World Food Books

An Anthology of Concrete Poetry
Edited by Emmett Williams

1967, English
Hardcover, 342 pages, 23.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by edition hansjörg meyer / Düsseldorf

$220.00 - Out of stock

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Rare first 1967 European hardcover edition of An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, published by the legendary edition hansjörg meyer. The book's editor, Emmett Williams, "as one of the original practitioners of concrete poetry, has been in a unique position to observe the development of the movement since its beginnings, and the selection in this volume therefore reflects a view of this evolution from within the movement rather than from a distance." An Anthology of Concrete Poetry was the first anthology on the international movement of Concrete poetry, published subsequently by the legendary Something Else Press in 1967 in America. The movement itself began in the early 1950s, in Germany–through Eugen Gomringer, who borrowed the term “concrete” from the art of his mentor, Max Bill–and in Brazil, through the Noigandres group, which included the de Campos brothers and Decio Pignatari. Over the course of the 1960s it exploded across Europe, America and Japan, as other protagonists of the movement emerged, such as Dieter Roth, Öyvind Fahlström, Ernst Jandl, bpNichol, Mary Ellen Solt, Jackson Mac Low, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Bob Cobbing, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Pierre Garnier, Henri Chopin, Brion Gysin and Kitasono Katue. By the late 1960s, poet Jonathan Williams could proclaim: “If there is such a thing as a worldwide movement in the art of poetry, Concrete is it.” The work of the 77 writers collected in this anthology varies greatly in its aims and forms, but all can be said to emphasize the visual dimension of language, manipulating individual letters and minimal semantic units to produce poems that are for contemplating as much as for reading. Emmett Williams, the book’s editor, added explanatory commentary for the poems and biographies of their authors, making this volume–long out of print–the definitive anthology of this movement, which has so influenced artists and writers of subsequent generations.

Writers and artists included: Friedrich Achleitner, Alain Arias-Misson, H. C. Artmann, Ronaldo Azeredo, Stephen Bann, Carlo Belloli, Max Bense, Edgard Braga, Claus Bremer, Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos, Henri Chopin, Carl Friedrich Claus, Bob Cobbing, Paul de Vree, Reinhard Döhl, Torsten Ekbom, Öyvind Fahlström, Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Larry Freifeld, John Furnival, Heinz Gappmayr, Ilse and Pierre Garnier, Matthias Goeritz, Eugen Gomringer, Ludwig Gosewitz, Bohumila Grögerova and Josef Hiršal, José Lino Grünewald, Brion Gysin, Al Hansen, Václav Havel, Helmut Heissenbüttel, Åke Hodell, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Ernst Jandl, Bengt Emil Johnson, Ronald Johnson, Hiro Kamimura, Kitasono Katue, Jiri Kolar, Ferdinand Kriwet, Arrigo Lora-Totino, Jackson Mac Low, Hansjörg Mayer, Cavan McCarthy, Franz Mon, Edwin Morgan, Maurizio Nannucci, bp Nichol, Hans-Jørgen Nielsen, Seiichi Niikuni, Ladislav Novák, Yuksel Pazarkaya, Décio Pignatari, Vlademir Dias Pino, Luiz Angelo Pinto, Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, Diter Rot, Gerhard Rühm, Aram Saroyan, John J. Sharkey, Edward Lucie Smith, Mary Ellen Solt, Adriano Spatola, Daniel Spoerri, Vagn Steen, Andre Thomkins, Enrique Uribe Valdivielso, Franz Van Der Linde, Franco Verdi, Emmett Williams, Jonathan Williams, Pedro Xisto and Fujitomi Yasuo.

"Emmett Williams, as one of the original practitioners of concrete poetry, has been in a unique position to observe the development of the movement since its beginnings, and the selection in this volume therefore reflects a view of this evolution from within the movement rather than from a distance. However it is far too soon to regard any anthology of Concrete Poetry as being definitive since the movement is extremely active and major new works have yet to appear in this most interesting of current poetry movements." -- from interior flap. Printed in black-and-white.

Very Good copy with some light edge wear to thick covers, general light age/tanning.

