A Fan's Notes - Inscribed -
Frederick Exley
1968 - Harper &, New York - First Edition
Inscribed ‘Read in good “mental health”’ by Exley to renowned New York professor and psychologist and psychoanalyst Avrum Ben-Avi, and then gifted by a Sarah P. I. to ABA ‘for helping me end my “journey on a davenport”’ which refers to Exley’s six months on the sofa at his mother’s house at the end of which he was consigned to a mental hospital.
Exley's cult classic, a fictional memoir based on the author's real struggle, complicated by alcohol abuse and mental illness, to avoid being a lifelong "loser." Son of a fabled high school athlete in Watertown, NY, but with no interest in athletics in a sports-rabid town, Exley's only joy was in watching, through an alcoholic haze, the NY Giants on television on Sunday afternoons at a local bar. A Giants' victory would seem to justify, for a few hours, his misshapen life. In between football games, drinking bouts, shock treatments and insulin therapy, Exley would venture out into the world to play at being a normal, successful, young man on-the-go only to find each attempt driving him toward insanity again bringing him to the conclusion he is not a hero but merely a fan.
More details
Price HK$ 4,500
1968 - Harper &, New York - First Edition
Inscribed ‘Read in good “mental health”’ by Exley to renowned New York professor and psychologist and psychoanalyst Avrum Ben-Avi, and then gifted by a Sarah P. I. to ABA ‘for helping me end my “journey on a davenport”’ which refers to Exley’s six months on the sofa at his mother’s house at the end of which he was consigned to a mental hospital.Exley's cult classic, a fictional memoir based on the author's real struggle, complicated by alcohol abuse and mental illness, to avoid being a lifelong "loser." Son of a fabled high school athlete in Watertown, NY, but with no interest in athletics in a sports-rabid town, Exley's only joy was in watching, through an alcoholic haze, the NY Giants on television on Sunday afternoons at a local bar. A Giants' victory would seem to justify, for a few hours, his misshapen life. In between football games, drinking bouts, shock treatments and insulin therapy, Exley would venture out into the world to play at being a normal, successful, young man on-the-go only to find each attempt driving him toward insanity again bringing him to the conclusion he is not a hero but merely a fan.
More details
Price HK$ 4,500
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me -
Richard Fari
1966 - Random House, New York - First Edition
First edition of ‘the classic novel of the 1960s an unerring, corrosively comic depiction of a campus in revolt
Fariña evokes the Sixties as precisely, wittily, and poignantly as F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the Jazz Age. The hero, Gnossus Pappadopoulis, weaves his way through the psychedelic landscape, encountering, among other things, mescaline, women, art, gluttony, falsehood, science, prayer, and, occasionally, truth. A portrait of an explosive decade, sparkling with inventive writing and conveying the essence of a generation.’
‘Coming on like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch... hilarious, chilling, sexy, profound, maniacal, beautiful, and outrageous all at the same time.’ – Thomas Pynchon.
More details
Price HK$ 3,500
1966 - Random House, New York - First Edition
First edition of ‘the classic novel of the 1960s an unerring, corrosively comic depiction of a campus in revoltFariña evokes the Sixties as precisely, wittily, and poignantly as F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the Jazz Age. The hero, Gnossus Pappadopoulis, weaves his way through the psychedelic landscape, encountering, among other things, mescaline, women, art, gluttony, falsehood, science, prayer, and, occasionally, truth. A portrait of an explosive decade, sparkling with inventive writing and conveying the essence of a generation.’
‘Coming on like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch... hilarious, chilling, sexy, profound, maniacal, beautiful, and outrageous all at the same time.’ – Thomas Pynchon.
More details
Price HK$ 3,500
Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone -
Richard Fari
1969 - Random House, New York - First Edition
‘A marvelous storyteller, Fariña is fit to join the company of Kerouac, Kesey, and Pynchon.’ – San Francisco Chronicle
On April 30, 1966, two days after the publication of his first novel, Been Down So Long, it Looks Like Up to Me, after a party to celebrate his wife Mimi's twenty-first birthday, Richard Fariña went off the Carmel Valley road at 90 miles per hour on the back of a friend’s motorcycle...
