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Ebay bargain of the day... (or not, if you are living in the real world) (1 Viewer)

hank solo

Just practicin' steps and keepin' outta the fights
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Wow. What A Bargain...

320717279817

The Days Run Away Horses, BSP, HB, Twenty-Sixth Printing (year 2000), $609.00 USD :abge:
 
That is a bit on the high side. I know where you can get a xerox of an early Bukowski chapbook for only $400.
 
You guys don't get it. That book is "virtually impossible to find in hardcover." That may be the last copy you ever see. Pass it up at your own peril.
 
I haven't even looked at it to tell, that this is a fraud: It could never be the heavily sought 26th printing for only 600 bucks! Never! I've been searching for this one for over a decade and it never came up! By the way: is this the infamous "signed 26th edition"? No serious seller would part with this gem under 20,000.-!
 
People just don't recognize a bargain when they see it. Oh well, that's their loss.
 
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Oh, it's the 26th printing! I totally spaced on that very important detail. That's the edition where Bukowski decided he hadn't done it quite right the first time and ran the whole book through the typer again, but this time he pulled out all the stops, he let it blow, and when he was done he mailed it off to Martin, and Martin called and said "I can't print this, Hank. They'll shut me down. The Catholic church will collapse. All the dock workers will go on strike. Shipping will come to a standstill. School girls in plaid dresses will riot. I can't publish it!" And Bukowski screamed into the receiver "Print the muther!" So Martin printed it, and when copies started to hit the streets, the news spread like wild fire. Federal authorities were called in and they managed to round up all but 18 copies that had been sent out in advance to retired English teachers. Those copies could not be retrieved. Oh sure, the feds paid a visit to each teacher's palatial home in the hills, but in each and every case, the prof was found murdered and the book was no where to be seen. Since that day, it's been extremely dangerous to even admit you've seen a copy, let alone own one. The most any sane person would allow is that they've read a 10th generation photocopy, but they didn't keep it, and they don't know where it is now! It's THAT printing. Well, sure, $609 is a damned steal.
 
Same dude has ANOTHER hc of Days up now, for $679. This is the elusive 12th printing. I went ahead and offered $35 on the later printing, so we'll see.
 
For one thing, the "P" does'nt match Nymark's copy at all. I wonder if JSA James Spence Authentication can be trusted.
I sure would'nt bet $4.500 on it.


 
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I forgot to mention that with the 27th printing of The Days Run Away, Martin restored the original text. Bukowski did not object. That 19th copy is mythical. The secretary at Black Sparrow Press said she'd mailed out "18 or 19" - she couldn't remember exactly. She's still in FBI custody. The want to know where that 19th copy went. There were only 18 retired professors on the list Martin handed her, and she swears she didn't keep one for herself. There's a publisher's rep who claims to have seen a copy briefly that was being hand delivered to a Hollywood director, not mailed, but the director denies the story. The search for the 19th copy continues.
 
Rumor has it, a friend of a friend of a Japanese Bukowski collector, once claimed to have seen a copy of said 19th printing in the house of an American Bukowski collector living in Japan. The American talked about selling it on Ebay, with one restriction though, he would'nt sell it to people living in the L.A. area, only to "real Buksters", as he called them.
 
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Everyone knows those LA Buksters are all posuers.

[You mean the 19th copy of the 26th printing, not the 19th printing, right?]

An interesting side note: there's a little known condition in all of Bukowski's contracts that if one of his books ever reaches the 99th printing, all of the type will be scrambled and reset in random order, and the 100th printing will be the first in a series of new works to be generated by this experimental technique. Buk was deeply interested in avant garde lit and wanted to enter the field, but only posthumously.
 
[You mean the 19th copy of the 26th printing, not the 19th printing, right?]

Of course! My mistake.

An interesting side note: there's a little known condition in all of Bukowski's contracts that if one of his books ever reaches the 99th printing, all of the type will be scrambled and reset in random order, and the 100th printing will be the first in a series of new works to be generated by this experimental technique. Buk was deeply interested in avant garde lit and wanted to enter the field, but only posthumously.

The technique is also known as, "Bukowski going Burroughs". As everyone knows, Bukowski was a huge fan of the Burroughs-Gysin cut up technique, only Bukowski took it one step further and reset all the letters in random order, instead of just the words, like Burroughs and Gysin did. "Let the letters create new words by themselves!", as Bukowski always said, whenever he was asked questions about this new revolutionary experimental technique of his, although sometimes he just said things like, "spnickl ntyfl flafn", as a way of making people understand the concept.
 

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