File under: Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd Bohumila Grögerova and Josef Hiršal José Lino Grünewald Václav Havel Helmut Heissenbüttel Åke Hodell Friedrich Achleitner Alain Arias-Misson H. C. Artmann Ronaldo Azeredo Stephen Bann Carlo Belloli Max Bense Edgard Braga Claus Bremer Augusto de Campos Haroldo de Campos Henri Chopin Carl Friedrich Claus Bob Cobbing Paul de Vree Reinhard Döhl Torsten Ekbom Öyvind Fahlström Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim Ian Hamilton Finlay Larry Freifeld John Furnival Heinz Gappmayr Ilse and Pierre Garnier Matthias Goeritz Eugen Gomringer Ludwig Gosewitz Dom Sylvester Houédard Ernst Jandl Bengt Emil Johnson Ronald Johnson Hiro Kamimura Kitasono Katue Jiri Kolar Ferdinand Kriwet Arrigo Lora-Totino Jackson Mac Low Hansjörg Mayer Cavan McCarthy Franz Mon Edwin Morgan Maurizio Nannucci bp Nichol Hans-Jørgen Nielsen Seiichi Niikuni Ladislav Novák Yuksel Pazarkaya Décio Pignatari Vlademir Dias Pino Luiz Angelo Pinto Diter Rot Gerhard Rühm Aram Saroyan John J. Sharkey Edward Lucie Smith Mary Ellen Solt Adriano Spatola Daniel Spoerri Vagn Steen Enrique Uribe Valdivielso Franz Van Der Linde Franco Verdi Emmett Williams Jonathan Williams Pedro Xisto Fujitomi Yasuo André Thomkins André Thomkins Friedrich Achleitner Alain Arias-Misson H. C. Artmann Ronaldo Azeredo Stephen Bann Carlo Belloli Max Bense Edgard Braga Claus Bremer Augusto de Campos Haroldo de Campos Henri Chopin Carl Friedrich Claus Bob Cobbing Paul de Vree Reinhard Döhl Torsten Ekbom Öyvind Fahlström Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim Ian Hamilton Finlay Larry Freifeld John Furnival Heinz Gappmayr Ilse and Pierre Garnier Matthias Goeritz Eugen Gomringer Ludwig Gosewitz Bohumila Grögerova and Josef Hiršal José Lino Grünewald Brion Gysin Al Hansen Václav Havel Helmut Heissenbüttel Åke Hodell Dom Sylvester Houédard Ernst Jandl Arrigo Lora-Totino Jackson Mac Low Hansjörg Mayer Cavan McCarthy Franz Mon Edwin Morgan Maurizio Nannucci bp Nichol Hans-Jørgen Nielsen Seiichi Niikuni Ladislav Novák Yuksel Pazarkaya Décio Pignatari Vlademir Dias Pino Luiz Angelo Pinto Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd Diter Rot Gerhard Rühm Aram Saroyan John J. Sharkey Edward Lucie Smith Mary Ellen Solt Adriano Spatola Daniel Spoerri Vagn Steen Andre Thomkins Enrique Uribe Valdivielso Franz Van Der Linde Franco Verdi Emmett Williams Jonathan Williams Pedro Xisto Fujitomi Yasuo Bengt Emil Johnson Ronald Johnson Jiří Kolář Hiro Kamimura Kitasono Katue Ferdinand Kriwet edition hansjörg meyer / Düsseldorf Concrete Poetry Conceptual Art Out-of-print / Rare Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Art Minimal Art Fiction / Poetry Poetry Fluxus

Stubble Archipelago
by Wayne Koestenbaum

2024, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 20 x 14 cm
Published by Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles

$34.00 - In stock -

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Wild new adventures in word-infatuated flânerie from a celebrated literary provocateur.

This book of thirty-six poetic bulletins by the humiliation-advice-giver Wayne Koestenbaum will teach you how to cruise, how to dream, how to decode a crowded consciousness, how to find nuggets of satisfaction in unaccustomed corners, and how to sew a language glove roomy enough to contain materials gathered while meandering. Koestenbaum wrote many of these poems while walking around New York City. He'd jot down phrases in a notebook or dictate them into his phone. At home, he'd incorporate these fragmented gleanings into overflowing quasi sonnets. Therefore each poem functions as a coded diary entry, including specific references to sidewalk events and peripatetic perceptions. Flirting, remembering, eavesdropping, gazing, squeezing, sequestering: Koestenbaum invents a novel way to cram dirty liberty into the tight yet commodious space of the sonnet, a fourteen-lined cruise ship that contains ample suites for behavior modification, libidinal experiment, aura-filled memory orgies, psychedelic Bildungsromane, lap dissolves, archival plunges, and other mental saunterings that conjure the unlikely marriage of Kenneth Anger and Marianne Moore. Carnal pudding, anyone? These engorged lyrics don't rhyme; and though each builds on a carapace of fourteen lines, many of the lines spawn additional, indented tributaries, like hoop earrings dangling from the stanzas' lobes. Koestenbaum's poems are comic, ribald, compressed, symphonic. They take liberties with ordinary language, and open up new pockets for sensation in the sorrowing overcoat of the “now.” Imagine: the training wheels have been removed from poetry's bicycle, and the wheeling flâneur is finally allowed a word pie equal to fantasy's appetite. Stubble—a libidinal detail—matters when you're stranded on the archipelago of your most unsanctioned yet tenaciously harbored impulses.

File under: Wayne Koestenbaum Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles Fiction / Poetry Poetry LGBTQ+ Theory / Essay

The Beauty of Light: An Interview
Etel Adnan & Laure Adler

2024, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
Published by Nightboat Books / New York

$38.00 - Out of stock

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A lively and spontaneous interview with Etel Adnan about her absolute belief in the beauty of the world and the beauty of art.

In these interviews with journalist and editor Laure Adler, conducted in the months before her death in November 2021, Etel Adnan traces with depth and emotion the founding experiences of her artistic approach, between poetry and painting. From her youth in Lebanon, her American years in New York and California, to her late recognition at Documenta in 2012 and her life in France, the conversation covers philosophy, painting, poetry and aesthetics, as well Adnan's views on history and politics in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. These transcripts usher the experiences and observations of Adnan's long and rich life into an intimate and spontaneous conversation with a dear friend―a window on the “universe” of her imagination.

File under: Etel Adnan Etel Adnan Laure Adler Nightboat Books / New York Fiction / Poetry Poetry Painting Art Theory / Essay

Apocalypse Culture
Edited by Adam Parfrey

1990, English
Softcover, 362 pages, 21.6 x 24 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by Feral House / Los Angeles

$40.00 - Out of stock

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"Apocalypse Culture is compulsory reading for all those concerned with the crisis of our times. An extraordinary collection unlike anything I have ever encountered. These are the terminal documents of the twentieth century."—J.G. Ballard

Two thousand years have passed since the death of Christ and the world is going mad. Nihilist prophets, born-again pornographers, transcendental schizophrenics and just plain folks are united in their belief in an imminent global catastrophe. What are the forces lurking behind this mass delirium?

APOCALYPSE CULTURE is a startling, absorbing and exhaustive tour through the nether regions of today’s psychotic brainscape.

