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:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
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
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 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. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or 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.
1983, Japanese / English
Softcover (w. original plastic cover and obi band), 138 pages, 22 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Asahi Shimbun / Japan
$180.00 - Out of stock
Rare first edition of this compelling early 1980's photo book of violence and disaffection in American cities from Japanese photographer Shigemoto Nobi, printed by Asahi Shimbun in 1983.
Images of social unrest, gang warfare, prostitution, police precinct lockups, murder... the "poverty of the heart" real people must face behind the facade of America's boasted wealth of economic growth, something Japanese photographer Shigemoto Nobi (b. 1943) first encountered when he went to New York in his twenties to work as a freelance commercial photographer. Despite the implications of the title, Shigemoto Nobi visited and documented not only New York, but also Detroit, Chicago, Hawaii, the US/Mexican border and the Fort Apache Indian reservation, taking images primarily at night. Intense, lurid reportage on life in the United States of America in rich, saturated colour Kodochrome. File alongside Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, Seiji Kurata, or Bruce Davidson's "Subway".
First printing in original protective plastic sleeve with original obi band. Texts in Japanese and English.
Very Good copy with usual light damage/shrinkage to aged original plastic dust jacket cover/obi. Light edge wear.
1988, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 28 pages, 29.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
ABKCO / Japan
$190.00 - In stock -
Very rare Japanese brochure from around 1988, promoting the release on VHS (we think!) of The Holy Mountain, the cult classic 1973 Mexican surreal film directed, written, produced, co-scored, co-edited by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky, who also designed sets and costumes, inspired in part by René Daumal's Mount Analogue. The scandal of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, Alejandro Jodorowsky's flood of sacrilegious imagery and existential symbolism is a surreal sojourn for enlightenment pitting illusion against truth. In a corrupt, greed-fueled world, a powerful alchemist leads a messianic character and seven materialistic figures representing the negative aspects of the seven planets, to the Holy Mountain, where they hope to achieve enlightenment. Following Jodorowsky's underground hit El Topo, acclaimed by both John Lennon and George Harrison, the film was produced by the Beatles manager Allen Klein and John Lennon and Yoko Ono put up production money. It was shown at various international film festivals in 1973, including Cannes, and limited screenings in New York and San Francisco, gaining cult status. The Holy Mountain is a mythical, mystical masterpiece, a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life - part spiritual quest, part science fiction, part social satire, and completely without comparison.
This rare collectible brochure published by Allen Klein's ABKCO gives synopsis and introduction to the film, illustrated throughout with glorious stills, including a four-panel colour fold-out, Japanese texts, cast and production information, even Holy Mountain manga! A wonderful piece of printed history to Jodorowsky's masterpiece.
Very Good copy with some handling pinches.
1999, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 21.5 x 13.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Faber & Faber / London
$55.00 - Out of stock
Scarce first edition of CCRU founder Sadie Plant's end-of-the-millennium classic, Writing on Drugs, published by Faber and Faber in 1999.
"All writers on drugs become ghost writers for drugs. Or perhaps their drugs are ghost writing them"—Sadie Plant
Narcotics, stimulants and hallucinogens — these drugs have always affected far more than the perceptions, minds and moods of their users. Writing on Drugs explores the profound and pervasive nature of their influence on contemporary culture. It reads Coleridge on opium, Freud on cocaine, Michaux on mescaline and Burroughs on them all, and with such writers it begins to understand the many ways in which the modern world has found itself on drugs. Psychoactive substances have been integral to its economic history, its politics, media and technologies. They have influenced its poetry and stories, and shaped some if its most fundamental philosophies. They have even exposed the neurochemistry of a human brain which, like its cultures, has never been drug-free.
Sadie Plant was born in Birmingham and studied at the University of Manchester, where she gained her PhD in Philosophy in 1989. She has been a Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham and a Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, where, in 1995, she formed The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) with Mark Fisher and Nick Land, an experimental cultural theorist collective celebrated for its idiosyncratic and surreal "theory-fiction" which incorporated cyberpunk and Gothic horror, gaining an online cult following related to the rise in popularity of accelerationism. She published The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age in 1992, and Zeros and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture in 1997. Having spent much of the 1990s in the academic world, she now works independently and writes full-time.
G—VG in VG dust jacket. Normal page tanning, tanning to dust jacket edge and spine. Not necessarily copy pictured.
