The Face on the Cutting-room Floor by Cameron McCabe  (Gollancz, 1974)  VG in publisher’s distinctive yellow d/w and first edition thus of 1937 thriller set in cutting rooms of Soho, a weird jazzed-up murder story written by a youthful German emigré, who, appropriately, went on to write jazz articles for Melody Maker, and was later a sexologist in Austria. He wrote several more novels under his own name of Ernest Borneman whose biography never sounded quite real (work associations with Wilhelm Reich and Orson Welles). At the halfway mark in this catalogue we reach a point of crossroads where names and themes start to overlap, creating their own maps: ghosts of cinema, writers double lives, serial killers, the mysteries of the cut, the Soho lowlife, weird academic research, lists and archeology, other landscapes, lost weekends, bad sex, wrong judgements, wild music, the crisscross of connections, plus philosophy, with Herbert Read pointing out the Hegelian influences on The Face on the Cutting-room Floor. It was one of those one-off perfect cul-de-sacs (like The Deadly Percheron), a seemingly straightforward investigation of the murder of a film actress whose part has been excised in the cutting-room. The narrator is tried and acquitted despite being the murderer and kills again to eliminate the detective in pursuit, at which point a minor character takes over to reinvestigate the case in terms of all the other characters as likely culprits because “the possibilities for alternative endings to any detective story are infinite.” The book is then discussed as having already been published before another murder is committed, leading Julian Symons in Bloody Murder to declare it “a dazzling, and perhaps fortunately unrepeatable, box of tricks.”  Because of the Soho connection, Borneman was bound to come to the attention of Julian Maclaren-Ross, who had a fascination for mysterious biographies hidden behind aliases, hence his curiosity about the true identity of McCabe. M-R described the book as a “brilliant, off-beat detective story” which he ascribed to Cyril Connolly and told him so. The review in Punch, saying that no straight novel published that month had the qualities of this crime story, was signed “Ross Maclaren”. Regarding Borneman’s later murderous Austrian protege in The Vienna Woods Killer (see above), as a voracious  reader the killer may well have known the book, which was published in German under Borneman’s name. The killer posed as a journalist to interview police about murders he had committed. One presumes he was acquainted with Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, a film of great relevance, with its charming, boyish Germanic killer revisiting the scene of his brutal murder of a prostitute, by pretending to be a journalist from The Observer. A reporter remarked on a strange tie worn by Borneman’s protege, made out of a roll of 35mm film, which “may have said something about his strange interior life”. 

The Technique of Film Editing by Karel Reisz (Focal, 1953) First edition. Near fine in protected d/w. Very minor foxing to edges. Very rare; even rarer in such good condition. Compiled for the British Film Academy by future director of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Instructive in these days in which editing has been reduced from a craft to a matter of keyboard assembly. “A cut from a to b is acceptable because the action is ostensibly continuous, although a portion of the movement is omitted.” See The Face on the Cutting-room Floor (immediately above). See also film Unrequited Love (2006); Petit commentary: “Janet Leigh in the shower in Psycho. Filmmaker as stalker. Hitchcock, for all the droll manner and Cockney formality, a man with the soul of a stalker. That obsession with those blonde actresses he manufactured - each more contrived and manipulated than the last - amounting to formal sadism. Shoot that film. Cut that picture. Murder that blonde.”

The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker (Granta, 1989) First edition. As new in d/w. Representative of a certain kind of yuppie/nerdy/super-anal American experience, post-Bret Easton Ellis, which understood the future of the shopping mall and was representative of the US novel in transition. Story of one man’s lunch hour. Lists. Footnotes. Twins with Marc Augé’s Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995); see above. Sale includes paperback copies of Vox (Granta, 1998 reprint) and Checkpoint (Chatto paperback original, 2004); the first fine (unread); the latter VG with some turned page corners. One, telephone sex ; the other, shooting the President. “‘Sometimes the opposite happens and I’m crowding up to the big moment in the story and my orgasm is dawdling, not all the precincts are reporting yet,  and so I have to read the chosen come-sentence very slowly, syllable by syllable, “up ... and ...  down ... on ... his ... fuck ... pole...’” Post-9/11 novel: “Hey hey, ho ho - George Bush has got to go.” Plus Granta first edition of Baker’s third book, U and I, with Baker ... up ... and ... down ... on ...  Updike. VG+ in d/w. 

City of Encounters: A London Divertissement by Thomas Burke (Constable, 1932) First edition. About VG in d/w. Spine slightly cocked, some foxing. Rubbed jacket, with portion missing from top front cover of otherwise spectacular drawn design showing London, St Pauls, Charlie Chaplin (and others) and the Thames. Peter Harrington has better copy of same at £125. Burke was a prolific Ackroydish (see below) London writer: “Let us grant that Regent Street and Oxford Street are unworthy to be compared with Fifth Avenue or Unter den Linden or Michigan Boulevard or the Champs Elysées; that we have enclosed our great cathedral within three of the drabbest streets that any city possesses . . . And still London is a great city.”    

The Great Fire of London by Peter Ackroyd (Hamish Hamilton, 1982). Near fine copy in d/w. Standard browning to pages and very minor spotting to inside d/w. First novel. First edition. Second impression December 1982. Scarce even so. Cycloramic portrait of  metropolis. Homosexual underground. Vagrants. Unemployed. Rich and successful. Babble of contemporary media. Premonitions of the eventual conflagration.  

Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell (No Exit Press, 1998) First UK edition, review copy, about fine in d/w with press release loosely inserted. Woodrell, described by Annie Proulx as “reaming the language with a dry corncob” is something of a writer’s writer and many queue to praise (Lehane, Pelecanos). High pulp, written with the finely-tuned ear of a man who might well have a PhD in American vernacular. The UK edition had a much smaller print run than the US one; hence rarer.

Laidlaw by William McIlvanney (Hodder and Stoughton, 1977) First UK edition. VG in protected d/w. Some spotting to top edge. First outing for unconventional, uncompromising Glasgow copper (what else?), written by late sportswriter Hugh’s brother, of whom Ross Macdonald said: “Staying power of a saga. Talent and daring.”  Founder of Tartan Noir; a key figure in unsurpassed Celtic trinity with Alan Sharp and Peter McDougall.   

The Papers of Tony Veitch by William McIlvanney (Hodder and Stoughton, 1983) First UK edition. Near fine in d/w, with tiny traces of foxing to top edge.  Both Laidlaw and this were winners of Silver Dagger award. Second outing of three for unconventional, uncompromising Glasgow copper (what else?). “The wine he gave me wisny wine.” 

The Sporting Club by Thomas McGuane (Andre Deutsch, 1969) First UK edition, VG in d/w with minor rubbing to edge extremities. Author’s first novel. Subsequent works filmed include the cult 92 in the Shade (Warren Oates) and Rancho de Luxe (Jeff Bridges). Mania of boredom, sex games, power games, death games. “For the next two hours, he tried to read Thackeray’s  Pendennis, a volume from the sunbleached blue uniform set that was the porch’s only decoration. Even the weevil tunnel that penetrated Chapter One sent his mind hurtling back to Janey’s bare-assed splendour.”  

Voyage to a Beginning by Colin Wilson (C&A Woolf, 1969) First UK edition. Autobiography. Illustrated. About VG in d/w. Some dust and spotting on top edge. Signed by author “For Alex, with warm regards, Oct 1977”. Wilson’s reputation burned bright after publication of The Outsider (1956, Suez, Elvis, beatniks; youthquake; austerity and hysteria) and crashed the following year with Religion and the Rebel: “Another critic who had helped launch The Outsider had already explained to various acquaintances that he had not actually read it, but thought it deserved a good review on the strength of its blurb.” “We are sick of the Boy Colin,” wrote Nancy Spain and a week later Wilson’s publisher hung him out to dry, advised him to stop writing for a year or two and get a job. The “Wilson phenomenon” was over before he was out of his twenties.   

Rachman by Shirley Green (Michael Joseph, 1979) First edition. VG++ in protected d/w. Winner CWA Gold Dagger Award for non-fiction. With pasted in erratum slip accepting that Diana Dors never met Rachman, with reference to pps. 70-1, 73-4, 108 and 154. More crossroads: Rachman was exposed through the Profumo Affair and his relationships with Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. His name became synonymous with ruthless slum landlord practices in a then squalid Notting Hill, which evicted unprofitable white statutory controlled tenants and replaced them with West Indians desperate for accommodation at any price. Rachman was the underbelly of what would become swinging London. He arrived penniless via a German concentration camp in his native Poland and a labour camp in Russia; from there he made the logical move into flat-letting and making other people’s lives miserable. 

Death on Credit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (John Calder, 1989) Translated by Ralph Manheim. First thus. Near fine in d/w. Some rubbing to cover and minor browning to pages. Mordant classic. “They’re singing in chorus, completely out of tune . . . It’s amazing the way they manage to torture their mouths, to dilate them, to blow them up like real trombones . . . and pull them in again . . . They’re on their last legs . . . They’re dying of convulsions . . . They’re praying and signing hymns . . . There’s this big tall battle-axe with only one eye, she yodeling so hard it’s likely to pop out of her head.” 

Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (John Calder, 1988) Translated by Ralph Manheim. First thus. Near fine in protected d/w. Minor browning to pages; otherwise very crisp copy. The Robinson to end all Robinsons: “Our own journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength.” “He’d got a good deal thinner since Toulouse, and something had happened to his face, something I’d never seen before, a kind of portrait had settled on his features, with forgetfulness and silence all around it.” Included in sale, a signed and inscribed first edition, fine, of Robinson by Petit (Cape, 1993). Unique pairing. 

Black List Section H by Francis Stuart (Lilliput Press, 1995) Review copy with inserted slip. First edition thus in folded wraps, about VG apart from evidence of reviewer folding page corners. Stuart (with Céline) was one of the great intransigent writers of the twentieth century, who, compared to his compatriot Beckett, made all the wrong moves: fascist wartime Berlin compared to Resistance France; tricky pro-Nazi broadcasts compared to silence. Stuart featured in the film The Falconer (Sinclair & Petit, 1997). Life was all drift, he said, but it is important what currents you drift on. Loosely inserted copy of long Petit Guardian review of the book (“Journey to the End of the Night”): “unique chronicle of daily existence in wartime Berlin”, with Stuart driven by an impulse that put him beyond the scope of most literature: to hold a candle to a great darkness and render it familiar. The book was dedicated in memory of John Lodwick (see above), “dearest of friends”. Included in the sale is Lodwick’s Somewhere A Voice Is Calling, a (very good, undeservedly obscure) Iberian novel dedicated to Stuart (“In love and homage”), (Heinemann, 1953). Reprint of  first edition. VG in d/w.   