First published in 1987, APOCALYPSE CULTURE immediately touched a nerve. Alternately excoriated and lauded as “epochal”, “the most important book of the decade,” APOCALYPSE CULTURE had begun to articulate what many inwardly sensed — the-fear inspired irrationalism and faith, the clash of irreconcilable forces, and the ever-looming specter of fin de race. In its present incarnation for Feral House, APOCALYPSE CULTURE has significantly increased in size, taking on new perspectives on our current crisis, with pertinent revisions of many articles from the original edition.—burb from this expanded and revised 1990 edition.

Good copy with general wear/"kinkiness".

File under: Peter Sotos Joe Bradley Peter Sotos Adam Parfrey John Zerzan Hakim Bey Paul Lemos Thomas McEvilley Feral House / Los Angeles Fiction / Poetry Art Eros Counterculture Sound / Music Out-of-print / Rare Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Crime / Violence Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Film / Video Theory / Essay Anarchism

Putting My Foot In It: A Novel
by René Crevel

1992, English
Softcover, 173 pages, 24 x 15 cm
Published by Dalkey Archive Press / US

$32.00 - Out of stock

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English edition of this 1933 classic surrealist novel by René Crevel (1900-1935), a bisexual communist dadaist who suffered a traumatic religious upbringing and suffered from tuberculosis. Crevel is considered to be one of the most important writers of surrealist fiction, a true genius of the movement. Translated by Thomas Buckley, this edition includes Ezra Pound's well-known essay on Crevel as a foreword, and an introduction by Edouard Roditi.

Imagine, if you can, Freud and Proust sitting down for a chat with Zippy the Pinhead and the marquis de Sade. Then, just when things are starting to get a bit silly, in walks Karl Marx with a dead serious face to deliver a vitriolic diatribe. After he has finished his speech, Jacques Lacan enters and slips a couch under the narrator, who begins psychoanalyzing himself and his text. Zippy soon prevails, however, and the narrative has turned into a political allegory with characters out of Felix the Cat: a surrealist, graphic (historiographic, geographic, pornographic) version of The Romance of the Rose. Rene Crevel's 1933 novel Putting My Foot in It (Les Pieds dans le plat) has long been considered a classic of the surrealist period, but has never been translated into English until now. Loosely structured around a luncheon attended by thirteen guests, the novel is a surrealistic critique of the intellectual corruption of post-World War I France, especially the capitalist bourgeoisie and its supporter, the Catholic Church. The novel begins with an account of the family of the major character, known as the "Prince of Journalists." This bizarre family - the grandparents a soldier and a sodomized woman, the parents an orphaned epileptic and a hunchback - is matched by Crevel's bizarre syntax and vocabulary: nouns that initially appear legitimate, intact, and respectable, soon decompose into obscene epithets, making other nouns, both common and proper, suspect. The story continues in this way to deconstruct itself on many levels - literary, semantic, psychological, ideological - until the final chapter, when the luncheon degenerates in a way reminiscent of a Bunuel film and all of the novel'scharacters appear in a dirty movie entitled The Geography Lesson, a final metaphor for the corruption of European society between the world wars.

File under: René Crevel René Crevel Thomas Buckley Ezra Pound Edouard Roditi Dalkey Archive Press / US Fiction / Poetry Surrealism Dada

Revolutionary Letters: 50th Anniversary Edition
by Diane Di Prima

2021, English
Hardcover, 244 pages,16.5 x 13 cm
Published by City Lights Books / San Francisco

$38.00 - Out of stock

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Expanded 50th anniversary edition of the City Lights classic of eco-feminist-Zen Beat poetry, featuring fifteen new poems. Simultaneously released with Diane di Prima's Spring and Autumn Annals on the one-year anniversary of her passing.

By turns a handbook of countercultural living, a manual for street protest, and a feminist broadside against the repressive state apparatus, Revolutionary Letters is a modern classic, as relevant today as it was at its inception, 50 years ago.

During the tumult of 1968, Beat poet Diane di Prima began writing her "letters," poems filled with a potent blend of utopian anarchism and Zen-tinged ecological awareness that were circulated via underground newspapers and stapled pamphlets. In 1971, Lawrence Ferlinghetti published the first collection of these poems in his iconic Pocket Poets Series, and di Prima would go on to publish four subsequent editions, expanding the collection each time. During the last years of her life, di Prima got to work on the final iteration of this lifelong project, collecting all of her previously published "letters" and adding the new work, poems written from 2007 up to the time of her death in October 2020. Published in a board-bound edition that proudly features the original edition's cover art by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Praise for Revolutionary Letters, 50th Anniversary Edition:

"There is a generosity and affection in Revolutionary Letters that I find myself returning to, always, when I'm at my most cynical and feeling lost for any understanding of what a better world might look like. When I need to be grounded and re-centered in my understanding of community care as a living, breathing, full-time mission. And, quite simply, when I need to be reminded of how language can begin on the page, and echo far beyond."-Hanif Abdurraqib

"What's astonishing about Diane di Prima's Revolutionary Letters is how these poems are adamantly useful. A manual of insurgent instruction, these poems tell you how to mitigate tear gas and sleep deprivation, eat a healthy diet, and overthrow the state. This book is ever more urgent in our moment, as a resurgent left faces down the apocalypse. Revolutionary Letters is a time machine towards a better future."-Ken Chen

"With this new and expanded edition we are offered a window onto a master poet redefining revolution over her lifetime. Di Prima continues to interrogate the ways in which we have been taught to live, love, eat, write, fight and take control. How can we make the most of this book and its wisdom? It's not enough to simply read it or even to write our own Revolutionary Letters. These poems are not realized until we are called upon to act."-Cedar Sigo

"How do 'we' keep fighting? There is no one way, but sometimes you think about lines in Diane di Prima's Revolutionary Letters. Di Prima's 'letters' feel like they were written to the all of you that always is somewhere coming together. And here you thought this classic couldn't get any better."-Wendy Trevino

