Super Copy Of William Burroughs' Scarce Digit Junkie $15,000 At New York Antiquarian Book Fair

by Stephen J. Gertz

A copy of the incredibly scarce first U.K. edition of William S. Burroughs' Junkie, published in London by Digit Books in 1957, is being offered at the upcoming New York Antiquarian Book Fair, April 3-6, 2014. Inscribed by Burroughs to his friend, Phoenix Bookshop owner Robert Wilson ("For Bob Wilson / With all best / wishes / William Burroughs / as William Lee") and in unusually wonderful condition, the asking price is $15,000.

Yes, that's $15,000 for a mass-market paperback book. But it is the most difficult Burroughs "A" item to acquire and one of the most collectible vintage paperbacks of all. It is definitely the most desirable drug-lit. paperback.

Banned by British censors immediately upon publication with all copies in retail circulation ordered returned to their distributors and then all copies in distributors' warehouses commanded to be destroyed, few copies have survived. I've only seen three copies in over thirty years of collecting and book selling, the last one in 2002. That copy, uninscribed, was owned by a friend who sold it to a British dealer for $5,000. What a difference twelve years and an inscribed copy with stunning association in excellent condition makes. This copy is likely the finest extant; if there's a better one it has yet to surface.

William S. Burroughs, c. late 1970s.
Photographer: David Sandell.
Provenance: Though not noted, from the collection of Tuli Kupferberg.

"For many struggling writers and poets of the latter half of the twentieth century, Robert A. Wilson [b. 1922] was a familiar and comforting presence. As the third proprietor of the Phoenix Bookshop in New York City from 1962 to 1988, Wilson provided both encouragement and financial support to beginning writers. A great lover of literature, Wilson specialized in rare books and manuscripts and shipped his material to enthusiastic readers in all parts of the world.

"Through the bookshop, Wilson published the work of many notable writers, including Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore, W.H. Auden, Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Bishop, and Richard Wilbur. During his twenty-six year tenure as the proprietor of the Phoenix, Wilson oversaw the publication of no less than forty-three volumes.

"An avid collector of rare books and manuscripts for his own personal collection, Wilson himself is the author of more than a dozen volumes, many of which he published on a mimeograph machine in the back room of the Phoenix. Among these are Auden's Library (1975); Marianne Serves Lunch (1976); Robert Haggard's She (1977);  Faulkner on Fire Island (1979); and Tea With Alice (1978), an interview with his friend, Alice Toklas.

"In 1988, financial difficulties forced Wilson to close the doors forever, thereby ending the Phoenix's fifty-six year history" (University of Delaware, Special Collections, Robert A. Wilson Collection).

Wilson's memoir, Seeing Shelley Plain ( 2001), relates how he transformed a small, obscure book shop into a internationally renowned literary harbor. Within he writes of his close, long-standing friendships with some of the great figures of 20th century literature, including Marianne Moore, W.H. Auden, and Burroughs, and provides mini-biographies of many famous "Beat Generation" poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Diane Di Prima, Gregory Corso, and Michael McClure. It also contains a previously unpublished piece by Burroughs.

When Junkie was originally published in the U.S. in 1953 by Ace Books it was issued in a two-fer edition inversely bound with a reprint of ex-Bureau of Narcotics agent Maurice Helbrant's 1941 Narcotics Agent. By doing so Ace exploited the contemporary craze for dope-themed literature but played it safe in a hostile environment that in 1952 had seen the United States Congress hold hearings on literature it considered morally repugnant for children and of dubious cultural or otherwise value to adults. Ace took no chances, correctly reasoning that Helbrant's tough anti-dope book would mitigate Junkie's unapologetic, outlaw romantic, almost positive view of heroin use.

The British edition - the first separate edition of Junkie - without the influence of Helbrant's book was a bit too much for British authorities. The back cover to the Digit edition, a masterpiece of sensational drug eroticism, didn't help. Falling firmly onto the censors' list of Yikes! its overt message of sex and drugs was not one the British wished to be delivered.

The front cover art to the Digit edition recreates rather than reproduces Al Rossi's original for the Ace edition and, strictly speaking, attribution should read, "after Al Rossi"; it is a repainting of the original with subtle differences in color, framing, the figures' hair, face, etc.

The book is being offered by Brian Cassidy, Bookseller, who, in celebration of Burroughs' centennial, is devoting an entire display case to Burroughs material, including the photos seen here, at the Fair, which will include another scarce gem, a precious copy of the 1957 off-print of Burroughs' Letter From a Master Drug Addict To Dangerous Drugs, which originally appeared in Vol. 53, No. 2 of The British Journal of Addiction (1956). A notorious Burroughs rarity, it was issued at his request in a print-run estimated at no more than fifty copies, tops. In excellent condition it is being offered for $3,000.

Letter From a Master Addict..., is, as critic Carol Loranger has written, "one of Burroughs' most subversive pieces of comic writing. The 'scientific' language and deadpan asides both anticipate and replicate...the 'scientific' language and asides of much of the narrative of Naked Lunch...The language of the article, together with Burroughs' heavy use of passive constructions and medical jargon, careful attention to definition of terms, and (for botanicals) use of Latin species names, combines with its encyclopedic organization and tabulations of data to effectively imitate science writing of the day - an imitation Burroughs then undermines with odd anecdotes" (Postmodern Culture, Volume 10, Number 1, September 1999).

William S.. Burroughs, c. 1962,
with Antony Balch in the Beat Hotel, Paris.
Photographer: Nicolas Tikhomiroff. $4,000.

The fact that this piece by Burroughs (whose Junkie pseudonym, William Lee, was blown by this time) appeared near simultaneous to the Digit edition of Junkie likely helped doom the book's appearance on the British welcome wagon of wholesome literature, William S. Burroughs a serious saboteur of mainstream cultural and moral values. 