1971, Japanese / English
Softcover (in slipcase w. obi strip), 22 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kodansha Int / Tokyo
$500.00 - Out of stock
The very first printing of the legendary Complete Tadanori Yokoo book, designed by Yokoo and published in Japan in 1971. Still the quintessential Yokoo book, anyone who sees it knows immediately — boldly designed and beautifully produced with gorgeous colour, thick paper stock, fold-outs, and absolutely comprehensive in capturing the early masterpieces of one of Japan's leading artists of the 1960s. All housed in the original iconic illustrated slipcase with publisher's obi-strip present. 360 total works recorded, alongside 230 photographs — all the posters and other works showcasing his psychedelic, erotic, esoteric and politically charged photo-montage and vivid pop print-making, with documentation of the exhibitions, events, and underground scene Yokoo was central to in the 1960s, captioned throughout with texts by Akiyuki Nosaka and Yokoo himself. A treasure for any fan. A most complete copy.
Tadanori Yokoo (b. 1936) is one of Japan's most successful and internationally recognized graphic designers and artists, who began working with painting in 1966. In parallel, Yokoo’s early screenprints experimented with collage and illustration, combining found photographs with the influence of traditional Japanese ukiyo-e and pop art’s flat vibrant colours and overtly sexual and grotesque content, often reflecting on the rapid changes and Westernisation of Japan post-war society. His interests in mysticism and esotericism, deepened by travels to India, influenced his iconic posters with eclectic psychedelic imagery sharing the aesthetics of the underground counterculture he was associated with. In Tokyo, Yokoo worked as a stage designer for avant-garde theatre, collaborating extensively with Shūji Terayama and his experimental theater group Tenjō Sajiki. By the late 60s he had already achieved international recognition and in the early 1970s MoMA mounted a solo exhibition of his graphic work. His famous designs for The Beatles, Miles Davis, Carlos Santana and collaborations with friend and iconic Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake are renowned the world over. He also starred as a protagonist in Nagisa Oshima's film Diary of a Shinjuku Thief in 1968.
Very Good—Near Fine copy preserved with very minimal wear, light tanning to obi/spine, VG slipcase.
1986, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 144 pages, 22.9 x 25.1 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Aperture / New York
$550.00 - In stock -
First 1986 hardcover edition of Nan Goldin’s classic photo book, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, published by Aperture, New York. A landmark work in the field of raw sociological reportage, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a visual diary chronicling the struggles for intimacy and understanding among the friends and lovers whom Goldin describes as her “tribe.” These photographs described a lifestyle that was visceral, charged and seething with a raw appetite for living, and the book soon became the swan song for an era that reached its peak in the early 1980s. Through an accurate and detailed record of Goldin’s life, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency records a personal odyssey as well as a more universal understanding of the different languages men and women speak. All these years later, Goldin’s lush color photography and candid style still demand that the viewer encounter their profound intensity head-on. The book’s influence on photography and other aesthetic realms continues to grow, making it a classic of contemporary photography.
From Goldin's introduction: "I sometimes don't know how I feel about someone until I take his or her picture. I want the people in my pictures to stare back. I want to show exactly what my world looks like, without glamorization, without glorification."
"Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a beggar’s opera of recent times. Here were real thieves and unexpected heroes, and a sense that some things in life might still be worth a brawl."—Artforum
Nan Goldin was born in Washington, D.C., in 1953, and grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts. Her first solo show was held in Boston in 1973. She moved to New York in 1979, where she began documenting the city’s gay and transvestite scenes and developed the informal snapshot aesthetic for which she is celebrated today. Goldin was the 2007 recipient of the Hasselblad Award.
Very Good copy - fine copy with VG dust jacket. Definite 1986 first edition in the original unclipped ($39.95) dust jacket, designed by Keith Davis.
2020, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 36 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$18.00 - Out of stock
Richard Kern's "Extra High" zine, published by Innen Books, Zürich, in 2020. First Edition.
Richard Kern (b. 1954) is an American underground filmmaker, writer and photographer. He first came to prominence as part of the cultural explosion in the East Village of New York City in the 1980s, with erotic and experimental films like The Right Side of My Brain and Fingered, which featured personalities of the time such as Lydia Lunch, David Wojnarowicz, Sonic Youth, Kembra Pfahler, Karen Finley and Henry Rollins. Like many of the musicians around him, Kern had a deep interest in the aesthetics of extreme sex, violence and perversion and was involved in the Cinema of Transgression movement, a term coined by Nick Zedd.