Balcony of Europe by Aidan Higgins (Calder and Boyars, 1972) Paperback edition, first thus; 2) Helsingor Station & Other Departures: Fictions and Autobiographies, 1956-89 (Secker and Warburg, 1989) First UK edition, review copy with folded slip loosely inserted, VG in d/w; 3) Dog Days (Secker and Warburg, 1998) Autobiography, fine in d/w. Higgins is a terrific writer, praised by Beckett and in the process of being forgotten. His first novel Langrishe, Go Down was adapted for television by Harold Pinter. Higgins incidentally opposed the cultural rehabilitation of fellow Irishman Francis Stuart (see above). The short story The Bird I Fancied, mentioned above, an exemplary pub crawl among other things, is included in Helsigør Station. The faulty memory that identified Nicolas Roeg perhaps should have recalled that the confusion was over Higgins’s compatriot, author William Trevor. “The William Trevor Doppelgänger passed me en route to the Gents with eyes bulging and gingery hair upstanding. He gave the impression of always advancing against a headwind, the eyes in his head swivelling.”  In that Irish habit of being away, Higgins has been all over: Spain (Malaga, “capital of sorrow”) in the novel Balcony of Europe (coldest winter since 1740); Berlin; Copenhagen. He interviews Anthony Burgess (see above) in the Savoy: “reserved affability; fingers clamped rigid like Beckett’s on the cigar (Beckett’s brand too), the noble head enveloped in Daneman smoke.” “Fell foul of Professor Ricks and Saul Bellow, for reasons unclear.” Back cover of Helsigør quotes Petit Times review, beneath William Trevor himself, no less, in Irish Times (“a beady eye”): “The sort of writing that looks random, but is in fact highly selective and not aimed at any old target. He goes hunting the literary equivalent of snipe, and gets bull’s eye after bull’s eye, making it look easy, until you have a go.” 

Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic by Dan Auiler (Titan Books, 1999) Foreword by Martin Scorsese. Illustrated. About fine in d/w. Review copy with loosely inserted press release, with coffee ring and small spill, otherwise immaculate. Plus copy of director Petit’s version of draft script commentary (15 pages; signed) for the film Unrequited Love (2006), which contains sections on Hitchcock (also see above), including rivalry with Antonioni: “Hitchcock, his career in decline, was obsessed with the ambiguities of Blow-Up and screened it all the time, regarding it more advanced, technically and sexually, than anything he could do under the Hollywood studio system. Antonioni was obsessed in return. He talked of wanting to shoot a scene with a man thinking about opening a door in a long, empty hotel corridor and making the audience wait beyond the point of boredom until suspense takes over and danger is sensed. That is the way I work, he said. Hitchcock eat your heart out. I can do it better with no props, nothing, just one man standing alone in a corridor, waiting to turn the handle of a door.” 

Rosie Hogarth by Alexander Baron (Jonathan Cape, 1951) First UK edition, VG++ in intact, unclipped, protected d/w. London novel, Islington setting. “Four years after the war ended, Jack Agass came home from London; and within four weeks he was engaged to be married,” and not to Rosie Hogarth. Third novel by one of finest London writers (The Lowlife - cited by Jon Savage as definitive pre-punk - King Dido). Hackney Downs School; fought Mosley’s blackshirts in Whitechapel; card-carrying Communist. Later worked as BBC scriptwriter (Poldark, adapting Dickens and Austen.) Carl Foreman turned The Human Kind into The Victors (1963), a big war epic about a US platoon’s (English in the book) progress from Sicily to Berlin. “Baron has been the subject of essays by Iain Sinclair.” (Wikipedia). He featured in a white Lino Ventura raincoat in The Cardinal and the Corpse (Sinclair & Petit, 1993), talking about returning to London after the war. 

The Damned United by David Peace (Faber and Faber, 2006) First UK edition, fine in d/w; soft cover paperback original. Richard Williams (see above) cover quote: “Amazing. I can’t imagine there’s ever been a more extraordinary football novel in any language.” Review copy with publicity sheet loosely inserted and publisher’s letter to Claire Armitstead, literary editor of the Guardian, plus email copy of review by Petit: “Puppet-masters condemned to the sidelines, (managers) are caught up in a play of control, destiny and impotence that affords Shakespearean possibilities: Taylor, Redknapp, Atkinson and Pleat in a bad rep version of one of the lesser comedies; Hoddle in Troilus and Glenda, sulking in his tent; Sven and Nancy as one of the problem plays; Fergie a full-blown, crimson-faced Scottish Lear, with Cantona and Keane his Goneril and Regan, Giggs his Cordelia. No Prospero unless it's Martin O'Neill or his mentor Brian Clough, a man not without a touch of the Calibans, someone sufficiently aware to have been conscious of the tragic dimension of his rise and fall and played to the hilt.”

Arfur: Teenage Pinball Queen by Nik Cohn (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970) Uncorrected proof of first edition. Orange wraps. VG apart from minor cracking to spine, plus creasing. Rare in any condition. Signed I/S in pencil, indicating it was bought from one of Iain Sinclair’s collections; countersigned by Sinclair in verification. Cohn’s association with the Who inspired “Pinball Wizard” which became the central motif of Peter Townshend’s rock opera Tommy, filmed by Ken Russell. Cohn would similarly inspire Saturday Night Fever, via a piece of journalism, and so be indirectly responsible for the second fame of the Bee Gees. 

