The Great Gadsby: A Rare Book Written The Hard Way, No "E"s

by Stephen J. Gertz

Today is Lipogram Day on Booktryst, and because it is Lipogram Day we celebrate Gadsby, a novel from 1939 whose sole claim to fame is that of its 50,110 words not a single one contains the letter "E." 

Lipograms, which have nothing to do with liposuction unless you're vacuuming avoirdupois letters from a composition that could use a little less around the middle, are simply forms of writing from which the author has omitted a certain letter or letters from the alphabet.

The form dates to the ancient world. The Greek poets Nestor of Laranda and Tryphiodorus wrote lipogrammatic adaptations of Homer, with Nestor composing an Iliad, followed by an Odyssey by Tryphiodorus.

If you're a writer composing in English the most challenging lipogram will involve leaving out our most common vowel, "E." Gadsby novelist Ernest Vincent Wright gave himself a rigorous task: no common English words such as "the" and "he"; plurals in "-es"; past tenses in "-ed"; and even abbreviations like "Mr." (for "Mister") or "Bob" (for "Robert"). In short, he deliberately gave himself a pain in the ass to work through. To ease his E-burden and avoid mistakes he tied down the "E" on his typewriter's keyboard.

Personally, I consider that cheating but shiftless scribe that I am, I once wrote an entire novel without using any letters from the alphabet. It was harder than you think. I had to jerry-rig a shield over my keyboard to prevent all twenty-six letters from being accidentally depressed. It was grueling. The prose was pristine (as well as the paper when printed-out) but the story pointless, as well as invisible. It was an ordeal. I had to take days off to recover and got nothing written at all.

Lipograms are just about the silliest form of writing endeavor I can imagine, the writer held hostage to a form that is more puzzle than novel, an intellectual game of dubious literary value where form trumps content and quality goes down for the count. So it was something of a miracle that Wright not only pulled it off but did so with aplomb. He tells the story well, the necessary substitution of words without "E" flowing smoothly off the page rather than causing the pain associated with a dentist pulling "E"s out of your gums without anesthesia.

An anonymous narrator relates the tale, which begins c. 1906 and continues through World War I, Prohibition, and the presidency of Warren G. Harding. The narrator introduces us to the city of Branton Hills, its history, and sterling citizen John Gadsby's place in it. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts abound, as if a Jamboree hit town and afterward left the scouts behind with sticks, string, and kindling fluff that ignite a political career when middle-aged churchman John Gadsby wakes up his sleepy, isolated community with the help of these youngsters, and soon becomes its Mayor in the process. 

Ernest Vincent Wright was a graduate of M.I.T. and served in the First World War. A warehouse fire shortly after the book's publication accounts for its rarity. With dust jacket it is absolutely scarce. According to the jacket blurb it took Wright 150 days to complete the work, but, apparently it was years in the making; hamstringing your keyboard will only go so far - you have to plan ahead. The novel, such as it is, has become legend in word circles, admired by lexicographers, lipogrammatists, puzzlers, and language freaks.

Gadsby has its own Wikipedia page which notes: "The book's scarcity and oddness has seen original copies priced at $4,000 by book dealers."

Wikipedia needs to update its entry. There is only one copy with dust jacket currently being offered in the marketplace. The asking price is $7,500.

"E"gad.

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NB: In further honor of Lipogram Day this post was written without "X" being the first letter of a word. This, despite my best efforts to work Xanthans, Xanthate, Xanthein, Xanthene, Xanthine, Xanthins, Xanthoma, Xanthone, Xanthous, Xenogamy, Xenogeny, Xenolith, Xerosere, Xerox, Xiphoid, Xylidine, Xylidins, Xylitols, Xylocarp, Xylotomy, Xanthan, Xanthic, Xanthin, Xenopus, Xerarch, Xeroses, Xerosis, Xerotic, Xeruses, Xiphoid, Xylenes, Xylidin, Xylitol, Xyloses, Xysters, Xebecs, Xenial, Xenias, Xenons, Xylans, Xylems, Xylene, Xyloid, Xylols, Xylose, Xylyls, Xyster, Xystoi, Xystos, Xystus, Xebec, Xenia, Xenic, Xenon, Xeric, Xerus, Xylan, Xylem, Xylol, Xylyl, Xysti, Xyst, Xerostomia, or Xylophone into the narrative. 

No excuse.
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WRIGHT, Ernest Vincent. Gadsby. A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without Using the Letter "E." Los Angeles, Wetzel Publishing Co., (1939). First edition. Octavo. 267 pp. Original red cloth stamped in black on upper cover and spine. Dust jacket.

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Image courtesy of Rulon-Miller Books, currently offering this title, with our thanks.
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The Scarce Rare Book That Spawned "It's A Wonderful Life" Offered At $15,000

by Stephen J. Gertz

George said, “give me just one good reason why I should be alive.”

The little man made a queer chuckling sound. “Come, come, it can’t be that bad. You’ve got your job at the bank. And Mary and the kids. You’re healthy, young, and—”

“And sick of everything!” George cried. “I’m stuck here in this mudhole for life, doing the same dull work day after day. Other men are leading exciting lives, but I—well, I’m just a small-town bank clerk that even the army didn’t want. I never did anything really useful or interesting, and it looks as if I never will. I might just as well be dead. I might better be dead. Sometimes I wish I were. In fact, I wish I’d never been born!”

The little man stood looking at him in the growing darkness. “What was that you said?” he asked softly.

“I said I wish I’d never been born,” George repeated firmly. “And I mean it too.”

So begins The Greatest Gift: A Christmas Tale, a 4,100 word novella by American author, editor, and noted Civil War historian Philip Van Doren Stern (1900-1984), who began writing it in 1939 and finished in 1943. Publishers treated it as coal in their Christmas stockings; Stern could not find a home for the book. And so he privately printed it in a twenty-one page edition of 200 7.5 x 5.5 inch signed copies bound in orange wrappers and distributed them to friends for Christmas 1943.

It was ultimately published by David McKay in New York in 1944 with illustrations by Rafaello Busoni. Stern sold the magazine rights to Reader's Scope, which published the story in its December 1944 issue, and to Good Housekeeping, which published it under the title The Man Who Was Never Born in its January 1945 issue (on the streets in December 1944).