1961 / 1972, English
Softcover, 102 pages, 16 x 12 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$25.00 - Out of stock
First 1961 edition, 1972 original City Lights ($1.50) printing of Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish (and Other Poems 1958—1960).
“In the midst of the broken consciousness of mid-twentieth century suffering anguish of separation from my own body and its natural infinity of feeling its own self one with all self, I instinctively seeking to reconstitute that blissful union which I experience so rarely. I took it to be supernatural and gave it holy Name thus made hymn laments of longing and litanies of triumphancy of Self over mind-illusion mechano-universe of un-feeling Time in which I saw my self my own mother and my very nation trapped desolate our worlds of consciousness homeless and at war except for the original trembling of bliss in breast and belly of every body that nakedness rejected in suits of fear that familiar defenseless living hurt self which is myself same as all others abandoned scared to own unchanging desire for each other.”—Allen Ginsberg from Kaddish
Famous Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was born June 3, 1926, the son of Naomi Ginsberg, Russian émigré, and Louis Ginsberg, lyric poet and school teacher, in Paterson, N.J. To these facts Ginsberg adds: "High school in Paterson till 17, Columbia College, merchant marine, Texas and Denver copyboy, Times Square, amigos in jail, dishwashing, book reviews, Mexico City, market research, Satori in Harlem, Yucatan and Chiapas 1954, West Coast 3 years. Later Arctic Sea trip, Tangier, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, read at Oxford Harvard Columbia Chicago, quit, wrote "Kaddish" 1959, made tape to leave behind & fade in Orient awhile." His other famous poetry collections including The Fall of America, Howl, Mind Breaths, Plutonian Ode, and Reality Sandwiches are also published by City Lights Publishers.
Good copy, cover wear, marking, tanning.
1968 / 9170, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 16 x 12 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$25.00 - Out of stock
First 1968 Ed, Second 1970 original City Lights printing ($2) of Planet News "collecting seven years’ Poesy scribed to 1967 begins with electronic politics disassociation & messianic rhapsody TV Baby in New York, continues picaresque around the globe, elan perceptions notated at Mediterranean, Galilee & Ganges till next breakthrough, comedown Poem at heart & soul last days in Asia The Change 1963; tenement doldrums & police-state paranoia in Manhattan then half year behind Socialist Curtain climaxed as Kral Majales May King Prague 1965, same years’ erotic gregariousness writ as Who Be Kind To for International Poetry Incarnation Albert Hall London; next trip West Coast thru center America Midwest Wichita Vortex Sutra . . . at last across Atlantic Wales Visitation promethian text recollected in emotion revised in tranquility continuing tradition of ancient Nature Language mediates between psychedelic inspiration and humane ecology & integrated acid classic Unitive Vision with democratic eyeball particulars-book closes on politics to exorcise Pentagon phantoms who cover Earth with dung-colored gas."—Allen Ginsberg, May 26, 1968
Famous Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was born June 3, 1926, the son of Naomi Ginsberg, Russian émigré, and Louis Ginsberg, lyric poet and school teacher, in Paterson, N.J. To these facts Ginsberg adds: "High school in Paterson till 17, Columbia College, merchant marine, Texas and Denver copyboy, Times Square, amigos in jail, dishwashing, book reviews, Mexico City, market research, Satori in Harlem, Yucatan and Chiapas 1954, West Coast 3 years. Later Arctic Sea trip, Tangier, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, read at Oxford Harvard Columbia Chicago, quit, wrote "Kaddish" 1959, made tape to leave behind & fade in Orient awhile." His other famous poetry collections including The Fall of America, Howl, Mind Breaths, Plutonian Ode, and Reality Sandwiches are also published by City Lights Publishers.
Good copy, cover wear, marking, tanning.
1991, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 21 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$65.00 - Out of stock
First 1991 City Lights edition of The Powers of The Word : Selected Essays and Notes 1927-1943 by early 20th-century French spiritual para-surrealist writer, critic, poet, and early, outspoken practitioner of pataphysics, René Daumal (1908-1944). Edited, translated and with introduction by Mark Polizzotti.
"Since his death in 1944, Rene Daumal has come to be recognized as one of the original minds of the twentieth century French letters. Poet, essayist, philosopher and translator, Sanscrit scholar and pupil of Gurdjieff, Daumal was a founder of the Grand Jeu group. He was iconoclastic and eclectic, able to embrace simultaneously Alfred Jarry's Pataphysics and Hindu teachings.
