965. Johnson concentrates on the "hearts and minds" aspects of U.S. policy: schools built, textbooks donated, vaccinations administered, etc. Stamped "Library of Congress Surplus/Duplicate" on front cover; gouge to lower spine; very good in stapled wrappers.
241. (Vietnam). KAMMHOLZ, Larry P. Moc Hoa. (Oshkosh): (Starboard Publishing)(1990). "A Vietnam Medical-Military Adventure," the personal account of a doctor's year in Vietnam, in diary format. Heavily illustrated with his photographs, both black-and-white and color, plus evocative line drawings by Theodore William Gostas, identified as a "Combat Artist" and a POW in Vietnam, 1968-1973. This is an advance review copy, with a slip pasted to the inside front cover so indicating. Signed by the author. Quarto, softbound. Short crease to rear cover; near fine.
242. (Vietnam). SOLOVIOFF, Nicholas. Sgt. Soape, Marine CAC 32, Hamlet School. 1967. Original artwork by Solovioff, commissioned by Fortune magazine for the article "Vietnam: The War We've Won, the War to Come," and depicting Sgt. Soape visiting a school in Da Nang that his Marines reopened after it was closed by the Vietcong. Pastels; 20" x 16". Signed by Solovioff. Verso has title and Fortune's "Used April 1967" stamp. Fine. Together with a copy of the April 1967 issue of Fortune the work appears in (page 130); Solovioff has nine other illustrations in the magazine, including the cover. Solovioff was a prolific illustrator for magazines as well as the Time-Life book series. He served in the military in World War II and as a combat artist with the Marines in Vietnam.
243. VONNEGUT, Kurt. Signed Ruler. Indianapolis: Vonnegut Hardware Co., (n.d.). A wooden ruler, given out by the Vonnegut Hardware Company of Indianapolis, which was founded by Vonnegut's great-grandfather and which employed Kurt during his high school summers. Signed by Vonnegut in 2006 in silver ink with the added words: "I worked here." 12", several stains; very good. Also serves as an "Indiana Legal Length Fish Gauge" and as such bears, at inch 7, the printed name of Vonnegut's alter-ego: "Trout."
244. VONNEGUT, Kurt. You've Never Been to Barnstable? Barnstable: Crane Duplicating Service (1966). The first separate appearance of this essay, which first appeared in Venture Magazine in 1964 and was later collected under a different title in Welcome to the Monkey House in 1968. Here printed as a Christmas greeting for friends of Crane Duplicating Service, located in Barnstable, a town where Vonnegut lived while raising a family and managing a Saab dealership. Two sheets folded to make eight pages; slight upper corner crease; else fine. Rare.
245. VONNEGUT, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. London: Jonathan Cape (1970). The uncorrected proof copy of the first British edition of his masterwork, a powerful fictional memoir of his experiences during the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany. On all three major lists of the top books of the 20th century. Creased, stained, abraded; good in wrappers. Scarce: while it is not known how many copies of this proof were prepared, the bibliographers report that only 39 copies of the proof of the American edition were done, and it is reasonable to suppose that there would not have been more copies done in the U.K. than in the U.S. The last copy we handled was in 1998.
246. VONNEGUT, Kurt. Happy Birthday, Wanda June. London: Cape (1973). The first British edition of this play that opened off-Broadway in 1970 and later made it to Broadway for a successful, although relatively short, run. With an introduction by Vonnegut explaining the genesis and personal relevance of the play. Signed by the author with a self-caricature. The British edition lacks the photographs of the U.S. edition. Small bookstore stamp front pastedown; fine in a fine dust jacket. In a custom clamshell case. A beautiful copy, and very uncommon signed.
247. VONNEGUT, Kurt. March 15th 1994. (n.p.): [Spiffing Books], 1994. A piracy printing a lecture Vonnegut gave at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City on March 15, 1994 and also including the text of the question and answer session that followed. Two dozen pages of single-spaced text, plus as many pages of illustrations, mostly drawings by Vonnegut taken from Breakfast of Champions. Fine in stapled wrappers. Rare: this is the only copy we have ever seen. Roughly 15000 words by Vonnegut that don't appear elsewhere.
248. WALKER, Alice. Finding the Green Stone. NY: HBJ (1991). An advance copy of the second children's book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple, illustrated by Catherine Deeter. Unbound signatures, fine, laid into a fine dust jacket. Scarce.
249. WALLACE, David Foster. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Boston: Little Brown (1999). The uncorrected proof copy of this collection of stories by the author of Infinite Jest, among others. Signed by the author on the front cover. An uncommon proof, especially signed. Given the author's suicide nearly a decade later after 20 years of depression, a number of the titles of the stories in this collection seem prescient, even heartbreaking: "Death is not the End"; "The Depressed Person"; "Suicide as a Sort of Present." Very near fine in wrappers.