It was optioned by RKO studios for film adaptation in 1944. Ultimately produced by director Frank Capra's Liberty Films and released in 1946 under the title It's A Wonderful Life, the movie is now an American Christmas classic. But this, the true first edition of the book that started it all, has become quite scarce. Just in time for Christmas, however, a copy has come into the marketplace. Offered by Royal Books in Baltimore, the asking price is $15,000.

OCLC records seven copies of this edition in institutional holdings worldwide, with 193 copies theoretically left. But they appear to have left with Elvis, and, like the King (but more reliably reported), copies are only occasionally sighted this side of the heavenly veil. According to ABPC there has not been a copy seen at auction within at least the last thirty-seven years. A copy was offered in 2011 by Mullen Books in Pennsylvania. Who knows when another will surface?

Those for whom the screenplay to It's a Wonderful Life is a sacred text will be disappointed to learn that its protagonist, George Bailey, is George Platt in The Greatest Gift. There is no Bedford Falls. There is no Mr. Potter. And there is no Clarence Odbody, Angel-2d Class, just a mysterious, unnamed little man:

"He was stout, well past middle age, and his round cheeks were pink in the winter as though they had just been shaved…He was a most unremarkable little person, the sort you would pass in a crowd and never notice. Unless you saw his bright blue eyes, that is. You couldn’t forget them, for they were the kindest, sharpest eyes you ever saw. Nothing else about him was noteworthy. He wore a moth-eaten old fur cap and a shabby overcoat that was stretched tightly across his paunchy belly. He was carrying a small black satchel. It wasn’t a doctor’s bag - it was too large for that and not the right shape. It was a salesman’s sample kit, George decided distastefully. The fellow was probably some sort of peddler, the kind who would go around poking his sharp little nose into other people’s affairs."

In what will likely be a major bah humbug to Wonderful Life fans and horrifying to those who may not believe in Santa but definitely believe there's a war on Christmas, the unnamed little man does not earn his wings when a Christmas tree bell rings, nor is there any mention of heaven or angels. The Greatest Gift is a secular story with a Rod Serling twist at its end. You're traveling through another dimension: there's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: a Twilight Zone Christmas.
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You can read the full text of The Greatest Gift here.
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VAN DOREN STERN, Philip. The Greatest Gift. A Christmas Tale. New York: Privately Printed for Distribution to His Friends, Christmas, 1943. First edition, limited to 200 copies, each signed by the author. Octavo. 21 pp. Orange wrappers with printed title label. Near fine.

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With the exception of Clarence's note card, images courtesy of Royal Books, with our thanks.
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You Won't Believe This Incredible Art Edition Of James Joyce's Ulysses

by Stephen J. Gertz

James Joyce completed his novel, Ulysses, on October 30, 1921. Ninety years later, on October 30, 2011, Charlene Matthews, the Los Angeles-based book artist and bookbinder recently the subject of a profile in Studios magazine, began work on an extraordinary edition of the book, based upon Sylvia Beach's true first edition with all its typos included.

Two years later, on October 30, 2013, she completed it: the entire text of Ulysses - all of its approximately 265,000 words in eighteen episodes - transcribed by hand onto thirty-eight seven-foot tall, two-inch diameter poles: Ulysses as a landscape to physically move through; the novel as literary grove, Ulysses as trees of of life with language as fragrant, hallucinatory bark, and trunks reaching toward the sky.

Each pole has sixteen 'cels' comprised of four pages, a total of sixty-four pages per pole.  The first cel has the first line in it and then Matthews measured down 9" and wrote that line in the next cel and so on, with the last cel containing the last line on the pole. The whole totals thirty-eight poles.

I talked to Charlene Matthews about the piece, which I've observed in progress since she began. Our interview follows.

SJG: This project involved an extraordinary amount of work and time. What inspired you to begin?

CM: I had to do a sculptural piece for an art show Doug Harvey was doing at the Shoshanna Wayne Gallery.  So I wrote a J.G.Ballard short story (Say Goodbye to the Wind) on a pole I had in the back yard for years  which I hate to say was not very good.  I liked how it looked and I liked the idea of taking the words out of the book and putting them onto an object, I stayed with the pole.  I went through my book collection and found Ulysses.  Nothing else would do but IT, and I had never read it.

Key to the poles.

SJG: Did you have any idea when you began just how all-consuming it would turn-out to become?

CM: I knew the project would take me a while, I researched poles and pens and jumped in. As problems occurred I solved them, like how to write and turn the pole smoothly, how to write without twisting my back, how to exercise my hands to keep them from cramping, how to sand the pole just so to accommodate smooth writing.  The eventual  get-up I rigged was pretty amusing. I also began mapping the characters' movements on my walls.

All typos included, as well as flaws in the medium.

SJG: What is the over-riding theme here? What was/is your intent? In short (from a philistine perspective), what's the point?

CM: Initially I envisioned just a large group of poles standing around with writing on them.  But as I was writing, I had visions of the poles being exhibited in many ways, I am going to publish a small edition book of these drawings this year.  Some of them are pretty basic, most are pretty out there ( Irish Jig Dancers, energy windmills, mirrors etc.).

Also, as I was writing my eyes would look at my process and get memorized in the patterns made by the black pen letters on the wood grain, the letters moving around, the grain going up and down. I saw pictures of faces, and animals and odd formations.

The point?  I wanted to make something beautiful.  That is how I chose to spend my time at night.  I did have some very personal reasons for doing this, but they are moot.  It really is just my most current book art project.

Basically the book is all about sex.  I have A LOT to say about this.

SJG: It seems that the process must have in some way paralleled Bloom's journey, his a walk through Dublin, yours a walk through Joyce. Anything to that?

CM: It definitely felt like I was having a love affair with Joyce. 

SJG: You've read the book, a work of art in and of itself. You've turned it into a work of art in another medium. How has it changed your perspective on the book?

