Yale University library - rejection letter (1963) (1 Viewer)

Interesting to note that the academic world was rejecting Buk as early as 1963. Here is a letter to the LouJon Press from the Yale library declining a copy of It Catches My Heart In Its Hands.
 

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"...we have no use for this book in the Yale library." Ha. That's great. Where did you find that?
 
That's funny. I guess they weren't interested in books by unknown poets.
Thanks, MDR...
 
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Fame or an MFA would probably be a requirement. I'm still not sure if Bukowski would be welcome at that library.
There are quite a few B items at the Beinecke (Yale) library, including the Martinelli-Bukowski and the Michael Hathaway/Chiron Review-Bukowski material.
 
Interesting to note that the academic world was rejecting Buk as early as 1963. Here is a letter to the LouJon Press from the Yale library declining a copy of It Catches My Heart In Its Hands.

Jon Webb gave me the letter and when I was putting out some of my scraggily House of Books catalogues in the 90s. For fun I inserted the letter and Ed Smith bought it for $30 bucks. Years later I donated the letter from James Babb who was Yale's head of the library and a real bookman who found out about the letter and sent an apology to Webb. I gave Babb's letter back to Yale about 2 years ago. While the interlude is pretty comical the truth is that Webb was extremely aggressive in his marketing. Webb sent out hundreds of IT CATCHES to libraries unsolicated with a bill betting that most would pay. The lady at Yale was probably under instructions to return all books that had not been specifically ordered by the library. It would be interesting to know what Yale paid for the Martinelli- Bukowski correspondence.
 
Does anyone recall what Webb was selling IT CATCHES for. I'd guess 3 or 4 bucks. My deal with Webb at the time was that I'd buy 100 copies of IT CATCHES prepublication for $250. He had run out of money and needed to buy paper to finish It Catches. I had a written agreement with him that he would buy back the books for the same $2.50 each which he did. He was a great letter writer and there must be copies of the letter he sent to the various libraries somewhere.
I'd love to see one.
 
Does anyone recall what Webb was selling IT CATCHES for. I'd guess 3 or 4 bucks.
Cover price was $5; however, there is an editor's note on page 96 of The Outsider 3 indicating that anyone who sends Loujon $2 by June 21, 1963 will get a signed copy of It Catches... Pages 21 and 65 were printed earlier and on page 21, the copy price is listed as $3, but early subscribers can get one for $2 since Buk waived author's royalties and if committed by April 30, 1963, the price is $2. On page 65, the signed price is listed as $5 and unsigned as $3, unless one orders early, and it's $2.

Quite the business model.
 
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Do you think Hank got an author's royalty?? I don't. Pretty funny! Thanks that's great stuff.

Sadly I bought a copy of Crucifix in NYC where it was almost immediately remaindered. I believe I paid half the listed price and this was less than a year after publication.
With what money he could scrape up Webb himself bought back some of the remaindered copies and resold them at a profit. Webb felt that Lyle Stuart had no idea how to handle Crucifix.
 

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