Amulettes

1958 · FB8152 /L19 — <p>Paperback. Green cover with black title. <em>We provide an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available </em></p><p>Warning: This book was part of the erotic library gathered by the famous Cambridge Don computer scientist food and wine connoisseur Jack Arnold LANG along with medical friends and family involved in Freudian research. Sexual instincts or drives have deeply hidden roots in the unconscious mind. Instincts act by giving vitality and enthusiasm to the mind through meaning and purpose. The range of instincts is in great numbers. Freud expressed them in two categories. One is Eros the self-preserving life instinct containing all erotic pleasures. While Eros is used for basic survival the living instinct alone cannot explain all behavior according to Freud. In contrast Thanatos is the death instinct. It is full of self-destruction of sexual energy and our unconscious desire to die. The main part of human behavior and actions is tied back to sexual drives. Since birth the existence of sexual drives can be recognized as one of the most important incentives of life. The enclosed book was part of this research. A photograph is enclosed should you seek further details please contact Martin Frost on martin.frost@gmail.com</p><p>Foremost amongst erotic books collected by Jack Arnold Lang are those published in France by the Olympia Press. The Olympia Press was a Paris-based publisher launched in 1953 by Maurice Girodias as a rebranded version of the Obelisk Press he inherited from his father Jack Kahane. It published a mix of erotic fiction and avant-garde literary fiction and is best known for issuing the first printed edition of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. In its heyday during the mid-fifties Olympia Press specialized in books which could not be published without legal action in the English-speaking world. Early on Girodias relied on the permissive attitudes of the French to publish sexually explicit books in both French and English. In the late 1950sthe French authorities began to ban and seize the press's books. A total of 94 Olympia Press publications were promoted and packaged as "Traveller's Companion" books usually with simple text-only covers and each edition in the series was numbered. The "Ophelia Press" line of erotica was far larger using the same design but pink covers instead of green. Olympia Press was the first publisher willing to print William S. Burroughs's avant-garde sexually explicit Naked Lunch which soon became famous. Other notable works included J. P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man ; Samuel Beckett's French trilogy Molloy Malone Dies and The Unnamable ; Henry Miller's trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion consisting of Sexus Nexus and Plexus; A Tale of Satisfied Desire by Georges Bataille; Story of O by Pauline Réage; Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg's Candy ; Alex Austin's The Blue Guitar and Eleanore ; and a critical book on Scientology Inside Scientology/Dianetics by Robert Kaufman. The South African poet Sinclair Beiles was an editor at the publisher. Other authors included Alexander Trocchi Iris Owens Harriet Daimler and John Stevenson Marcus Van Heller. Girodias had troubled dealings with his authors including copyright issues. Nabokov was dissatisfied with the copyediting assignment of copyright and the press's literary reputation. The press engaged in a long-running dispute over the rights to The Ginger Man ended with Donleavy's wife Mary buying out Girodias at what was intended to be a closed auction. Forced to leave France in 1963 Girodias briefly reestablished Olympia Press in New York in the 1960s and in London in the early 1970s. Grove Press in the U.S. would later print The Olympia Reader a best-selling anthology containing material from some of Olympia's most popular works including material by Burroughs Miller Trocchi and others. Another well-known collection was The Best of Olympia first published by the Olympia Press in 1963 and reprinted by New English Library in 1966. Other incarnations of the company some with Girodias' support emerged in Germany Italy and the United Kingdom. Olympia Press has been re-established and is currently operating out of Washington London and Frankfurt. Paris: The Olympia Press.1958. Small format 8vo. original green card covers ruled and lettered in black and white; pp. vi 7-259 v; title page with border in green; a very good to near fine copy. First issue. No. 63 in the Traveller's Companion series. An Olympia Press catalogue issued c.1958 lists no. 63 in this series as being a novel by Henry Crannach Marilyn Meeskeentitled 'Porridge Tasters'. The book was never written and Talsman's offering filled the gap.Somewhat of a lost novel in the history of gay literature The Gaudy Image follows the protagonist Titania Thomas Schwartz as he navigates a cast of characters in New Orleans in search of the perfect lover. Review: Talsma's book tells the story of Thomas Schwartz Madame Titania's alter ego who moves to 1950s New Orleans in search of the perfect man synthesized in the "Gaudy Image". Through the city's bars clubs and back streets you follow the lives of a variety of characters. Sometimes the novel seems a bit confusing sometimes it's not simple to follow the story. But right away you have a very articulate split of what gay life was like in those years. So many characters who call themselves using adjectives and feminine pronouns a world where true identities don't matter replaced by nicknames. In which the police seem to tolerate. And in which the Gay and partly lesbian world seems organized into precise castes each with its role. Yet the desire to love many of the figures in the novel Tit in the lead already tells of a desire for normality that will be late in arriving. Note: Originally published in France in the 50s to avoid prosecution for obscenity The Gaudy Image is one of the most important `lost' gay novels. A classic of gay fiction.</p> The Olympia Press. paperback