File under: Diane Di Prima Diane Prima City Lights Books / San Francisco Feminism Theory / Essay Sociology / Politics

MARLOW'S DREAM: JOSEPH CONRAD IN ANTIPODEAN PORTS
by Martin Edmond

2024, English
Softcover, 252 pages, 11 x 17 cm
Published by Index Journal / Melbourne

$35.00 - In stock -

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Joseph Conrad is a major figure in modern literature. Before his writing career was established in 1899 with 'Heart of Darkness', Conrad was a merchant seafarer and eventually a shipmaster of vessels that regularly sailed between Europe and its antipodes, with several visits to Australia & New Zealand. In 'Marlow’s Dream', Martin Edmond shows in vivid detail how Conrad both collected and began to arrange the tales that would later appear in his fiction during these voyages. Intertwining Conrad’s biography with his own, Edmond masterfully demonstrates how Conrad’s celebrated stories were lifted straight out of his experiences as an itinerant mariner who had spent countless days in antipodean ports between 1878–93.

Martin Edmond is the author of more than twenty books. He has a Doctorate of Creative Arts from Western Sydney University where he wrote his dissertation, which later appeared as the book Battarbee and Namatjira. Edmond’s works of memoir and biography about art and artists include Dark Night: Walking with McCahon, The Supply Party (on artist Ludwig Becker), Chronicle of the Unsung, winner of the 2005 Montana Book Award for Biography, and The Resurrection of Philip Clairmont. His other books include Luca Antara, Waimarino County, The Autobiography of My Father and The Expatriates (the latter including a history of Joe Trapp, the long-serving director of the Warburg Institute who was from New Zealand). In 2013 he received the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Non-Fiction in recognition of hisoutstanding contribution to literature.

File under: Joseph Conrad Martin Edmond Index Journal / Melbourne Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Theory / Essay

1982, Janine
by Alasdair Gray

1984 / 2003, English
Softcover, 340 pages, 20 x 13 cm
Published by Canongate Books / Edinburgh

$39.00 - Out of stock

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The unforgettable, challenging and experimental second novel from the author of Lanark. Published in 1984, 1982, Janine remains Scottish author Alasdair Gray's most controversial work. Its use of pornography as a narrative device attracted much criticism, although others, including Gray himself, consider it his best work.

Jock McLeish, failed husband, lover and businessman is alone in a hotel room, drinking whisky, fantasising about sex and contemplating suicide. As he tries to distance himself from reality, his lonely, alcohol-fuelled fantasies are interrupted by a flood of memories, reminding him of his own shortcomings.

An unforgettably imaginative book, deeply experimental in its form and charged with a dark humour, 1982, Janine is a searing portrait of male need and inadequacy. Gray's exploration of politics, religion, powerlessness and pornography has lost none of its power to shock and entertain.

Introduced by Will Self.

"Perhaps the finest artist/writer of his generation . . . Tumultuous, inventive, heart-rending . . . A landmark work"—Will Self

"1982, Janine has a verbal energy, an intensity of vision that has mostly been missing from the English novel since D.H. Lawrence . . . Gray is a natural storyteller and it is the wit and energy of his language that keep the rendering of Jock's lonely, wasted life from being unbearably depressing. The richness of this novel and the pleasures of its language and form are sufficient affirmation, a real message of hope"—New York Times

"Made me realise that contemporary fiction would still be a vivid and vital way of interpreting the world . . . 1982, Janine revived my flagging impetus to continue writing myself"—Jonathan Coe

"1982, Janine is not pornography but a thoughtful and sad study of the human predicament; to be trapped in a world where the little man, woman or country will always be exploited by the big bullies"—Irish Independent

File under: Alasdair Gray Canongate Books / Edinburgh Fiction / Poetry

House Of Psychotic Women : Expanded Edition
by Kier-la Janisse

2022, English
Hardcover, 448 pages, 21.5 x 25 cm
Published by FAB Press / UK

$120.00 - Out of stock

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In 2012, a book debuted that would go on to canonical status and usher in a new way of writing about film. Kier-La Janisse's HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN is an autobiographical exploration of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films that examines hundreds of films through a daringly personal lens. In this pioneering work, anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and a consideration of female madness, both onscreen and off.

To mark its 10th anniversary, Kier-La Janisse and FAB Press have reteamed to produce an expanded edition the book, featuring new writing on 100 more films - many of which were inspired in part by the book itself - and hundreds of new images. This first pressing of the Expanded Edition has been issued as a large format hardcover.

Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but few things are more transfixing than a woman losing her mind onscreen. Horror as a genre provides the most welcoming platform for these histrionics: crippling paranoia, desperate loneliness, masochistic death-wishes, dangerous obsessiveness, apocalyptic hysteria. Unlike her male counterpart - 'the eccentric' - the female neurotic lives a shamed existence, making these films those rare places where her destructive emotions get to play.

This sharply-designed book, including a 48-page full-colour section, is packed with 680 rare stills, posters, pressbooks and artwork throughout, that combine with family photos and artifacts to form a titillating sensory overload, with a filmography that traverses the acclaimed and the obscure in equal measure. Films covered include The Entity, The Corruption of Chris Miller, Singapore Sling, 3 Women, Toys Are Not for Children, Repulsion, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, The Haunting of Julia, Secret Ceremony, Cutting Moments, Out of the Blue, Mademoiselle, The Piano Teacher, Possession, Antichrist and hundreds more!

File under: Kier-La Janisse FAB Press / UK Film / Video Theory / Essay Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Transgressive / Visceral / Abject

Your Dreams
by Thomas Moore

2023, English
Hardcover, 106 pages, 21 x 14.5 cm
Published by Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin

$46.00 - In stock -

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The long-awaited new novel from a major literary talent. With cover design by Michael Salerno (KIDDIEPUNK).

