Alice's Restaurant Cookbook by Brock, Alice May - 1969

Brock, Alice May. Alice's Restaurant Cookbook. [FIRST EDITION] Random House: New York, 1969. 4to (265x185mm) pict dj, pict bds [4],148pp. (recorded introduction by Arlo Guthrie) Near Fine/Near Fine dj neatly clipped, spine sunned; edges lightly worn

BROCK, Alice May (1941 -)

Alice's Restaurant Cookbook

New York : Random House, 1969. First Edition, first printing. Recorded introduction by Arlo Guthrie, photography by Howell Conant and Benno Friedman and drawings by the Author.

Quarto (265x185mm) pictorial colour dust jacket, pictorial boards [4],148pp, unplayed flexible record introduction by Arlo Guthrie attached to the rear paste-down.  Dust jacket neatly price clipped, light edgewear, spine gently sunned, internally near fine.

 In 1965 Alice Brock opened "The Back Room" a small casual restaurant in Stockbridge Massachussets whilst working at the Stockbridge School where the folk singer Arlo Guthrie was a student.  Guthrie stayed with Brock and her husband for Thanksgiving dinner that year and was infamously arrested for littering.  The following year Guthrie began performing an 18 minute-long satirical blues anti-war  protest talking dialogue 'song'  Alice's Restaurant Massacree which in part tells the story of the Thanksgiving dinner and subsequent arrest.  An immediate hit, and counterculture anthem, Guthrie performed it regularly, recording it in 1967 on the A side of his first album, also named Alice's Restaurant.  The success of the album, in turn, inspired in 1969 a successful film by the same name in which Guthrie starred and Brock made cameo appearances. 

Brock's "The Back Room" closed in 1966.   The cookbook was a by-product of the success of the song and film; an interesting and amusing amalgam of simple American home cooking, buffet- diner style, combining a range of mixed Italian, Jewish and Eastern European influences and served up with a folksy (dare one say hippy) charm and kitchen philosophy that eschews much of the structure of a recipe.  As Brock says in her "word to the wise": "Please feel free to make any changes you wish: more, less, or different. When I don't specify the amount of a particular ingredient, that means it's up to you. And when I say season with whatever you're in the mood for, I mean exactly that."

Over the years, the song Alice's Restaurant has become a common part of America's Thanksgiving traditions played by many radio stations each Thanksgiving.  The recording was added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry in 2017. 

A lovely copy of a book celebrating an important icon of America's counter culture movement.