All books fine in original dust jackets, unless otherwise noted.
1. (Anthology). Kiss My Ass, Motherfucker, Gonna Blow Up Your Damn House. Seattle: Squatters Collective, 1979. Essays on direct action, including one by Tony Puryear, later author of an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, Eraser, also including the first ever appearance of National Book Award Winner Eileen Brennan (Several Generations of Forlorn Women) under her pseudonym, Elsie Tree. We had the book in our co-op back in Ann Arbor back in the late seventies. At the time, my roommate, who eventually directed aspirin commercials, insisted that influenza was organized and disseminated by the Central Intelligence Agency in an effort to neutralize the American counterculture.
$ 15
2. (Anthology). Prose by Don. New York: Unfounded Allegations, 1978. Hardcover edition of this sampling of literature by authors named Don, including Don DeLillo, Donald Antrim, Donald Barthelme, Donald Westlake, Dawn Powell, Donny Osmond, Don Knotts, Donald Sutherland, Don Giovanni, Don Vito Corleone, and others, also including excerpts from the autobiography of a Nutley, New Jersey, electrician, Don Vyclitl, of Ukrainian origin. Slight foxing to jacket, otherwise fine. Later titles in the series included the two-in-one volume Works by Zephediah backed with A Couple of Unpublished Scraps by Hamilton.
$35
3.(Anthology). Words, Blossoms, Cars. Austin, TX: Cooked Books, 1968. All contributions are unsigned, although, according to scholars like Tommy McCandless at Western Kentucky Technical Institute, they include Frederick Barthelme, a seventeen-year-old Mary Robison, Rikki Ducornet, Ann Lauterbach, and others, as well as excerpts from manuals on how to disassemble and reassemble the first Ford Mustang, several arguments against popular modifications of the Monopoly board, and some poems in the style of Mallarmé. This copy signed by Barthelme with appended disclaimer, Idon’t know what the hell you’re talking about, I had nothing to do with this book, I like your suede shoes though. KB.
$45
4. Blake, Kenneth M. Elocution. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1986. First American edition of this novel concerning a group of Oxbridge scholars who cook and eat their landlady and who later assume command of British forces during the Falklands War. Not long after, the author himself was convicted of cooking and eating his landlady. This copy also signed, rare as such: Bon Apetit! K.M.B., 7.7.87.
$50
5. Carrington, Leonora. Chilblains. Paris: Editions Aveugle, 1921. Little known roman à clef by the great surrealist. A library copy, actually stolen from the Widener, at Harvard, by yours truly. The story goes thus. I was desperately in love with an art history student, Anna Feldman, she of the blond bob, she of the palindromic name, she of the ballerina’s frame, she of the turnout, of the veils and scarves, of the BMW 2002; having espied her at a fast food joint in town (I was working at a used bookstore), I had taken the opportunity to follow her on a couple of occasions, always at a discreet distance, never in a way that would have intruded. I’d been reading Carrington’s books in the confines of the Rare Book Room at the Widener: For as the reader willrecognize, my famishment is immense. I was fascinated with the way the heroine in Carrington’s novel could change herself at will into the South American mammal called the nutria. I’d felt that Anna Feldman would especially appreciate the image and the book. Getting it past the sequence of alarms in the Widener was a chore, I can tell you, even though security was comparatively lax in those years. When I finally attempted to present Carrington’s volume to Anna, after months of conspiring, the future art historian was aloof, refusing the token of my affections outright. This copy, therefore, though it is in the original edition, has some lonely, dispirited marginal commentary in my own hand, of a mildly misogynistic cast (from which illness I later recovered, I assure you). I offer it at bargain price.
$75
6. Dactyl, Veronica (Davis, Lydia). How to Compose a Detective Novel. Washington, DC: Sun and Moon, 1987. Pseudonymous how-to primer, by the fiction writer and translator widely considered one of the most elegant and arresting of twentieth-century American voices. Davis, as has often been noted, writes and produces slowly, and now it’s clear why. Acting on information provided me by a Katonah, NY, accountant, I have learned that the identity of this shadowy, elusive crime writer, Veronica Dactyl, is none other than the exquisitely luxe prose stylist herself. This primer reflects Dactyls fifteen years of writing mysteries mainly for the French market (L’Ami, L’Amour, Le Mort, for example, was a bestseller after the release of the Mickey Rourke vehicle) and as such was not a hit on this side of the pond. Now that the association is clear, Dactyl will no doubt have a higher profile among collectors. Price-clipped, with some writing on title page, though not in the author’s hand: Happy bday B., you should always have a career to fall back on, love, Mom.