20
21
21 BUTLER, Octavia E. Patternmaster. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1976 Her debut, inscribed to a fellow science fiction writer First edition, first printing, review copy, inscribed by the author on the title page, “To Buck Coulson, Best wishes, Octavia E. Butler”, with the ownership stamp of the recipient and his wife on the front pastedown. Inscribed copies of this title are scarce. This was Butler’s debut novel, the first in the Patternist quintet, though chronologically the final. Robert Coulson (1928–1999) was a science fiction writer and reviewer who, together with his wife, writer Juanita Coulson, edited the fanzine Yandro , which was nominated for the Hugo Award 10 years in a row from 1959 through to 1968, winning in 1965. Butler was the first Black woman to receive both the Nebula and Hugo Awards, and the first science fiction author to be granted a MacArthur fellowship. Her work “creates powerful images of black women in a genre in which and from which they have traditionally been marginalized and excluded . . . Frances Smith Foster argues that the heroines in Butler’s Patternist series represent ‘a new kind of female character in both science fiction and Afro-American literature’” (Boutler, p. 170). Octavo. Original beige leatherette, spine lettered in black, fore edge untrimmed. With dust jacket. Loosely inserted is the publisher’s review slip, previously taped on the front free endpaper. Head of spine lightly creased, edges and endpapers a touch foxed, remnants of tape from review slip on front free endpaper, trivial rubbing from tape on rear free endpaper. A near-fine copy in jacket, spine sunned, a few spots of foxing, a touch of rubbing to extremities, very sharp. ¶ Amanda Boulter, “Polymorphous Futures”, American Bodies, Cultural Histories of the Physique , 1996. £4,000 [156857]
Ginsberg, Corso, and various others, characterizes “the bulk of Beat writers [as] undisciplined and slovenly amateurs who have deluded themselves into believing their lugubrious absurdities are art simply because they have rejected the form, style, and attitudes of previous generations and have seized upon obscenity as an expression of ‘total personality’”. Burroughs is painted with broad brush strokes: “for sheer horror no member of the Beat Generation has achieved effects to compare with William S. Burroughs . . . a pale, cadaverous and bespectacled being who has devoted most of his adult life to a lonely pursuit of drugs and debauchery. He has, first in Mexico and then in Tangier, dosed himself with alcohol, heroin, marijuana, kif, majoun and a hashish candy”. Burroughs’s mother was understandably horrified by the piece, while his response was more dismissive: “In order to earn my reputation I may have to start drinking my tea from a skull since this is the only vice remaining to me . . . I hope I am not ludicrously miscast as the wickedest man alive, a title vacated by the late Aleister Crowley” (quoted in Roach, p. 24). This title, number 91 in The Traveller’s Companion series, contains two pieces written in collaboration with Michael Portman; “In a Strange Bed” and “The Black Fruit”. Together with The Soft Machine (1961) and Nova Express (1964), The Ticket That Exploded forms part of the Nova trilogy. It describes Burroughs’s idea of language as a virus and lays the groundwork for many of the ideas detailed in The Electronic Revolution (1970). Octavo. Original green and white wrappers, printed in black. With Ian Sommerville dust jacket. Green border on title page, monochrome design on p. 183 by Brion Gysin. Trivial creases to front wrapper and spine, light offsetting to rear pastedown. A fine copy in jacket, a few marks to panels, folds lightly rubbed, crease to head of front panel, a few nicks to head of spine, two short closed tears to head of front panel and one to front flap, a very sharp example. ¶ Kearney 166; Maynard and Miles A6. William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch , 1992; Paul O’Neil, “The Only Rebellion Around”, Life Magazine , 30 November 1959; Rebecca Roach, Literature and the Rise of the Interview , 2018. £2,500 [156528]
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
15
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter maker