250. WATTS, Alan. The Spirit of Zen. London: John Murray (1948). Second printing of this early book by one of the first writers to popularize Zen in the West, and who helped draw the connections between Zen and other mystical traditions of both East and West. Watts was particularly taken by Zen's integration of the spiritual and the practical: the subtitle of the book is "A Way of Life, Work and Art in the Far East." The first printing of the book was done in 1936, and the second was not done until after the Second World War. Watts moved to California in 1951 and later experimented with, and wrote about, psychedelic drugs, comparing their effects to the mystical experiences described in Zen and other religious literature, thus helping give an entire generation justification for their own use of recreational drugs. He became a counterculture celebrity, albeit perhaps a slightly reluctant one. Inscribed by the author in the year of publication "to my good friend ___ ___ with very best wishes from the author - Alan W. Watts." Modest foxing to text; heavy offsetting to flyleaf, behind the inscription; handling to cloth; very good, without dust jacket. Books signed by Watts are fairly uncommon, especially from the early years of his career.
251. WATTS, Alan. Zen. Stanford: Delkin (1948). An essay first published in England a year earlier, here with a short, new introduction for the American edition. Inscribed by the author in the year of publication: "For my good friend ___ ___ with very best wishes from the author. Alan W. Watts." Offsetting to endpages (inscription still quite legible) and heavy edge and spine sunning to boards, with a small tear at the upper front joint; very good, without dust jacket. A nice copy of a scarce book, seldom found signed or inscribed.
252. WATTS, Alan. In My Own Way. NY: Pantheon (1972). His autobiography, published the year before he died. Inscribed by Watts, in English and Chinese, to composer Lou Harrison, in 1973. On the verso of the flyleaf, the book is signed by seven others in Watts's crowd, including Elsa Gidlow, lesbian poet-gardener, and Roger Somers, carpenter. Laid in is an autograph note from Gidlow to Harrison. Slight spine lean; else fine in a near fine, very spine-faded dust jacket with trace wear at the crown. A nice set of associations, linking a number of individuals prominent in various arts and practices to Watts and to each other.
253. WELCH, Lew and Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen. Broadside Set. (San Francisco): (Four Seasons Foundation)(1963-1964). Three broadsides: Lew Welch's Step Out Onto the Planet, Gary Snyder's Nanao Knows, and Philip Whalen's Three Mornings. [McNeil A7.] Each reproduced by photo-offset from the author's own calligraphy and printed in an edition of 300 copies on the occasion of a reading by the three poets at Longshoreman's Hall, San Francisco, June 12, 1964. Each broadside is signed by its author. Snyder, Welch and Whalen first met when they attended Reed College, a progressive school in Oregon; the friends later became three of the most influential poets of the Beat generation. Don Carpenter, a friend of Richard Brautigan and an important figure in the Bay Area literary scene, organized the Free Way Reading with the three poets; Don Allen, another key figure in the Bay Area literary scene -- his nascent publishing company, the Four Seasons Foundation, would later publish both Snyder and Brautigan -- printed the broadsides to commemorate the reading. An important occasion, linking three key poets of their time. Welch disappeared in the Santa Cruz mountains in 1971; Snyder found a suicide note at his camp, but no body was ever found and his fate remains one of the mysteries of that time. 9 1/2" x 12 1/2"; fine. A nice set.
254. WELTY, Eudora. Place in Fiction. NY: House of Books, 1957. A small volume published in the House of Books "Crown Octavo Series." One of 300 numbered copies signed by the author. Minor foxing to the endpages and a very faint stain to the front cloth; near fine in the original glassine dust jacket, which has two tiny chips.
255. (WEST, Nathanael). HUXLEY, Aldous. The Cicadas and Other Poems. London: Chatto & Windus, 1931. Nathanael West's copy of Huxley's collection of poetry, with West's holograph notes on five of the front and rear endpages. Approximately 250 words, mostly quotes of other writers -- Huxley, Gray, Shakespeare; some light, but most quite serious: "In matters of love it is absurd to stand on your dignity and claim your rights. Such experiences cannot be judged and calculated like a matter of business. One gives as much and as long as one can & one does not bargain. Take what is given to you." West concludes with: "The paths of glory lead but to the grave." The year this book was published, West published his first novel. Later in the 1930s, both West and Huxley were employed as Hollywood screenwriters. West died in 1940 at the age of 37. The provenance of this book leads from West to his brother-in-law, S.J. Perelman, to the writer and bookseller, George Sims, who recounts the circumstances of his purchasing books from Perelman in the early 1970s, presumably including this one. A photocopy of a note from Sims is laid in. Fading to spine, spotting to cloth, short tear to lower front joint; still very good, without dust jacket. Publisher's extra spine label tipped to rear free endpaper. A wonderful glimpse of West's musings and inner life.
