Estimate: | £350 - £450 |
Hammer price: | £300 |
BUKOWSKI, Charles (1920-94). Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts. Bensenville, Illinois: Mimeo Press [and Douglas Blazek], 1965. 8vo (216 x 143mm). Mimeographed text on yellow, pink and white paper. Original pale pink stapled pictorial wrappers, the upper wrapper with an illustration of a detail "from a painting by Anna Purcell of Los Angeles", the lower wrapper with an illustration by Bukowski of an over-sized bird looking at a man in a birdcage and priced at $1. Provenance: from the Collection of David Kotthoff. FIRST EDITION of the author's first book of prose. The title page states, "This is a limited edition of no more than 500 copies." "Blazek went on to publish a Bukowski chapbook of a single prose piece, Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts, a portmanteau of nine short stories based on his childhood, adolescence and youth. It further promoted Bukowski as the hero of his own work, even though he used the device of a fictional first-person narrator. The name, Henry Chinaski, was noticeably similar to his own" (Sounes, p.74). RARE. Dorbin A8; Krumhansl 17.