Catalog 158, L
110. LEARY, Timothy. Timothy Leary's Greatest Hits, Volume 1. Studio City: Kno Ware, 1990. Monographs, 1980-1990. Ten of Leary's scholarly monographs, desktop published on a Los Angeles couple's Macintosh, with Leary's permission, in 1990. Signed by Leary. Comb-bound sheets with pictorial cardstock cover. Scarce: there is no indication of how many of these were done, but it is doubtful it had any widespread distribution. Near fine.
111. LESSING, Doris. This Was the Old Chief's Country and The Sun Between Their Feet. London: Michael Joseph (1972/1973). The two-volume set collectively issued as Collected African Stories. Volume One consists of all the stories from the original collection entitled This Was the Old Chief's Country plus three stories from Five. Volume Two picks up a few additional stories from the collection African Stories and adds perhaps a dozen more. Each volume has a new preface by Lessing. Fine in near fine, price-clipped dust jackets with wrinkling to the lamination. Very attractive copies, and uncommon thus.
112. LEVY, D.A. ukanhavyrfuckincitibak. D.A. Levy: A Tribute to the Man, An Anthology of His Poetry. Cleveland: Ghost Press (1968). A compilation and tribute to Levy, one of 1000 copies, published after Levy was indicted on obscenity charges. 8 1/2" x 11" x 1" thick, with photographic cover, bound with black tape spine, silkscreen prints bound in. "Proceeds, if any, from the sale of this book will go to the levy defense fund, the yet-to-be-conceived levy substinence fund, and the subsequent levy offense fund." Levy was one of the important underground poets of the 1960s counterculture, and deeply involved in the self-publishing and mimeograph movement of the era. He was constantly at odds with the powers that be in Cleveland, and committed suicide in 1968, leaving a legacy as a martyr to art and social protest. Some handling and sunning evident on covers; near fine.
113. LOPEZ, Barry. Arctic Dreams. NY: Scribner (1986). A massive study on the Arctic, combining history, natural history, mythology, ecology and anthropology in a narrative that is at once scientifically rigorous and spiritually exalting. Winner of the National Book Award. This copy is inscribed by Lopez to another National Book Award-winning author, "with admiration, in a shared sense of enthusiasm for the land for all it contains." Dated in the year of publication. Along with his earlier book, Of Wolves and Men, which won the John Burroughs Medal, Arctic Dreams helped change American "nature writing" fundamentally and permanently: after these books it was no longer possible to write about "nature" as though it did not include our own natures, and each book has both an external and internal component, the two being frequently intertwined like the "double helix" of DNA. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. An association copy of the first order.
114. LOPEZ, Barry. Crossing Open Ground. NY: Scribner (1988). A collection of essays on "the bond between mankind and the land and man's heartbreaking betrayal of [it]." Again, inscribed by the author to another writer in the field, "with gratitude for the illumination you offer, with great respect for your testimony." Dated in the year of publication. Near fine in a fine dust jacket.
115. LOPEZ, Barry. Field Notes and Typed Letter Signed. NY: Knopf, 1994. A collection of stories, the third in a trilogy that began with Desert Notes and continued with River Notes. This copy was sent by Lopez in the month of publication to William Rueckert, literary critic, coiner of the term "ecocriticism," and author of "Barry Lopez and the Search for a Dignified and Honorable Relationship with Nature," which appeared in the North Dakota Quarterly in 1991. With a typed letter signed from Lopez to Rueckert conveying the book, in part: "You were so insightful about River Notes, I thought you would want to see the book, though I know you've moved on to other things." The letter is approximately 125 words, folded in fourths to fit into the book, else fine. The book has Rueckert's signature on the front pastedown under the flap, and is otherwise fine in a fine dust jacket with a corner crease to the front flap. In its early conceptualization, the trilogy was going to include Desert Notes, River Notes and Animal Notes. Animal Notes was never written: Lopez turned his inspiration for Animal Notes into the groundbreaking nonfiction work Of Wolves and Men, and Field Notes then completed the sequence.
116. LOPEZ, Barry. Lessons from the Wolverine Broadside. [Athens]: University of Georgia Press [1997]. Large broadsheet featuring the cover art for this story, which was attractively illustrated by Tom Pohrt, who also illustrated Lopez's Crow and Weasel. Signed by both Lopez and Pohrt. 12" x 24". Fine.
117. LOPEZ, Barry. Pulling Wire. (Minnesota): Red Dragonfly Press, 2003. A fine press edition printing a single story. Letterpress printed on handmade Japanese paper, with a title page woodcut by Gary Young. Of a total edition of 276 copies, this is one of 240 copies in wrappers. Fine.
118. LOPEZ, Barry. Nunca Mas! (Red Wing): (Red Dragonfly Press)(2007). A chapbook documenting a week of despair during which Lopez visited Auschwitz after the launch of the French edition of his book Resistance. First published in the French paper Liberation as "Une phrase de Primo Levi." One of 350 numbered copies, this being Copy 115. Fine in saddle-stitched wrappers.
119. -. Same title. One of 350 copies, the first 90 of which were signed by Lopez and the artist, Carol Inderieden. This is Copy 40. Fine in saddle-stitched wrappers.
120. LOVECRAFT, H.P. Autograph Letter Signed. October 1, 1927. Written to horror writer and artist Clark Ashton Smith ("C.A.S."), one of the circle of friends and fellow writers known to posterity as the Lovecraft Circle, and one of the writers whose work extended the Cthulhu Mythos that Lovecraft had invented and which then became part of the fictional milieu of a whole group of writers for Weird Tales and the other pulps in the 1930s and after. Four pages, closely written on two sides of two 6" x 9" sheets; approximately 1300 words. Lovecraft begins by admiring the paintings by Smith that Donald Wandrei had sent him ("Truly, I have never before seen such profoundly soul-moving glimpses of alien worlds with haunted skies and jungles of prismatic madness. It is such a series of forbidden revelations as one might spy through some magic window of the sort described in Dunsany's 'Book of Wonder'..."). He discusses his travels, particularly to areas in New England that are predominantly unchanged for the past 150 years, and sympathizes with Smith's struggles to write and paint, bolstering his friend by calling him more successful than himself in his "ability to produce creative work... I haven't very much energy or perseverance -- the uselessness of everything, including even aesthetic effort, overshadows my consciousness & cooperates with my native indolence in defeating all progressive or constructive developments." He mentions the first issue of The Recluse magazine, which published his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" and recommends to Smith that he read E.R. Eddison's now-classic The Worm Ourobouros, which had just been published in the past year, "which combines some gloriously imaginative phantasy with an exquisitely lyrical prose style." He recommends the new Franz Werfel, recounts his disappointment in the new Robert Chambers book, and about his own writing he says "I haven't written any stories since 'The Colour Out of Space', but hope to get around to a hell-raiser or two in the later autumn." A highly personal, informative letter to one of his closest writer friends: Smith and Lovecraft first "met" in 1922 when Lovecraft wrote him a fan letter, and they began a long and intimate correspondence until Lovecraft's death in 1937. They are considered, in retrospect, the two most outstanding figures of the classic era of American horror fiction, with Lovecraft at the pinnacle and Smith a somewhat distant second. Signed "HPL." Folded for mailing; near fine, with envelope. The sheets are inserted in sleeves, which are bound into a custom folder, which is fine.