"AND I THOUGHT, IF BEING A BUM IS TO BE THE / OPPOSITE OF WHAT THIS SON-OF-A-BITCH / IS, THEN THAT'S WHAT I'M GOING TO / BE": LIMITED FIRST EDITION, SIGNED BY BUKOWSKI

BUKOWSKI, Charles. You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1986. Octavo, original half violet cloth, original acetate dust jacket. $2200.

Signed limited first edition, number 34 of only 100 special copies handbound in boards by Earle Gray and featuring an original signed silkscreen print of an illustration by Charles Bukowski, additionally signed by Bukowski on the limitation page.

In this collection of poetry, an aging Bukowski looks back on his childhood, recounting some of its most poignant moments in his characteristic style. Bukowski’s “work is a natural culmination of the ongoing revolt against formalism, the academic, and the intellectual that has periodically energized American poetry since its inception… His effects are primarily narrative, and involve the collision of his own gruff, funny, idiomatic voice with the random incidents of his daily life” (Hamilton, 76). Published simultaneously with a paperback issue, 500 hardcover trade copies and 401 hardcover signed copies. The colophon cites "126 numbered copies," but the actual numbering states "34/100" and Krumhansl agrees with 100 copies. Krumhansl 100d.

A very nearly fine copy with minor spotting to text block edges.