At Terror Street and Agony Way

Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1968. First Edition. Octavo. #6 of 75 copies, signed and numbered, and with an inscription on flyleaf: "For Lee Rolland (wife of Richard Roland co-owners of Either/Or Books Shop, Hermosa Beach) direct from Terror Street, Charles Bukowski, 5-7-68". This copy is in a mixed state: While it does contain the original tipped in painting by Bukowski, a double tan paper spine label printed lengthwise in red and the colophon has Bukowski's name above the colophon and with the number 6 in red below the colophon, it also contains the Zinc cuts used for the blind stampings of an excerpt of a Bukowski letter ("l.a. Sunday August 20 hello Mike...."), excerpted from a letter to Michael Forrest. The excerpts read from tail to head, on the verso of the third leaf, recto of the title page and the recto of the last leaf. Zinc cuts were also used for blind stampings of illustrations by Bukowski located on the sixth leaf (verso of the half-title) and the leaves between pp. 42-43 and pp. 66-67 and the last page. Verso of the title page printed is a 13 line introduction by the author. Hardbound in multicolored blue, red, violet, green and yellow cloth. What makes this one of the most important of Bukowski's books is found in his printed letters (Screams from the Balcony, pp. 327-330), Bukowski to John Martin (publisher of Black Sparrow), May 20, 1968 "Your beautiful check and the 20 copies of Terror Street....check [$460 from his letter on June 4, 1968 to Jon and Louise Webb] was more than I expected. In a previous letter to Carl Weisner (early May 1968) he writes: "I have been doing paintings in the kitchen....this bird, Martin, wants 75 small paintings which will be mounted in the back of the special hardcover copies of Terror Street. I've made about 60 paintings up to now and he wants 20 more, and he says he can pick them up Monday. I've done 6, these editors just don't realize that paintings can't just be made up....each painting must come from the balls like a f..k, few men can f..k six times a night, 20 [i.e. paintings] is just impossible. To make it an especially nice copy, the Either/Or Book Store was frequented by Bukowski, Pynchon, and a host of people who loved small press poetry and counterculture books. A fine and desirable association copy. (Krumhandsl, #27).