So, go to the 2014 New York Antiquarian Book Fair, with over 200 expert dealers from nearly twenty countries around the world exhibiting, check your steely dan at the door, go to the booth of Brian Cassidy, Bookseller, wish Burroughs a happy 100th birthday, and drool over a fine selection of his contributions to the decline of Western civilization.

Afterward, visit the offices of Dr. Benway, Burroughs' go-to medico, who doesn't give a bat's butt about a patient's state of mind but has some marvelously graphic things to say about how to remove a patient's brain with the sucker none the wiser and better off for its excision. In a brainless world the brainless are kings with the brainful at a distinct disadvantage.

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Images courtesy of Brian Cassidy, Bookseller, with our thanks.
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It's about time and long overdue that a census be taken of all extant copies of the Digit edition of Junkie. Any volunteers?

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This 1898 Lost Gem Of Oriental Romanticism Is Intoxicating

by Stephen J. Gertz

The following is my Historical Note to a new translation of Haschisch by Fritz Lemmermayer, originally issued in 1898 and now published for the first time in English by Process Media in association with RKS Library Editions. The black and white illustrations here (as well as the original cover art in color) are by Gottfried Sieben and are taken from the first German edition. All of the striking and plentiful original illustrations are present (and faithfully reproduced) in this exciting new edition along with many supplemental illustrations that illuminate the history of the book. - SJG.

Some novels die and justifiably remain dead. A few are resurrected by bookish saviors and, re-examined, rise to deserved new life. Haschisch by Fritz Lemmermayer is one such literary Lazarus. 

During the nineteenth century Europe was infatuated with the Orient in general and the Muslim world in particular. The Ottoman Empire, which in the late 17th century beseiged Vienna and put all of Christian Europe at risk, had receded as a threat. Translations of The Arabian Nights appeared in French (1704) and English (1706), kindling popular interest in the Orient. Diplomatic and commercial ties with Istanbul, the Ottoman capital, increased during the 18th century and Turquerie, an Orientalist style imitative of Turkish culture and art, had developed into a popular fashion by century’s end. By the beginning of the 19th century literary Romanticism had established itself. Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley, amongst others, lured by the exotic East, indulged, to popular success, their fascination for the foreign in their work. Oriental Romanticism, which captured their fantasies, was the result.

By mid-century the European craze for all things Oriental was at its height. The paintings and color-plate albums of Amadeo Preziosi, a Maltese count and artist who had become a resident of Istanbul, provided a lush feast for Europeans hungry for visual representations of this strange world of unusual costume, customs, and, let us not mince words, alluring women, mysterious with titillating possibility behind the veil. And, too, the use of opium and hashish in the East had captured the Romantic imagination as a gateway to the Oriental mind and fantastic visions not otherwise available to Western man. The exotic East possessed a strong sensuous undercurrent and it will come as no surprise that a genre of erotic literature arose in parallel to Oriental Romanticism to satisfy the European male’s desire, The Lustful Turk (1828) being an early example. The region was perceived to be an erogenous zone.

In Germany, Romanticism tended to look inward to Teutonic myth rather than outward to the East. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, a small group of Neo-Romantics, led by litterateur Fritz Lemmermayer in protest to modern realism, turned their eyes toward the Orient. Haschisch, Lemmermayer’s 1898 novel, is not only Oriental Romanticism’s last gasp, but its acme, the literary culmination of two centuries of feverish thought and interest in the exoticism of the East.

We would not know this, however, without the scholarship of Dr. R.K. Siegel who rescued from obscurity this novel, a book lost in the wake of literary modernism and forgotten almost as soon as it was published. It’s a book that, as an antiquarian bookseller, I first became aware of in the mid-1980s through its 1911 translation into, of all languages, Yiddish. The cover art was sensational. A few of us in the trade who had a special interest in the literature of psychotropic drugs were riveted but, preoccupied with quotidian needs, did not have the necessary time to study and determine just what this book was. Enter Dr. Siegel, a dedicated collector-scholar, a breed of book lover that has so often (and to no financial gain whatsoever) devoted precious time to perform the bibliographical spadework for books in general and orphaned literature in particular. It was he who uncovered the first edition in German and then made the study of the novel’s history a personal mission. The results are here and marvelous.

Amadeo Preziosi, Odalisque.

A word on the novel’s illustrations by Sieben. He was unquestionably influenced by Preziosi’s artwork. Stamboul: Souvenirs d’Orient, Preziosi’s widely and wildly popular color-plate masterpiece first appeared in 1858, its fourth and final issue published in 1883 (as Stamboul: Meours et Costumes) to satisfy unabated demand. When Europeans imagined the Orient it was Preziosi’s imagery that they referenced, particularly his women of Istanbul. The faces of the women in Haschisch are directly those of Preziosi’s women. Preziosi’s image of a harem woman, languid and alluring as she is attended by her servants, tempts us with come-hither eyes as she smokes a hookah. Is she enraptured by hashish, or merely smoking tobacco? It is left to the observer to decide.

I think it safe to say, however, that readers will not have to make a decision regarding the novel’s vivid and operatic narrative. Haschisch is a literary cloud of intoxicating smoke, a phantasmagoria in print, once forgotten but now unforgettable.

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N.B. The politics of Oriental Romanticism are not germane to this post beyond that almost every 19th century stereotype of the exotic East is found in Haschisch. Romanticism's preoccupation with love, sex, and death gets full play here. Throw in exotic drugs and Muslims and Edward Said would have had a field day with it had he lived to see this publication, which is quite something with production values that belie its cost, and a degree of scholarship that is remarkable. Dr. Siegel is a model literary detective; his informative introduction and notes cover the waterfront. It appears he hasn't missed a thing, which would be a bad thing if the story behind the book wasn't so interesting.

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LEMMERMAYER, Fritz. Hashish: The Lost Legend. The First English Translation of a Great Oriental Romance. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Ronald K. Siegel, PH.D. Translations by Hermann Schibli (German); Mindle Crystal Gross (Yiddish). Historical Note by Stephen J. Gertz. Port Townsend, WA: Process Media in association with RKS Library Editions, 2013 [i.e. Feb. 2014].

