Catalog 164, J-K
93. JAMES, Henry. The Ambassadors. Boston: Harper & Brothers, 1903. The first issue of the first American edition, in blue-gray boards, gilt spine titles and top edge, and "Published November 1903" on the copyright page. A near fine copy in a near fine, navy cloth dust jacket growing fragile at the folds.
94. KENNEDY, William. Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, and Ironweed. NY: Coward McCann/Viking (1975-1983). The uncorrected proof copies of the first three books of Kennedy's Albany sequence-—Legs (NY: Coward McCann Geoghegan, 1975), Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (NY: Viking, 1978) and Ironweed (NY: Viking, 1983; Pulitzer Prize winner). Legs includes a publisher's slip; Ironweed includes a two-page letter from the publisher to a reviewer at the Chicago Tribune, appending a copy of a blurb by Doris Grumbach. Ironweed was the basis for the award-winning 1987 Hector Babenco film, starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Kennedy's Albany Cycle has now reached eight volumes and is one of the most highly regarded fictional series of contemporary American literature. Three volumes: each is near fine in wrappers or better, and all three volumes are signed by the author. Uncommon proof copies, especially signed.
95. KENNEDY, William. Ironweed. (NY): Viking (1983). The first edition of the third book in his Albany sequence, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the basis for the highly praised 1987 film. Signed by the author. Mild sunning to upper board edges, else fine in a fine dust jacket.
96. KESEY, Ken. Signed Annotated One-Page Excerpt from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Undated. A one-page typed scene (fair copy) from the middle of the book, typed beneath the author and title, and ending mid-scene. In the lower margin, Kesey has written an alternate next sentence: "Well then, Doc, what about my stash? I ain't had a doobie since I checked in this dump?!" Signed by Kesey. The actual passage in the book was similar but concerned cigarettes rather than doobies. Foxing to the edges; about near fine.
97. KESEY, Ken. Autobiographical Statement, Signed. NY: Viking Press, 1971. Kesey has taken Viking's four-page request for biographical information and turned it into extensive piece of commentary (and collage). Interests? "I get high and pray a lot." Fraternal Organizations? "I am a member in good standing of ISIS." (Kesey's group of Pranksters on the famous Furthur bus trip called themselves ISIS for the Intrepid Search for Inner Space.) A list of people who will be interested in your book? Kesey lists, in multiple colors, nearly 100 names from the usual suspects (Leary, Ginsberg, Brautigan, John Lennon, Robert Stone) to Georgia O'Keefe, Groucho Marx, and the ACLU. Signed by Kesey. Roughly 200 words, in addition to the 100 names, and 4 applications of meaningful pictorial cutouts. A few small stains, glue drying on the cutouts, causing some detachment; very good. Unique.
98. KESEY, Ken. The Sea Lion. (NY): Viking (1991). The uncorrected proof copy of this children's book, which was illustrated by Neil Waldman. Together with unbound signatures in trial dust jacket and actual dust jacket. Also together with an 8 1/2 x 11 pictorial poster announcing a Ken Kesey "Sea Lion story telling performance" presented by the Naropa Institute at the Boulder Theater. The advance copies are fine; the poster is very good.
99. KESEY, Ken. Signed Photograph. Undated. Black and white photograph of a "later" Kesey (circa 1990), in a tweed jacket over a paisley shirt. Signed by Kesey. Roughly an 8" x 10" photo; framed. Fine.
100. (KESEY, Ken). GAY, John. Sometimes a Great Notion. Universal City: Universal Studios, 1970. Gay's screenplay based on Kesey's second novel, after One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but his first novel to be brought to the screen. The novel concerns the Stamper family, an independent, sometimes ornery group of Oregon loggers. The film was directed by Paul Newman and starred Newman, Henry Fonda and Lee Remick, and it has fallen into undeserved obscurity: it was nominated for two Academy Awards and many consider it one of the last great performances of Fonda's career. This is labeled "Second Draft Screenplay," dated by hand February 10, 1970, with the name of legendary Hollywood editor Dede Allen written on the front cover (Allen is not credited on the film). Bradbound in studio wrappers; a bit dusty, but near fine.
101. (KESEY, Ken). CASSADY, Neal. Drive Five. (Dexter): (Prankster Archives) (c. 1972). Transcription of a tape of Cassady made by Kesey and Mountain Girl in Fall of '65, and later edited down to be the soundtrack of a film of Cassady shot by Page Browning and edited by Ken Babbs. Very little of Cassady's legendary way with words has been preserved in print or recordings (published, at least). Eleven-page pamphlet, illustrated with photographs; very good in stapled wrappers.