CM: As I was absorbing the story, I was also observing his style, and method of storytelling. I understood what was going on in his head as a story teller, writer and artist.  What he was trying to achieve in his Modernism.  This is when I knew that the book had more than a plot line, it had a picture line, the movements of everyone if they could be seen over head would draw out symbols/pictures.  As I was taking the words off the page, I was in this fourth dimension with Joyce.

Draft schematic plan for exhibition.

SJG: And for the viewer/reader, what is it you expect or hope from them? What do you want people to take away from the experience?

CM: What I want people to take away from seeing the poles is the magic of the hand written word, the beauty of handwriting.  The beauty of a handmade object only they can create, by hand writing.

SJG: Are you looking for or have you found an exhibition space for the piece? Any interest yet from galleries?

CM: I am talking to people about exhibiting them, and welcome any inquiries. Depending on the space will depend on how to show them.  Either anchored to the floor or hanging from the ceiling. All can be done.

Pole #38, with last line.

SJG: You said that "basically the book is all about sex.  I have A LOT to say about this." You can't declare that and not pay it off.

CM: Spoiler Alert! It covers every angle of human sexuality. One interesting point about the Ulysses obscenity trial in America is that the case was won the day after Prohibition was lifted.

•  •  •

The case was won on December 6, 1933. Prohibition ended on December 5, 1933 when the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution repealing the 18th Amendment was ratified.

"...And what is cheese? Corpse of milk" - James Joyce, Ulysses . 

And what is Charlene Matthews' Ulysses? Copse of novel.

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Images courtesy of Charlene Matthews, with our thanks.
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Whitey The Irrepressible Infests Europe After Festing With The Queer People Of Hollywood

by Stephen J. Gertz

Cover art by Vincentini.

A lovable and, yes, irrepressible but dissolute American, Whitey, wreaks havoc in Europe in the company of Sonia Varon, a movie star concealing her pregnancy from her producer; Prime Minister Zmiythe, dictator of Gandonia; and various potentates, gangsters, bartenders, and a fat lady - Senorita Francisca Ortiz, in love with Whitey, all 220 pounds of her - who doesn't sing until it's over in Kings Back To Back: Whitey The Irrepressible Infests Europe, the third novel in Carroll and Garrett Graham's Whitey trilogy.

Theodore Anthony "Whitey" White is a New York newspaperman of the Hecht-MacArthur Hildy Johnson/Front Page ilk who, if not exactly a bottom-feeder, avidly grazes on the fringe. So, when he blows into Hollywood, where his dubious reputation in New York and Chicago has not blown west with him, in Queer People - the first Whitey novel - he is at home among the colorful studio folk who populate Hollywood as a colony of bacteria occupy the colon.

Whitey has embraced the past age of enlightenment as the present age to getting lit, and answers any and all questions philosophical or otherwise with "I don't know. Let's take a few drinks and find out." The wisdom of the whiskey bottle is, for him, a modern day oracle at Delphi to be consulted in times of doubt or certainty, which is to say, always, to wit: "By dusk he was always comfortably potted and in a mood for anything." In Whitey, the Playboy of "Queer People" Runs Riot in Manhattan, the second novel in the Graham's trilogy, we are introduced to our hero as he confesses to his fifteenth drink - so far that morning.

Partying was his primary occupation but every now and then, as a result of contacts made at  Hollywood bacchanals, he found work. In a case of mistaken identity,  for instance, in Queer People he is hired by the head of Colossal Pictures to join its story department.

Cover art by Vincentini.

Budd Schulberg, who, as the son of movie pioneer and early Paramount studio chief B.P. Schulberg, knew a thing or two about Hollywood, wrote in the Afterword to the modern reprint of Queer People (Southern Illinois University Press, 1976) that readers may recognize Whitey "as a forerunner of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Pat Hobby, the irrepressible studio hack, part heel, part victim - an All-American, interchangeable with All-Hollywood in these hilarious and desperate days when the Whitey-Pat Hobbys lived off the crumbs from the banquet table of the queer people who combined the decadent flamboyance of Louis XIV with the stupidity of George III."

"Siblings Carroll and Garrett Graham decided to explore the sleazier side of Tinseltown in their novel Queer People (1930)...With its hard-nosed anti-hero, Theodore 'Whitey' White, anticipating Schulberg's newshounds-for-hire, Al Mannheim and Sammy Glick, this disconcerting roman à clef exposed the chasm between fantasy and reality, and suggested that icons and wannabes alike were incapable of distinguishing between performance and life" (Trouble in Tinseltown: Budd Schulberg's Literary Legacy, The Guardian, Aug. 7, 2009)

Cover art by Ann Cantor.

Queer People was a best-seller that went through eleven printings in its first year of publication. It was issued in a paperback digest edition in 1950 under the title, Fleshpots of Malibu (NY: Broadway Novel Monthly), with cover art that does not in any way telegraph that it is a hard-bitten satire but does highlight the book's proto-pulp sensibility.

Little is known about Carroll and Garrett Graham, who appear to have disappeared from the scene faster than a dissident in North Korea. In addition to their Whitey trilogy, the Grahams published Only Human, another from Vanguard Press in 1932 and issued just prior to Kings Back To Back: Whitey The Irrepressible Infests Europe.

Cover art by Vincentini.

"In the ring he was great - a light-footed boxer, and a murderous, relentless slugger who didn't know how to lose a fight and who ploughed his way straight to a championship. Johnny was sure he loved Marjorie, a sheltered, conventional, polished girl to whom he became engaged, but May, who was more at home in a speakeasy than in a drawing room, needed him. And Johnny couldn't disappoint a girl!" (Jacket blurb).

Mention must be made of the beautiful dust jacket art by Vincentini, about whom I've been able to find nothing thus far. The folks at Vanguard Press (in its heyday a Leftist publisher of, among other genres,  novels of social realism) loved his stylish work, so much so that they reproduced Vincentini's DJ art as the front free-endpaper to Kings Back To Back, a highly unusual move not seen from other publishers.

It's very difficult to find first edition, first printing copies of the Whitey trilogy in collectable condition. It's even harder to find them in dust jackets. Vincentini's work is highly desirable. Other examples of his dust jackets can be found here.

