World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
BOOKSHOP CLOSED FOR BREAK UNTIL NOV 10.
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
ORDERS CAN STILL BE PLACED AND WILL BE PROCESSED AFTER NOV 10.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1972, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 18.5 x 12.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Studio Vista / London
E P Dutton / New York
$30.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the Futurism volume of Studio Vista / Dutton's great paperback series. Published in 1971 and written by Jane Rye, this heavily illustrated overview spans Futurism's beginnings as an aggressively modern style in art and literature in the 1920 and 1930s, its activities and developments via central protagonists such as Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who coined the term, Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carrà, Umberto Boccioni, Gino Severini, etc.
Includes chapters on all major Futurist disciplines : Painting and Sculpture, Architecture, Literature, Theatre, plus chapters on Futurism and politics, Futurism within Italy and Futurism outside Italy, a book list, index, and more.
Good copy.
1970, English
Softcover, 168 pages, 18.5 x 12.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Studio Vista / London
E P Dutton / New York
$30.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the Dada volume of Studio Vista / Dutton's great paperback series. Published in 1970 and written by Kenneth Coutts-Smith, this heavily illustrated overview spans Dada's activities via central locations and protagonists such as Picabia, Janco, Duchamp, Schwitters, Ernst, Grosz, Man Ray, Arp, etc.
Chapters : "Zürich - the beginning", "Anti-art and the irrational", "The roots of Dada", "New York - Duchamp and philosophical irony", "Berlin - political commitment", "Cologne - Ernst and the hallucinatory vision", "Hanover - Schwitters, freedom through lyricism", "Paris - last fling and obsequies", "Dada is dead-long live Dada", "Book list", "Index".
1994, Softcover
Softcover, 644 pages, 15.2 x 22.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Harvest Books / New York
$45.00 - In stock -
To some the Marquis de Sade was a monster, to others an apostle of sexual freedom and a literary genius. Lever reconstructs the life of the "divine marquis" in all its splendor and perversity. Named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Includes a full index of Sade's works. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
Very good copy of the first 1994 edition of this acclaimed Sade biography.
1976, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 13 x 18 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Corgi / London
$35.00 - Out of stock
1976 UK edition of William S. Burroughs' The Naked Lunch, published by Corgi books.
'I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves'
Nightmarish and fiercely funny, William Burroughs' virtuoso, taboo-breaking masterpiece Naked Lunch follows Bill Lee through Interzone: a surreal, orgiastic wasteland of drugs, depravity, political plots, paranoia, sadistic medical experiments and endless, gnawing addiction. One of the most shocking novels ever written, Naked Lunch is a cultural landmark, now in a restored edition incorporating Burroughs' notes on the text, alternate drafts and outtakes from the original.
William S. Burroughs was born in 1914 in St Louis. In work and in life Burroughs expressed a lifelong subversion of the morality, politics and economics of modern America. To escape those conditions, and in particular his treatment as a homosexual and a drug-user, Burroughs left his homeland in 1950, eventually living in Mexico City, Tangier, Paris and London. By the time of his death he was widely recognised as one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the twentieth century. His numerous books include Naked Lunch, Junky, Queer, Nova Express, Interzone, The Wild Boys, The Ticket That Exploded and The Soft Machine.
Very Good copy.
1974, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 13 x 18 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Corgi / London
$35.00 - Out of stock
1974 UK edition of William S. Burroughs' The Soft Machine, published by Corgi books.
With a dangerous blend of chemistry and magic, secret agent Lee has the ability to change bodies - his own, or with anyone he chooses. Also able to time travel, he finds himself forced to use his skills to defeat a team of priests, who are using mind control to produce their own private slave race. Dead soldiers, African street urchins, evil doctors, corrupt judges and monsters from the mythology of history and science all feature in Lee's terrifying adventure.
A surreal space odyssey, The Soft Machine is the first book in Burrough's innovative 'cut-up' trilogy - followed by Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded - and a ferocious assault on hype, poverty, war and addiction in all its forms.
William S. Burroughs (1914—1997) was an American writer and visual artist, immensely influential among the Beat writers of the 1950s — notably Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg — and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays, and five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. His first published novel was the largely autobiographical Junky, which remains a classic depiction of the constant cycle of drug dependency, cures and relapses he was victim to for most of his life. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, made many appearances in films, and created and exhibited thousands of visual artworks, including his celebrated "Shotgun Art". In 1951, in a drunken William Tell stunt, he accidentally shot and killed his common-law wife. He is most famous for his use of the 'cut-up' technique of writing and the novel Naked Lunch. His other major works included Queer, Exterminator! The 'Nova Trilogy' (The Soft Machine, Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded) and the 'Red Night Trilogy' (Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands).
Very Good copy.