Daumal's two major works in English translation, Mount Analogue and A Night of Serious Drinking, have long been classics in this country; but until now, readers have not had access to the full range of his thought. The Powers of the Word spans a lifetime of essays and notes-many here translated for the first time-from the earliest incitements to drug use and revolt; through Daumal's unique readings of literary works; to his more mature, but no less ardent, meditations." — publisher's blurb
Fine copy. First 1991 Ed.
1971 / 2000?, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 23 x 30.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Grove Press / New York
$65.00 - Out of stock
When it first appeared in 1971, Larry Clark's groundbreaking book Tulsa sparked immediate controversy across the nation. Its graphic depictions of sex, violence, and drug abuse in the youth culture of Oklahoma were acclaimed by critics for stripping bare the myth that Middle America had been immune to the social convulsions that rocked America in the 1960s. The raw, haunting images taken in 1963, 1968, and 1971 document a youth culture progressively overwhelmed by self-destruction -- and are as moving and disturbing today as when they first appeared. Originally published in a limited paperback version and republished in 1983 as a limited hardcover edition commissioned by the author, rare-book dealers sell copies of this book for more than a thousand dollars. Grove Press re-print of this seminal work of photographic art and social history
Larry Clark (b. 1943) is an American film director, photographer, writer and film producer who is best known for his controversial teen film Kids and his photography book Tulsa.
Very Good copy with some light tanning and wear to covers. Undated, presumed 2000.
1972, Japanese
Softcover (w. french-fold dust jacket and printed cardboard slipcase w. original obistrip), 246 pages, 13 x 19.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kodansha Int / Tokyo
$160.00 - Out of stock
The very scarce and unique PUSH by Tadanori Yokoo, published in 1972 and featuring photography by Kishin Shinoyama and Daido Moriyama.
After a car accident in 1972 Tadanori Yokoo decided to take a two year hiatus from work at the height of his fame. PUSH is a visually inventive dairy of this period beautifully designed by Yokoo himself with colour nude girl photographs and b/w self-portraits of the artist by none other than Kishin Shinoyama, Daido Moriyama and Tadashi Krahashi. A gorgeous and curious production with humorous over-printing and incredible design, housed in original printed slipcase with the original publisher's obi-strip.
Tadanori Yokoo (b. 1936) is one of Japan's most successful and internationally recognized graphic designers and artists, who began working with painting in 1966. In parallel, Yokoo’s early screenprints experimented with collage and illustration, combining found photographs with the influence of traditional Japanese ukiyo-e and pop art’s flat vibrant colours and overtly sexual and grotesque content, often reflecting on the rapid changes and Westernisation of Japan post-war society. His interests in mysticism and esotericism, deepened by travels to India, influenced his iconic posters with eclectic psychedelic imagery sharing the aesthetics of the underground counterculture he was associated with. In Tokyo, Yokoo worked as a stage designer for avant-garde theatre, collaborating extensively with Shūji Terayama and his experimental theater group Tenjō Sajiki. By the late 60s he had already achieved international recognition and in the early 1970s MoMA mounted a solo exhibition of his graphic work. His famous designs for The Beatles, Miles Davis, Carlos Santana and collaborations with friend and iconic Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake are renowned the world over. He also starred as a protagonist in Nagisa Oshima's film Diary of a Shinjuku Thief in 1968.
Very Good—Near Fine copy, with only light wear and age. Very well preserved and complete.
1990, English / Italian
Softcover, 180 pages, 22 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Mascal / Italy
$200.00 - Out of stock
First, only edition of this exceptionally rare 1990 Italian book dedicated entirely to the art of the disco invitation, circa 1980-1990. Rave Invitation Cards is the ultimate time-capsule of Italy's 1980's nightlife, presenting a comprehensive collection of invitations to countless parties and club nights at around 60 of Italy's leading discos. Profusely illustrated throughout in the colours of the original flyers, Rave Invitation Cards itself embodies the graphic design of the period, conceived and art directed by Paolo Fornaciari and Giuliano Ravazzini, with accompanying introductory texts in both English and Italian and all invites detailed with their respective discoteques and designer/artist captions. A wonderful reference for wild 1980s-1990s typography and graphics, and a rare document of Italy's disco scene!