As for me, I'm irrepressible, ran riot in Manhattan as a lad, used to run a Hollywood story department, am a whitey in Los Angeles, and only human. So, I'll be exploring the fleshpots of Malibu as soon as I determine whether any actually exist and that Joe's Crab Shack on the coast isn't one of them. You can't be too careful.

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GRAHAM, Carroll and Garrett. Kings Back to Back: Whitey the Irrepressible Infests Europe. New York: The Vanguard Press, 1932. First edition. Octavo. 286 pp. Cloth. Dust jacket.

Slide, The Hollywood Novel, p. 113.

GRAHAM, Carroll and Garrett. Queer People. New York: The Vanguard Press, 1930. First edition. Octavo. 276 pp. Cloth. Dust jacket.

Slide, p. 112.

GRAHAM, Carroll and Garrett. Whitey; The Playboy of "Queer People" Runs Riot in Manhattan. New York: The Vanguard Press, 1931. First edition. Octavo. 274 pp. Cloth. Dust jacket.

Slide, p. 113.

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With the exception of Only Human and Fleshpots of Malibu, images courtesy of ReadInk and Between the Covers, with our thanks. Ond to Google Books for the titlepage to Whitey...
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Proust Gets Boost at Christie's

by Stephen J. Gertz

Written at age 9, to his grandmother, Feb. 1881.
Est. $6,700-$9,300.

Eight signed autograph letters written by French novelist, critic and essayist Marcel Proust (1871-1922) are being sold by Christie's-Paris in its Importants Livres, Anciens Livres, Livres d'Artistes, et Manuscrits sale November 6, 2013. Offered in eight individual lots, estimates range from $2,000-$12,000.

The charming two-page letter above was written by Proust to his maternal grandmother, Ms. Nathe Weil, on the occasion of her birthday, February 5, 1881. He was nine years old. He signed it "Marcel Proust" in German Gothic, and we smile: children seem to enjoy signing their full name as an exercise in identity and sounding adult, even to members of their immediate family.

To Lucien Daudet, c. late 1897.
Est. $8,700-$12,000.

In this letter, dated "Thursday returning" (likely late 1897-early 1898) Proust writes to "mon rat gentile," Lucien Daudet, shortly after the death of Daudet's father, novelist Alphonse. It is believed that Lucien Daudet and Proust had been lovers.

Unable to attend a dinner, Proust sends his regrets. "[ ... ] And I thought you had considered me cruel for  not being master over my body and unable to go near you, to be in this state of health your father had predicted and he advised me that the vision of genius and goodness with which he lived could probably lead us to all wonderful things [...] I wonder at times [...] if he did not die without you known in the most exquisite depths of his mind fully transmitted [...] not only were you  his flesh and blood, but you were sort of real presence of mind [...]."

To la princesse Soutzo (future wife of Paul Morand).
No date (c. 1917). Est. $5,400-$8,000.

On August 24, 1917, Proust wrote four-pages to his confidant, Princess Hélène Soutzo, the future Mrs. Paul Morand, regretting taking so long to acknowledge her invitation to dinner, to which the princess had also invited Soutzo Scheikevitch Ms., Mrs. Harcourt, Jean de Gaigneron, and Etienne de Beaumont.

"[...] When I woke up at 8am, your words gave me pleasure and pain, by your kindness to invite me for the evening I could love you more, and the impossibility, because of the time, to join. Celeste called on the telephone, you were out. Had we called the hotel [the Ritz] [ ... ] it seems that [...] it could present my excuses. I would have infinitely liked this dinner with you, especially Foyot [a restaurant located at the corner of rue de Vaugirard and Rue de Tournon]..." (Proust Correspondence. Text established and annotated by Philip Kolb . Volume XVI . Paris : Plon, 1988 , letter 108 , p. 218).

To Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, February 11, 1915.
Est. $2,700-$4,000.

On February 11, 1915, Proust wrote to Jean-Louis Vaudoyer asking about his friend and Vaudoyer's brother-in-law, historian Daniel Halevy, and complaining about his health.

"I was told that you had seen Mrs. Wood Rouvray (who I do not know) [ ... ] and you were very good. But a line may bring me great sweetness in these terrible days. [ ... ] I hope you have not been tested too much in your friendships. From the first day my brother [Robert] was in danger, but so far has escaped and everything goes well. I have advice against reform [ ... ] I wanted to tell you that I kept thinking about you and as it happens in disasters one keeps in his heart that which is needed, and you were more intimately mine" (Proust Correspondence. Volume XIV.  Paris: Plon, 1986, letter 18 , p. 51-52) .

To Madame Anatole Catusse, undated (c. Dec. 1917).
Est. $5,400-$8,000.

Mrs. Anatole Catusse was very close to Mrs. Proust with whom she shared a love of music. In December 1917 Marcel wrote her a four-page letter.

"Dear Madam, thank you a thousand times for your letter. The state of my eyes after correcting tests   does not allow me to give many thanks at length." 

He also remembers their meeting in restaurant (very likely the Ritz): "The other night, in the hotel you did me the honor to come to dinner, you had me in the crystal revolving door and gave excellent advice." With the help of Ms. Catusse Proust tried to sell some furniture which he had received offers on to buy.

He goes on describing his financial health, so bad, apparently, that even fruit isn't taking any chances on him. "If I had the idea to ask for a chopped apple, it would make me pay in advance." (Proust Correspondence. Volume XVI . Paris : Plon, 1988 , letter 168 , p. 325-326 .

To Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, no date (early Oct. 1918).
Est. $4,100-$6,700.

In an undated (early October 1918), four-page letter to his friend, novelist and critic Jean-Louis Vaudoyer (1883-1963), that he marked "confidential," Proust amusingly writes about a Proust-pastiche he saw in the magazine Le Crapoullot.

"They sent me a number of the Crapouillot causing me a slight annoyance because it contains a really stupid pastiche of me, but causes me great joy: you do me the honor and friendship to dedicate my wonderful pastiches. That of Gerard de Nerval in particular is an ongoing miracle [ ...] As pastiche that the pretension to forge my way, I am wrong to be indignant. It is only the consequence of Vanderem signs and other items that ignoring the composition of my work seem to say that I am the ' memories and am writing my memories of the fl [ ... ]" (Proust Correspondence.Volume IV. Paris : Plon, 1933 , p. 79).