“I’m so close to falling apart. Fuck it. Who isn’t?”

Thomas Moore’s latest novel Your Dreams, the follow-up to 2021’s devastating Forever, is a visceral yet contained inquiry into the endless need to be understood. Eavesdropping on a debate about cancelled bands, listening to a close friend’s explanation of his disturbing desires, facilitating a conversation about kinks at a party until it goes wrong, Moore’s narrator is less of a character than a witness of desperate disconnection. Your Dreams, despite its impulse to hide, faces the reader head-on in an intimate unmasking, still grasping for closeness in a world of limits.

“Simple words. Deep emotions … beyond prose to another plane. Openness that pours through you.”
Jack Skelley, The Los Angeles Review of Books

“Thomas Moore is one of the best writers the world has in stock.”
Dennis Cooper

File under: Thomas Moore Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin Fiction / Poetry LGBTQ+ Transgressive / Visceral / Abject

Forever
by Thomas Moore

2021, English
Softcover, 140 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
Published by Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin

$34.00 - Out of stock

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SADNESS ALWAYS FINDS PEOPLE

"I'm writing this instead of killing myself" states the narrator of Forever, Thomas Moore's most compelling novel yet. A young man travels alone to Paris, to see out his days in painful reflection and sexual abandon until the money inevitably runs out.

By turns hauntingly elegiac and viscerally brutal, Moore charts with forensic precision the topographies of violence and self-harm that flourish within the dehumanised environment of predatory global capitalism.

Unflinchingly crafted in exquisite prose, Forever is a vividly political and intensely personal vision of life and language pushed to the very limits.

"We are always told that things should be more, everything should be bigger, better, owned, ownable. Things should be forever even though nothing is."

"Thomas Moore is one of the best writers the world has in stock."—Dennis Cooper

Thomas Moore's previous work include In Their Arms, When People Die, Small Talk at the Clinic (with Steven Purtill), and most recently the novel Alone, also published by Amphetamine Sulphate.

Cover art by Micahel Salerno

File under: Micahel Salerno Thomas Moore Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin Eros LGBTQ+ Fiction / Poetry

Alone
by Thomas Moore

2020, English
Softcover, 166 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
Published by Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin

$44.00 - Out of stock

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Has Grindr killed psychic gay powers?

For Halloween I’m dressing as a YouTube video of Corey Haim, when he was still alive and talking about kissing girls, feeling like dolphins were swimming through his blood. And I’d dress as the helpline 1-800-C-O-R-E-Y that he set up when he was seventeen, when he was high and giving advice to young fans about how to stay off drugs.

The pièce de résistance of my costume would be the contrast that the viewer makes in their mind between the image of Corey Haim in The Lost Boys with a beautiful smile and skin that looks healthier than you’ve ever seen and the TMZ report of pneumonia and the enlarged heart that killed him and the question about whether the reader would carry through the metaphor and make the link between the dolphins he said were in his blood and what they would look like now.

"Thomas Moore is one of the best writers the world has in stock, and I always expect a ton from what he writes, but, even so, ALONE is beyond the pale — immaculate, febrile, deadly, a complete stunner."—Dennis Cooper

File under: Thomas Moore Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin LGBTQ+ Eros Fiction / Poetry

Paul Wunderlich und Karin Székessy
Correspondenzen

1977, German
Softcover, 128 pages, 33 x 24 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by Belser Verlag / Stuttgart

$68.00 - Out of stock

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Softcover edition of this wonderful over-sized publication on the unique collaboration between German artist Paul Wunderlich and photographer Karin Székessy, one of Germany's most important female photographers, who were married to each other. Published in Switzerland in 1977, this volumes collects an abundance of these iconic 'transpositions,' evocative, experimental nude photographs by Szekessy juxtaposed with Wunderlich's versions, or replies, in the form of paintings and prints. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w, the result is a fascinating dialogue of unconventional nude form. German literary critic Fritz J. Raddatz's illustrated introduction gives contextual and art historical references and background, accompanied by a full listing of works and exhibition history.

Good—VG copy with only light cover/edge wear.

File under: Paul Wunderlich Karin Székessy Fritz J. Raddatz Belser Verlag / Stuttgart Photography Eros Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Surrealism Painting Drawing Art Out-of-print / Rare

Unlimited: Comme des Garçons

2005, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. printed acetate dust jacket), 270 pages, 20 x 22.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Heibonsha / Tokyo

$160.00 - Out of stock

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First edition of Unlimited: Comme des Garçons, a unique and lavish compilation book about Comme des Garçons and designer Rei Kawakubo, published in Japan in 2005 and edited by Sanae Shimizu and NHK. Shimizu explains in the afterword: "the present book is a compilation based on reporting for two television programs, the NHK Special, "What the World Values in Her Fashion: REI KAWAKUBO and Comme des Garçons," and the Hi-Vision Special, "Fashion Revolutinonary: REI KAWAKUBO and the World of Comme des Garçons." Single frames of video filmed with a Hi-Vision camera were captured, and transformed into static images, after which the images were digitally printed". The book combines rare collection, store interior, and Comme workshop imagery with interviews, reflections, and commentary from a range of people, including fashion designers (Alexander McQueen, Junya Watanabe, Azzedine Alaïa, Jean Paul Gaultier, Paul Smith, Walter van Beirendonck, etc.), Comme des Garçons production staff, choreographers (Merce Cunningham, etc.), photographers (Paolo Roversi, etc.), fashion journalists and editors (Vogue, Dazed, Purple, etc.) and many from Rei Kawakubo herself. One of the most insightful books on Comme and Rei, The images of Comme des Garçons workspaces and insight into the production and pattern-making process provided by staff make this an invaluable book for any fan.