1980, English
Softcover, 54 pages, 17.5 x 12.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$45.00 - Out of stock
Second 1980 printing of this lovely 1979 City Lights edition of William S. Burroughs' Roosevelt After Inauguration and Other Atrocities. Written by Burroughs in the early 1960's, Roosevelt After Inauguration and Other Atrocities was originally intended for inclusion in The Yage Letters but was censored by the English printers. Ted Morgan describes the text as a parody or routine in which Cabinet offices are given to pimps, thieves, hookers, and hustlers, which was not that wide off the mark, in a metaphorical sense, given the peculiarities of some members of the first Roosevelt Cabinet.
Good copy.
1970, English
Softcover, 13 x 18 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Corgi / London
$35.00 - Out of stock
First 1970 UK edition of William S. Burroughs' The Soft Machine, published by Corgi books.
With a dangerous blend of chemistry and magic, secret agent Lee has the ability to change bodies - his own, or with anyone he chooses. Also able to time travel, he finds himself forced to use his skills to defeat a team of priests, who are using mind control to produce their own private slave race. Dead soldiers, African street urchins, evil doctors, corrupt judges and monsters from the mythology of history and science all feature in Lee's terrifying adventure.
A surreal space odyssey, The Soft Machine is the first book in Burrough's innovative 'cut-up' trilogy - followed by Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded - and a ferocious assault on hype, poverty, war and addiction in all its forms.
William S. Burroughs (1914—1997) was an American writer and visual artist, immensely influential among the Beat writers of the 1950s — notably Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg — and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays, and five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. His first published novel was the largely autobiographical Junky, which remains a classic depiction of the constant cycle of drug dependency, cures and relapses he was victim to for most of his life. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, made many appearances in films, and created and exhibited thousands of visual artworks, including his celebrated "Shotgun Art". In 1951, in a drunken William Tell stunt, he accidentally shot and killed his common-law wife. He is most famous for his use of the 'cut-up' technique of writing and the novel Naked Lunch. His other major works included Queer, Exterminator! The 'Nova Trilogy' (The Soft Machine, Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded) and the 'Red Night Trilogy' (Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands).
Good copy.
1971, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 13 x 18 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Corgi / London
$25.00 - In stock -
First 1971 UK edition of William S. Burroughs' The Ticket That Exploded, published by Corgi books.
Inspector Lee and the Nova Police have been forced to engage the Nova Mob in one final battle for the planet. This is Burroughs's nightmare vision of scientists and combat troops, of Johnny Yen's chicken-hypnotizing and green Venusian-boy-girls, of ad men and conmen whose destructive language has spread like an incurable disease; a virus and parasite that takes over every human body.
One of Burroughs's most approachable works, The Ticket That Exploded is the climax of his innovative 'cut-up' Nova trilogy - following The Soft Machine and Nova Express - and is an enthralling and frightening image of the future.
William S. Burroughs (1914—1997) was an American writer and visual artist, immensely influential among the Beat writers of the 1950s — notably Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg — and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays, and five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. His first published novel was the largely autobiographical Junky, which remains a classic depiction of the constant cycle of drug dependency, cures and relapses he was victim to for most of his life. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, made many appearances in films, and created and exhibited thousands of visual artworks, including his celebrated "Shotgun Art". In 1951, in a drunken William Tell stunt, he accidentally shot and killed his common-law wife. He is most famous for his use of the 'cut-up' technique of writing and the novel Naked Lunch. His other major works included Queer, Exterminator! The 'Nova Trilogy' (The Soft Machine, Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded) and the 'Red Night Trilogy' (Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands).
Good copy.
1967, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 18 x 11 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Penguin Books / Australia
$20.00 - Out of stock
In The Immoralist, André Gide presents the confessional account of a man seeking the truth of his own nature. The story's protagonist, Michel, knows nothing about love when he marries the gentle Marceline out of duty to his father. On the couple's honeymoon to Tunisia, Michel becomes very ill, and during his recovery he meets a young Arab boy whose radiant health and beauty captivate him. An awakening for him both sexually and morally, Michel discovers a new freedom in seeking to live according to his own desires. But, as he also discovers, freedom can be a burden. A frank defense of homosexuality and a challenge to prevailing ethical concepts, The Immoralist is a literary landmark, marked by Gide's masterful, pure, simple style.
Good copy.
1964, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 18 x 11 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$18.00 - Out of stock
'It's only after our death that we shall really be able to hear.'
Originally published in 1925, this book became known for the frank sexuality of its contents and its account of middle class French morality. The measured tone of hopeless nihilism that pervades The Counterfeiters quickly shatters any image of André Gide as the querulous and impious Buddha to a quarter-century of intellectuals. In sharp and brilliant prose a seedy, cynical and gratuitously alarming narrative is developed, involving a wide range of otherwise harmless and mainly middle-to-upper-class Parisians. But the setting could be anywhere. From puberty through adolescence to death, The Counterfeiters is a rare encyclopedia of human disorder, weakness and despair.