(“On m’envoie un n° du Crapouillot qui me cause un léger ennui car il contient un pastiche de moi vraiment stupide, mais me cause une joie profonde : vous me faites l’honneur et l’amitié de me dédier des pastiches merveilleux. Celui de Gérard de Nerval en particulier est un miracle continu [...] Quant au pastiche qui a la prétention de contrefaire ma manière, j’ai tort de m’en indigner. Il n’est que la conséquence des articles signés Vandérem et autres, qui méconnaissant la composition de mon ouvrage ont l’air de dire que je fais des ‘mémoires’ et écris au fl de mes souvenirs [...]”).

To Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, n.d. [May 7, 1919].
Est. $2,700-$4,000.

In a three-page letter, Marcel writes to his friend, Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, and alludes to  Les Permissions de Clément Bellin, Vaudoyer's novel published in 1918.

"Wednesday, Reynaldo wrote me that he will probably dine and leave immediately afterward… I suffered so yesterday when I wrote that I have the impression that thinking has extraordinary and silent night with the mulatto, and other overhead of Peahen, I love talking about the Peahen and Peacock. I called this last name or the hero that you are a 'given' papers (you should remove that had given me', nor Paonneaux painted [ ... ]."

(“Mercredi, Reynaldo m’écrit qu’il viendra dîner et il partira sûrement tout de suite après. Vous ne serez que tous les deux (sauf un garçon que j’ai recueili depuis q.q. mois mais qui ne nous gênera pas car il ne dit rien) [...] Je souffrais tellement hier quand je vous écrivis que j’ai l’impression qu’en pensant à la nuit extraordinaire et silencieuse avec la mulâtresse, et d’autre part au pavillon de la Paonne, j’ai parlé des amours de la Paonne et de Paon. Je n’appelle de ce dernier nom ni le héros dont on vous a ‘remis’ les papiers (vous devriez supprimer ce ‘qu’on m’avait remis), ni les Paonneaux peints [...])” (Proust Correspondence. Volume XVIII. Paris : Plon, 1990 , letter 87 , p. 205-206).

To Gustave Geffroy, no date (June 20 or 21, 1920).
Est. $5,400-$8,000.

Here, Proust, in 1920, writes to his friend, the art historian, critic and novelist Gustave Geffroy (1855-1925), who wrote the first biography of Claude Monet in 1922.

"I'll wait a while, what I write is not forbidden and it is almost impossible to thank you for your wonderful tales of the West Country. But I want to tell you again what a delight and punishment they are for me. No longer able to travel I cannot see those places that give me nostalgia [...] But many sites - you really live in your Tales of the West Country - I have not visited, and I never will know them. But thanks to you they surround me much more than the walls between which I am [...]." (Marcel Proust. Correspondence. Volume XIX. Paris: Plon, 1991, letter 147, p. 314-315).

"Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces"

"There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book."

"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

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Images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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Bukowski's First Appearance In Print, 1944

by Stephen J. Gertz

A wonderful association copy of the scarce March-April 1944 issue of Story, featuring the first published work by Charles Bukowski - at the time only twenty-four years old - is being offered by PBA Galleries in its Beats, Counterculture & Avant Garde - Literature - Science Fiction. Collection of Richard Synchef sale, October 10, 2013. It is estimated to sell for $2,500-$3,500.

Bukowski's contribution, Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip, was composed just two years after he had begun to write, and was inspired by a note from Story publisher-editor Whit Burnett regarding a recent submission:

Dear Mr. Bukowski:

Again, this is a conglomeration of extremely good stuff and other stuff so full of idolized prostitutes, morning-after vomiting scenes, misanthropy, praise for suicide etc. that it is not quite for a magazine of any circulation at all. This is, however, pretty much the saga of a certain type of person and in it I think you've done an honest job. Possibly we will print you sometime but I don't know exactly when. That depends on you.

Sincerely yours,

Whit Burnett

In Factotum (1975), Bukowski described his experience with this first publication, calling Whit Burnett "Clay Gladmore":

"Gladmore returned many of my things with personal rejections. True, most of them weren't very long but they did seem kind and they were very encouraging...So I kept him busy with four or five stories a week." 

Bukowski later recalled the circumstances of the short story's publication in an interview just shortly before he died:

"I can remember my first major publication, a short story in Whit Burnett's and Martha Foley's Story magazine, 1944. I had been sending them a couple of short stories a week for maybe a year and a half. The story they finally accepted was mild in comparison to the others. I mean in terms of content and style and gamble and exploration and all that."

But Bukowski was not happy when Burnett finally published him. Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip had been buried in the End Pages section of the magazine as, Bukowski felt, a curiosity rather than a serious piece of writing. The cover's tag line - "Author to editor with everybody discomfited" - didn't help. Bukowski felt discounted and humiliated; he never submitted anything to Story again.

In that same interview, he noted that in the aftermath of Aftermath... "I didn't feel that the publishers were ready and that although I was ready, I could be readier and I was also disgusted with what I read as accepted front-line literature. So I drank and became one of the best drinkers anywhere, which takes some talent also."

"Charles Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany, 1920. His father was California-born of Polish parentage, and served with the American Army of Occupation in the Rhineland where he met the author's mother. He was brought to America at the age of two. He attended Los Angeles City College for a couple of years and in the two and one half years since then he has been a clerk in the postoffice, a stockroom boy for Sears Roebuck, a truck-loader nights in a bakery. He is now working as a package-wrapper and box-filler in the cellar of a ladies' sportswear shop" (Bio in Story).

Laid in to this copy of Story is a postcard from Christa Malone, daughter of Wormword Review publisher Marvin Malone, stating that this copy belonged to her father. Bukowski was the most frequent contributor to the Wormwood Review, with works appearing in more than ninety issues. It's a strong association.

Story was founded in 1931 by Whit Burnett and his first wife, Martha Foley, in Vienna, Austria. A showcase for short stories by new writers, two years later Story moved to New York City where Burnett and Foley created The Story Press in 1936.

