Outrageous Kesey and Kerouac Pieces Among Items Sold at Beat Book Auction
April 10, 2014
I went to a Beat, Counterculture and Avant-Garde Book and Ephemera Auction in downtown San Francisco today. A noted collector, Richard Synchef, was selling off his stash of cool signed Beat and psychedelic books and oddities.Â
Amidst the walls of City Lights books signed by Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima and the angel-headed hipsters of the North Beach scene, there were also Psychedelic and Hippie tomes.
One, Lisa Law's "Flashing On The 60s", contained this pic, on a page signed by author and counterculture icon Ken Kesey:
("Hmmmmm... If I play my cards right, I can fuck her and the dog both...")
The book sold for $108. I didn't bid on it, but, I must admit, mostly because I didn't see the Kesey inscription until AFTER the bidding on that item had ended.Â
There were other items of interest, too, but mostly the experience was fun just to see a room full of bookshelves that look a lot like mine:
The book sold for $108. I didn't bid on it, but, I must admit, mostly because I didn't see the Kesey inscription until AFTER the bidding on that item had ended.Â
There were other items of interest, too, but mostly the experience was fun just to see a room full of bookshelves that look a lot like mine:
My friend came away with a rare vinyl bootleg of one of the Acid Tests and a signed copy of Timothy Leary's "The Game of Life."Â
Other noteworthy items that we did not bid on included a Check to Nunzie's Liquors from Jack Kerouac that sold for $570 and a copy of Dharma Bums - signed by "Japhy Ryder" that fetched $120.Â
The auctioneers handled the day with grace, even as they laughed aloud reading Lot #89 Horseshit: The Offensive Review - Nos. 1 - 4 or closed off bids with statements like "$100 for The Hippies."Â
It would have been a fun day to bring in a wheel-barrow full of money and walk out with a great Beat library, but, as a former student of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in the '90s, I've already got a great Beat library living in my storage unit on the East Coast. Today I refrained from obtaining a second one for the West Coast.Â
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