First edition in English, limited to 418 copies numbered and signed by Ronald K. Siegel, PH.D. Quarto (10 x 6 1/2 inches). xx, 118 pp. on heavy glossy paper. Illustrated throughout in black & white and color. Full blue suede cloth with color illustration laid-on. Gilt lettered spine. Housed in a red suede cloth slipcase. $65.

 

Full Disclosure: I sit on the Editorial Board of RKS Library Editions, along with William Dailey, Michael Horowitz, and Steven B. Karch, M.D., FFFLM.

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William Burroughs' Intro To Naked Lunch At $175,000

by Stephen J. Gertz

Calling Dr. Benway:

The first and final draft corrected typescripts of William S. Burroughs' Introduction to the first American edition (NY: Grove Press, 1962) of Naked Lunch (Paris: Olympia Press, 1959), his seminal, controversial work and one of the landmark publications in the history of American literature, have come to market. The asking price is $175,000.

From the collection of his friend and editor, Alan Ansen, they are being offered by Glenn Horowitz, Bookseller, the New York City dealer who has made a habit of pulling literary rabbits out of his hat. Within that context these typescripts may be fairly ranked as the rabbit who ate Cleveland.

The first, titled "Postscript" in Burroughs' penciled holograph, is comprised of five recto-only leaves corrected by Burroughs in black ink, with page numbers in same. It is unknown when, exactly, he wrote it but it appears to be c. 1960.

The heavily corrected typescript is Burroughs' first pass at his extended essay, Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness, that would serve as the introduction to the American edition of Naked Lunch. “Postscript” discursively explores the themes and sentiments which motivated Burroughs to write the introduction; it is the text upon which the polished, buffed, and published version was based. 

Bits and pieces of “Postscript” can be found throughout “Deposition,” as well as in its final post-postscript, and the relationship between “Postscript” and the published introduction is immediately obvious. For example, page one of the “Postscript” typescript includes the following notes:

"Hasheiesh [sic], Mescaline, LSD -- ? under the title what is? Who must have junk to live in the structure? When there are no addicts carriers will disintegrate - virus opium."

"Talk exact manner in which junk virus controls words in monkey considered sacred by those who purpose to keep the virus of numbers or remove the bottom number street to cover basic frequency."

The published introduction directly addresses the points noted above, concerning the difference between hallucinogens - hashish, mescaline, LSD  - and heroin. Burroughs writes in part, “There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence. The action of these drugs is physiologically opposite to the action of junk. A lamentable confusion between the two classes of drugs has arisen owing to the zeal of the U.S. and other Narcotic departments...” The introduction also sets forth upon “the exact manner in which the junk virus operates.” 

Within the five-page “Postscript” is a handful of dialogue and a paragraph referring to “Mr Bradly Mr Martin,” a character appearing in the novels of Burroughs' Nova Trilogy: Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket that Exploded (1962), and Nova Express (1964). In part, they read:

“Light in eyes and I saw the brains...no time to stop and eat switch fuzz behind me...I told him I'd do it I told him if I catch you on the West Side push you on the tracks...hustle your own mooch...”

"And he looked at me over the blade caught the tarnish black and white subway dawn..Old photo..Couldn't reach me with the knife and fell on the tracks I told him he would and he rushed for I – overcoat I held there teaching him the cloth in the turnstile and learned the cloth stuck there like star fish smoking and switch fuzz whistling down the iron stairs and I caught an uptown cold sore…"

"Mr Bradly Mr Martin teaching him the cloth in the junk hold saw the brains fuzz the rail…"

Neither the dialogue nor the narrative made it into the Introduction and appear to be unpublished.

The final draft appears in three typescripts:

• “Deposition. Testimony Concerning a Sickness,” (ca. 1960), a corrected ribbon typescript of thirteen recto-only leaves (including the one-page “PSS or PPS” noted below), with Burroughs’ holograph corrections in blue ink and copy-editing notes in red ink.

•“Deposition. Testimony Concerning a Sickness,” (ca. 1960), a corrected carbon typescript of eleven recto-only leaves (lacking final page) very neatly incorporating in another hand the changes to the ribbon typescript above, either by erasing the type and replacing it with the correct text or interlined with Burroughs’ text.

• “PSS or PPS.” (ca. 1960), a one-leaf corrected ribbon typescript with Burroughs’ holograph corrections in black ink. It is stapled to “Deposition” above. 

These are a ribbon typescript and carbon copy of Burroughs’ introduction, "Deposition,” as published by Grove Press. The thirteen-page typescript is corrected by Burroughs and his changes are incorporated into the carbon copy as well as the final text as published. Burroughs’ holograph annotations include clarifications to language, e.g., “these notes” becomes “the notes which have now been published,” “measurable” becomes “accurately measurable,” etc., and include corrections to spelling and changes in emphasis with the addition of underlining.

The one-page “PSS or PPS” was not included in the book but did appear with “Deposition” in Grove Press' Evergreen Review (Volume 4, Issues 11-12). It was introduced “as a late post-postscript - a newspeak précis.”

Alan Ansen ("Rollo Greb" in Kerouac's On the Road) was a poet, playwright, and close friend of many Beat Generation writers. Living in Tangier, he spent time with Paul Bowles, Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and others. He lived in Greece during the last forty or so years of his life

Considered to be the only man capable of shaping the hundreds of random pages generated by Burroughs into publishable form, Ansen was brought in by Ginsberg to help edit Naked Lunch. He later preserved the Ginsberg-Burroughs correspondence along with many of the photographs from the period.

To have fresh Burroughs autograph/typescript material enter the marketplace (ABPC records no Burroughs typescript/manuscript material coming to auction within the last thirty-six years) at this late date is somewhat miraculous; all that could be found had, it seemed, been unearthed. But that was before The Amazing Horowitz waved his magic wand, said "abracadabra," and conjured this material out of nowhere and into and out of his hat.

