The speakers

New York: Grove Press [1967, 1964. First Edition/1st Printing. Hardcover. Very Good/Good-. 1964 Tidy olive-green cloth boards with gilt titling on the spine, ligh wear to extremities. Binding is tight. Several instances (6+) of green highlighting noted. Upper page edges toned. Unclipped dustjacket is edgeworn, mildly rubbed and with price sticker remnant on front. 8vo. Our photos depict actual book offered for sale. Books are carefully packaged by hand and shipped from our family-owned bookshop in the US. BOOK INFO: See photos for Table of Contents. Illustrated in B&W photography. 'Brilliant...a remarkable achievement, and very, very, funny.' (-Harold Pinter, London Observer). 'In London's Hyde Park, the speakers congregate daily to expound endlessly on those topics closes to their minds and hearts--sex, religion, politics, freedom, fear, and wild combinations of all these things, salted with their own wit and prejudice. This book presents the speakers as they live and work, ramble, panhandle, and, of course, speak. Four of them are dealt with in detail, both in the Park and out, by the author's use of a trio of aficionados--men who are either ex- or would-be speakers themselves, and who frequent the Park as if it were their private club. The four are MacGuinness, the Irish bum, drunkard, and dope addict, who deals with the crowd with anecdotes and blarney; Axel Ney Hoch, a driving instructor, whose background is a mirror of the horror of the war years in Europe, and who assaults all variants of the status quo; Webster, the ex-follower of a host of <> and the one speaker whom everyone else in the Park loathes and distrusts; and Van Dyn, covered with tattoos, whose one brush with the law has been parlayed by him into an imaginary life of crime for which he insists on being compensated, The Mood of the Park is splendidly captured by Heathcote Williams in description and in long extracts from the speeches delivered by the four protagonists. <> are liberally spread throughout the text in the comments and remarks of the trio of sardonic experts who move from one platform to another, and who speak of legendary figures of Hyde Park's past.... In this remarkably sympathetic book, Heathcote Williams has managed to convey not only the humor and freedom of these misfit men, but has also looked beneath the surface of their roles as soapbox orators to show us the waste and tragedy of their lives.' (-from the endflap). Includes bibliography and index. \n208 p. ports. 21 cm.