André Paul Guillaume Gide (1869 – 1951) was a French author. Born in Paris in 1869, Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars. He had an irregular and lonely upbringing. He became devoted to literature and music, and began his literary career as an essayist, moving on to poetry, biography, fiction, drama, criticism, reminiscence and translation. By 1917 he had emerged as a prophet to French youth, and his unorthodox views were a source of endless debate and attack. Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposed to public view the conflict and eventual reconciliation of the two sides of his personality (characterized by a Protestant austerity and a transgressive sexual adventurousness, respectively), which a strict and moralistic education had helped set at odds. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritanical constraints, and centers on his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of how to be fully oneself, including owning one's sexual nature, without at the same time betraying one's values. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. Gide died in Paris in 1951.
Good copy.
1994, English
Softcover, 704 pages, 13.3 x 19.6 cm
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$35.00 - In stock -
The works of Friedrich Nietzsche have fascinated readers around the world ever since the publication of his first book more than a hundred years ago. As Walter Kaufmann, one of the world's leading authorities on Nietzsche, notes in his introduction, "Few writers in any age were so full of ideas," and few writers have been so consistently misinterpreted.
The Portable Nietzsche includes Kaufmann's definitive translations of the complete and unabridged texts of Nietzsche's four major works: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Nietzsche Contra Wagner and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In addition, Kaufmann brings together selections from his other books, notes, and letters, to give a full picture of Nietzsche's development, versatility, and inexhaustibility.
"In this volume, one may very conveniently have a rich review of one of the most sensitive, passionate, and misunderstood writers in Western, or any, literature." — Newsweek
1965, English
Softcover, 438 pages, 20 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
The Citadel Press / New York
$70.00 - In stock -
First 1965 English edition of this splendid introduction to the philosophy of existentialism.
In Essays in Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), the leading French exponent of existential philosophy, wrote a book that open many doors to the mind. Sartre challenged his readers to think beyond the meaning of their everyday thoughts and beliefs. His essays on nothingness, on the emotions, and on the image—including “The Problem of Nothingness,” “The Role of the Image in Mental Life,” and “Essays in Aesthetics”—contain the essentials of his metaphysical speculations.
An introductory essay by Professor Jean Wahl clarifies the origins of Sartre’s humanistic, religious, and aesthetic ideas.
Essays in Existentialism challanges and encourages us to alter how we think about the choices that we make: to live “authentically” we must be concious of our freedom to choose and concerned with the effect our choice will have on all others. It is an essential text for any student of philosophy.
Good copy of first 1965 English Citadel Press edition.
1974, English
Softcover, 368 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$10.00 - Out of stock
English 1974 Penguin edition of Jean-Paul Sartre's "The Age of Reason", translated by Eric Sutton.
The first volume in his Roads to Freedom trilogy, Jean-Paul Sartre's The Age of Reason is a philosophical novel exploring existentialist notions of freedom. Set in the volatile Paris summer of 1938, The Age of Reason follows two days in the life of Mathieu Delarue, a philosophy teacher, and his circle in the cafes and bars of Montparnasse. Mathieu has so far managed to contain sex and personal freedom in conveniently separate compartments. But now he is in trouble, urgently trying to raise 4,000 francs to procure a safe abortion for his mistress, Marcelle. Beyond all this, filtering an uneasy light on his predicament, rises the distant threat of the coming of the Second World War.
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism and phenomenology, and one of the leading figures in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. His work has also influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines. Sartre was also noted for his open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir. Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, in both lifestyle and thought. The conflict between oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity (mauvaise foi, literally, "bad faith") and an "authentic" way of "being" became the dominant theme of Sartre's early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work Being and Nothingness (L'Être et le Néant, 1943). Sartre's introduction to his philosophy is his work Existentialism Is a Humanism (L'existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946), originally presented as a lecture. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honours and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution".
Good copy.
1977, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Panther / London
$18.00 - Out of stock
English 1977 Panther edition of Sartre's collection of short stories, published originally in 1939. "This is Sartre's masterly portrait of life seen from new and revealing angles, in which the human soul is stripped of all its civilized veneer, and layers of experience are peeled back with ferocious skill - to reveal the depths of the private oppressions, sensualities and neuroses of our time and the overpowering evil to which modern man can descend." Collects the stories Intimacy, The Room, Erostratus, The Childhood of a Leader, and The Wall, considered one of the author's greatest existentialist works of fiction.
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism and phenomenology, and one of the leading figures in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. His work has also influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines. Sartre was also noted for his open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir. Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, in both lifestyle and thought. The conflict between oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity (mauvaise foi, literally, "bad faith") and an "authentic" way of "being" became the dominant theme of Sartre's early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work Being and Nothingness (L'Être et le Néant, 1943). Sartre's introduction to his philosophy is his work Existentialism Is a Humanism (L'existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946), originally presented as a lecture. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honours and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution".