Almost Cover to Cover by Michael Snow, A.L. Rees, Amy Taubin, Malcom Le Grice and others (Black Dog Publishing, 2001) First edition about fine in soft cover with some creasing. Finely illustrated, black and white and colour. Essays published to coincide with first major exhibition in UK by Canadian artist, experimental filmmaker and jazz musician, Michael Snow, at the Arnolfini, Bristol. Plus loosely inserted copy of Manny Farber essay on Snow (1969) from Negative Space (1971): “The cool kick of Michael Snow’s Wavelength was in seeing so many new actors - light and space, walls, soaring windows, and an amazing number of color-shadow variations that live and die in the window panes - made into major esthetic components of the movie experience.” 

Soft City: What Cities Do To Us, And How They Change The Way We Live, Think and Feel by Jonathan Raban (Hamish Hamilton, 1974) First UK edition VG++ in protected d/w. Author photo by Walker Evans. Dedicated to Robert and Caroline Lowell. Plasticity, privacy and freedom. Makes the point that we all carry different maps in our heads of the places where we live, much based on superstition, and, one might add, Clockwork Orange paranoia. Described as an “imaginative inquiry” into to the life of the individual in the big city, leaving the reader free to wonder how much is made up. “There are rumours of a gang called the Envies. Their brutal, seemingly motiveless assaults on strangers go largely unreported by the press, apparently for fear of ‘carbon copy’ crimes. Who might not fall victim to the Envies? You have a car, a girl, a new suit, a cigarette, even a smile on your face, and they may come at you out of the dark. They choose the most elegant and unruffled parts of the cities for their attacks.” Nah. Made it up. First non-academic work and acknowledged classic by author who went on to establish reputation as a travel writer. Collectible.      

Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs? by B.S. Johnson. (Hutchinson, Midway Original, 1973) First edition. Paperback in laminate d/w. Fine. “It is a fact of crucial significance in the history of the novel that James Joyce opened the first cinema in Dublin in 1909.” “Are we concerned with courtesy?” “Someone has to keep the records.” “What are hands for, if not to hide the eyes?” Final essay in book Everyone Knows Somebody Who’s Dead. “Popular acclaim must surely follow.” Suicide at forty after what he perceived to be a career of commercial failure. Rare example of contemporary experimental English novelist. “Guts.” (Anthony Burgess) Scarce. 

Accident by Nicholas Mosley (Hodder & Stoughton) First UK edition, VG in protected d/w. Small tear to top front end paper. Car crash; death; all an “accident”. Pre-Morse Oxford. Tutorials. Professional jealousy. Beautiful young things. Media punditry. Obligatory adultery. Civilised seething. More famous as a clipped film adaptation by Pinter, directed by Losey ,with Bogarde and Stanley Baker, another exercise in class decadence following collaboration on The Servant from the novel by Robin Maugham. Pinter, not above a bit of social climbing, grabbed himself a fine brace with these two, both old Etonians and disguised aristos: Sir Nicholas, 3rd Baron Ravensdale and 7th Baronet of Ancoats; and 2nd Viscount Maugham. (Highly sought after title; top-end UK dealers charge twice the price, or check out Raptis Rare Books in Brattleboro, VT, USA at a staggering £796.54.)  

Inside Daisy Clover by Gavin Lambert (Hamish Hamilton, 1963) First UK edition, about VG in somewhat rubbed and creased d/w with suntanned spine; some foxing, slightly cocked and dusty top edge. Rare. By the author of The Slide Area and The Goodby People. Educated Cheltenham, along with Lindsay Anderson, Lambert eventually  decamped to gay Hollywood where he made name as screenwriter, social observer and novelist. He claimed Nick Ray was his lover while they worked together on Bitter Victory, which Ray directed and Lambert part wrote. The film of Inside Daisy Clover, directed by dependable if unexciting liberal Robert Mulligan, starred Natalie Wood, Christopher Plummer and Robert Redford in a discreetly bi-sexual role that probably delayed his stardom by several years.    

Football Quartet: The Damned United by David Peace (Faber and Faber, 2006) First edition. Uncorrected proof copy. Soft covers. Almost VG, with rubbing to top and bottom edge of spine front. 2) The Perfect 10: Football’s Dreamers, Schemers, Playmakers and Playboys by Richard Williams (Faber and Faber, 2006) First edition. Fine in d/w. 2006 was something of a vintage year for Faber on the f&football front. 3) Among the Thugs by Bill Buford (Secker & Warburg, 1991) First edition. Uncorrected proof copy, VG, with loosely inserted letter to Richard Rayner from Dan Franklin, hoping he agrees it is a brilliant and important book. Buford was editor of Granta magazine at the time, later famous as a foodie, and the book was the subject of much gossip as to whether he would deliver. Buford claimed to have an inside track on football hooliganism, a sexy subject among the media classes. As it was, its impact was eclipsed by Alan Clarke’s film of two years earlier, The Firm with Gary Oldman, and Buford’s methodology was questioned by insiders: “I was there and this book does not represent what was going on. For excellent alternatives try Steaming In, Armed for the Match or Congratulations, you just met the IFC;” all a bit more hands-on. 4) Football Delirium by Chris Oakley (Karnac, 2007) First edition. Proof copy, fine in soft covers, with loosely inserted press release. Oakley is a psychoanalyst and football fanatic, travelling to matches all over the world in what amounts to a kind of stalking and strange acts of shrinkage: “One autumnal Friday evening I am in Limerick taking in a run of the mill Irish second division game.” Why? What is the real agenda here? Fascinating. 

