TROCCHI, Alexander

Cain's Book

First English edition. Page edges soiled, and corners a bit bumped, a very good copy in an age-toned, very good plus dustwrapper. English edition of the important autobiographical novel about a heroin addict adrift in New York City. Inscribed by Trocchi to poet and publisher Jim Haynes: "For Jim Haynes, Wordless, dumb after our long vigil. I am that is. Later. Alex Trocchi. Edinburgh, May 1965." The Scottish Trocchi was the British bridge to the American Beat Generation. Almost certainly inscribed at the Edinburgh Writers Festival, where Haynes is a fixture, and where Hugh MacDiarmid denounced Trocchi as "cosmopolitan scum" in 1962 (greatly increasing his notoriety). Inscribed copies of Trocchi's last and most important novel, especially with associative value, are exceptionally uncommon.

[BTC #96193]