This fine first edition of Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone brings together the best of Fariña’s shorter writings, stories, poems, essays and song lyrics, many of which had never before been published. It also features an introduction by Fariña’s sister-in-law, Joan Baez, and notes on the text by his widow, Mimi Fariña.
More details
Price HK$ 1,600
1969 - Random House, New York - First Edition
‘A marvelous storyteller, Fariña is fit to join the company of Kerouac, Kesey, and Pynchon.’ – San Francisco ChronicleOn April 30, 1966, two days after the publication of his first novel, Been Down So Long, it Looks Like Up to Me, after a party to celebrate his wife Mimi's twenty-first birthday, Richard Fariña went off the Carmel Valley road at 90 miles per hour on the back of a friend’s motorcycle...
This fine first edition of Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone brings together the best of Fariña’s shorter writings, stories, poems, essays and song lyrics, many of which had never before been published. It also features an introduction by Fariña’s sister-in-law, Joan Baez, and notes on the text by his widow, Mimi Fariña.
More details
Price HK$ 1,600
Booms and Depressions. Some First Principles -
Irving Fisher, LL. D.
1932 - Adelphi Company, New York - First Edition
First edition of this now acknowledged classic presenting the theory of Great Depressions by the leading American economist of his generation, who many consider ‘the father of monetary economics’ (Pressman, 91), along with Milton Friedman.
Rare in such a bright and intact delicate dust jacket.
More details
Price HK$ 38,000
1932 - Adelphi Company, New York - First Edition
First edition of this now acknowledged classic presenting the theory of Great Depressions by the leading American economist of his generation, who many consider ‘the father of monetary economics’ (Pressman, 91), along with Milton Friedman.Rare in such a bright and intact delicate dust jacket.
More details
Price HK$ 38,000
Notes on Alcohol in Brandy, Whisky and Rum -
Sir Walter Gilbey Bart.
1904 - Vinton &, London - Second Edition
A fine copy of this exceedingly rare work by Sir Walter Gilbey (1831-1914), ‘a distiller of note, his family firm of wine and spirit merchants owned Gilbey's Gin and, at the time of this publication, Glen Spey, Strathmill and Knockando distilleries on Speyside.’
‘It is a curious fact that the heat of the fire also imparts a Flavour to the vaporised matter. The fire heat gives the Spirit a character which distinguishes it from Spirits distilled by the Patent Still. It imparts to the Spirit the character known as empyreumatic, which is easily recognised in the product of the Pot Still and which is quite absent in Spirit produced by the Patent Still.’
‘This pamphlet is now extremely rare, with as few as half a dozen copies known to have survived. It provides a contemporary view of the importance of "The Pot Still as used to produce the finest Malt Whiskies of the Highlands of Scotland and the finest Whiskies of Ireland" - From the introduction to the limited edition facsimile of 2007, by Tom Cannavan of Whisky Pages, referring to this, the second edition.
More details
Price HK$ 6,000
1904 - Vinton &, London - Second Edition
A fine copy of this exceedingly rare work by Sir Walter Gilbey (1831-1914), ‘a distiller of note, his family firm of wine and spirit merchants owned Gilbey's Gin and, at the time of this publication, Glen Spey, Strathmill and Knockando distilleries on Speyside.’‘It is a curious fact that the heat of the fire also imparts a Flavour to the vaporised matter. The fire heat gives the Spirit a character which distinguishes it from Spirits distilled by the Patent Still. It imparts to the Spirit the character known as empyreumatic, which is easily recognised in the product of the Pot Still and which is quite absent in Spirit produced by the Patent Still.’
‘This pamphlet is now extremely rare, with as few as half a dozen copies known to have survived. It provides a contemporary view of the importance of "The Pot Still as used to produce the finest Malt Whiskies of the Highlands of Scotland and the finest Whiskies of Ireland" - From the introduction to the limited edition facsimile of 2007, by Tom Cannavan of Whisky Pages, referring to this, the second edition.
More details
Price HK$ 6,000
The Big Sky - Inscribed -
A. B. Guthrie Jr.
1947 - William Sloane Associates, New York - First Edition
An inscribed first edition of Guthrie’s epic of the American West, inscribed ‘For John Beeley, victim of Joe Houlihan’s cold steel, with good wishes of the author. A.B. Guthrie Jr. Lexington, Ky. April 25, 1947.’