The Animal-Lover’s Book of Beastly Murder by Patricia Highsmith (Penzler Books, New York, 1986) Hardcover. Limited first edition of 250 copies numbered 128 and signed by the author, fine in publisher’s slipcase. There is an account of Petit’s meetings with the author in The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar. These involved a misunderstanding over a German dictionary that Petit was given to deliver to Highsmith’s then girlfriend in Berlin, which led Highsmith to write to the editor of Time Out, for which he then worked, querying whether Petit was an impostor. Facsimile copies of this correspondence are loosely inserted into the slipcase.   

The Polish Officer by Alan Furst (Harper Collins, 1995) First UK edition, about fine in d/w. Third novel of highly collectible author whose superior wartime novels cleverly exploit interstices of the great game. 

Ratking by Michael Dibden (Faber and Faber, 1988) First UK edition, VG++ in unclipped, slightly rubbed d/w with usual browning to pages. With bookplate of literary agents A.D Peters; from office of Anthony Jones. Dibdin’s third novel and first Aurelio Zen outing. Dibdin appeared in Petit film Thriller (1994) for BBC Bookmark, a very rare DVD copy of which is included in the sale. 

Maclaren-Ross Double Translation. 1) Pierrot by Raymond Queneau (John Lehmann, 1950) Translated from the French by Julian Maclaren-Ross. First UK edition about VG in water-stained boards but in VG protected, clean pictorial d/w with some rubbing and very minor chipping to bottom of spine. Purchased from an Iain Sinclair catalogue, marked I/S on front end paper; signed by Iain Sinclair as authentication. 2) Maigret and the Burglar’s Wife by Georges Simenon (Hamish Hamilton, 1955) Translated from the French by Maclaren-Ross. First UK edition, VG in d/w. After comparatively short-lived literary success, Maclaren-Ross, one of what was called a ruined generation, scraped a living from freelance work, a bit of radio, a bit of reviewing, translation, radio and film scripts, including a daft Canadian coproduction called The Naked Heart that was truly awful. 1955 was reckoned to have been a hard year for M-R. Anthony Powell talked of an American-style crack-up, following a disastrous affair, included in Books Do Furnish a Room, which led to the malicious destruction of a manuscript and only copy of a novel he had spent two years working on.

Memoirs of the Forties by Julian Maclaren-Ross (Alan Ross, 1965) First edition. VG in VG d/w with sun-tanned spine and minor edge nicks. Life as a Soho pub crawl and the art of being broke and taking taxis. The dandy’s flourish. Dylan Thomas, drinking bitter, to Maclaren-Ross, drinking Scotch, in the Café Royal: “Why don’t you try to look more sordid? Sordidness, boy, that’s the thing!” M-R was a major minor author or a minor major author depending on taste. This selection is a commendable act of deep topography, reaching literary parts otherwise neglected. Anthony Powell modelled X. Trapnel in A Dance to the Music of Time on M-R. Included in sale, facsimile pages of essay Newman Passage  or J. Maclaren-Ross and the Case of the Vanishing Writers (1993) by Petit, described by Guardian as an essay got up to resemble a short story, or was it a short story designed to read like a memoir? “Whichever, it was deceptively clever since the distinction between Maclaren-Ross’s short stories and memoirs, if there’s one at all, is rarely very clear.” 

Rum, Bum and Concertina by George Melly (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977) First UK edition, VG in slightly rubbed and price-clipped d/w (one crease on rear cover) with drawing by David Hockney. Louche memoirs of jazz, bi-sex, surrealism and anarchy. “Lord Kestrel, still in his pyjamas, was standing on the right of his front steps shouting abuse at the departing orgiasts while on his left Reggie, who by this time had put on an expensive silk dressing-gown I had watched him choose in Burlinton arcade, was apologising profusely for his father’s behaviour.”  “Since I was thirteen, I had been making eyes at all my mother’s friends I knew to be gay and finally one them had responded, so I ran home to tell my ten-year-old sister. I’d already sold her the glamour of homosexuality and we’d go for long walks in the parks appraising the ragamuffins in their torn jerseys. ‘How much more beautiful,’ I’d say to her, ‘is the word “boy” than the word “girl””, and she, flattered to receive my attention and confidences, would solemnly agree.” The examples of Melly, Lodwick and Borneman, not to mention Stuart and Céline, leave us realising what interesting lives people lived then, compared to now when everyone just logs on, like in a factory. 

Patrick Hamilton double. 20,000 Streets Under the Sky (Constable, 1947) Second reprint of 1935 edition, containing The Midnight Bell, The Siege of Pleasure and The Plains of Cement. Introduction by J.B. Priestley. VG clean copy with none of the usual defects, in near VG d/w, with some rubbing and and chipping and two edge corners missing. Rare in jacket, even in this later edition, an altogether handsome copy. 2) Craven House (Constable, 1948) Second reprint of revised 1943 edition of Hamilton’s second novel, published 1926. An about VG clean copy, blue boards, silver title lettering, no d/w; cocked and small Sellotape wrap around bottom of spine. Hamilton was never more beady-eyed than in 20,000 Streets, a cold-hearted story of ruin. Although many of his stories remain Victorian in spirit, he was one of the first to write about a modern automated world (he himself was a victim of a hit-and- run accident) of cars, telephones and cinemas, still evident today. His specialities were saloon-bar fascists and sexual psychopathy, particularly in his theatrical hit Rope, which Hitchcock adapted for the screen and Hamilton dismissed as “sordid and practically meaningless balls”. Hamilton’s end, as an alcoholic in retreat in Norfolk, is bleak by any account. His last works are full of resumé, as the writer’s pickled memory tries to remember what was last written. 

Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo (Andre Deutsch, 1974) UK first edition. Near fine in protected d/w; very minor page spotting. DeLillo’s rock and roll novel. Long journeys across grey space, consuming fame, bad publicity. “Hysteria in limousines, knife fights in the audience, bizarre litigation, treachery, pandemonium and drugs.” 

The Family by Ed Sanders. (Dutton, 1971) US first edition stated (without the Process Church disclaimer). Near fine in slightly creased protected d/w, with minor paper tanning. The story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy Attack Battalion. “There was a new persona developing for Charlie: The Devil from the bottomless pit beneath Death Valley. Oo-ee-oo.”

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen (Gollancz, 1938) First edition. VG in black boards, a generally tight, clean copy, slightly dusty top edge and minimal foxing. London setting, written in anticipation of war: high tension, increasing anxieties and what Bowen called “this great stress on individualism. People were so conscious of themselves, and of each other, and of their personal relationships because they thought that everything of that time might soon end.” Named among hundred best modern novels by Time Magazine and the Modern Library. “He felt pretty flat in London and always shot home again, which was very gratifying for her. Till one time, when for a reason that did not appear till later, he sent her a wire to say, might he stay on in London for a few days more. What had happened was that he has just met Irene, at a dinner party in Wimbledon. She was a scrap of a widow, ever so plucky, just back from China, with damp little hands, a husky voice and defective tear-ducts that gave her eyes always a rather swimmy look.” Loosely inserted, in admiration, two pages of the script of Unrequited Love, quoting Bowen’s sublime line from The Heat of the Day, describing initial meeting of her lovers as “the demolition of an entire moment”.  

The Portable Virgin by Anne Enright (Secker and Warburg, 1991) First edition; about fine in d/w; some typical browning to pages. First published collection of Booker Prize winner. “‘I wouldn’t go near her with a bag of dicks,’ said his companion, who was left-handed, or at least that was the hand that was holding his pint.” Of Canada: who needs history when you have so much weather. Sale includes copy of film treatment written by Enright for never realised Petit project (1994).

The Light Went Out: A Biography of Patrick Hamilton by Bruce Hamilton (Constable, 1972) First edition. Illustrated. VG in slightly rubbed protected d/w. Small staining to a couple of pages. Bruce Hamilton wrote in the shadow of his brother, never achieving much by way of sales though unintentionally paving the way for the huge success of Gaslight via a throwaway detail from his 1930 novel To Be Hanged, which noted the variable brightness of gas light in a room, according to other appliances in the house being switched on and off, which Patrick exploited as the central motif in his huge stage hit. Hamilton’s four-times married second wife was Lady Ursula Winifred James (née Chetwynd-Talbot (1907-66); daughter of Viscount Ingestre who wrote under the name Laura Talbot and known to her intimates as “La”. “Patrick had not much cared for her novel The Gentlewoman, which while showing sensitive perceptions, was excessively preoccupied with such trivialities as the propriety of having armorial bearings on carriages or cars.” Bruce’s account is one where the hangover is the determining state of life, with much peakiness. (I have half-remembered rumours of bondage, resisted, and Talbot’s affair with a dentist that was turned by her into a thriller of sorts, except that sounds too vulgar.) “Still drinking hard.” “Drinking madly even for him.” Immediate cause of death was collapse of the kidneys, accelerated by the huge quantities of water with which for many months Hamilton had diluted his whisky, as a means to arrest the cirrhosis causing collapse elsewhere. 

The Grass Arena by John Healy (Faber and Faber, 1988) An autobiography. Introduction by Colin McCabe. First edition, VG in slightly bumped and creased d/w, with some rubbing, plus usual tanning to pages. Small discount sticker on front inside  wrapper. Among the great down-and-out writing: booze, vagrancy, beggars, con-men, thieves, prostitutes, killers. “Description of the highest order, the eschewing of all levels of morality and psychology in favour of an ethic and aesthetic of accuracy.” (McCabe) Healy’s escape came through chess: “Into this gruelling, competitive world we threw ourselves each weekend, seething with aggression, hunched over our boards like hawks mantling their prey.”  Sale includes UK first edition of The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis (Heinemann, 1983) VG in slightly rubbed d/w. “‘The Caro-Kann Defence,’ he said, laughing. ‘A genuine bummer.’ ‘What’s wrong with the Karo-Kann?’ someone asked. ‘All pawns and no hope.’  Smart chess thriller, as you would expect from the man who wrote The Hustler  (filmed Rossen with Paul Newman) and The Man Who Fell to Earth (filmed Roeg with Bowie).

