FIRST EDITION OF HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE, SIGNED BY KURT VONNEGUT WITH A SELF PORTRAIT

VONNEGUT, Kurt. Happy Birthday, Wanda June. New York: Delacorte, (1971). Octavo, original black cloth, original dust jacket; housed in a custom clamshell box. $4800.

First edition of this play about a big game hunter who returns home after eight years of being presumed dead, boldly signed on the half title by Kurt Vonnegut with a large self-portrait by him.

Performed off-Broadway in front of packed houses for five months during 1970 and '71 and ending only after a strike closed the theater down, the zany, bizarre, and wholly original Wanda June was written at the height of one of Vonnegut's periods of depression. He penned it just after the publication of Slaughterhouse Five, having vowed never to write another novel and evidently unable to give up on writing altogether. "Almost every time an American novelist writes a play, he shows up most of our thumb-tongued playwrights, who lack the melody of mind, the wit, dash and accuracy of Saul Bellow and Bruce Jay Friedman. And the same thing must be said of the writing in Happy Birthday, Wanda June… Vonnegut's dialogue is not only fast and funny, with a palpable taste and crackle, but it also means something. And his comic sense is a superior one; Wanda June has as many laughs as anything by Neil Simon" (Newsweek). Book fine, price-clipped dust jacket with mild staining and toning to spine lettering. Near-fine condition.