• • •

And now, a treat: Burroughs recites passages concerning Dr. Benway - the Marcus Welby, M.D. from Hell who "performs appendectomies with a rusty sardine can" - from Naked Lunch in his deadpan nasal monotone mashed-up with footage from an episode of Dr. Kildare, and behold! Burroughs' voice coming out of Richard Chamberlain's mouth. Oh, to hear Burroughs croon Three Stars Will Shine Tonight, the 1961 TV show's hit theme song.


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All images courtesy of Glenn Horowitz Bookseller with our thanks.

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Thomas De Quincey Writes While High As A Kite

by Stephen J. Gertz

"I was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery of opium-taking: and, what I took, I took under every disadvantage. But I took it: -- and in an hour, oh! Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished, was now a trifle in my eyes: -- this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me -- in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea - a [pharmakon nepenthez] for all human woes: here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket: portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint bottle: and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail coach" (Confessions of an English Opium-Eater).

At an unknown date post-1804, the year that he first tried opium at age nineteen, Thomas De Quincey, famed author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (anonymously published in London magazine in 1821 and in book form in 1822), was working on a draft of an as yet unidentified or unpublished essay.

In 250 words over eighteen lines with numerous cancellations and insertions, De Quincey, apparently after chug-a-lugging laudanum (tincture of opium), to which he was addicted, took flight and soared to Xanadu as a  phoenix ecstatically lost in the ozone and content to be above it all, a mummified skeleton lying in a blissful state. That one-page, drug-addled manuscript has now come to auction.

It reads, in part:

"In a clock-case housed in a warm chamber of a spacious English mansion (inevitably as being English, so beautifully clean, so admirably preserved, [noise there is none, dust there is none, neither moth nor worm doth corrupt] how sweet it is to lie! – If thieves break through and steal, they will not steal a mummy; or not, unless they mistake the mummy for an eight-day clock. And if fire should arise, or even if it should descend from heaven is there not a Phoenix Office, able to look either sort of fire (earthly or heavenly) in the face ... Mummy or anti-Mummy, Skeleton or Anti-Skeleton, the Phoenix soars higher above both, and flaps her victorious wings in utter defiance of all that the element of fire can accomplish—making it her boast to ride in the upper air high above all malice from earthly enemies...."

To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway, Write high, edit sober. It appears, however, that De Quincey, never completely free of opium's grip, remained stoned through the editorial process. This is is an opium-soaked apparition, a fantastic proto-Surrealist Gothic phantasmagory. It must have seemed to De Quincey that he had broken the boundaries of prose and ascended to that enchanted place where reveries take flight onto paper without volition or physical exertion, highly automatic writing while under the spell of the Oneiroi, the dream-spirits who emerge like bats from their deep cavern in Erebos, the land of eternal darkness beyond the rising sun, the infinite night that day cannot break. Don't mess with the Muse, feed Her. Judging by his penmanship there was laudanum in his inkwell.

This De Quincey manuscript, an early example of high-lit. during the Romantic period demonstrating the effect of opium on literary creation, is being offered at Bonham's Fine Books & Manuscripts sale, February 17, 2013, in San Francisco where it is estimated to sell for $800-$1200.

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Manuscript image courtesy of Bonham's, with our thanks.
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A Lurid Story of Book Dope And Lives Twisted By Mad Desire! A Booktryst Golden Oldie

by Stephen J. Gertz

Hard-boiled dames caught in the grip of a habit beyond their control; corrupt dolls seeking cheap thrills between the sheets of a book; innocents ensnared into the rare book racket, underage girls seduced by slick blurbs, and grown men brought to their knees by bibliographical points that slay dreams in a depraved world.

It's rare book noir, the dark underbelly of collecting. Human wreckage litters the streets of Booktown, the vice-ridden gotham that kicks its victims into the gutter margin, slaves to their twisted desire and lost in a sick world where condition is everything, obsession is the norm, and compulsion the law.
 

That first book seen in a window display, an Internet image, held in the hands - soon, you're furtively ducking into dens of iniquity with bookshelves and rarities behind a bamboo curtain; you've got the shakes and you need something, bad, right now. The rent is due, the kids need food, mama needs a new pair of shoes but let 'em all go to hell, you're a quarto low, you need your shot of heaven, a mainline hit straight to the pleasure centers to bathe in a flood of dopamine unleashed by a new acquisition and sink into careless ecstasy.

It's a brutal, hard-hitting story that rips the tawdry curtain away from this covert world to expose the reckless passion that drives its denizens to the depths of impecunious human existence and insanity.

It's a tale told through posters designed and exclusively distributed by Heldfond Gallery Ltd in San Francisco, based upon vintage pulp fiction book covers. Proprietor Eric Heldfond has been  peddling them for a few years now, leaning against a lamppost on a dark street corner to tempt unwary passersby. I've succumbed to his evil pitch, bought a few, have given them as gifts, and suspect you may wish to do same for friends of dubious character, i.e. book lovin' broads, momzers, and biblio-debauchees - in short, fellow travelers in the shadowland of the sordid habit we call reading. Make yourself at home in the flophouse of the hopelessly hooked: Your local rare book shop.

Never before has the finger of light shone so glaringly on the wasteland of the book collector to pitilessly strip bare this seamy hotbed of unbridled text! 

 "Read any good books lately?" she purred. 

The dame had me right where she wanted me. 

I felt her scan my lines and before I knew it she tore 

off my jacket, and began to paraphrase my favorite part.

She bookmarked me, and how. I didn't complain.

I was a book junkie and there was no escape from this sinister paradise.

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The posters are 8.5 X 11 inches, printed on 68lb. (252 g/mf) / 10.4 mil. heavyweight Premium High Gloss photo media.92 ISO, and priced at $25 each. Custom sizes up to 13 x 19 inches are available. Visit Heldfond's Bibliopulp gallery here.

