DORN, Edward. Gunslinger Book I [and] Gunslinger Book II.

The Signed, Lettered Editions, bound in Chapskin & Buckskin

DORN, Edward. Gunslinger Book I [and] Gunslinger Book II. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press. 1968, 1969.

Two volumes. 8vo. Vol I: full natural rough chapskin, Vol II: handbound in buckskin by Earle Gray; both with paper labels to front panel and spine, very near fine copies.

Vol I: Designed and printed April 1968 in San Francisco by Graham Mackintosh for the Black Sparrow Press. Limited to 600 copies in paper wrappers; 100 numbered, hardbound copies signed by the poet; 26 lettered copies, for presentation, bound in full natural chapskin and signed by the poet. This copy is letter Q of the 26 lettered copies, signed “eastern Kansas, 23 / april, Edward Dorn”.

Vol II. Printed June 1969 in Santa Barbara by Noel Young for the Black Sparrow Press. Design by Barbara Martin. Limited to 1000 copies in paper wrappers; 250 hardcover copies numbered & signed by the poet; & 26 copies handbound in buckskin by Earle Gray lettered & signed by the poet. This copy is letter R of the 26 lettered copies. signed “Edward Dorn, San Cristobal, 14 June 69”.

First editions, each one of 26 lettered copies, of the first two volumes of Dorn’s masterpiece, specially bound and signed by the author.

Described by his friend, J. H. Prynne as “an immense bundle of swift-moving fun from the beginning”, Dorn’s Gunslinger sits beside Pound’s Cantos and Olson’s Maximus Poems as one of the great achievements of twentieth century American poetry. A comic, anti-epic epic of American capitalism, it is set in the American West where the Gunslinger, his talking horse Claude Levi-Strauss, a saloon madam named Lil, and the narrator called "I" set out in search of the billionaire Howard Hughes. Along the way, they are joined by a number of characters. Prynne writes that “the underlying spirit of it is immensely entrepreneurial and buccaneering and disrespectful and altogether a kind of advanced parody of the whole business of episodic serial writing (the fabular and fabulous in the fable) [: t]he entire American adventure is laid out there with great wit and humour.”

SKU: 2124092