256. WHARTON, Edith. The Valley of Decision. NY: Scribner (1902). The first full-length novel by the author of The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome, among others. This novel was set in 18th century Italy; later books focused on the morals of contemporary society -- especially upper class New York society -- and displayed a frankness in sexual matters that was controversial in its time. This is the first issue, printed at the Merrymount Press. Two volumes. Owner bookplate on the front pastedown of each volume; minor handling apparent to boards. A near fine set, lacking the dust jackets.
257. WILSON, Edmund. Typescript of the Foreword to The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. [c. 1969]. Wilson's four-page typescript, with his holograph corrections. Signed by Wilson and with his note at the top: "Please send me a proof of this. Edmund Wilson/ Wellfleet, Mass." We have no way of knowing whether Wilson got his proof: the manuscript differs from the final text by several words. The Complete Works of Kate Chopin, edited by Per Seyersted, was first published by the Louisiana State University Press in 1969; it was reprinted in paperback in 2006 and a first printing of the 2006 edition is included here. This was the volume that completed the resurrection of Kate Chopin's literary reputation, from that of being an obscure and largely forgotten regional writer to being one of the important American authors of the 1890s, a proto-feminist and a tragic figure. The inclusion of an introductory assessment of her work by Seyersted and of a foreword by no less a figure than Wilson -- probably the preeminent American man of letters at the time -- seemed designed to put the critical weight of the literary establishment behind this re-evaluation of her writings. Wilson reports in these pages that prior to this work, he had difficulty finding Chopin's stories to read, and in order to read her first novel, At Fault, he had to go to the microfilm at the Library of Congress. The typescript is folded once and has staple removal holes at the upper left corner; the top page is evenly sunned; near fine. A laudatory manuscript about one major American author by another.
258. WOLFE, Tom. The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. NY: FSG (1965). The first book by the most outspoken practitioner of the "New Journalism" in the Sixties. Signed by the author. A fine copy in a near fine, price-clipped dust jacket nicked at the crown. Laid in is a 1965 letter from Arnold Gingrich, the publisher of Esquire (where Wolfe had earlier published the title piece and several others from this collection), to the chairman of the communications firm Sudler & Hennessey, transmitting the book.
259. WOLFE, Tom. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. NY: FSG (1968). Wolfe's landmark account of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and their bus trip across the country. Another example of, and perhaps the epitome of, the "New Journalism" that Wolfe helped to bring about in the Sixties; it was called at the time "the most penetrating piece of writing yet done on the ethos and dynamics of the hippie," and it remains a classic of the time, and the most definitive, sympathetic and insightful account of the seminal events of the 1960s counterculture -- the cross-country bus trip taken by Kesey and the Pranksters and the LSD-fueled gatherings -- "acid tests" -- that defined the Bay Area counterculture community in the mid-1960s, when LSD was still legal. Signed by Wolfe and by novelist Robert Stone, a longtime friend of Kesey's and one of the important figures in the literary/artistic community that arose in the Palo Alto/Menlo Park/Stanford area, where Kesey lived and where his house became a sort of cultural center. Kesey, Stone, Larry McMurtry and others in the circle had gone to Wallace Stegner's Writing Workshop at Stanford in the early '60s, giving a decidedly literary flavor to the early counterculture. Top stain faded; a near fine copy in a near fine dust jacket. An important book, and somewhat uncommon signed, especially with the added signature of one of the participants in the story.
260. WOLFE, Tom. The Painted Word. NY: FSG (1975). A scathing essay, which skewered the self-referential world of modern art. Inscribed by Wolfe, "to Nick," (author Nicholas Delbanco) in Ann Arbor in 1981. Bookplate removal front pastedown; edge-sunning to boards; near fine in a very near fine dust jacket.
261. WOLFF, Tobias. In the Garden of North American Martyrs. NY: Ecco (1981). His first collection of short fiction. Signed by the author in May, 1982. This book was originally issued with a dust jacket with a "$14.95" price. The price was lowered to $10.95 prior to publication. This is a fine copy of the book, in a fine dust jacket, with the later $10.95 price.
262. WOOLF, Virginia. Monday or Tuesday. NY: Harcourt Brace, 1921. The first American edition of this early collection of short fiction, in which Woolf explores the stream of consciousness technique that she used to great effect in later novels. One of 1500 copies, this copy in the black cloth binding. Slight foxing to cloth; near fine in a very near fine, price-clipped dust jacket, professionally, preemptively strengthened on the verso along the folds. A beautiful copy; by far the most attractive one we've seen.
263. WOOLRICH, Cornell. Children of the Ritz. Sydney: Cornstalk Publishing, 1927. The first Australian edition of this early book by Woolrich, published the year after his first book. In the 1940s and '50s, Woolrich, writing under his own name and also as William Irish and George Hopley, wrote some of the classic volumes of noir fiction of the era, a large number of which were turned into the movies that defined film noir and gave it its cultural importance and artistic stature. Foxing to pages, as is typical with this edition; minor spotting and fraying to the spine. Very good, lacking dust jacket.