The Legacy of the Stiff Upper Lip or The Astonishing Social Hinterland of a Lapse by Robin Cook (Hutchinson, 1966) About VG quasi-Bohemian copy in similar d/w with some creasing to front top and small piece missing near spine. Some foxing, but in the spirit of its author, a generally robust copy, with previous seller’s pencil marking thus: 13.2.97/Petit/13.  Cook was what many writers aspired to be: louche, Bohemian, semi-criminal, well, criminal actually, the public schoolboy (Eton) gone wrong. He wrote in the spirit of Patrick Hamilton: We had a drink and went on to somewhere else we could have another. “‘Time was, I used to be able to drink from twelve to fifteen pints before it hit me . . . I don’t know why I get these funny moods, where I want to show people, or kill people, or die wanting to be loved by them.”’ After many years in France, after a necessary runner,  Cook returned plus black beret and reinvented himself as Derek Raymond, writing metaphysical noir that achieved a fine balance between ramrod discipline and rant. Included in sale, a rare DVD copy of The Cardinal and the Corpse (Sinclair & Petit, 1993) in which Cook makes a fluent appearance, despite having helped to drink the bar dry. Plus copy of Petit’s Robinson, signed by author (Granta, 2001), first thus, fine and unread. The character of Cookie was not based on Cook, as such, but was an amalgam of several such dangerously charming rogues; the voice, however, was entirely lifted from Cook. “‘No such thing as bad weather only poor kit. Cheers!’”   

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (Hodder and Stoughton, 1918) First UK edition, a fair copy in grey boards, black lettering and somewhat bumped and faded spine. Foxing and page-tanning and general signs of wear. Front illustration opposite title page: “‘It’s good-bye - I think it’s good-bye for good, Lucy!’” The point is, regardless of condition, an almost impossible title in terms of archeological exhumation. The only other copy currently available in similar condition, or slightly worse, is offered at over three times the price, with the seller pointing out the uncommonness of the English edition, compared to American, “perhaps because Tarkington’s American regionalism didn’t translate well into England”. The book was filmed twice, in 1925 as Pampered Youth, and by Orson Welles, with legendary difficulties, as his 1942 follow-up to Citizen Kane.  Sale includes Welles biography Rosebud by David Thomson (Little, Brown, 1996) First UK edition, near fine in protective d/w.      

The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon (Mysterious Book Club, 1998) Reissue of 1959 watershed thriller about mind control. VG in lightly creased d/w  and slightly cocked spine. The book is signed by the author on the title page. The novel was filmed twice, more notably by Frankenheimer (1962) as classic cold war thriller with Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh. The film is discussed in Manny Farber’s essay The Decline of the Actor in Negative Space, in terms of sadism with which the actors are treated. “Janet Leigh seems to have been skinned and stretched on a steel armature, and then compelled to do over and over again with hands and voice things supposed to be exquisitely sexual. The audience is made to feel unclean like a Peeping Tom, at this queer directional gamboling over bodies. And Sinatra’s romantic scenes with Miss Leigh are a Chinese torture: he pinned against the Pullman door as though having been buried standing up, and she, nothing moving on her body, drilling holes with her eyes into his screw-on head. In one advanced film after another, we find an actor being used for various purposes external to him - a mistake, a pitiful object, a circus sight.” The book was a personal copy of Condon’s sent to Petit following an interview. Loosely inserted is Condon’s original letter of thanks, on his headed paper with Dallas address. “Your piece in The Times made out visit to Blighty. It was the best analysis of the purpose of the Prizzi novels that I have ever seen ... Resting on the oars, All cheers.” 

Phineas Kahn: Portrait of an Immigrant by Simon Blumenfeld (Jonathan Cape, 1937) First edition, VG in d/w with portion missing on top edge of spine, and usual signs of wear, dusty top edge and some browning to pages. Copy was bought from same seller at same time as item 89 with written in pencil: 13.2.97/Petit. London Jewish East End novel. Blumenfeld wrote Westerns under the pseudonym Huck Messer and founded Record Mirror with Benny Green. Author of three very-hard-to-find novels in their original editions (see item 95), and a precursor to a school of Jewish East writing that included Alexander Baron, Bernard Kops, Harold Pinter and Emanuel Litvinoff. Almost never seen in original jacket.

The Gilt Kid by James Curtis (Jonathan Cape, 1936) First UK edition. Hardback beige cloth covers, turquoise titles. Light shelf rub to boards, spine slightly darkened, small rubs to spine tips. VG, no d/w. Very rare any condition. With previous seller’s (Burwood?) loosely inserted strip, itemising condition, with Stock ref 8788. (A copy in d/w, plus similar of Curtis’s You’re in the Racket, Too and There Ain’t No Justice are currently in a combined sale for an altogether staggering price of nearly £5000.) Curtis was one of those lost writers, rediscovered and reforgotten several times over,  compared by Jonathan Meades to Derek Raymond, aka Robin Cook, author of metaphysical noir, who like Curtis rejected his class background and took to Soho bohemian life. Underdog tales and a reservoir of slang. London pre-noir: “It was after seven o’clock by the time the Gilt Kid had reached Coventry Street and the evening bustle was well under way.” Drinks later: “The barmaid, flustered at the end of the day’s rush, looked at him a little strangely. She noticed there were beer-slops on the counter and began to mop them up. Most of the male customers in the four-ale bar, drank pints of fivepenny ale, all black and frothy in glasses as thick as jam jars; the women usually had stout, or a glass of cheap Lisbon red wine, lizzie they called it.” 

Pompey by Jonathan Meades (Jonathan Cape, 1993) First edition. Uncorrected proof in wraps, with author photo on front and on the back amended publication date, in biro, moved from 15 to 29 April, plus some penned alterations to text. VG++ with very minor creasing. The book is inscribed to Petit on title page: for Chris from Jonathan. As others have noted, Meades rarely signs. Meades was another Time Out recidivist (short-lived).  Pompey, although hailed, remains insufficiently hailed as one of the finest novels of the post-war generation. Always a keen sartorial observer: “fleece-collared flying jacket and Donegal overcoat”. Natch. I’ve read most of them but Meades is one of very few that writes about a world I recognise as an exact and better approximation of the one I grew up with and lived through, a sort of Céline on acid, football, telly and people called Jonjon. Meades’s political correctness is impeccable: Congolese pigmy hunts; the bad faith of Ray Butt’s Church of The Best Ever Redemption and the bad blood of geronto-philiac Jean-Marie. Enormous vocabulary. Mordant wit. Filthy mind. Unfailing curiosity.