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Originally appeared on Jume 14, 2010.

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It's Tuesday, We Pause To Smoke Opium

by Stephen J. Gertz

Oh Stevie boy, the pipe, the pipe is calling... 

Melancholia, catarrh, the weakies, dropsy, hectic fever, hydrocephalus, ague, the King's evil, quinsy, croup, iron-poor blood, neuritis, neuralgia,  that sinking sensation, teething, diaper rash, and the most dreaded of all maladies, mogo-on-the-gogo-go, in concert with an overdose of reality, fantasies of the exotic Orient and infernal pleasures, and a bad case of the blahs have driven me to the pipe this morning.

The pipe, alas, is imaginary. I'm hopelessly addicted to fantasies of smoking opium. The first time I imagined that I was smoking opium it was a moral choice. Now, caught in Lady Opia's soothing yet remorselessly diabolical embrace, it's a medical problem. Fortunately, I'm never at a loss to satisfy my craving; there's no skulking around dark places to get a fix, socializing with the unsavory, nor criminal activity to support the habit. I simply lie down, close my eyes, and I'm in a plush den, a comely young woman attending to my pipe, keeping it full when I'm unwilling to break the spell, fire a neuron and move a flaccid muscle.

This morning, I'm getting off on The Chinese Opium-Smoker, a scarce reformist tract illustrating the horrors of opium addiction. The lithographs are apparently reproductions of  original Chinese wood engravings. Cheery-O: It's the perfect accompaniment to Cheerios; breakfast is our most important meal of the day, and high time for endorphins to make a brain-pleasin' splash.

"The title sufficiently explains the nature of this little publication, which shows by characteristic language and equally characteristic illustrations what the Chinese think about opium are exceedingly effective, not to say touching. We trust the plea of a heathen nation with a Christian one on behalf of first principles of morality will not go long unheeded" (London Quarterly Review, Volume 60, April-July 1883, p. 280).

 

In its first edition, the book is divided into four sections: I. The Chinese Opium-Smoker. Twelve illustrations. II. Opium-Smoking in China Compared with the Drinking Habits of England. III. The Extent of the Evil. IV. England's Responsibility in Regard to the Opium-Smoker.

This post is being written while I'm in a faux opium reverie; it's writing and publishing itself, and I'm basking in the fabulous reviews flooding in from all media. It's the #1 download at Amazon and iTunes. The YouTube video adaptation goes viral, I'm in contention for a Pulitzer Prize, a committee in Stockholm bruits Nobel, I'm Time magazine's Man of the Year, groupies loiter on my doorstep, panting, and Gore Vidal declares, "God, where has this writer been? His words are crystalline blue notes on a suave stave, by turns rapturous nocturne and Dionysian rondo. I feel like dancing cheek-to-cheek with William F. Buckley Jr!" Adulation becomes me, as I become adulation. We're very happy together.

Please don't spoil my imaginary high and bring me down. O-Lan, lose Wang Lung, Pearl S. Buck's the damned  Good Earth,  and prepare a pipe for me and my guests, a plague of locusts descending to devour West Los Angeles. We must welcome them, provide succor, a nice supper, a cigar, and serenity. It's the least that The Chinese Opium-Smoker can do for those who have journeyed so very far. Yes, I feel their buzz.

Cheerio!

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[Chung Ling Soo and Wilfred Partington]. The Chinese Opium-Smoker. Twelve Illustrations Showing the Ruin which our Opium Trade with China is bringing upon that Country. 12 full-page lithographs printed in colours, showing the gradual downfall of a smoker. Descriptive text opposite each plate. 

London: S.W. Partridge & Co. , n.d. [1881].  Third edition. Octavo. Printed wrappers. [15] leaves including 12 leaves of colored lithographed plates, each with descriptive text to facing leaf.

First edition, 1870, with subsequent editions in 1880, 1881, 1900, and 1909. All are scarce, with OCLC recording approximately only fifteen copies of all editions in library holding worldwide

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All images courtesy of Lorne Bair Rare Books, currently offering this title, with our thanks.
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Incredibly Scarce Cocaine Magazine (1925) and Marihuana Matches (1937)

by Stephen J. Gertz

Kokain. Eine Moderne Revue. Heft (Installment) 2. Wein: 1925.

It is amongst the rarest of all items of drug literature, virtually unknown to scholars and collectors until now. It is Kokain Eine Moderne Revue, a literary journal published in Vienna 1915-1925. Only five issues were published. Little, at this time, is known about it beyond that gleaned from the issues under notice.

Kokain. Eine Moderne Revue. Heft (Installment) 4. Wein: 1925.

Edited by Fritz Bauer, about whom I've yet to discover anything (he was not the notorious Nazi jurist),  Kokain featured many contributions by women, and was highlighted by the cover art, graphic design and erotic lithography of Stefan Eggeler. Issue #3 was, apparently, confiscated by the Viennese authorities because one of the stories within, Im Kellerloch (In the Cellar Hole) by Erwin Stranik (1898-?; OCLC notes twenty-three titles by him), contained a particularly graphic description of a sexual act. The story was republished in issue #4 (above) along with an essay by Stranik, Was ist Kunst und was ist Pornographie? ("What is Art and what is Pornography?"),  discussing the affair.

What is particularly interesting about Kokain Eine Moderne Revue is that it not only provides further evidence that Weimar culture was lively indeed but, more to the point, its introduction, in 1915, preceded by three years the post-WWI establishment of the Weimar Republic in 1918. As such, Kokain Eine Moderne Revue can justifiably be considered an early, if not the earliest, hint of what was to come, an inspiration, perhaps, for the most libertine and decadent period in Western culture during the twentieth - or any other - century, the defeat of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires in the most violently cataclysmic war yet fought leading to  the collapse of traditional values and the fatalistic pursuit of  desperately carefree, unrestrained pleasure, the Jazz Age in overdrive.

