(Beat Generation) Brautigan, Richard. The Galilee Hitch-Hiker. San Francisco: The White Rabbit Press, May, 1958. FIRST EDITION: THIS EDITION IS LIMITED TO TWO HUNDRED COPIES. 8vo - 8-1/2" x 6-7/16". [16] pp. Hand-stitched original parchment outer wrappers with an illustration by Kenn Davis of a carnival midway, with titles printed in black to the front outer wrapper, over red stiff paper inner wrappers with titles printed in black to the front inner wrapper. This remarkably rare volume contains Brautigan’s legendary single long poem divided into nine separate parts, serving as his second overall published book and appearing just one year after his debut broadside/chapbook collection, The Return of the Rivers (1957).
The physical condition of the item is graded NEAR FINE (utilizing the standard antiquarian book grading scale for works on paper). The delicate parchment outer wrapper exhibits light, natural toning isolated along the spine fold, but otherwise presents as a remarkably fresh, intact specimen. Internally, the text leaves remain entirely clean, bright, and fine throughout.
Joe Dunn, Greyhound Bus Lines, and White Rabbit Press Genesis
A triumph of mid-century underground printing, The Galilee Hitch-Hiker captures the raw, DIY ethos of the emerging San Francisco Renaissance and the Jack Spicer circle. The chapbook was printed by Brautigan's close friend Joe Dunn, the visionary founder of the White Rabbit Press, who utilized the printing and mimeograph equipment at the Greyhound Bus Company in San Francisco where he was then employed. This particular copy is historically significant, bearing a handwritten bibliographic note and the signature of legendary printer Graham Mackintosh—who would assume structural control of the White Rabbit Press in 1962—inscribed directly on the colophon: "Printed by Joe Dunn at Greyhound - Graham Mackintosh." The narrative poem itself stands as a masterwork of Beat-era surrealism, famously transplanting the 19th-century French symbolist poet Charles Baudelaire into anachronistic, whimsical, and grotesque 20th-century American vignettes, picking up Jesus in a Model A Ford.
Institutional Scarcity and Census
Given the inherently fragile, hand-sewn paper construction of this mimeographed edition and its tiny printing of only 200 copies, survival rates are extraordinarily low. Most copies were sold casually by Brautigan himself on the streets of San Francisco or distributed via the legendary City Lights Bookstore, ensuring the destruction or loss of the vast majority of the print run. A current global sweep of the OCLC/WorldCat database locates only 20 specimens preserved in institutional special collections worldwide: making a complete copy with both the delicate parchment outer wrappers and the secondary inner red wrappers intact a premier rarity of counterculture literature.
THE SURVIVAL OF THIS EXCEEDINGLY RARE BEAT PIECE, BEARING AN INTEGRAL GRAHAM MACKINTOSH BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INSCRIPTION AND REPRESENTING THE EXTREMELY FRAGILE 1958 TRUE FIRST PRINTING, REPRESENTS A CRITICAL ACQUISITION FOR INSTITUTIONAL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS OR EXTRAORDINARY PRIVATE COLLECTIONS DEVOTED TO THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN POETRY, THE BEAT GENERATION, OR THE AVANT-GARDE SAN FRANCISCO RENAISSANCE.
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