About this Item
Quarto (28cm); photomechanically reproduced sheets, comb-bound into peach printed wrappers, with publisher's typed label mounted to front cover; [ii],363,[3]pp, with the publisher's three-page epilogue and "Author's Note" xeroxed on 8.5" x 11" sheets, stapled at upper left corner, folded and laid in. Gentle sunning to spine, light wear to wrapper extremities, with month and date of publication written in red pencil at upper front cover, and a diagonal crease to upper left corner of rear cover; contents fresh; Very Good+ to Near Fine. Housed in a custom clamshell case. Wolfe's third and most enduring book, a major work of the New Journalism and one of the defining books of the 1960's, in which he recounts his experiences traveling with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Essentially the earliest obtainable format of the text, created directly from the publisher's long galley sheets by Crane Duplicating Service, a small print shop in Barnstable, MA whose sole function was the printing and binding of publisher's advance copies. A preliminary leaf prints a half-page statement by Crane's, with some chapter headings, a few small corrections, and page numbers written by hand (in copy), along with a potentially libellous two-line passage struck through (p.149, again in copy). A side-by-side reading against the finished text shows a few dozen mis-spelled words, dropped letters, and a few awkward spaces. While no hard numbers are known for how many such proofs were printed, marketing materials for Crane from this period suggest they would not undertake a job printing fewer than 11 copies of a proof, with other known examples from this period numbering between two to three dozen. This copy came from the collection of Jack McManis, a poet and editor who led writing workshops at Penn State for 25 years; folded and laid in is a holograph letter from McManis to an unknown recipient, containing his preliminary thoughts on the book. Rare no copies in the auction record, though Maggs offered one for sale in 1986 (lacking the epilogue leaves); none found in OCLC, though we have located copies held with Wolfe's papers at NYPL and at Eastern Carolina University. Seller Inventory # 6024
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