Very Good copy with light wear and usual bind issue (tightly stitch bound in perfect shape and working order, but glue of no use)

File under: Rei Kawakubo Comme des Garçons Steve McQueen Walter van Beirendonck Alexander McQueen Junya Watanabe Azzedine Alaïa Jean Paul Gaultier Paul Smith Merce Cunningham Paolo Roversi Sanae Shimizu Olivier Zahm Heibonsha / Tokyo Fashion Theory / Essay Art Out-of-print / Rare Textiles

Comme des Garçons SIX/Sixth Sense No. 1

1988, English / Japanese
Softcover, oversized, loose-leaf pages, 42 x 29.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Comme des Garçons / Tokyo

$440.00 - Out of stock

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First 1988 edition, first printing of the inaugural issue of the cult, privately distributed Comme des Garçons publication. The incredible first issue of Comme des Garçons' 'Six' magazine (1988) features the work of Hungarian photographer André Kertész, Comme des Garçons by photographer Peter Lindbergh, photography by Sachiko Kuru, features on artist Jean Cocteau, architect Eileen Gray, artist Michel Sauer, and an interview with fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto, plus additional photography by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Arthur Elgort, Tony Mendoza, Sachiko Kuru, Shinji Mori, Serge Lido and Gisele Freund. Beautiful first-edition printing of this over-sized magazine vision of Rei Kawakubo, including die-cut features throughout and de-bossed cover title.

Between 1988 and 1991, Comme des Garçons explored the theme of the sixth sense via eight special biannual oversized, unstapled magazines titled 'Six'. These magazines were launched to coincide with Comme des Garçons fashion collections and were privately printed and distributed by Comme. The magazine visually represented the brand in a way that no other fashion company had before. Rei Kawakubo invited Tsuguya Inoue to art direct and Atsuko Kozasu to edit the issues, whilst contributions came from a diverse array of leading designers and artists. Issues of Comme des Garçons 'Six' have become very sought after collectors items.

Very Good / Near Fine copy.

File under: Arthur Elgort Comme des Garçons Eileen Gray Jean Cocteau Peter Lindbergh Rei Kawakubo Sachiko Kuru Yohji Yamamoto Comme des Garçons / Tokyo Architecture / Interior Art Graphic Design / Typography Fashion Out-of-print / Rare Photography Japanese Photography

H.R. Giger
Poëtenz, 1967 (poster)

1967, German
Offset poster (double-sided), 83.5 x 59 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good

$600.00 - Out of stock

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Where it all started.... H.R. Giger's first ever poster! Rare vintage original and never reprinted.

Published in a limited edition to accompany the The-Telllife-No-mads-presents: Poëtenz happening/exhibition, organized by young Giger's friend and collaborator, Swiss writer, artist and publisher Urban Gwerders. Gwerders was the publisher of Swiss underground counterculture magazine Hotcha (1968—1971), to which Giger was also a contributor. The poster folds-down into a catalogue/program for the event with original cover artwork by Giger and collage contents, poems, photographs (including pics of Giger, Li, et al) and Poëtenz information, all designed in the montage style of Hotcha, and the "poster" side entirely reproducing Giger's incredible early "Astreunuchen" masterpiece, pre-dating ALIEN by over ten years.

A stunning collector's item and piece of Giger history, ready to frame.

Dimensions : 83.5 x 59 cm
Very Good condition, never mounted/pinned, well preserved in folded state as issued.

File under: H.R. Giger Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Art Surrealism Out-of-print / Rare Posters / Prints Objects / Ephemera / A/V Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Film / Video

World of Interiors
by Aurelia Guo

2022, English
Softcover, 138 pages, 21.6 x 13.9 cm
Published by Divided Publishing / London

$32.00 - Out of stock

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In World of Interiors I use collage and appropriation to destabilise the first-person ‘I’. I also write directly about the inescapable condition of being perceived and positioned by other people. Our lives take place in time and space, meaning in history and geography, as well as in relation to one another – not just interpersonally, but intergenerationally, with all the baggage of race, class, gender and nation that this implies. I write about economic cycles of wealth and poverty at the levels of the individual, group and state. The book is about travel and immigration: migrants, tourists and refugees. It is about the work of survival and the cost of survival. It is also a hopeful book – about how strong and indomitable the will can be.

Aurelia Guo is a writer and researcher based in London. She is a lecturer in law at London South Bank University.

'Tracing the borders between essay and poem, quotation and the fragment, Aurelia Guo’s writing circles and contradicts narratives of power. Her close readings of contested histories, abject biographies and her own experiences of migration and displacement transfix and unsettle. This book is mesmerising.'—Natasha Soobramanien

'An uncategorisable writer … intimate, impersonal, visionary and pitiless.'—Sam Riviere

File under: Aurelia Guo Aurelia Guo Divided Publishing / London Australian Art Fiction / Poetry

Patty Chang
The Wandering Lake

2017, English
Softcover, 124 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
Published by Dancing Foxes Press / Brooklyn Queens Museum / Queens

$50.00 $30.00 - In stock -

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Integrating video, photography, sculpture, writing, and performance into one expansive body of work, Los Angeles–based artist Patty Chang examines the complex way stories develop through geography, history, cultural mythology, fiction, and personal experience. Accompanying her project A Wandering Lake that was in part inspired by turn-of-the-century colonial explorer Sven Hedin’s book Wandering Lake (1938)—which tells the story of a migrating body of water in the Chinese desert—this artist’s book, combining Chang’s writings and travel photographs with historic and theoretical text excerpts as well as photographs of her sculptures and watercolors, is a personal, associative, narrative meditation on mourning, caregiving, and landscape.

