Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - September - 2007 Issue
Cinema, First Editions, and the Eclectic from James Pepper Rare Books
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Here are some more words from the far left -- a pamphlet that originally appeared in the April 2, 1962 issue of The Militant, printing one of Fidel Castro's notoriously long-winded speeches, delivered at the University of Havana on March 13, 1962. It was distributed by the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a group set up in America to support Castro. It disbanded in 1963, helped not at all by Lee Harvey Oswald's association with it. In his speech Castro rambles on, as he is wont to do, at one time criticizing the old socialist saying, "‘We are socialists, forward, forward, and whoever doesn't like it let him take a laxative!'" Observes Castro, "If you don't like it take a laxative. Who are you going to win over with that?" Wise words, indeed. No wonder he has remained in power for almost half a century. Venceremos! Item 21. $50.
Here's one that falls under the "eclectic" heading: The Sacred Mushroom Seeker. Essays for R. Gordon Wasson. Wasson was a mushroomologist (I made up that word because I don't know the real one). Starting with an interest in the normal types of mushrooms you might put on your pizza, he expanded his interests to the more spiritual variety, another way of saying hallucinogenic drugs. Wasson ascended to the spiritual otherworld in 1986 at the age of 88, and in 1990 his friends published this collection of essays in his honor. I'll stick with anchovies on my pizza. Item 62. $85.
As long as we're traveling high, item 63 is True Hallucinations. Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise. Author Terence McKenna and others had embarked on a long strange trip to the Amazon in 1971 in search of a mushroom that supposedly was the missing link in the development of human consciousness. Perhaps he already had a few too many magic mushrooms before he left. A Village Voice review on the dust jacket proclaims, "If only a fraction of McKenna's thought is true, he will someday be regarded as the Copernicus of consciousness." I'm sure Copernicus would have appreciated the comparison. The book was published in 1993 in -- where else? -- San Francisco. $85.
James Pepper Rare Books is found online at www.jamespepperbooks.com, telephone 805-963-1025.