OCLC/KVK locate only two copies of any issues of Kokain Eine Moderne Revue, at the Landesbibliothekenverbund Ostereich, and Verbundkatalog HeBIS, Hessen.
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BAUER, Fritz, (editor) and Stefan Eggeler (artist). KOKAIN. Eine Moderne Revue. Heft 2 and 4. Wein, 1925. First (only) editions. Quarto. #2: [3]-73, [1] pp. #4 (irregularly bound and paginated): [3]-18, 51-66, 35-73, [1] pp. Illustrated wrappers. Text in German. With numerous black & white and color lithographs. With Library of Congress duplicate stamps (yet no copies located in LOC).
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03/29/2011. We have received the following information about Stefan Eggeler from our colleague Elmar Seibel, of Ars Libri Ltd:

"An Austrian painter, printmaker and illustrator, Stefan Eggeler (1894 – 1969) studied art at the Vienna Academy. His first original etching was published in 1914 and during the following twenty years he created a number of outstanding engravings and etchings, most dealing with either figure studies or interior scenes.

"He was a fairly prolific Austrian illustrator of erotic and particularly sado-masochistic books and portfolios. Years & years ago, we had a whole archive of his, possibly from the library of Erich von Kahler; he might have been a friend of Lily von Kahler’s [Erich's wife, aka Alice]. All very odd bunnies. Sort of like Rudolf Jettmar."

• • •

Attention children: Don't play with matches. Particularly these.

Assassin of Youth Matchbook, 1937. Front.

Assassin of Youth Matchbook, 1937. Rear.

The producers of Assassin of Youth, the classic 1937 anti-marijuana exploitation film directed by Elmer Clifton, didn't miss a trick to ballyhoo the movie. Here, they provided an ingenious, if not diabolical, way to promote it with every strike of a match to light legal cigarettes, customized for local theaters.

Assassin of Youth Matchbook, 1935. Inside.

Per usual, the anti-drug message is contradicted by a powerfully overt erotic charge. Sex sells. And sex sells illegal drugs.
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These images make their Internet debut on Booktryst and are courtesy of Between the Covers, with our thanks. The two issues of Kokain immediately sold for $1200 and are now part of the R.K. Siegel Library of Drug Literature. The Assassin of Youth matchbook also sold within moments of being offered, selling for $250; later reprinted, genuine examples in such fine condition are rare.

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Anyone in the U.S. or Europe with further knowledge of Kokain. Eine Moderne Revue, Fritz Bauer or Stefan Eggeler is encouraged to contact me. The hunt for other issues begins.

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The Elizabethan Poem in Praise of Cannabis

by Stephen J. Gertz

Frontispiece portrait of John Taylor,
engraved by Thomas Cockson,
from The Workes of John Taylor (1630).

“Sweet sacred Muses, my invention raise
Unto the life, to write great Hempseeds praise...”

So begins The Praise of Hemp-seed, a minor epic poem dating from 1620  by John Taylor (1580 - 1653), who, though all but unknown to modern readers, was a prolific writer with over 150 works published in his lifetime and was amongst the most popular poets of the Elizabethan Era.

Known as “The Water Poet” - his primary source of income derived from his profession as a waterman, the trade of boatmen who ferried passengers across the Thames - his poetry, while far from gemstone, was notable for its diamond wit and keen  observations of the contemporary social and cultural scene.

Of what use is hemp?

“This grain grows to a stalk, whose coat or skin
Good industry doth hatchell twist, and spin,
And for mans best advantage and availes
It makes clothes, cordage, halters, ropes and sailes.”

Taylor enumerates the many manufacturers and trades dependent upon hemp, not the least of which are pharmacy:

“Apothecaries were not worth a pin,
If Hempseed did not bring their commings in;
Oyles, Unguents, Sirrops, Minerals, and Baulmes,
(All nature’s treasures, and th’Almighties almes),
Emplasters, Simples, Compounds, sundry drugs
With Necromanticke names like fearful Bugs,
Fumes, Vomits, purges, that both cures, and kils,
Extractions, conserves, preserves, potions, pils,
Elixirs, simples, compounds, distillations,
Gums in abundance, brought from foreign nations.”

All manner of physical complaint is relieved. “Most serviceable Hempseed but for thee, These helpes for man could not thus scattered be.”

One of the more notable aspects of The Praise of Hempseed is that within Taylor acknowledges the death of Shakespeare four years earlier and his place in poetry’s firmament; he was the first poet to do so:

“In paper, many a poet now survives
Or else their lines had perish’d with their lives.
Old Chaucer, Gower, and Sir Thomas More,
Sir Philip Sidney, who the laurel wore,
Spenser, and Shakespeare did in art excell,
Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel,
Sylvester, Beaumont, Sir John Harrington.
Forgetfulness their works would over run
But that in paper they immortally
Do live in spite of death, and cannot die.”

Taylor may have known William Shakespeare. In The True Cause of the Waterman’s Suit Concerning Players (1613 or 1614) he writes about the waterman’s dispute with London theater companies, which in 1612 had moved from the south bank of the Thames to the north, thus depriving the ferrymen of lucrative traffic.

Taylor was unabashedly attracted to the pleasures of life; amongst his many poems is A Bawd. A vertuous bawd, a modest bawd: as she deserves, reproove or else applaud (London: [printed by Augustine Mathewes] for Henry Gosson, 1635).

While we're on the subject , let us not pass over Taylor’s statement of hemp’s efficacy in matters of passion:

“Besides it is an easie thing to prove
It is a soveraigne remedie for love.”

A fascinating aside: Taylor wrote one of the earliest palindromes whose authorship can be firmly credited, one that celebrates a lifestyle of dubious morality, hempseed and the flesh:

“Lewd did I live & evil I did dwel.”