Very Good copy.
2023, English
Softcover, 20 x 15 cm
Published by
Pilot Press / London
$16.00 - Out of stock
A pocket-sized zine containing the CIA's entire 'Gateway Process' document, a report written in 1983, and declassified in 2003, about using a series of exercises to produce states of expanded human consciousness such as astral projection, outer body experiments, and other altered states of mind.
1959, English
Softcover, 222 pages,12 x 11 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
World Distributors / London
$45.00 - Out of stock
First edition, 1959 third impression of this classic pulp title on youth transgression in the conservative 1950s by Wenzell Brown. Considered one of the giants in juvenile delinquency literature of this era, Brown almost single-handedly created the subgenre of True Teen Crime.
"Here are the terrifying experiences of "junkies" who started "blasting" for thrills and couldn't "kick" the habit — and the crimes they committed to get "the monkey off their backs." Told by a man who lived with them intimately, and who spares no one in exposing the menace of teen-age drug addiction."
SHOCKING STORY! "Accounts of young dope addicts and how they gave in to the habit, or fought against it and how some of them won. While the story is shocking, it is less so than it would have been five years ago because of recent revelations."—Detroit News
First printed in 1954, at a time when juvenile delinquency stories were at their most popular and as the "Youthquake" phenomenon was taking shape and becoming a major societal concern and a international obsession — this combined fascination made it easy for a well seasoned student of society like Wenzell Brown to hone his craft. A veteran and world traveller, Brown worked with troubled teens and salvaged many first-hand accounts for what would become some of the most popular reads in pulp fiction. His sharp prose and keen use of contemporary youth lingo was drafted into lurid tales of vicious street punks, gutter girls, switchblade gangs and beatnik drug addicts. "Monkey on My Back" is one of his most popular books in his canon which includes other classics such as "Gang Girl", "Jailbait Jungle" and "Teen-Age Mafia".
Good copy with wear, creasing and tanning from age.
2023, English
Softcover, 566 pages, 25 x 19 cm
Published by
Edition Patrick Frey / Zürich
$119.00 - Out of stock
The youth uprising, now simply called “The Sixties,” was fed by one of the greatest booms in publishing history. The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) began as a loose confederation of five papers in 1966, and within a few years swelled to over 500 across the world, reaching millions of readers. They “spread like weed,” said the UPS director, weed-dealer, and eventual founder of High Times, Tom Forcade. The metaphor was apt: the UPS spurred the legalization movement, and weed became its totem.
Weed was so pervasive it became a helpful means for government agencies to crack down on the UPS. Weed came to emblematize activist groups, and added a touch of flair to the mastheads of UPS titles. Weed permeated UPS pages, with gaps in text crammed with weed-inspired “spot illustratios”.
Heads Together collects these drawings, shining a light on lesser-known names in the stoner-art canon, and many who weren’t names at all, as no signature was attached. It also compiles guides for growing weed from the period that were treated like contraband by the CIA. Activist-oriented, psychedelic rolling papers are showcased too.
As pot now fast-tracks toward legalization in the U.S. and beyond, its once incendiary status is brought into odd relief. Pot’s profiteers of the corporate market today do not reflect those who fought for legalization, or the Black and Latino populations strategically criminalized for pot well before hippies were targeted, and long after.
The art in this book speaks to a time when pot was smoked with optimism, as something potentially good for society and people, capable of activating profound transformation in the face of corrupt and powerful forces.
With Oral Histories by: Ishmael Reed, John Sinclair, Marjorie Heins, Mariann Wizard-Vasquez, Abe Peck
2022, English
Hardcover, 200 pages, 29.5 x 27.5 cm
$95.00 - In stock -
FAMILY: THE SOURCE FAMILY SCRAPBOOK provides an immersive view into the public and private world of the Southern California occult commune The Brotherhood of the Source. This lavishly illustrated book reproduces 200 original scrapbook pages assembled by family historian Isis Aquarian from 1972-1977, documenting the group's dramatic rise and fall, from their time living together in the Hollywood Hills operating their wildly popular Source vegetarian restaurant on the Sunset Strip to their exodus to Hawaii and San Francisco as the group began to unravel. Copious unpublished photographs, newspaper clippings, letters, manifestos, album art and flyers, augmented by descriptive captions by Isis Aquarian, reveal the Source Family's astonishing trajectory, from controversial leader Father Yod's spiritual awakening to the group's wild musical and social experimentations, to the provocations that led to the group's paradise lost. These pages provide a revelatory, firsthand view into the widely misunderstood phenomenon of new religious movements and cults of the 1960s and 70s.