Very Good copy. 1977 print of this edition.
1967, English
Softcover, 170 pages, 18 x 11 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$14.00 - In stock -
1967 Penguin Classics volume containing both La Symphonie Pastorale and Isabelle by André Gide together in the one book. Translated by Dorothy Bussy. "La Symphonie Pastorale" is the tale of a country priest who takes into his home a blind orphan with the purpose of educating her, but develops a deep love for her - with tragic consequences. "Isabelle" explores the nature of a different kind of love - a passion based on pure fantasy.
André Paul Guillaume Gide (1869 – 1951) was a French author. Born in Paris in 1869, Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars. He had an irregular and lonely upbringing. He became devoted to literature and music, and began his literary career as an essayist, moving on to poetry, biography, fiction, drama, criticism, reminiscence and translation. By 1917 he had emerged as a prophet to French youth, and his unorthodox views were a source of endless debate and attack. Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposed to public view the conflict and eventual reconciliation of the two sides of his personality (characterized by a Protestant austerity and a transgressive sexual adventurousness, respectively), which a strict and moralistic education had helped set at odds. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritanical constraints, and centers on his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of how to be fully oneself, including owning one's sexual nature, without at the same time betraying one's values. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. Gide died in Paris in 1951.
Good copy.
2020, English
Softcover, 254 pages, 21 x 14 cm
Published by
Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin
$40.00 - Out of stock
MULTIPLE WRITINGS / NO LACOSTE NO COLOGNE NO BRIGHT SHIRTS / FEAR CITY / PLATO’S RETREAT / PIG TO PIG / NINTH CIRCLE / TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE / THE MINDSHAFT / YOU MAKE ME FEEL (MIGHTY REAL) / JOCKSTRAP LEAGUE OF AMERICA / PERFECT MOMENTS / VIENNESE ACTIONISM 1969 / SAUSALITO 1977 / PISS ELEGANCE / FOREIGN BODIES / SEX PARTS / TUBS AND TROUGHS / BENT FOR JOY / NYC COCKPIT / A KID ON THE PIERS / BANGED ON THE FLOOR / HUCK FINN SHOOTING UP / MULTIPLE STAB WOUNDS / DERELICT TEMPLES / DOING POPPERS / STEVE FINBOW / FULL LEATHER MASKS / HALF OF HELL HALF OF DREAMS / NOMADISM / ALIEN COCKS / PIERCED WITH GOLD NEEDLES / HANDBALLING / MAINLINED VERTIGO / EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE / SILVER NEON STROBES / SAILORS AND MEAT TRUCKS / BONDAGE STRAPS / TO THE PEOPLE OF QUEENS / GODS OF THE PLAGUE / DEATH VALLEY 1975 / I’M HERE YOU’RE HERE / TAPED MUSIC / GOOD DRUGS / PRISON SADISM / AMPHETAMINE SULPHATE / TOTAL FANTASY / WALLS PAINTED BLACK / SECRET CODES / MORAL CONDITIONING / COILED SERPENTS RISING / HOT ROPES / BLUE AND YELLOW RAINBOW / FIST PRESSING BACK
EROTICISM AT THE ABYSS. What connects Robert Mapplethorpe, Francis Bacon, Michel Foucault, the Son of Sam, Andy Warhol, De Sade, Franz Kafka, Adolf Hitler, William Friedkin and a host of other creative artists and deviant creeps? Ever wondered what it might feel like to drop acid in Death Valley or explore the forbidden sex clubs of 70s Manhattan. If you love cruising, if you love the pleasures of the flesh, if you love the feel and touch of shiny, shiny leather, now's the time to enter ... THE MINDSHAFT
You won't want to come back. "The whole book is a sort of rupture-in-anguish leaving us at the limit of tears: in such a case we lose ourselves." — 3AM magazine
"Too many very graphic displays of extreme sexual activity." — A GoodReads 5-Star(!) review
1984, Japanese
Softcover, 300 pages, 21 x 15 cm
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$55.00 - Out of stock
Issue 4 (October 1984) of June, the first yaoi (boys love or "BL") magazine in Japan, founded in 1978, named after the French author Jean Genet, with "june" being a play on the Japanese pronunciation of his name. An underground cult hit, June became synonymous with the BL genre, publishing male/male tanbi ("aesthetic") romances — stories written for and about the worship of idealised beauty, tragedy, and homoerotic romance between androgynous men and beautiful male youths, narratives that emphasise homosociality and de-emphasize socio-cultural homophobia, rich in decadence through the use of flowery language, baroque sexual fantasies and unusual kanji. The yaoi genre was coined by the female manga artists Yasuko Sakata and Akiko Hatsu and originated in the 1970s as a subgenre of shōjo manga, or comics for girls, influenced by the rising popularity of depictions of bishōnen ("beautiful boys"), a term for androgynous or effeminate male characters. June ushered in a new wave of — primarily female — manga artists and writers, including Keiko Takemiya, Tomomi Kobayashi, Kaoru Kurimoto, and Akimi Yoshida, and male artists such as Sadao Hasegawa, Gekko Hayashi, and Ben Kimura, publishing unsolicited manuscripts and homoerotic artworks alongside critical writings, reviews, and historical pieces, all centred around boys. Although it began typically as a genre by and for women, distinct from bara (gay manga created by men), June increasingly appealed to a gay audience, and played a significant role in the construction of a collective gay identity in Japan, alongside pioneering gay manga magazines such Barazoku, which featured many of the same artists. The June imprint ran various editions of the magazine, including the "large format" with many photos of youths and colour artworks, the popular Roman June ("Romantic June") which contained a mix of stories and manga, and Shousetsu June, and the original manga magazine.