102. (KESEY, Ken). Oregon Trail 1975-2000. Eugene: Bend in the River Council (1974). An ambitious project conceived by Kesey (as Co-Director) and others to form a Council to address the major problems facing Oregon (and by extension, the U.S.) in a manner which would expose the issues to the public at large and allow for public input. This is a press kit cum prospectus for the council, including numerous separate pieces, e.g. a copy of a letter to Kesey from the Governor, lauding the project; a two-page set of proposals for the creation of the council and its structure and agenda; two issues of The Bend in the River Reality, a broadsheet newspaper, to which Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs, among others, contribute to Issue 1, the "Special Armory Issue," and the same contributions appear in Issue Number 2, the "Special Coast Issue"; there are two magazine-format issues of The BITR Papers, with different color covers and variant content, some of which overlaps with other items in the lot. The intent of the project was to create an educated, informed "Enlightened Constituency" that would "influence not only the state's politicians, the populace and the industry, but the future course of her sister states as well, and thus help steer this nation through the uncharted waters before us." While it may not be attributable to this particular effort, Oregon has become something of a bellwether for the rest of the region and for the country as a whole; one way or another, the project has in many ways largely come to fruition. All housed in a Bend in the River Council folder. Edge-sunned and musty; very good. Rare.
103. (KESEY, Ken; SNYDER, Gary; BRAND, Stewart). News that Stayed News, 1974-1984: Ten Years of CoEvolution Quarterly. North Point, 1986. Collects pieces from 10 years of CoEvolution Quarterly. Includes Kesey's "Burying Jed Kesey" and Snyder's "Good, Wild, Sacred." Co-edited by Stewart Brand, who also contributes several pieces. This copy is inscribed by Kesey, Snyder, and Brand. A wide-ranging anthology from the journal that was the quarterly successor to The Whole Earth Catalog, after that ended its publication run. Contributors include counterculture figures like Brand and Kesey, alternative science pioneers like Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock ("the Gaia hypothesis"), writers like Snyder and Ursula LeGuin, and iconoclastic thinkers like Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead. Snyder, a Beat poet and early student of Zen among Westerners, was also the model for Japhy Ryder in Jack Kerouac's novel, The Dharma Bums. Kesey was, in effect, the Father of the Counterculture: his cross-country bus trip not only proclaimed a new ethos in opposition to the fear-based world view of the Cold War, but he and his Merry Pranksters -- of whom Brand was one -- delivered LSD along the way to numerous places that had no access to it, and thus fostered the drug experimentation and its resultant countercultural upheavals and movements. It is seldom that three figures so central to the social and cultural changes that took place in the 1960s are represented in one volume and also have signed a single copy of it. A substantive collection that helps chart the way from the Sixties counterculture and the movements it spawned toward the present: much of what appeared in this at-the-time marginal journal is now firmly ensconced in contemporary mainstream thinking. A few tiny spots to top edge, else fine in a fine dust jacket.
104. KINGSOLVER, Barbara. Prodigal Summer, Personalized Mycophobia Edition. 2002. A one-of-a-kind edition of Kingsolver's novel, first published in 2000, here re-issued by Kingsolver herself in the form of a two-volume comb-bound typescript, with more than a dozen passages re-worked to remove references to mushrooms, as a gift for her friend, the writer Margaret Randall, who reportedly had an aversion to fungi. Inscribed by the author on a bound-in dedication page: "For Margaret, your own special, one-of-a-kind edition, because you are a very special person. Love, Barbara." Photo-reproduced cover; fine. With an autograph note signed laid in, transmitting the gift, and with the original mailing box, hand-addressed. Randall had provided the foreword to Kingsolver's 1992 book Another America, Otra America, and even then Kingsolver was referring to Randall as her "friend and mentor."
105. KIRKWOOD, Jim. There Must Be a Pony! Boston: Little Brown (1960). The first book by the author of P.S. Your Cat is Dead and Some Kind of Hero, co-author of A Chorus Line. Inscribed by the author: "To Burt! Yes -- and I've found the Fucker, too! Its [sic] called LIFE! James Kirkwood." The recipient was Burt Britton, longtime bookseller and book collector in New York City, who among other things published a book of writers' self-caricatures: Self-Portrait: Book People Picture Themselves. James Kirkwood was one of the contributors to Britton's book. Fine in a rubbed, near fine dust jacket. Basis for the 1986 made for television movie starring Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Wagner, and James Coco. Quite uncommon, especially signed.