2000, English
Hardcover, 120 pages, 22.3 x 27.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
The Drawing Center / New York
Merrell Publishers / London
$140.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful hardcover volume exploring every aspect of the art of the celebrated Belgian/French writer and artist Henri Michaux, published to accompany the major exhibition Untitled Passages, curated by Catherine de Zegher and Florian Rodari for The Drawing Centre, New York. Untitled Passages by Henri Michaux investigates Michaux’s graphic works in tandem with his poetic practice, addressing the artist-poet’s research into the passages between “writing” and “drawing”, taking its title from Michaux’s extensive body of untitled drawings and from Passages, his book of poetic writings. Profusely illustrated with an interview with Michaux by John Ashbery. Edited with texts by Catherine de Zegher, also Raymond Bellour, Henri Michaux, Laurent Jenny, Florian Rodari, Richard Sirburth.
Fine copy, almost As New. Out-of-print.
2005, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 20.3 x 14 cm
Published by
Soft Skull Press / New York
$35.00 - Out of stock
In this eye-opening memoir, Lisa Crystal Carver recalls her extraordinary youth and charts the late-80s, early-90s punk subculture that she helped shape. She recounts how her band Suckdog was born in 1987 and the wild events that followed: leaving small-town New Hampshire to tour Europe at 18, becoming a teen publisher of fanzines, a teen bride, and a teen prostitute. Spin has called Suckdog's album Drugs Are Nice one of the best of the '90s, and the book includes photos of infamous European shows. Yet the book also tells of how Lisa saw the need for change in 1994, when her baby was born with a chromosomal deletion and his father—industrial music maven and rumoured Nazi Boyd Rice—became violent. With lasting lightness and surprising gravity, Drugs Are Nice is a definitive account of the generation that wanted to break every rule, but also a story of an artist and a mother becoming an adult on her own terms.
2015, English
Softcover, 304 pages, 19.8 x 13 cm
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$23.00 - In stock -
'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.
2008, English
Softcover, 166 pages, 19.8 x 13 cm
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$23.00 - In stock -
Burroughs' first novel, a largely autobiographical account of the constant cycle of drug dependency, cures and relapses, remains the most unflinching, unsentimental account of addiction ever written.
Through junk neighbourhoods in New York, New Orleans and Mexico City, through time spent kicking, time spent dealing and time rolling drunks for money, through junk sickness and a sanatorium, Junky is a field report (by a writer trained in anthropology at Harvard) from the American post-war drug underground.
A cult classic, it has influenced generations of writers with its raw, sparse and unapologetic tone. This definitive edition painstakingly recreates the author's original text word for word.
William S. Burroughs was born on February 5, 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, and soon after began writing. 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. After living in Mexico City, Tangier, Paris, and London, Burroughs finally returned to America in 1974. He died in 1997.
1992, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 80 pages, 28 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
OB Enterprises / New York
$45.00 - Out of stock
Premiere issue of Art? Alternatives magazine, published in April 1992. Although short-lived, A?A was the perfect embodiment of a spirit in 1990s American visual culture that attacked the distinctions between "high culture" and counterculture, championing the underbelly of new outlaw artistic expression. Edited by Michelle Delio, A?A heralded a sensibility that exploded in 1990s America, that, like the underground press movement of the 1960s/70s that proceeded it, confronted the rise of conservatism and bourgeois attitudes, this time in the face of Reagan-era strip-mall gentrified America. A?A became the mouthpiece of new underground/"lowbrow" art, bringing together the legacy of underground comic art, modern primitivism (tattoo and body art), folk and outsider art, kitsch, occultism, psychedelia, and much more, into a melting pot that foreshadowed such magazines as Juxtapoz, established 2 years later. This premiere issue with a cover feature on artist Robert Williams, features on artists S. Clay Wilson, Spain Rodriguez, Guy Aitchison, and Joe Coleman, legendary Los Angeles gallerist La Luz de Jesus (of Soap Plant and Wacko fame), along with illustrated articles on Underground Comix, Tattooing, and more.
Very Good copy.