The title page to The Praise of Hemp-seed contains a declaration that could have come out of the mouth of hemp’s favorite spokesman in the modern world, actor Woody Harrelson:

“The Profits arising from Hemp-seed are
Clothing, Food, Fishing, Shipping
Pleasure, Profit, Justice, Whipping.”

Don’t know about the whipping. Lashes made from braided hemp threads? Shades of psychopathic Harrelson in Natural Born Killers!

In seventeenth century England the hemp plant was exploited for all it was worth. Contrary to Armour Meat Packing’s famous claim that when processing pigs they used everything but the squeal, when hemp was processed in Elizabethan England, they used everything and the squeal - of pleasure.

It is a measure of how literary reputations, popularity, and book collecting tastes ebb and flow that in 1902 a copy of the 1630 folio edition of The Workes of John Taylor sold for an astounding half of  what a Shakespeare Second Folio (1632) fetched, 100% more than what a first edition of John Donne’s Poems (1633) sold for in the same year (Out of Print & Into Profit, p. 203).

Now, unfortunately, when we think of the Waterman, if we think of him at all, we probably think of this latter-day H2O-guy:

It’s enough to drive a body into the arms of Mary Jane. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

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TAYLOR, John. The Praise of Hemp-Seed. With the voyage of Mr. Roger Bird and the writer hereof, in a boat of brown-paper, to Quinborough in Kent. First edition. London: [printed by E. Allde] for H. Gosson, 1620.

STC 23788.

The Praise of Hemp-Seed is an exceedingly rare book. OCLC/KVK record only one hard copy (many on microfilm or digital file) of the first edition and only a handful of the second edition i1623) in institutional holdings worldwide. ABPC reports no copies of either edition at auction within the last thirty-five years.

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Read the complete text of The Praise of Hemp-Seed here.
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Matching the Right Wine to the Right Rare Book

Let Vincent Vinmerde, the Rare Book Sommelier, former winemaker at Chateau Saint Livre and consultant to the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), help make your next bookish event a vintage affair fit to print. Maybe.

by Stephen J. Gertz

I'd like to thank the Director, Father Michael Suarez S.J., for inviting me to present this, the final class of the year at UV's Rare Book School, and for giving me a last only chance. The man's a saint, is what he is. A saint.

Of the debacle at the ILAB Congress in Madrid, where I denounced all Riojas as swill not suitable to even gargle with and to be accompanied only with cheap reprints of Lorca on a bad day, and of the subsequent riot outside the U.S. embassy and then nationwide strike, I shall say no more.

I promised to be on my best behavior but right now I imagine Father Suarez  is in a rectory praying that I don't make a complete wreckery of things.

I've brought a selection of some of the finest wines that starving librarians, rare book dealers, and collectors can buy. Which means that the only Lafite you'll be tasting will be the ones at the end of my ankles.

Hmmm. Not even a chuckle? Time for the first tasting. Mine. Since I got out of the car. Excuse my sumptuous sip; none of this polite thimbleful, swirl and spit nonsense for me!

Oh, dear, I seem to have forgotten to bring  the glasses. Oh, well. No shame in chug-a-lugging; the spirit of the winemaker is pleased when votaries of the vine tip the bottle back. Here's to Bacchus and rare books!

Well, now. Much better. Much, much better. Oh, yes! Great legs, insouciant nose, yet astringent, ultimately the dregs. But let's leave my ex out of it.

Hello?

Fuck-a-doodle-doo! Wake up, everybody.

Lesson #1: It is not necessary to drink white wine while reading rare books on marine natural history. I once shared a bottle of '76 Romanée-Conte so ruby we called it Tuesday, with a fish. At least she drank like one. The phone number she gave me afterward was for a mortuary.  I hate bad reviews.

Another tasting? Why, sure, thank you for asking!

That takes care of that bottle. Oh, fuckity. Where do we toss the damned empties?

Lesson #2: When reading the Christian Hebraists do not, under any circumstances, drink Manischewitz. Do not engage in literalism - in religion or wine-drinking.

Oh, fuckity-fuck - I've insulted religion. Fortunately, I brought along a nice Châteauneuf-du-Pape so I'll drink just a tiny little bit strictly in honor of His Holiness; maybe get a dispensation out of it.

Whad'I do with the corkscrew? Fuckity-fuck-fuck! Oh, there's the little sucker.

Lesson #3: When using a corkscrew be sure to carefully center it on the cork, like THIS, and begin screwing. At least, that's what she said last night.

What a crowd. I'm searching for signs of intelligent life here, folks; terrestrial, extra-, makes no difference to me.

Now pull out carefully. The cork, you filthy book lovers! Oh, fuckity-fuck-fuck!  Damned cork!

Lesson #4: When the fuckity cork breaks off  in the fuckity bottle, grab a pencil, jam it into the bottle's neck and ram what remains of the demonic bottle-stop down in there. Allow for spillage. No time to grieve; immediately, raise bottle to lips, and swig, like this.

Divane pipisy, er, divine papacy! Ah, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you!

Lesson #5: In vino veritas. And in truth, I don't give a fuckity-fuck. Let's drink some more! Or, anyway, I'll drink some more. That a problem, my little fuckadees?

Lesson #6: When reading rare volumes of Charles Bukowski the obvious  vinous accompaniment is what, class?

Thunderbird. Come on, people! Do I have to spell everything out for you?

Okay, nest, er nesh, eh next!

Answer: Gewürztraminer.

Question:  When shitting, er sittting down for some nice Szechuan while reading Schopenhauer what minor Alsacian philosopher should you drink?

A scholastic detour: Let me put to rest, once and for all, the Shakespeare - Bacon controversy. The bard preferred pancetta, end of story, okay? Geesh!