By the late 1930s, the magazine's circulation had climbed to a relatively astounding 21,000 copies. In addition to Bukowski, Burnett and Foley published early stories by Erskine Caldwell, John Cheever, Junot Diaz, James T. Farrell, Joseph Heller, J. D. Salinger, Tennessee Williams and Richard Wright. Other authors in the pages of Story included Ludwig Bemelmans, Carson McCullers and William Saroyan.

In 1942, Burnett's second wife, Hallie Southgate Burnett, began collaborating with him and Story published the early work of Truman Capote, John Knowles and Norman Mailer. Story folded in 1967 secondary to lint in its bank account but its roster of authors established and has maintained its reputation as one of the great American literary journals.

After finishing Bulowski's Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip,  readers of Story could take advantage of a fabulous offer advertised by the Book-Of-The-Month-Club. New subscribers to the BOTMC were offered a free copy of My Friend Flicka (1941) and its sequel (1943). Those familiar with the novel will note its thematic similarities to the work of Bukowski. 

My Friend Flicka is the story of a horse and the boy that loved him, and "Flicka," as we all know, is Swedish for "little girl." Flicka was quite the filly, and Bukowski had a keen eye for fillies - at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park racetracks. And, yes, Roddy McDowall, who starred in the 1943 film adaptation (as the boy, not the horse), was a dead ringer for Charles Bukowski, though a bottle or three of whiskey may be  necessary to appreciate their resemblance to each other.

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All images courtesy of PBA Galleries, with our thanks.
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Of Related Interest:

Bukowski: Lost Original Drawings Of A Dirty Old Man.

Charles Bukowski, Artist.

Charles Bukowski's Last, Unpublished Poem.

Charles Bukowski Bonanza At Auction.
  
Dirty Old Man Exposed At The Huntington Library. 
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A Gravity's Rainbow Archive Screams Across The Sky

by Stephen J. Gertz

A screaming comes across the sky.
- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow.

The most demanding novel anyone has ever written… [and] the most important work of fiction yet produced by any living writer - Bruce Allen, Library Journal, March 1, 1973.

A small archive of correspondence between novelist Thomas Pynchon and Bruce Allen, whose review of Gravity's Rainbow in the March 1, 1973 issue of Library Journal emitted the sparks to Pynchon's genius that would ignite an incandescent shower of praise, has come to market.

The archive includes a 200-word signed typed letter (carbon) from Allen to Pynchon effusively praising Gravity's Rainbow and referring him to Allen's review.

Two additional carbons of letters to Pynchon from Allen, dated late 1975 and mid- 1976 are included, as well as Allen's heavily annotated proof copy of Gravity's Rainbow used for his review and his copy of the book's first edition.

The centerpiece of the archive is Pynchon's 260-word response to Allen's initial letter on the author’s trademark graph paper, dated March 25, 1973, along with its envelope.

Pynchon acknowledges Allen’s praise gratefully (“Thank you for that really extravagant review of Gravity’s Rainbow. It was a good ego trip for me, and I guess it must’ve cheered up Viking’s advertising people too”). He goes on to agree, in principle, with Allen’s point that at $15 the hardcover is expensive (“...my feeling was that the whole fucking thing ought to be paperback”) and suggests Allen take it up with Viking, although he feels that Viking wasn’t as able to subsidize a project like Gravity’s Rainbow, as easily as say, Random House would have (“...to be fair, Viking is trying to survive as a smaller independent publisher...and it costs them more to put out a book than the biggies like Random House...Thanks for caring enough to write to Viking, anyhow”).

Then, forty years before the publishing world would be fractured by the rise of digital technology, Pynchon writes of the current state of publishing and the writer's place at the shallow end of the income stream.

"But till writers get their own publishing and distribution operation together, this 19th century dispensation wherein the Man gets to make off with 85-95% of the writer's earnings will go on prevailing, and all the talk is sort of academic.

The letter also provides a glimpse of the author’s thoughts on his place in the literary continuum at a critical juncture in his career and in the publishing industry. "If the book sells lousy they'll call it Viking's Folly, and if it sells good it will be a great enlightened Watershed In Publishing History or something…if anybody can predict…"

Pynchon manuscript and autograph material is legendarily scarce. According to ABPC, the only such Pynchon material to yet come to auction was a one-page signed letter dated 1981 refusing permission to write about and anthologize some of his early stories. It sold at Swann Galleries for $12,000 on April 23, 2009. The cache under notice, however, is a much more important and significant catch, offered by Glenn Horowitz Bookseller.

V., Pynchon's 1963 debut novel, showed things to come. George Plimpton, reviewing it in the New York Times declared Pynchon "a young writer of staggering promise."  The Crying of Lot 49, his 1966 short novel, received decent notices but was, as far as Pynchon was concerned, a failure. Ten years after V., Gravity's Rainbow delivered on the promise, elevating Pynchon to the modern pantheon of novelists.

Above, something you scarcely, if ever, see: the highly private and reclusive Pynchon's autograph signature, the earliest dated yet to appear in the market, as far as I've been able to determine. It closes his last paragraph, which ends with a four-word summary that is almost cosmically amusing in retrospect:

“We’ll see what happens.”

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All images courtesy of Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, with our thanks.
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William S. Burroughs Exposes Scientology To Allen Ginsberg

by Stephen J. Gertz

Title page.

Serendipity struck Scientology when, simultaneous to actress Leah Remini's recent and very public defection from the controversial organization, a copy of William S. Burroughs exposé, Ali's Smile / Naked Scientology, came to market. It wasn't just any ol' copy. It was a Presentation Copy, Allen Ginsberg's, inscribed by Burroughs on the front wrapper, "For Allen / Love / William S. Burroughs," and signed "Allen Ginsberg aug 30, 1979 City Lights" on the half-title.

The book collects the author's various newspaper and magazine essays on Scientology and the Scientology-themed short story, Ali's Smile. Burroughs joined the organization during the Sixties, took courses, and became a "clear." But soon afterward he became disenchanted with the group's authoritarian and secretive nature and left the organization in 1970. Officially expelled, he was declared by Scientology to be in a "Condition of Treason."