Copublished with the Queens Museum in 2017
Edited by Karen Kelly and Barbara Schroeder
With an afterword by Hitomi Iwasaki
Design by Leftloft

This is a guide to mourning; but Chang widens the scope to include political conflict and environmental degradation, and argues that, despite the losses we’ve incurred, we are still collaborators in the making of our worlds.”—Erin Schwartz, The New York Review of Books

File under: Patty Chang Hitomi Iwasaki Karen Kelly Barbara Schroeder Patty Chang Dancing Foxes Press / Brooklyn Queens Museum / Queens Film / Video Art Fiction / Poetry Theory / Essay Sculpture / Installation Photography SALE Painting

Michiko Matsumoto
Women Come Alive

1978, Japanese
Softcover, 204 pages, 21 x 29.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Hanashi-no-Tokushu / Tokyo

$650.00 - In stock -

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Exceptionally rare (signed!) 1978 first edition photobook by Michiko Matsumoto, one of post war Japan's leading photographers. As a young female photographer growing up in a period of turmoil, Matsumoto conveys the wonders of women to the viewer from the perspective of a woman. Women Come Alive is her rarest and greatest example of this. This wonderful book collects "seven years with women...", Matsumoto's front-line photographic records of the women's liberation movement in Japan in the 1970s and her "Sisters Across Borders" (New York, Paris, Los Angeles, London...), as well as portraits of female artists, activists and friends Yoko Ono, Maki Asakawa, Eiko Ishioka, Michiko Gorman, Mamako Yoneyama, Teruko Yoshitake, Tokiko Kato, Harumi Yamaguchi, Chinatsu Nakayama and others. A true time-capsule, this book visits the workshops, bookshops, marches, women's centres, lesbian bars, exhibitions, editorial offices, dances and studios of a pivotal time of great change. An incredible book of feminist protest and celebration. Virtually an impossible book to find, even without a signature from the artist! Highly recommended!!

Very Good copy in very good dust jacket. Signed in black ink and dated 1978.6.7 on title page.

File under: Yoko Ono Michiko Matsumoto Alicia Bay Laurel Hanashi-no-Tokushu / Tokyo Japanese Photography Photography Out-of-print / Rare Feminism Counterculture Signed Books

Hitomi Watanabe
'77 LOOK Calendar

1977, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 28 pages, 36.5 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Nisshindo Optical Shop / Nagoya

$140.00 - In stock -

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Extremely rare calendar issue from acclaimed Japanese photographer and representative of the Provoke movement, Hitomi Watanabe. Issued privately by a small eyeglasses shop in Nagoya, Nisshindo Optical Shop, this 1977 "LOOK" Calendar presents the rarely seen personal 1970s work of Watanabe. Watanabe began her career photographing in the Tokyo neighbourhood of Shinjuku, home to Japan’s 1960s counter culture. She came to prominence during the Zenkyoto student movement in the late 1960s, occupied the University of Tokyo campus in 1968-69 and participated in the 10.21 International Anti-War Day protests and 1970 Anpo protests against the renewal of the Japan-US Mutual Security Treaty. Her candid photographs of the everyday lives of the protesters, the state violence, and the aftermath of rioting from her insider’s vantage on this tumultuous moment afforded her work an undeniable, enduring power. Her famed "Kaihoku '68 / Liberated Area '68" a testament to this. When the Japan-US Mutual security treaty was renewed in 1970, Watanabe, heartbroken that they had not been able to prevent it, began her long travels through Asia, particularly India and Nepal, from which these beautiful, atmospheric colour photographs are taken. Reproduced in large format across the 12 months of 1977.

Very Good copy with some light wear and light cover tanning. Has been previously hung.

File under: Hitomi Watanabe Nisshindo Optical Shop / Nagoya Japanese Photography Photography Out-of-print / Rare Objects / Ephemera / A/V Art

Issy Wood
Study for No

2023, English / French
Softcover, 190 pages, 25.5 x 21 cm
Published by Lafayette Anticipations / Paris

$70.00 - Out of stock

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Lafayette Anticipations presents Study for No, Issy Wood's first solo exhibition in France, featuring over 60 paintings by the English artist, most of which have never been shown before.

The body of work presented in the catalogue speaks of a refusal to accept a certain order, and expresses unease at the systems of oppression, both conscious and unconscious, that govern human beings, especially the most vulnerable. The exhibition catalogue includes an essay by art critic Barry Schwabsky, a portrait of the artist by Kaitlin Phillips, and an interview between Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel and Issy Wood.

Bilingual French / English

File under: Issy Wood Kaitlin Phillips Barry Schwabsky Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel Lafayette Anticipations / Paris Painting Art

In the Time of Kiarostami: Writings on Iranian Cinema
by Godfrey Cheshire

2022, English
Softcover, 309 pages, 20.5 x 15 cm
Published by Woodville Press / New York

$52.00 - Out of stock

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“Essential”—Indiewire

“What’s most remarkable about this volume is its transparency. Throughout, in new, rewritten and republished pieces, you can see Godfrey’s questing and questioning mind latching onto a subject for which he has a deep affinity, learning as much as he can about it—by pondering the works themselves, talking to their creators, and absorbing the culture that birthed the scene—and then figuring out a way to transmit his enthusiasm to the widest American audience possible.”—Matt Zoller Seitz

“I admire Godfrey for his strong support of Iranian cinema and his efforts to introduce Iranian films to American audiences. Although movies are shown by distributors and exhibitors, it’s really the critics who bring the audience. Godfrey’s reviews also help us in Iran by providing critical support against those who attempt to suppress us and keep us from working.”—Jafar Panahi, filmmaker