Lesson #7: It should go without saying, so, naturally, I will anyway, that alcohol and the literature of psychotropic drugs do not mix. Recently, I was drinking an '81 Martin Ray Stelzner Vinyard Cabernet while reading a few lines from a beautiful first edition copy of Mortimer's Peru: History of Coca. The Divine Plant of the Incas (1901). Soon, I was compulsively reading long lines from the book, one after another after another after another after another, while simultaneously running a NG-tube from the bottle, up a nostril and down into my stomach to avoid the inconvenient labor of swallowing. Wine is an intellectual experience; at this point I don't need to taste it to enjoy it.

Which reminds me, when attending a wine-tasting, always follow the advice that all mothers give to their daughters upon reaching sexual maturity: Don't. Swallow, that is. That, at least, has been my experience. What am I, poison?

What? Have I offended someone? Well, fuckity-fuck la-dee-fucking-la!

Did I just hear the track bugler call the horses to post? I'll drink to that!

Don't let the name Gallo throw you off. This is good shit; can’t be beat - but Beat it is. Goes with everything: Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Corso, 'course not - anything.

You give a bunch of women the best years of your married life and whad'ya get? You wind up alone, living in a crap bachelor with a hot plate and cruising Craigslist for distaff members of the desperately seeking solace club. So much for gratitude!

You there, the ugly one with hairy arms, wearing glasses and a thrift shop rag, looking at me with such scorn - my place, later? I'll read you sonnets from my latest collection, The Bilious Imbibing Bibliophile: An Alky's Misadventures in Rare Book Land.

Oh, fuckity-fuck-fuck-FUCK!! I knocked the bottle over with my expansive, gross motor coordination-be-damned gesticulations and the wine's spilling over the side. A wandalous scaste, er, scandalous waste! Quick, someone lie down on the floor and let it cascade into your gullet!

Fuckity-doo-dah, fuckity-aye, my oh my what a wonderful fuckity day - I guess I'll have to do it myself; the cultivated oeno-bibliophile's work is never done. Put THAT in your English Short Title Catalogue and drink it!

I will.

Ah, good to the lasht drop.

Pop-quizh: What did Dom Perignon shay when he took his first ship of champagne?

"I'm drinking stars!"

And I'm sheeing them.

Clash dishmisshd!

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Sex, Drugs, and Vintage Ink Blotters?

by Stephen J. Gertz

Abbott's ABD Malt, c. 1925.
6 1/4 x 3 1/2 inches.

They are quaint reminders of a bygone era, a time when pens were dipped into an inkwell and, later, fitted with a cartridge or bladder "fountain" filled with ink. Writing was challenging; the ink could easily smear before it dried and it often left blotches on the paper. The excess ink required frequent blotting to prevent a mess; hence the necessity of ink blotters; heavy, highly absorbent papers.

Ink blotters had been around since the fifteenth century, the papers used by themselves or affixed by clips to a wooden block curved along its bottom to allow for rocking motion across the inked document, a more efficient and tidy manner than a flat block allowed. Used with a block, each was approximately 6 x 3 inches.

Abbott Laboratories Ltd. Montreal., c. 1930.
6 1/4" x 3 1/2 inches.

Schering (Canada) Limited. Montreal, c. 1925.
 3/4 x 3 3/4 inches.

By the early twentieth century it became clear that these simple, blank blotting papers provided an excellent medium for advertising all manner of product and service; blotters were found in offices and homes, used daily and often by millions. Ink blotters provided advertisers with a huge potential audience at little cost for maximum exposure. By the 1920s-1930s promotional ink blotters were ubiquitous. 

Merck & Co. Inc. Rahway, N. J., c. 1925.
7 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches.

Swan-Myers Co. Montreal, c. 1930.
5 3/4 x 3 3/4 inches.

Schering (Canada) Ltd. Montreal, c. 1920s.
6 1/4 x 4 inches.
Bottoms Up!

For pharmaceutical companies, advertising via ink blotters allowed for an end-run around laws prohibiting advertising in standard media for prescription drugs, i.e. extracts of digitalis, phenobarbitol; pharmaceutical salesmen calling on doctors handed them out to promote their company's product. And they were widely distributed to heavily promote over-the-counter nostrums to the general public.

Mistol. USA,  1925.
6 1/4" x 4 inches.

Rogerson Coal Co. Toronto, c. 1920s.
6 x 3 1/2 inches.
Joy Coke - A High Grade Fuel.

Swan-Myers Co. Indianapolis. Montreal/Toronto Distributor, c. 1920s.
6" x 3 1/2 inches.

And, no surprise, sex was used to move the merchandise - even a commodity as bland as sand. This Mr. Sandman brought dreams guaranteed to keep a man awake and busy with his fountain pen, defying him to blot these sweet dreams out of his memory.

"My [illegible] Shadow."
c.1940s.

"I'm Putting on the Finishing Touch."
c. 1940s.

"Of course you have to use your imagination."
c. 1940s.

Need insurance and bonding? Gance & Wonger insure that wangers will not wilt. A customer service call girl awaits your claim.

"There must be something wrong with my line."
c. 1940s.

Of course, after all the sex and drugs, you may require something to blot out the cost of excess. The following product provides gland treatment for sexual neurasthenia, aka the doused-fire down below, the withered stones, the weathered seed, and subsequent winter of our discontent. Trust Homovir to restore Man Virility.

Anglo-French Drug Co., Montreal, c. 1920
3 x 5 3/4 inches.
"Gland Treatment regulating nerve and essential power."

Ink blotters are about as ephemeral as ephemera gets. Never meant to be saved, they were frequently used and tossed out, literally throw-aways given away by the advertiser for promotional purposes. That any have survived is something of a miracle, more so than the advertising cookbooks we've previously written about on Booktryst.

Vintage ink blotters are a fun, inexpensive entry-point for collectors that capture an era in writing long gone within the context of American pop-culture of the early-mid twentieth century, graphically interesting and fascinating slices of history.

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Images of drug ink blotters courtesy of David Mason Books.

Images of 40s pin-up ink blotters courtesy of Esnarf.com.

All blotters pictured are currently offered for sale by the above dealers.

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