Catalog 160, T-V
82. THOMPSON, Hunter. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. NY: Random House (1971). A review copy of Thompson's second and most famous book, a classic of the freewheeling, drug-ingesting Sixties, illustrated with hilarious and scary pen-and-ink drawings by Ralph Steadman. With the publisher's review slip laid in giving the date of publication (June 26, 1972) and with a bookplate laid in signed by Ralph Steadman. Boards lightly edge-sunned, as usual; else fine in a very near fine dust jacket, with mild fading to the red spine lettering. Basis for the Terry Gilliam film with Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro; one of the key books of the gonzo genre; and scarce as an advance copy.
83. THOMPSON, Hunter. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. (San Francisco): Straight Arrow (1973). A review copy of Thompson's third book and the second of his "Fear & Loathing" accounts, in which Thompson covers the Nixon/McGovern race for the Presidency, bringing to the campaign a sense of humor and horror that is simultaneously both off-the-wall and entirely appropriate to its subject. Author photo, five pages of publicity material, review slip (which also states that the frequent faintness of the type will be corrected in the first edition), and a McGovern promissory note laid in. In the promotional material the publisher describes this book as "the last volume in a strange trilogy that began with Hell's Angels... and continued through Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," the only time we have heard of these three books being explicitly described as a trilogy. This copy is signed by Ralph Steadman and Kurt Vonnegut. Steadman, who contributed illustrations to the book, has added devil's horns, a jester's cap, and a cigarette holder to the title page illustration and has written "Part Devil, Part Jester," dating his signature on August 20, 2005 at Owl Farm, Woody Creek, the day of Hunter Thompson's memorial blastoff. Vonnegut has written, on July 28 of that year: "Hunter Thompson is the most creatively crazy of the New Journalists. His ideas are brilliant, and honorable and valuable -- the literary equivalent of cubism. All rules are broken." In addition to his signature, Vonnegut has added a signed self-caricature. Fine in a near fine, presumed first issue, price-clipped dust jacket with slight edge wear, housed in a custom clamshell case. The bibliographic history of this title is unusual, and this advance copy provides some clues to a number of the questions that surround it. In particular, the price-clipped jacket is telling: originally the price of the book was to be $7.95, as is indicated on the review slip, but the price was lowered prior to publication so that the first copies issued to the trade had a $6.95 price. The price was later raised back to $7.95. As the publisher indicates, early copies of the book were printed poorly, and the printing was to be improved upon actual publication. Straight Arrow Press was the newly created publishing arm of Rolling Stone magazine, which was still a small counterculture journal at the time, and the vagaries of the publication process were apparently still new to them. A beautiful copy of an early issue of this book, which survived to be annotated at the end of the story, Thompson's blastoff.
84. THOMPSON, Hunter S. The Rum Diary. (NY): Simon & Schuster (1998). Written in Puerto Rico in 1959 and discovered by Johnny Depp decades later in a box in Thompson's house. Basis for the second film in which Depp played Thompson. This copy is inscribed by Thompson, who integrated the inscription into the title page illustration: "Dear Mary Ann/ Thanks for the letter. Have some fun with this book. I was 22 yrs old when I wrote it. Ho Ho [heart]/ Hunter S. Thompson/ Dec I '03/ Woody Creek CO." With a Hunter Thompson business card (as Night Manager of the Mitchell Brothers' O'Farrell Theatre in San Francisco) laid in, on which Thompson has written "Admit two (2)/ Thanks" and has signed the card with his initials. The Mitchell brothers were early San Francisco porn kings, producers of the breakthrough film Behind the Green Door, and the O'Farrell Theatre was an x-rated movie theater and later a strip club. Thompson claimed in his 2003 book Kingdom of Fear that he had worked as a night manager at the theater in 1985, although it is unclear if he ever actually did so or if it was more of an "honorary" title. Regardless, he had business cards made up, and apparently still had some as of 2003. Slight spine push and corner tap to book; very near fine in a near fine dust jacket with a tiny edge tear and light creasing near the crown. The publisher issued a number of these with tipped-in signatures; inscribed copies are uncommon, particularly with such an elaborately done inscription.
85. (THOMPSON, Hunter; STEADMAN, Ralph; and WOLFE, Tom). The New Journalism. NY: Harper & Row (1973). An anthology of the movement in the 1960s toward a "new journalism" that abandoned pretensions of objectivity in favor of engagement with the subject matter of the writing -- from Terry Southern's humorous pieces to Hunter Thompson's "gonzo" journalism. Includes "Khesanh" by Michael Herr, four years before its publication in his Vietnam war classic Dispatches, and "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," the title piece of Joan Didion's landmark 1968 collection. Also includes excerpts from Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and George Plimpton's Paper Lion. Edited by Tom Wolfe, with two pieces by him, and also including "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved" by Thompson. Signed (initialed) by Thompson at his contribution, and inscribed by Ralph Steadman with a drawing in the section called "Waiting for Steadman." Also inscribed by Wolfe on the title page. Slight foredge sunning, a few marks to the edges of the text block; near fine in a near fine dust jacket with a few small edge nicks. An important anthology of new writing from the Sixties, much of which is now viewed as classic. Seldom found signed, this is the only copy we have ever encountered signed by Thompson and Steadman.