“So impressed by his first encounters with contemporary Iranian films, Godfrey Cheshire decided to do a deep dive into Iranian literature, art and society, not to mention film history. The happy result is this book, displaying an incredible range of knowledge about what is the most remarkable film movement of the past decades, while offering a deep exploration of both this cinema’s deep roots as well as its celebrated achievements.”—Richard Pena, Professor of Film and Media Studies, Columbia University

“Godfrey Cheshire has been the preeminent American critic on Iranian cinema for decades. With rare access to master filmmakers, Cheshire weaves together rich, personal stories, with history, culture and his brilliant insights. His passion is infectious. This is his definitive book.”—Ramin Bahrani, Oscar-nominated filmmaker

“There is no better way to discover Iranian cinema than to immerse yourself in Godfrey Cheshire’s beautifully written 30 year personal cinematic journey. This is an important, informative and compelling book at this global political moment. It is vital to know these filmmakers of purpose through the perception of an outsider with whom we can identify and to lose ourselves to the wonder, humanity, and artistry of a culture and cinema that demands our attention now more than ever.”—Michael Barker, Sony Pictures Classics

File under: Godfrey Cheshire Matt Zoller Seitz Woodville Press / New York Theory / Essay Film / Video Art Sociology / Politics

Conversations with Kiarostami
by Godfrey Cheshire

2022, English
Softcover, 188 pages, 19 x 12.5 cm
Published by Woodville Press / New York

$40.00 - Out of stock

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“In many respects the best book yet published on the director.”—Cineaste

“For Kiarostami’s own overview of his early career, I’d recommend Conversations with Kiarostami.”—Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Conversations with Kiarostami collects for the first time a far ranging series of interviews with the celebrated director Abbas Kiarostami by film critic, and Iranian cinema expert, Godfrey Cheshire.

Conducted in the 1990s, these in-depth conversations offer a film-by-film account of Kiarostami’s views of his artistic development from his first short “Bread and Alley” in 1970 to the 1999 feature The Wind Will Carry Us, covering his lesser known, and seldom written about, shorts from earlier in his career, along with the masterworks that made him world famous, such as the Koker Trilogy (Where Is the Friend’s House?, And Life Goes On, Through the Olive Trees), Close-Up and Taste of Cherry. The book includes a Foreword by Ahmad Kiarostami, the director’s son, as well as an introduction from Cheshire that contextualizes the interviews and discusses his relationship with the director.

“During Godfrey’s several visits to Iran throughout a decade, he formed a relationship with my father that I had rarely seen him having with other writers. I believe this is because of Godfrey’s ability to go beyond the surface; his unique views and interpretations…It is well-known that Godfrey was one of the first people who introduced the Iranian cinema to America and, yet, there is no trace of the usual “exotic” approach…That is what you will find in this book: a refreshing conversation with Abbas that has substance, and is far from cliché.”—Ahmad Kiarostami, from his foreword.

File under: Ahmad Kiarostami Godfrey Cheshire Woodville Press / New York Film / Video Sociology / Politics Theory / Essay Art

Time Tells, Vol. 1
by Masha Tupitsyn

2023, English
Softcover, 296 pages, 19 x 14 cm
Published by Hard Wait Press / New York

$55.00 $35.00 - Out of stock

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Named one of the best books of 2023 by The Paris Review
Named one of the best books of 2023 by Sight & Sound

Time Tells is a grand study of time, technology, performance, the attention economy, and comedy. Using the cinematic time-jump, "a numerical shorthand for a fated intermission," to weave a narrative of chronopolitics, memoir, and cultural study, Masha Tupitsyn constructs a unique literary and visual phenomenology on the loss of time, presence, and attention in the digital age. Structured into two interlocked inquiries—Time and Acting—Time Tells focuses on the internet to talk about the ethics of presence and attention, comedy to talk about timing and the language of critique, and lying masculinity, the double, and acting to talk about performance and the reign of falsehood. Both volumes intersect to examine our inability to experience coherence and integration in the post-truth era.

In the first volume, Time, Tupitsyn covers wide-ranging cultural touchstones such as the ’90s TV show Felicity, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Pretty Woman, Wong Kar-wai’s 2046, David Fincher’s Zodiac, Jean-Luc Godard, the Beastie Boys, Wim Wenders, the art of style, memory and music in the post-internet age, and the lost ontology of cinema. Using what Tupitsyn terms “screen-shot criticism,” Time Tells makes innovative critical thinking accessible to anyone interested in American culture today.

Afterword by Felix Bernstein.

“Time Tells is a mesmerizing work about art, life, chronology, and magical thinking. Masha Tupitsyn is a treasure.”—Matt Zoller Seitz

“Masha Tupitsyn rescues films of our generation from the memory hole to which everything but box office is now consigned. Her writing is intimate and analytical, laced with radiant perceptions about movie stars, memory, and lost time.”—A. S. Hamrah

“I have been searching for books during the pandemic that will saddle up with me in my middle-aged sorrow. A sorrow having something to do with “before television went online, days of the week mattered.” Books about the state of the global crisis haven’t done it for me. Masha Tupitsyn’s Time Tells is the book I am looking for. I’m keeping that in the present tense to suggest my ongoing and vital relationship to an extraordinarily generous and profound hybrid text and manual that I will keep on hand at all times. As a poet, I am obsessed with how art can sequence events to expand or contract our sense of time. Mid-way through Tupitsyn’s treatise, she has placed one of the brightest and most innovative pieces of film criticism I have ever read. I would teach her writing on the film Zodiac as a list poem. She writes, ‘In Zodiac, time is forensic.’ I gasped with a little horror and a little joy.”—Stacy Szymaszek

File under: Felix Bernstein Masha Tupitsyn Hard Wait Press / New York Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Art Film / Video Theory / Essay SALE

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