‘Reading The Big Sky is like coming from a sleet-swept New York street into the limitless, sun-baked expanses of Carl Akeley’s African Hall. In this novel, which may surely be termed superb, the Far West of a century and more ago is spread out from the wild Missouri to the towering bastions of the Rockies’ – Bruce Lancaster, The Atlantic.
‘The Best Novel of the American West’ as chosen by members of the Western Literature Association.
More details
Price HK$ 2,800
1947 - William Sloane Associates, New York - First Edition
An inscribed first edition of Guthrie’s epic of the American West, inscribed ‘For John Beeley, victim of Joe Houlihan’s cold steel, with good wishes of the author. A.B. Guthrie Jr. Lexington, Ky. April 25, 1947.’‘Reading The Big Sky is like coming from a sleet-swept New York street into the limitless, sun-baked expanses of Carl Akeley’s African Hall. In this novel, which may surely be termed superb, the Far West of a century and more ago is spread out from the wild Missouri to the towering bastions of the Rockies’ – Bruce Lancaster, The Atlantic.
‘The Best Novel of the American West’ as chosen by members of the Western Literature Association.
More details
Price HK$ 2,800
You're Stepping on my Cloak and Dagger - Signed -
Roger Hall
1957 - W. W. Norton &, New York - First Edition
A scarce signed first edition, of Hall’s autobiography, in which he recounts his experiences as an American Army officer assigned to the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. His book has become a cult favourite in intelligence circles, and which critic Charles Poore, writing in the New York Times in 1957, called "the funniest (unofficial, that is) record of rugged adventure in the O.S.S.".
‘Mr. Hall took great pleasure from accounts he received from inside the agency, he said, that the book had become part of C.I.A. training. Instructors would hold the book up in front a room of newly minted agents, Mr. Hall would recall, and tell them, “Never let this happen again”.’ - Obituary, New York Times, 2008.
‘A tale of courage, danger and wit, with a clever turn of phrase on nearly every page. The book appeals to the patriot, the thrill-seeker and the rebel, easily capturing the imagination of the inner spy within each of us’ – Lt. Michelle Mui, U.S. Navy, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif. 2005.
More details
Price HK$ 3,000
1957 - W. W. Norton &, New York - First Edition
A scarce signed first edition, of Hall’s autobiography, in which he recounts his experiences as an American Army officer assigned to the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. His book has become a cult favourite in intelligence circles, and which critic Charles Poore, writing in the New York Times in 1957, called "the funniest (unofficial, that is) record of rugged adventure in the O.S.S.".‘Mr. Hall took great pleasure from accounts he received from inside the agency, he said, that the book had become part of C.I.A. training. Instructors would hold the book up in front a room of newly minted agents, Mr. Hall would recall, and tell them, “Never let this happen again”.’ - Obituary, New York Times, 2008.
‘A tale of courage, danger and wit, with a clever turn of phrase on nearly every page. The book appeals to the patriot, the thrill-seeker and the rebel, easily capturing the imagination of the inner spy within each of us’ – Lt. Michelle Mui, U.S. Navy, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif. 2005.
More details
Price HK$ 3,000
Islands in the Stream -
Ernest Hemingway
1970 - Charles Scribner's Sons, New York - First Edition
A fine first edition of the first of Hemingway’s fictional works to be published posthumously.
Islands in the Stream follows the fortunes of Thomas Hudson from his experiences as a painter on the Gulf Stream island of Bimini, where his loneliness is broken by the vacation visit of his three young sons, to his antisubmarine activities off the coast of Cuba during World War II. The greater part of the story takes place in a Havana bar.
More details
Price HK$ 3,000
1970 - Charles Scribner's Sons, New York - First Edition
A fine first edition of the first of Hemingway’s fictional works to be published posthumously.Islands in the Stream follows the fortunes of Thomas Hudson from his experiences as a painter on the Gulf Stream island of Bimini, where his loneliness is broken by the vacation visit of his three young sons, to his antisubmarine activities off the coast of Cuba during World War II. The greater part of the story takes place in a Havana bar.
More details
Price HK$ 3,000