86. TOLKIEN, J.R.R. The History of Middle Earth, Volumes 1-12, and The Silmarillion. London: Allen & Unwin/Unwin Hyman/Harper Collins, 1977, 1983-1996. A complete set of the first editions of these tales, poems, and songs underlay The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien began writing these tales while in college, 40 years before LOTR was published. He was a student of philology, the study of historical linguistics and the rules by which languages evolve, and in his writing he invented archaic languages and the stories told in those languages, and then tracked the evolution of both the stories and the language until they became the legends and mythology that informed Middle Earth. This is part of what gives the Trilogy its powerful sense of reality and immediacy, but the stories are compelling in and of themselves, beyond the degree to which they inform his masterpiece. In particular, these stories, most of them written between 1913 and the early 1940s, give the lie to the simplistic notion that Tolkien's trilogy is a mere analogue for the conflicts involved in World War II. If anything, it was the First World War -- with its senseless, mechanized destruction on a heretofore unimaginable scale -- that influenced Tolkien in his view that battle between the forces of good and evil was not a struggle of ideologies so much as one between a world view in harmony with nature and one that focused on unchecked industrial development. Published over the course of more than a dozen years, complete sets are difficult to assemble as all of the volumes had small first printings, and some were positively tiny -- 1500 copies or so. Volume 5 has a small nick at the upper rear spine fold; otherwise a fine set in fine, unclipped dust jackets. The Silmarillion and Volumes 1, 2 and 4 have no printed prices, as issued; Volume 4 has an A&U price sticker. Volumes 10 and 11 have printed prices on the flaps (in contrast to the unprinted export edition dust jackets, which, by the usual standards of the publication process, probably preceded those with printed prices). The ultimate history of the worlds that underlay The Lord of the Rings.
87. UPDIKE, John. Rabbit, Run. NY: Knopf, 1960. His second novel, which introduced Rabbit Angstrom and began the sequence of novels that will stand as Updike's major achievement in fiction, having won, collectively, virtually every major literary award given in the U.S., some of them twice. Signed by Updike. Fine in a near fine, price-clipped dust jacket with some slight rubbing and a tear at the lower rear spine fold. A very attractive copy of the most difficult of his major trade editions to find in collectible condition and/or signed.
88. UPDIKE, John. Howells as Anti-Novelist. Kittery Point: William Dean Howells Memorial Committee, 1987. One of 150 copies printed of a lecture Updike gave at Harvard as part of the 150th anniversary of Howells' birth. Published in a slightly altered form in The New Yorker, this is the first separate appearance, with an Author's Note by Updike. Approximately 40 pages of text; fine in self-wrappers with complimentary slip from the publisher laid in. Updike won the Howells Medal years later, in 1995, for Rabbit at Rest; the medal is given out for the best work of fiction in America during a five-year period. One of Updike's scarcest "A" items.
89. VONNEGUT, Kurt. Cat's Cradle. NY: HRW (1963). The book that belatedly earned Vonnegut his Master's Degree in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, after his original theses ideas, one a comparative study of the Cubist Painters in Paris and Plains Indians of the Ghost Dance Movement and the other, "Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales," were rejected. Signed by the author with a self-caricature, with cigarette. One of Pringle's 100 best science fiction novels, nominated for the Hugo Award, and chosen by the Modern Library as one of the best 100 novels of the 20th century. Mild sunning to cloth; else a fine copy in a very near fine dust jacket with a bit of edge creasing. In custom clamshell case.
90. VONNEGUT, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. (NY): Delacorte (1969). His masterwork, a powerful, genre-bending fictional memoir of his experiences as a POW during the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany. The first printing was 10,000 copies. On all three major lists of the top books of the 20th century. Signed by the author with a self-caricature. Minor foxing to top edge of the text block and slight sunning to board edges, as is almost always the case with this title; very near fine in a very mildly spine-sunned dust jacket. In a custom clamshell case.
91. VONNEGUT, Kurt. Unpublished Preface for Between Time and Timbuktu. [1972]. NY: Delacorte (1972). Vonnegut's carbon typescript for the original preface for Between Time and Timbuktu, which was not used in the published edition. Whereas the published version is about the television production and the advantages of novels over films, this unpublished version is about Vonnegut and his "Molly Bloom Period," during which he agreed to do and write many things he did not do and write. "How could I [write] with a pillow over my head?" Three stapled pages; signed by the author with a self-caricature. Between Time and Timbuktu was a "space fantasy" for television, created by David O'Dell from works by Vonnegut, and then given to Vonnegut to, in his words, "fart around with." Vonnegut didn't count this as one of his own publications, but the preface (both of them) were all his. Rare unpublished Vonnegut, probably unique. Vonnegut's papers reside at the Lilly Library at Indiana University, and very few manuscripts of his have turned up on the market. One fold, else fine. In a custom clamshell case.
92. VONNEGUT, Kurt. March 15th 1994. (n.p.): [Spiffing Books], 1994. A bootleg production 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. Roughly 15000 words by Vonnegut that don't appear elsewhere. Fine in stapled wrappers. Rare: this is the only copy we have ever seen.
93. VONNEGUT, Kurt. Typescript of Speech at the Athenaeum, Indianapolis, October 10, 1996. 1996. Original typescript of the speech Vonnegut gave at the renovated Athenaeum in Indianapolis, which was designed by his grandfather. Signed by Vonnegut. Six pages, with Vonnegut's holograph corrections and page numbering. With a printout of the press clipping laid in, which is also signed by Vonnegut. An eloquent and humorous speech, and a tribute to the immigrants who built the city and those who made it their home. Unpublished and uncollected, to the best of our knowledge. Fine, in custom folding chemise. Manuscript material by Vonnegut, whose papers are largely held in institutional collections, seldom comes on the market.