Insightful letter from the "Scottish Beat"
TROCCHI, Alexander. Cain's Book. London: John Calder. 1963.
8vo. Original red cloth with silver title lettering to spine; pictorial dust jacket with red and black text; pp. [8], 252, [4]; minimal toning to spine of dust jacket, otherwise fine.
First UK edition hardback with loosely inserted hand-written note from Trocchi addressed, undated, to his publisher, Arthur Boyars, asking him "have you an alarm clock? If so, will you set it by me for 8am?". He adds, "Meanwhile, if I croak during the night & you notice- send for an undertaker- thanks, Alex".
Alexander Trocchi wrote Cain's Book whilst working on a scow on the Hudson River in America. An autobiographical account of the life of a Glaswegian heroin addict, Joe Necchi, and christened the "Scottish Beat's" classic, the novel was prosecuted in Britain for obscenity in 1965.
Alongside Burrough's Naked Lunch, Cain's Book stands as what Burroughs himself communicated as "the classic late-1950s account of heroin addiction … An un-self-forgiving existentialism, rendered with writerly exactness and muscularity … apart from all others of the genre".
SKU: 2121296
Insightful letter from the "Scottish Beat"
TROCCHI, Alexander. Cain's Book. London: John Calder. 1963.
8vo. Original red cloth with silver title lettering to spine; pictorial dust jacket with red and black text; pp. [8], 252, [4]; minimal toning to spine of dust jacket, otherwise fine.
First UK edition hardback with loosely inserted hand-written note from Trocchi addressed, undated, to his publisher, Arthur Boyars, asking him "have you an alarm clock? If so, will you set it by me for 8am?". He adds, "Meanwhile, if I croak during the night & you notice- send for an undertaker- thanks, Alex".
Alexander Trocchi wrote Cain's Book whilst working on a scow on the Hudson River in America. An autobiographical account of the life of a Glaswegian heroin addict, Joe Necchi, and christened the "Scottish Beat's" classic, the novel was prosecuted in Britain for obscenity in 1965.
Alongside Burrough's Naked Lunch, Cain's Book stands as what Burroughs himself communicated as "the classic late-1950s account of heroin addiction … An un-self-forgiving existentialism, rendered with writerly exactness and muscularity … apart from all others of the genre".
SKU: 2121296
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