1974, English
Newspaper, 28 pages, 41 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Incorporated Newsagencies / West Melbourne
$90.00 $60.00 - Out of stock
Rare February 1974 issue of The Living Daylights, a radical, riotous weekly counter-culture magazine out of North Melbourne in the 1970's, edited by Oz magazine founder Richard Neville, along with Terence Maher, Michael Morris, and graphic designer Laurel Olszewski, and published by Neville's fellow OZ colleague, Richard Walsh, between 1973-4. The Living Daylights was packed with all happening things in youth counter-culture, filled with articles, cartoons, artwork, sex, drugs, rock n roll and protest. A provocative, humorous and controversial anti-establishment bulletin in the tradition of Oz, regularly featuring the artwork of Martin Sharp, Michael Luenig, Dickie, and Neil McLean! This issue features 186 Years of Penal Outrage, activists against the closure of Lameroo "Free Beach" in Darwin, Bondi photography by Syd Shelton, dodgy Adelaide drug squad, Melbourne marijuana activists, Nimbin news, female singers, women's liberation and beauty trends by Margaret Smith, Confessions of a Working Class Shit Eater by poet Eric Beach, Taiwanese actress Angela Mao, Fritz the Cat, and so much more.
A wonderful, very seldom seen, historical piece of Australian counterculture publishing.
Very Good copy with light wear/tanning.
1974, English
Newspaper, 28 pages, 41 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Incorporated Newsagencies / West Melbourne
$90.00 $60.00 - Out of stock
Rare March 1974 issue of The Living Daylights, a radical, riotous weekly counter-culture magazine out of North Melbourne in the 1970's, edited by Oz magazine founder Richard Neville, along with Terence Maher, Michael Morris, and graphic designer Laurel Olszewski, and published by Neville's fellow OZ colleague, Richard Walsh, between 1973-4. The Living Daylights was packed with all happening things in youth counter-culture, filled with articles, cartoons, artwork, sex, drugs, rock n roll and protest. A provocative, humorous and controversial anti-establishment bulletin in the tradition of Oz, regularly featuring the artwork of Martin Sharp, Michael Luenig, Dickie, and Neil McLean! This issue features Ian Stocks in conversation with science fiction legend Arthur C. Clarke, a guide to smuggling, Allen Ginsberg on cocaine and Abbie Hoffman, Heroin, Pentridge prison, Magic Mushrooms, police brutality against black Australians, Cherry Ripe on the pioneering drag queen anarchy of Sylvia and the Synthetics, meditation, Veronica Perry on the ecology of Shit, the Bitch newspaper, Miles Davis, and so much more.
A wonderful, very seldom seen, historical piece of Australian counterculture publishing.
Very Good copy with light wear/tanning.
2021, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$33.00 - Out of stock
In twenty years, drug use will have spread to every level of society, perhaps even to the countryside, and by then it will be too late to stop its advance.—from the preface to The Die Is Cast
Published in 1943 (just a year before its author would be arrested by the Gestapo), The Die Is Cast was a departure for Robert Desnos: a shift from his earlier frenetic surrealist prose to a social realism that borrowed as much from his life experience as from his career as a journalist. Drawing from his experiences with drugs in the 1920s and his doomed relationship with the chanteuse Yvonne George (the inspiration for some of his most famous poems, who would herself ultimately succumb to opium addiction and tuberculosis), Desnos here portrays a band of opium, cocaine, and heroin users from all walks of life in Paris, a motley group who share nothing but their addiction and their slow and steady descent into ruination and despair. It is a startlingly contemporary portrayal of overdoses, arrests, suicides, and the flattened solitude of the addict—yet published in occupied Paris, years before “junkie literature” would begin to establish itself as a genre with the Beat generation. In a distinct break from the “artificial paradises” explored by his predecessors in French literature, Desnos inaugurated with this novel a new era of “artificial hells.” An anomaly both in his career and for having been published under the Occupation by an active member of the Resistance who would die in the camps only a couple years later, The Die Is Cast stands as a piece of work as timely now as it had been untimely when it first appeared.
Translated, with an introduction, by Jesse L. Anderson
Robert Desnos (1900–1945) was one of the leading lights of the surrealist movement and its most accomplished practitioner of automatic writing and dictation before his break with André Breton in 1929. His busy career in journalism and radio culminated in an active role in the French Resistance. Desnos was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, and would pass through several concentration camps until finally dying of typhoid in Terezín in occupied Czechoslovakia in 1945, a few days after the camp he was in was liberated.