The yaoi genre of June (also referred to as shōnen-ai "boy love") was heavily inspired by European decadent literature, philosophy, the homoerotic writings of Japanese authors Taruho Inagaki, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, and the Bildungsroman (coming-of-age) literary genre as much as it was by pop culture and the androgyny of musicians such as David Bowie, Marc Bolan and David Sylvian, or actor Björn Andrésen's portrayal of Thaddeus in Visconti's 1971 film adaptation of Death in Venice. Early issues are be filled to the brim with lavish illustrations and comic stories, erotic fantasy fiction, photographs of "beautiful boys" (young film stars, catholic choir boys, musicians...), reviews, interviews, and essays, all rich with romantic connotations to the age of Decadence, Symbolism, and the aesthetics of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, as well as Japanese folklore.
Good—Very Good copy of this scarce early issue of June, published by Sun Publishing, Tokyo.
1984, Japanese
Softcover, 300 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$55.00 - In stock -
Issue 5 (February 1984) of June, the first yaoi (boys love or "BL") magazine in Japan, founded in 1978, named after the French author Jean Genet, with "june" being a play on the Japanese pronunciation of his name. An underground cult hit, June became synonymous with the BL genre, publishing male/male tanbi ("aesthetic") romances — stories written for and about the worship of idealised beauty, tragedy, and homoerotic romance between androgynous men and beautiful male youths, narratives that emphasise homosociality and de-emphasize socio-cultural homophobia, rich in decadence through the use of flowery language, baroque sexual fantasies and unusual kanji. The yaoi genre was coined by the female manga artists Yasuko Sakata and Akiko Hatsu and originated in the 1970s as a subgenre of shōjo manga, or comics for girls, influenced by the rising popularity of depictions of bishōnen ("beautiful boys"), a term for androgynous or effeminate male characters. June ushered in a new wave of — primarily female — manga artists and writers, including Keiko Takemiya, Tomomi Kobayashi, Kaoru Kurimoto, and Akimi Yoshida, and male artists such as Sadao Hasegawa, Gekko Hayashi, and Ben Kimura, publishing unsolicited manuscripts and homoerotic artworks alongside critical writings, reviews, and historical pieces, all centred around boys. Although it began typically as a genre by and for women, distinct from bara (gay manga created by men), June increasingly appealed to a gay audience, and played a significant role in the construction of a collective gay identity in Japan, alongside pioneering gay manga magazines such Barazoku, which featured many of the same artists. The June imprint ran various editions of the magazine, including the "large format" with many photos of youths and colour artworks, the popular Roman June ("Romantic June") which contained a mix of stories and manga, and Shousetsu June, and the original manga magazine.
The yaoi genre of June (also referred to as shōnen-ai "boy love") was heavily inspired by European decadent literature, philosophy, the homoerotic writings of Japanese authors Taruho Inagaki, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, and the Bildungsroman (coming-of-age) literary genre as much as it was by pop culture and the androgyny of musicians such as David Bowie, Marc Bolan and David Sylvian, or actor Björn Andrésen's portrayal of Thaddeus in Visconti's 1971 film adaptation of Death in Venice. Early issues are be filled to the brim with lavish illustrations and comic stories, erotic fantasy fiction, photographs of "beautiful boys" (young film stars, catholic choir boys, musicians...), reviews, interviews, and essays, all rich with romantic connotations to the age of Decadence, Symbolism, and the aesthetics of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, as well as Japanese folklore.
Good—Very Good copy of this scarce early issue of June, published by Sun Publishing, Tokyo.