Jew Boy by Simon Blumenfeld (Jonathan Cape, 1935) First edition, July; second impression September 1935. Hardback purple cloth covers, turquoise titles. Light shelf rub to boards, spine darkened, small rubs and some fraying to spine tips.  Browning to page edges, some staining; a somewhat dusty copy, but intact, condition good, no d/w. Very rare as such; twice the price, and more, from elsewhere for similar.  Story of some months in the hectic life of young Jewish tailor (cf. Alexander Baron’s Hoffman Presser in The Lowlife) in Whitechapel sweat shop. London setting.  Praised at the time for exclamatory style, doing for Whitechapel what Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole did for Salford, as well if not better. Humour and humanity, flashing anger and bitter wit. “To read this hard, vigorous, vital book is to begin to understand something of the sufferings of the industrial under-dog.” (Observer) 

I Am Your Brother by G.S. Marlowe (Collins, 1935) First edition. Hardback, brown cloth covers. Shelf rub to boards; same to spine tips plus some creasing. OK copy, intact, robust; probably ex-library, but no stamps, and extremely rare any condition.  (The only similar available is charged at £165 and a copy in d/w will set you back 750.) Marlowe was the pen name of Gabriel Beer-Hoffman, a brief cult sensation and forgotten now except as a footnote in Julian Maclaren-Ross’s Memoirs of the Forties, itself obscure. Cf. entry posted on the internet a couple of years ago: “Memoirs has about the most esoteric character sketch I’ve ever read and it’s driving me up the wall that I can’t find any more information, fully expecting to find at least an anemic Wikipedia page, but no, barely a whisper on the entire web.” Maclaren-Ross, who adapted the book for a never produced radio drama, refers to a “repulsive mother of the schizophrenic young composer, shuffling and snuffling around the Soho markets in search of offal on which to nourish her other, perhaps imaginary son: a monster product of maybe artificial insemination, who lived in an attic above his brother’s studio and had to be fed raw liver and fairy stories once a day.” M-R found Marlowe comfortably ensconced in a Kensington flat with an attractive secretary. He never discovered Marlowe’s nationality and variously speculates that he was Scandinavian, Viennese or from the Danube basin. Marlowe told M-R that I am Your Brother originated as “a bedtime story”.  M-R says Marlowe had worked in Hollywood, where he met Greta Garbo, and wrote the script of David Copperfield (1934). If he did it was uncredited, though Marlowe claimed friendship with Hugh Walpole, who played the vicar in the film, and whose name did appear in the credits, so the claim may have some foundation. Maclaren-Ross later visited Marlowe in a larger, modern flat in Chelsea: “Here, on an afternoon in Spring, I found him living in an Edgar Wallace-like opulence, surrounded by dictaphones, telephones, and typewriters, with a brand new secretary even better looking than the last.” In the spring of 1940 Marlowe, who was Jewish, left Britain for Norway, believing it the one place the Nazis wouldn’t invade and was in due course written off as dead by all until after the war when Maclaren-Ross was drinking (champagne cider) with a man who claimed to have run into him, alive and well in a village pub. “Thus Marlowe contrived to enshroud himself in mystery right up to the end, if indeed it was his end.” 

Live Now Pay Later by Jack Trevor Story (Secker and Warburg, 1963) First edition. VG+, very slightly cocked in protected, unclipped d/w with some tanning to spine and altogether a nice clean copy with publicity photograph on back cover for film of the same starring Ian Hendry and June Ritchie. Not quite of this world and certainly not of the next but that of the “never-never”, somewhere on the outer fringe of provincial England. Easy women, easy payments, promiscuous glamour and the feckless Albert, prince of the tally-boys. “The early edition of the local evening paper carried a full-length picture of Joyce Corby wearing a bikini bathing suit, a crown, and the ‘Miss Agricultural Tractors 1959’ sash across her middle. ‘Ex-beauty Queen dies in fall from bedroom - local man’s heroic life-saving attempt’ was the heading. And opposite was a head-and-shoulders photograph of Albert taken on the steps of the police station alongside a picture of Corby. ‘Oh, brother, what a figure!’ Jeff was saying as they all looked at the paper spread on the counter. ‘Look at those child-bearing hips. Don’t tell me you weren’t knocking it, Albert!””  

The Stealer of Souls by Michael Moorcock (Neville Spearman, 1963) VG+ in protected , unclipped d/w with some rubbing to extremities ; some foxing to page edges but generally an extremely presentable copy. First of the Elrics; nothing necessary to add. Curiously unsigned. 

Mystery title: on application.

London Orbital: A Walk around the M25 by Iain Sinclair (Granta, 2002) Cover by Dave McKean. Illustrations by Renchi Bicknell. Colour plates. Fine in d/w. Signed by author. Plus one from a series of paintings, signed by Emma Matthews of M25 images taken from film of same name, directed by Sinclair and Petit, edited by Matthews. Image shows abstract traffic detail, red and white, plus barrier; digital image and oil paint 6x6cms.