Burroughs was initially attracted to Scientology because of its promise to liberate the mind by clearing it of traumatic memories that impeded personal growth, and, by extension, social progress and freedom from social control. His frequent collaborator, the artist Brion Gysin, introduced him to it and Burrough's "cut-up" technique in his early books reflected the influence of Hubbard's Dianetics and the fracturing of consciousness to attain a higher reality.

But as his biographer Ted Morgan noted, Burroughs "… had hoped to find a method of personal emancipation and had found instead another control system."

Burroughs wrote:

"In view of the fact that my articles and statements on Scientology may have influenced young people to associate themselves with the so called Church of Scientology, I feel an obligation to make my present views on the subject quite clear..."

"...Some of the techniques are highly valuable and warrant further study and experimentation. The E Meter is a useful device … (many variations of this instrument are possible). On the other hand I am in flat disagreement with the organizational policy. No body of knowledge needs an organizational policy. Organizational policy can only impede the advancement of knowledge. There is a basic incompatibility between any organization and freedom of thought. Suppose Newton had founded a Church of Newtonian Physics and refused to show his formula to anyone who doubted the tenets of Newtonian Physics? All organizations create organizational necessities. It is precisely organizational necessities that have prevented Scientology from obtaining the serious consideration merited by the importance of Mr. Hubbard’s discoveries. Scientologists are not prepared to accept intelligent and sometimes critical evaluation. They demand unquestioning acceptance.

"Mr. Hubbard’s overtly fascist utterances (China is the real threat to world peace, Scientology is protecting the home, the church, the family, decent morals … positively no wife swapping. It’s a dirty Communist trick … national boundaries, the concepts of RIGHT and WRONG against evil free thinking psychiatrist) can hardly recommend him to the militant students. Certainly it is time for the Scientologists to come out in plain English on one side or the other, if they expect the trust and support of young people. Which side are you on Hubbard, which side are you on?" (Burroughs On Scientology, Los Angeles Free Press,  March 6, 1970, reprinted in Ali's Smile / Naked Scientology).

That Burroughs presented this copy of Ali's Smile / Naked Scientology to Allen Ginsberg is of no little significance. Burroughs had been proselytizing to his friend about Scientology as early as 1959. In a letter to Ginsberg dated October 27 of that year he wrote: "The method of directed recall is the method of Scientology. You will recall I wrote urging you to contact local chapter and find an auditor. They do the job without hypnosis or drugs, simply run the tape back and forth until the trauma is wiped off. It works. I have used the method - partially responsible for recent changes."

Ginsberg was also concerned with personal liberation and freedom from social totalitarianism. With this copy of Ali's Smile / Naked Scientology Burroughs presented Ginsberg with his conclusions about the group and his deep concerns, which can be neatly summarized in a line from The Who's We Won't Get Fooled Again, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Dogma, orthodoxy, and authoritarian control were antithetical to everything Burroughs and Ginsberg stood for.
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BURROUGHS, William S. Ali's Smile Naked Scientology. Bonn: Expanded Media Editions, 1978. First collected edition of previously published work, first printing in wrappers, a Presentation Copy inscribed to Allen Ginsberg. Octavo. 106, [4] pp., text in German and English, translations by Carl Weissner. Pictorial wrappers.
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The Autobiography Of God

by Stephen J. Gertz

Chicago: Willett, Clark and Company, 1937.

"The vast sweep of history from the days of Abraham down to Hitler and the coronation of George VI of England in 1937 is portrayed as seen by Yahweh himself, the chief actor in the episodes that have shaped the modern world...a novel of great audacity" (Dust jacket blurb).

Ai, ai, ai, I, Yahweh! Great audacity, indeed.

Now, you can call me Yah or you can call me El; you can call me Elah or you can call me Eloah; you can call me HaShem or you can call me Adoshem; you can call me Jah or you can call me Jehovah but you doesn't have to call me Yahweh! In fact, I find it annoying. Adonai will do just fine. Like James Baldwin, nobody knows my name. In my case let's keep it that way.

Addressing me by my first name is simply rude. Maybe it's an American thing, breaking down class distinctions by leveling the playing field with informality. But if you were introduced to George Washington would you say, "Hey, George, nice t'meet'cha. Waz happ'nin?'" followed by a fist-bump? Of course not; you'd be awestruck. But you don't hesitate to dis me, treating me like we're old pals. Jumpin' Jehosephat! Did anybody - besides his wife, in private - dare to call Don Corleone "Vito?"  So, what am I, chopped liver?

It's Mr. Yahweh to you. Better yet, I Am That I Am (אהיה אשר אהיה), but if you insist upon being a boor call me Big Daddy. Or, since we're in the 21st century, Big Data: the invisible know-it-all in the cloud with a host of servers to do my bidding.

First of all, I did not "write" this book nor did I will it into existence. It's a case of identity theft. The first paragraph is a dead giveaway.

"I know not whose prayer gave rise to my being. Who, indeed, can remember the circumstances of his begetting? I recall only the mighty solitude of the world wherein first I found myself There was a great plain which lay round about the city of Ur in ancient Chaldea. Thither do my earliest memories return."

What? Thither doth my displeasure begin, and, please, begone the stilted language. I needed mankind to pray me into existence? Gimme a break. I was here before, I'm here now, I'll be here later, long after humanity bites the dust and returns to it. And, what, I have no memories before humanity came on the scene? Skip the ontology; I AM, that's all you need to know, and I remember more than Sammy "the Bull" Gravano testifying against John "the Dapper Don" Gotti.

Check this out, from chapter seven: "From that time forth, forasmuch as I had entered somewhat into the temporal province, Constantine entered more freely into the spiritual. And I took it it not amiss until that day when he said unto me, 'Yahweh, it is made increasingly plain that we must have thee defined.'

"'Defined, sayest thou?' I queried." The nerveth of this guy! I refuse to be pigeonholed. Everybody says I'm unknowable, beyond comprehension - and I am - but that hasn't stopped anyone from determining what they think I want. I'm a mystery without a solution, a Raymond Chandler novel with plot that makes no sense. My challenge to mankind is not to feel secure but to be able to live with insecurity without going insane.