1984, Japanese
Softcover, 300 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$55.00 - Out of stock
Issue 6 (April 1984) of June, the first yaoi (boys love or "BL") magazine in Japan, founded in 1978, named after the French author Jean Genet, with "june" being a play on the Japanese pronunciation of his name. An underground cult hit, June became synonymous with the BL genre, publishing male/male tanbi ("aesthetic") romances — stories written for and about the worship of idealised beauty, tragedy, and homoerotic romance between androgynous men and beautiful male youths, narratives that emphasise homosociality and de-emphasize socio-cultural homophobia, rich in decadence through the use of flowery language, baroque sexual fantasies and unusual kanji. The yaoi genre was coined by the female manga artists Yasuko Sakata and Akiko Hatsu and originated in the 1970s as a subgenre of shōjo manga, or comics for girls, influenced by the rising popularity of depictions of bishōnen ("beautiful boys"), a term for androgynous or effeminate male characters. June ushered in a new wave of — primarily female — manga artists and writers, including Keiko Takemiya, Tomomi Kobayashi, Kaoru Kurimoto, and Akimi Yoshida, and male artists such as Sadao Hasegawa, Gekko Hayashi, and Ben Kimura, publishing unsolicited manuscripts and homoerotic artworks alongside critical writings, reviews, and historical pieces, all centred around boys. Although it began typically as a genre by and for women, distinct from bara (gay manga created by men), June increasingly appealed to a gay audience, and played a significant role in the construction of a collective gay identity in Japan, alongside pioneering gay manga magazines such Barazoku, which featured many of the same artists. The June imprint ran various editions of the magazine, including the "large format" with many photos of youths and colour artworks, the popular Roman June ("Romantic June") which contained a mix of stories and manga, and Shousetsu June, and the original manga magazine.
The yaoi genre of June (also referred to as shōnen-ai "boy love") was heavily inspired by European decadent literature, philosophy, the homoerotic writings of Japanese authors Taruho Inagaki, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, and the Bildungsroman (coming-of-age) literary genre as much as it was by pop culture and the androgyny of musicians such as David Bowie, Marc Bolan and David Sylvian, or actor Björn Andrésen's portrayal of Thaddeus in Visconti's 1971 film adaptation of Death in Venice. Early issues are be filled to the brim with lavish illustrations and comic stories, erotic fantasy fiction, photographs of "beautiful boys" (young film stars, catholic choir boys, musicians...), reviews, interviews, and essays, all rich with romantic connotations to the age of Decadence, Symbolism, and the aesthetics of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, as well as Japanese folklore.
Good—Very Good copy of this scarce early issue of June, published by Sun Publishing, Tokyo.
1984, Japanese
Softcover, 300 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$55.00 - In stock -
Issue 10 (December 1984) of June, the first yaoi (boys love or "BL") magazine in Japan, founded in 1978, named after the French author Jean Genet, with "june" being a play on the Japanese pronunciation of his name. An underground cult hit, June became synonymous with the BL genre, publishing male/male tanbi ("aesthetic") romances — stories written for and about the worship of idealised beauty, tragedy, and homoerotic romance between androgynous men and beautiful male youths, narratives that emphasise homosociality and de-emphasize socio-cultural homophobia, rich in decadence through the use of flowery language, baroque sexual fantasies and unusual kanji. The yaoi genre was coined by the female manga artists Yasuko Sakata and Akiko Hatsu and originated in the 1970s as a subgenre of shōjo manga, or comics for girls, influenced by the rising popularity of depictions of bishōnen ("beautiful boys"), a term for androgynous or effeminate male characters. June ushered in a new wave of — primarily female — manga artists and writers, including Keiko Takemiya, Tomomi Kobayashi, Kaoru Kurimoto, and Akimi Yoshida, and male artists such as Sadao Hasegawa, Gekko Hayashi, and Ben Kimura, publishing unsolicited manuscripts and homoerotic artworks alongside critical writings, reviews, and historical pieces, all centred around boys. Although it began typically as a genre by and for women, distinct from bara (gay manga created by men), June increasingly appealed to a gay audience, and played a significant role in the construction of a collective gay identity in Japan, alongside pioneering gay manga magazines such Barazoku, which featured many of the same artists. The June imprint ran various editions of the magazine, including the "large format" with many photos of youths and colour artworks, the popular Roman June ("Romantic June") which contained a mix of stories and manga, and Shousetsu June, and the original manga magazine.
The yaoi genre of June (also referred to as shōnen-ai "boy love") was heavily inspired by European decadent literature, philosophy, the homoerotic writings of Japanese authors Taruho Inagaki, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, and the Bildungsroman (coming-of-age) literary genre as much as it was by pop culture and the androgyny of musicians such as David Bowie, Marc Bolan and David Sylvian, or actor Björn Andrésen's portrayal of Thaddeus in Visconti's 1971 film adaptation of Death in Venice. Early issues are be filled to the brim with lavish illustrations and comic stories, erotic fantasy fiction, photographs of "beautiful boys" (young film stars, catholic choir boys, musicians...), reviews, interviews, and essays, all rich with romantic connotations to the age of Decadence, Symbolism, and the aesthetics of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, as well as Japanese folklore.
