Bob Dylan's Legendary Tarantula Proofs Bite At $10,000

by Stephen J. Gertz

A copy of the pre-production uncorrected galley proofs of Bob Dylan's first book, Tarantula, has come to market. Spiral-bound in the original salmon-colored wrappers, it is being offered by Biblioctopus of Century City, California. The asking price is $10,000.

Why the hefty price tag? Tarantula was published in 1971. These proofs - of which only "a few copies" were produced, according to publisher Macmillan's press release - are dated 3 July, 1966 ("376") with "pub. date: Aug 1966 Price: $3.95 (tent.)" in holograph ink at the top of the front cover. In short, the proofs were printed five years before the book was actually published.

What happened?

Dylan's motorcycle accident happened.

Publication plans were in motion when Dylan had his fateful accident on July 29, 1966. Hospitalization and recovery surely distracted him but Dylan was never really committed to this collection of prose-poetry to begin with. 

"Things were happening wildly in that period," Dylan recalled to an interviewer in 2001. "I never had any intention of writing a book. I had a manager [Albert Grossman] who was asked: he writes all those songs, what else does he write? Maybe he writes books. And he must have replied: obviously, sure he writes books, in fact we're just about to publish one. I think it was on that occassion that he made the deal and then I had to write the book. He often did things like that."

Further movement on the book ground to a halt. 

Except from bookleggers, one of whom was in possession of a stolen copy of these proofs, photocopied it, and printed and published the result. Subsequent pirated editions (over a dozen) followed, each based upon third or later generation photocopies of that first pirated edition of these proofs.

First authorized edition, NY: Macmillan, 1971.

Here, then, is the fabled, earliest and scarcest of all editions of Tarantula in print, one of perhaps only 3-5 copies produced, eleven inches in height, seventy-eight pages in length, and $10,000 in cost.

_
__
___
____
_____
______
_______

here lies bob dylan
demolished by Vienna politeness -
which will now claim to have invented him
the cool people can
now write Fugues about him
& Cupid can now kick over his kerosene lamp -
bob dylan - filled by a discarded Oedipus
who turned
around
to investigate a ghost
& discovered that
the ghost too
was more
than one person

(From Tarantula, ©Bob Dylan).
__________

View some of the Tarantula piracies here.

__________

Images courtesy of Biblioctopus, with our thanks.
__________

Of Related Interest:

Greetings From Bob Dylan On Highway 51.
 
Very Early Bob Dylan Song Manuscripts Surface.
__________
__________

The Houdini of Cell Block A

by Stephen J. Gertz

The notorious bandit Otto Wood (1895-1930) became something of a folk hero in the North Carolina mountains in the late 1920s when, following a conviction for killing a Jewish pawnbroker, he succeeded in escaping from prison no fewer than three times, thus earning the sobriquet, "The Houdini of Cell Block A." A Depression desperado, Wood was finally killed in a shootout on the streets of Salisbury, North Carolina in December, 1930, shortly after his final prison escape.

Despite an obligatory author's foreword expressing a wish that his story might "...help some fallen mortal to a higher life," Wood's narrative is refreshingly unrepentant, detailing a lifelong career of petty crime, vagabondage, moonshining, gambling, whoring and periodic incarceration. 

The twelve-page afterword to this edition, written anonymously, recounts the events that followed Wood's final escape, concluding with the Salisbury shoot-out. Wood's exploits were immortalized in Walter “Kid” Smith's 1931 ballad Otto Wood The Bandit, which ended each verse with the refrain: "...Otto, why didn't you run / when the sheriff pulled out that .44 gun?" The ballad was re-recorded in the 1960s by Doc and Merle Watson, and has since become a folk-music standard.

Step up, buddies, and listen to my song
I'll sing it to you right, but you may sing it wrong,
All about a man named Otto Wood,
I can't tell you all, but I wish I could.

He walked in a pawn shop a rainy day,

And with the clerk he had a quarrel, they say.

Pulled out his pistol and he struck him a blow,

And this is the way the story goes.

They spread the news as fast as they could,
T
he sheriff served a warrant on Otto Wood.

The jury said murder in the second degree,

And the judge passed the sentence to the peniteniary.

CHORUS: Otto, why didn't you run?

Otto's done dead and gone.

Otto Wood, why didn't you run

When the sheriff pulled out his 44 gun?

They put him in the pen, but it done no good,

It wouldn't hold the man they call Otto Wood.

It wasn't very long till he slipped outside,

Drawed a gun on the guard, said, "Take me for a ride."

Second time they caught him was away out west,

In the holdup game, he got shot through the breast.

They brought him back and when he got well,

They locked him down in a dungeon cell.

He was a man they could not run,

He always carried a 44 gun.

He loved the women and he hated the law,

And he just wouldn't take nobody's jaw.

He rambled out west and he rambled all around,

He met the sheriff in a southern town.

And the sheriff says, "Otto, step this way,

'Cause I've been expecting you every day."

He pulled out his gun and then he said,

"If you make a crooked move, you both fall dead.
 
Crank up your car and take me out of town,"

And a few minutes later, he was graveyard bound.

 

This is an exceedingly rare book in any edition. OCLC notes four copies in library holdings worldwide, recording a 1926 edition of forty-three pages and a 1931 edition of twenty-two pages. However, the present edition, with added matter and an afterword, is, apparently,  unrecorded by any OCLC member institution. 

Above, The Carolina Buddies (Walter "Kid" Smith and friends) perform Otto Wood, the Bandit,  recorded in NYC, NY on February 4, 1931.
__________

WOOD, Otto. Life History of Otto Wood. Inmate North Carolina State Prison 1926. Wadesboro, NC: Pee Dee Publishing Company, 1931. Posthumous (second?) edition, complete, of a virtually unobtainable Southern outlaw narrative. Significantly expanded with photo-illustrations and a twelve page afterword.  Twelvemo (19.5 cm). 62 pp,  three leaves of half-tone photo-illustrations. Staple-bound pamphlet with original photo-illustrated wrappers.

Thornton, A Bibliography of North Carolina 1589-1956, 15354. Not in Suvak, Memoirs of American Prisons: An Annotated Bibliography.

__________

Image courtesy of Lorne Bair Rare Books, with our thanks.
__________
__________