Bukowski reading in Michigan? (1 Viewer)

chronic

old and in the way
I was just looking up some stuff in Fogel's price guide and came across this (on page 213).

(POSTER) (1968); b&w poster for an appearance and reading at "Paperback Unlimited" in Ferndale, Michigan, Oct. 31, 1968; 1/50 copies printed & designed by Sharon Malone, wife of maverick poet, Hank Malone.
$150

Did this reading ever actually take place? I don't see anything in the timeline here and don't recall ever seeing it mentioned. Does anybody here have additional info?
 
1968?! That doesn't seem possible.

I think there may have been quite a few readings that he didn't detail in letters, so I would assume the Michigan reading is legit, but Fogel just typo'ed the date. He didn't usually write very specifically about the readings in letters. It was typically more along the lines of, "Back from reading. They paraded my guts through the streets on pikes." or something like that. ;) But that would have been the first reading, so he certainly would have mentioned it in more detail in a letter. You would think.

But there is something interesting about that date, because he was in Detroit doing a reading on television on October 31, 1974. Maybe that is the actual year?
 
But there is something interesting about that date, because he was in Detroit doing a reading on television on October 31, 1974. Maybe that is the actual year?

That would make sense. No offense to Al Fogel but I have "issues" with the accuracy of his book anyway. Particularly the prices he lists... seems like he just kinda pulled a lot of them out of thin air and that they have no basis in reality (even at the time that the book was issued). It's as if he said to himself "I have this book/magazine and I can't find a price for it anywhere so I guess I get to decide what it's worth."
 
Yeah, well it would seem that any pre-internet price lists (for any "collectible") need to be re-assessed. Something could seem very rare in the past, but now that every attic and basement is open to the internet, more stuff comes to light.

Say what you will about eBay, but is there a better tool for getting an idea of what the market will bear? (The market as a whole, not the one collector that Joe's Rare Books can afford to wait 10 years to sell to.)

So, yeah. I don't pay any mind to the prices in Fogel's book. At the time it was a great resource, but it's more or less irrelevant now, almost 30 years later. No offense to Al.
 
There's a "Notes of A Dirty Old Man" from the LAFP, Dec. 13, 1974 that begins:
"I figured 500-plus air might make this community college outside Detroit worth my soul so I got on American and worked the stewardesses for extra drinks. I was to land a day early, and I made it down the ramp waiting for some professor to grab me and one did and I told him, 'I'm yours now, How can you tell what you've got until it gets off the plane?' 'We can't. My job's more or less on the line each time but it's worth it.' Each year he went out and got one. It had been Ginsberg, Stephen Spender and James Dickey int eh last three years and he still had his job. I warned him that I had been thrown out of the women's dorm at the University of Kansas after a reading and we walked toward his car. He drove me to a hotel in Detroit and left me with a mess of phone numbers and instructions..."
It's a cool story, and I always had wondered if it was an actual trip. Looks like it was.
 
Well that's typical, there are three contradictory possibilities for the venue; "Paperback Unlimited" (a bookstore, I would assume), a "community college outside Detroit," and MCCC-TV.

Though it's quite possible he did the bookstore (or was it a community college? ;)) and then read at the television station later that evening. But the TV station date comes from an obscure LP that included the date of the reading, so I'm pretty sure that one is accurate.
 
I vaguely recall Al asking me about some Bukowski prices back when he first did his biblio (in the 80s?) I doubt he just made any of them up. He likely got them from rare book dealers, either in person/letter/phone, or from mail order catalogs. Catalogs were a major resource back before the web. The Internet turned prices on their head. Expensive stuff got cheap, cheap stuff got expensive. Now it's pure supply and demand, on steroids. A different world.
 

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