First edition, first printing, inscribed to publisher William J. McElwee Jr., "To Bill McElwee - who actually bought this book - not borrowed it! Anthony Gudaitis", on the front free endpaper. This is a superb copy of a scarce piece of American stream-of-consciousness modernism, in the very scare and strikingly designed dust jacket - the front flap of which advertises: "This is the most important confession of adolescence since the friends of Marie Bashkirtseff published her pitiable memoirs after her death. The difference is that Gudaitis belongs to a generation morbid with sex-exhuastion - and that our young man exercises a freedom of expression that was unthinkable even in the Paris of the "nineties." No one - young or old - can read this book without giving thought to a despair which pervades the young of our time." Gudaitis edited, under the pseudonym Anton Gud, a libertarian manifesto entitled Don't Vote Til You Read this (1952), and also penned a pastiche of Lady Chatterley's Lover (itself advertised on the rear panel of the jacket) entitled Lady Chatterley's Husbands, published by Faro in 1931. William J. McElwee was the publisher at Ritten House, Philadelphia.
The post A Young Man About to Commit Suicide. appeared first on Peter Harrington.