Good—Very Good copy of this scarce early issue of June, published by Sun Publishing, Tokyo.
1986, Japanese
Softcover, 300 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$55.00 - In stock -
Issue 18 (April 1986) of June, the first yaoi (boys love or "BL") magazine in Japan, founded in 1978, named after the French author Jean Genet, with "june" being a play on the Japanese pronunciation of his name. An underground cult hit, June became synonymous with the BL genre, publishing male/male tanbi ("aesthetic") romances — stories written for and about the worship of idealised beauty, tragedy, and homoerotic romance between androgynous men and beautiful male youths, narratives that emphasise homosociality and de-emphasize socio-cultural homophobia, rich in decadence through the use of flowery language, baroque sexual fantasies and unusual kanji. The yaoi genre was coined by the female manga artists Yasuko Sakata and Akiko Hatsu and originated in the 1970s as a subgenre of shōjo manga, or comics for girls, influenced by the rising popularity of depictions of bishōnen ("beautiful boys"), a term for androgynous or effeminate male characters. June ushered in a new wave of — primarily female — manga artists and writers, including Keiko Takemiya, Tomomi Kobayashi, Kaoru Kurimoto, and Akimi Yoshida, and male artists such as Sadao Hasegawa, Gekko Hayashi, and Ben Kimura, publishing unsolicited manuscripts and homoerotic artworks alongside critical writings, reviews, and historical pieces, all centred around boys. Although it began typically as a genre by and for women, distinct from bara (gay manga created by men), June increasingly appealed to a gay audience, and played a significant role in the construction of a collective gay identity in Japan, alongside pioneering gay manga magazines such Barazoku, which featured many of the same artists. The June imprint ran various editions of the magazine, including the "large format" with many photos of youths and colour artworks, the popular Roman June ("Romantic June") which contained a mix of stories and manga, and Shousetsu June, and the original manga magazine.
The yaoi genre of June (also referred to as shōnen-ai "boy love") was heavily inspired by European decadent literature, philosophy, the homoerotic writings of Japanese authors Taruho Inagaki, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, and the Bildungsroman (coming-of-age) literary genre as much as it was by pop culture and the androgyny of musicians such as David Bowie, Marc Bolan and David Sylvian, or actor Björn Andrésen's portrayal of Thaddeus in Visconti's 1971 film adaptation of Death in Venice. Early issues are be filled to the brim with lavish illustrations and comic stories, erotic fantasy fiction, photographs of "beautiful boys" (young film stars, catholic choir boys, musicians...), reviews, interviews, and essays, all rich with romantic connotations to the age of Decadence, Symbolism, and the aesthetics of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, as well as Japanese folklore.
Good—Very Good copy of this scarce early issue of June, published by Sun Publishing, Tokyo.
1986, Japanese
Softcover, 300 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$55.00 - Out of stock
Issue 19 (June 1986) of June, the first yaoi (boys love or "BL") magazine in Japan, founded in 1978, named after the French author Jean Genet, with "june" being a play on the Japanese pronunciation of his name. An underground cult hit, June became synonymous with the BL genre, publishing male/male tanbi ("aesthetic") romances — stories written for and about the worship of idealised beauty, tragedy, and homoerotic romance between androgynous men and beautiful male youths, narratives that emphasise homosociality and de-emphasize socio-cultural homophobia, rich in decadence through the use of flowery language, baroque sexual fantasies and unusual kanji. The yaoi genre was coined by the female manga artists Yasuko Sakata and Akiko Hatsu and originated in the 1970s as a subgenre of shōjo manga, or comics for girls, influenced by the rising popularity of depictions of bishōnen ("beautiful boys"), a term for androgynous or effeminate male characters. June ushered in a new wave of — primarily female — manga artists and writers, including Keiko Takemiya, Tomomi Kobayashi, Kaoru Kurimoto, and Akimi Yoshida, and male artists such as Sadao Hasegawa, Gekko Hayashi, and Ben Kimura, publishing unsolicited manuscripts and homoerotic artworks alongside critical writings, reviews, and historical pieces, all centred around boys. Although it began typically as a genre by and for women, distinct from bara (gay manga created by men), June increasingly appealed to a gay audience, and played a significant role in the construction of a collective gay identity in Japan, alongside pioneering gay manga magazines such Barazoku, which featured many of the same artists. The June imprint ran various editions of the magazine, including the "large format" with many photos of youths and colour artworks, the popular Roman June ("Romantic June") which contained a mix of stories and manga, and Shousetsu June, and the original manga magazine.