What do I want? I'm not talking; gotta keep you flesh and blood folks on your toes.

I'm pleased to report that this book, a  turkey in the form of an autobiography, has not received a single review on Library Thing, Good Reads, or Amazon. It is, apparently, considered to be one of the ten plagues of Egypt and something to avoid, a toss-up between boils and pestilence. It is forgotten and for good reason. "Friends will find much to ponder on in this book, which is told in the first person by no less than Jehovah, Yahweh, God of the Hebrews. The idea is more startling than the book." So sayeth T. Morris Longstreet in 1939, reviewing the book (two years after its publication, yet!) for the Bulletin of Friends' Historical Association. It needs all the friends it can get, Quaker or otherwise.

Need I add that I have nothing to do with Yahweh.com, the online House of Me? Talk about chutzpah! My Domain is mine and mine alone but try telling that to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). I complained. I said, "I'm Yahweh." Guy says to me, "Right, and I'm Dagon, don't bust my chops." Philistines.

So, enough of this phoney-baloney autobiography of Me. Oy, Yahweh! It's a hoax.

So say I, Clifford Irving.

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GREY, Robert Munson. I, Yahweh. Chicago: Willett, Clark & Company, 1937. First edition. Octavo. [8], 352 pp. Cloth.. Dust jacket.

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Unrecorded Philip K. Dick Archive Surfaces

by Stephen J. Gertz

Once again, Phil, you've come up with some memorable descriptive lines in this book -- two stick in my mind: something that smelled badly "as if the skins of dead dogs were drying somewhere, on a line," and "gray and fragile, like wounded mice." Wonderful.  (Larry Ashmead).

An archive of Philip K. Dick's 1970 novel, A Maze of Death - arguably his darkest and most violent work, an exploration of the death instinct and the human capacity for murder, and, as in much of Philip K. Dick's world, inquires into the conflict between reality, perception, and identity - has come to market. It includes the final, holograph-corrected typescript. The asking price is $28,500.

Manuscript material by Dick of any sort is scarce in the marketplace. Most of the author's papers are housed at California State University where they were donated by him in 1972. A smaller cache rests at the Browne Popular Cultural Library at Bowling Green State University in Ohio (which includes a manuscript draft of Maze of Death). As a result, whenever any archival collections of the author appear for sale it's a major event. This archive seems to have been lost in an alternative reality until now.

First edition.

"His job, as always, bored him. So he had during the previous week gone to the ship's transmitter and attached conduits to the permanent electrodes extending from his pineal gland" (from A Maze of Death).

That's what I do when consumed by ennui.

In A Maze of Death, Ben Tallchief hates his inventory-control job so he prays, the conduits from his pineal gland transmitting his prayers to a relay network which sends his plea throughout the galaxy. He hoped it would reach one of the God-worlds. It, apparently, worked; he was transferred to Delmak-O, a harsh and strange off-world colony largely unexplored. There, he joins thirteen other colonists. Soon, six of the colonists either commit suicide or are murdered under mystifying circumstances.

Per usual with Philip K. Dick things are not what they seem. The survivors realize that they are each criminally insane, had murdered the others, and have been a part of a failed psychiatric experiment in rehabilitation. Oh, and that Delmak-O is actually Earth. Ultimately, their entire experience is discovered to be an exercise in virtual reality and hallucination; they are trapped within a program designed to help them endure their fate; their space ship is stranded in orbit around a dead star and they have no hope of rescue. Within the program a computer-generated religion and deity provides solace.

But Dick, who in this novel began to explore theological themes, doesn't let it go. The god of Delmak-O - the Intercessor - bleeds out of the virtual world and into the real to spirit away one survivor from the doomed ship, leaving the others to continue their hallucinatory existence until they die.

"A but of explanation on p. 13, clarifying the fact that nosers are strictly
one-way machines, would make p. 31 perfectly reasonable."

In addition to the corrected typescript, the archive includes letters from editors at Doubleday. Dick, evidently, ignored legendary editor Larry Ashmead's suggestions in a letter dated November 14, 1968 in which Ashmead declared the novel "one of your best to date." And so over a year later Doubleday editor Judith Glushanok wrote to the author on December 15, 1969 reiterating the suggestions.

To which Dick responded on December 28, 1969:

1. Explanation on p. 13. You seem to be under a misapprehension re the way fuel is used in interplanetary flight. Virtually all the fuel is used on takeoff; it is not like, say, a car which uses fuel continually. Thus, a space ship could, for example, handle a single-way flight of ten million miles but not a flight-and-return of five thousand miles each way. Do you see? But if you want to make changes on p. 13, please do so. But as far as I go, no changes are needed, so I will yield to you.

In the same letter, he declines to accept the suggestion that the sexually explicit material and graphic language on p. 131 be "toned down." Yet in the final, corrected typescript - part of this archive - he made changes to words and imagery.

Leaf from typescript, with holograph corrections.

Dick said that the idea for the novel came from an attempt "to develop an abstract, logical system of religious thought, based on the arbitrary postulate that God exists."

At this point in his career, Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was transitioning from science-fiction themes to reconnaisance of religion and God.  He asserted that the idea for the novel came from an attempt "to develop an abstract, logical system of religious thought, based on the arbitrary postulate that God exists."

The Introduction to the third volume of the Library of America's collection of Dick's writing describes this phase as one where "religious revelation, always an element of his fiction, became a dominant and irresistible theme," and that A Maze of Death "foreshadows Dick's final novels."

This post was written on Ecstasis-9, a barren pebble located in the third quadrant of meta-cyberspace by someone who looks, acts and talks exactly as I do but may be a figment of my fecund imagination, "Stephen J. Gertz" the product of long-term use of Substance-D by someone who shares my DNA but has been known  since  birth  as Agent  Murray, a  defrocked  rabbi  with personality issues working undercover  to  investigate "Stephen J. Gertz" for  the  Department  of  Homeland  Security, Section 8.

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Images courtesy of Royal Books, currently offering this archive, with our thanks. Click here for full details of archive content.

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