The Octopus Frontier.
San Francisco: The Carp Press, 1960 Stock Code: 145608
First edition, first printing, of Brautigan's second collection of poetry, comprising 22 poems and featuring his first photographic cover, the image taken by North Beach photographer Gui de Angulo - "it is striking and just misses being sinister" (McClure, p. 172).
Brautigan collector Craig V. Showalter notes that The Octopus Frontier, along with Brautigan's other early works The Galilee Hitch-Hiker (1958) and Lay the Marble Tea (1959) "were fragile and printed in small editions" with an unknown print run (p. 227). William Hjortsberg recounts a trade agreed to by Brautigan with Jayne Walker - Brautigan, knowing that The Octopus Frontier was "already a rare and desirable early Brautigan title", offered a signed copy for a supply of saffron brought to the US from Spain by Walker.
Some of the poems had first appeared in Richard Duerden's magazine Foot and Jack Spicer's magazine J.
Description
Octavo. Original black and white pictorial wrappers, stapled.
Illustrations
Title page with Brautigan's teardrop-shaped trout drawing next to imprint.
Condition
Wrappers a little rubbed and soiled, contents fine. In all very good.
Bibliography
William Hjortsberg, Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan, 2012; Michael McClure, "Ninety-One Things about Richard Brautigan" & Craig V. Showalter, "Notes from a Brautigan Collector", in John F. Barber, ed., Richard Brautigan: Essays
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