The yaoi genre of June (also referred to as shōnen-ai "boy love") was heavily inspired by European decadent literature, philosophy, the homoerotic writings of Japanese authors Taruho Inagaki, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, and the Bildungsroman (coming-of-age) literary genre as much as it was by pop culture and the androgyny of musicians such as David Bowie, Marc Bolan and David Sylvian, or actor Björn Andrésen's portrayal of Thaddeus in Visconti's 1971 film adaptation of Death in Venice. Early issues are be filled to the brim with lavish illustrations and comic stories, erotic fantasy fiction, photographs of "beautiful boys" (young film stars, catholic choir boys, musicians...), reviews, interviews, and essays, all rich with romantic connotations to the age of Decadence, Symbolism, and the aesthetics of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, as well as Japanese folklore.
Good—Very Good copy of this scarce early issue of June, published by Sun Publishing, Tokyo.
2022, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 23 x 15.2 cm
Published by
University of Chicago Press / Chicago
$58.00 - In stock -
Consulting an extensive archive of early modern literature, Joy of the Worm asserts that voluntary death in literature is not always a matter of tragedy.
In this study, Drew Daniel identifies a surprisingly common aesthetic attitude that he calls "joy of the worm," after Cleopatra's embrace of the deadly asp in Shakespeare's play-a pattern where voluntary death is imagined as an occasion for humor, mirth, ecstatic pleasure, even joy and celebration.
Daniel draws both a historical and a conceptual distinction between "self-killing" and "suicide." Standard intellectual histories of suicide in the early modern period have understandably emphasized attitudes of abhorrence, scorn, and severity toward voluntary death. Daniel reads an archive of literary scenes and passages, dating from 1534 to 1713, that complicate this picture. In their own distinct responses to the surrounding attitude of censure, writers including Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, and Addison imagine death not as sin or sickness, but instead as a heroic gift, sexual release, elemental return, amorous fusion, or political self-rescue. "Joy of the worm" emerges here as an aesthetic mode that shades into schadenfreude, sadistic cruelty, and deliberate "trolling," but can also underwrite powerful feelings of belonging, devotion, and love.
Drew Daniel is associate professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Twenty Jazz Funk Greats, a study of the English "industrial" music pioneers Throbbing Gristle, and The Melancholy Assemblage: Affect and Epistemology of the English Renaissance. He is also one half of the electronic duo Matmos.
"The lucidity of Daniel's razor-sharp prose is surpassed only by the boldness and sensitivity of his thought. Joy of the Worm resists the easy logic of secularization, whereby classical valorization and Christian condemnation of self-killing sequentially give way to a modern understanding of suicide as a cry for help. Instead, Daniel attunes us to materialist understandings and aesthetic representations of self-destruction in which cruelty and tenderness, sorrow and mirth, ugliness and beauty mingle conceptually and tonally. Daniel's meticulous and humane readings attune us to a complex affective and social landscape surrounding suicide." — Melissa E. Sanchez, University of Pennsylvania
"What happens if we take seriously the failed seriousness of literary scenes of self-killing? 'Joy within death' is the ambit of Daniel's revelatory book, which gathers instances on both sides of Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (1643)-the work that debuted the word 'suicide'-to show this 'contrary aesthetic tendency' accreting generic force. By reckoning with the levity that animates the choice not to bear what must be borne, Joy of the Worm offers a brilliant and necessary meditation on the resources early modernity furnishes for finding pleasure in an age of destruction and setting down the burden of false hope." — Ellen MacKay, University of Chicago
"Joy of the Worm is a brilliant, deeply thoughtful, conceptually agile, ethically serious, and surprisingly funny work. Before the emergence of suicide as the pathologized act we currently understand it to be, self-killing enabled a wider set of affective and aesthetic responses. Alert to the difficulty of this topic, Daniel moves deftly back and forth between our twenty-first-century present and the early modern past so that we can understand our own assumptions for what they are: historically contingent ways of framing and perhaps diminishing a fundamental human possibility." — Timothy M. Harrison, author of 'Coming To: Consciousness and Natality in Early Modern England'
1965, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$18.00 - Out of stock
The Thief's Journal is perhaps Jean Genet's most authentically autobiographical novel; an account of his impoverished travels across 1930s Europe. The narrator is guilty of vagrancy, petty theft and prostitution, but his writing transforms such degradations into an inverted moral code, where criminality and delinquency become heroic. With a holy trinity of his own making - homosexuality, theft and betrayal - in The Thief's Journal Genet produced a startlingly powerful novel without precedent.
Jean Genet, (1910—1986), French criminal and social outcast turned writer who, as a novelist, transformed erotic and often obscene subject matter into a poetic vision of the universe and, as a dramatist, became a leading figure in the avant-garde theatre, especially the Theatre of the Absurd.
Good copy of 1965 Penguin edition.