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Long live man

Long live man

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Long live man: Romain GARY & Jean SEBERG copy

by Gregory CORSO

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About This Item

Romain Gary and Jean Seberg's copy, extensively annotated by the author.

First edition and first printing.
Inscribed :

"For Jean, my only movie-star - whose humanness celluloid were at a loss to render unreal and for Romain, a fellow singer, and spirit - love, Gregory
P.S. This be the only copy in which I have made personal corrections - surely when you see the completions of a film you've made you wish Jean could have done some scenes differently - so the same for poems and the poet - I feel this book to be my finest work - mine "Breathley" & "Roots of Heaven"
- In spirit I always hold you & Romain fondly & well - Romain helped me when I was in dire need once - you both did."
This mailing is accompanied by a long note written after the last poem in the collection "Writ on the eve of my 32nd birthday":
"a poem like this shouldn't be too long, or talk too much, I feel - yet I hate to omit anything so truly heartfelt - but it makes no difference - to end it - the world owes me - a million dollars is happy. Tongue in cheek, audacity - to continue it d(?) I do is to crowd too much feeling into a single poetry - like old letters, I can't stand to read my yesterday's poems -

Basta - the poesy to follow this can't help but be goodly wisely compassionate expressions heart and spirit - whoops! I just remembered that the world only owes me 999,900 dollars as Romain once bestowed 100 dollars to me when I was in dire need, but truly I owe the world everything and it owes me nothing - so as a gentleman I must return his aid to him, someday, when I get lots of doubloons - I wish both of you the loneliest of things and non-things - Gregory."

Autograph corrections and additions to seven poems:

p. 58: 2 stanzas circled with the words "omit".
p. 66 and 67: corrections and variants for the poem "Man Enterring the Sea, Tangier".
p. 73: 1 addition to the poem "A Race of Sound".
p. 74: 1 stanza added to the poem "There can be no other apple for me".
p. 78: 2 variations on the poem "Writ on the Steppes of Puerto Rican Harlem".
p. 83: 2 variations on the poems "A City Child's Day and They".
p. 87: 1 variation on poem P.S. 42
p. 88: 1 addition to the poem "Danger
p. 89: 1 stanza circled with "omitted" for the poem "After Reading in the clearing".
p. 93: note transcribed above.

Long Live Man appeared in the legendary New Directions (ND) poetry anthology series. Two years earlier, The Happy Birthday of Death brought together Corso's first poems, including the famous 'Bomb'. Founded by James Laughlin in 1936, ND's primary purpose was to support unknown and daring writers and poets, and soon New Directions began publishing fiction, drama and more. Today, its catalogue includes many of the world's most famous literary names who found a publisher willing to commit to them: Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas, Tennessee Williams...

In 1960, three of the major members of the Beat Generation had already published with Laughlin: Kerouac had just published the famous Visions of Cody (December 1959), Ginsberg had already entered the "Prose and Poetry" collection in 1953, and the three Beat poets were reunited in 1961 in No. 17 of this same collection.

By the time Corso's collection appeared, four of the famous Beat poets had already published their major texts: On the Road (Kerouac), Howl (Ginsberg), Bomb (Corso) and The Naked Lunch (Burroughs).

Gregory Corso, the latest to join the group, has become one of its most prominent spokesmen. But when he addressed this copy to Jean Seberg and Romain Gary, he was referring to a different time in his life. The material help he mentions here twice was probably not a detail in his life. Corso's situation in the 1950s has little to do with Gary's, a diplomat and successful writer married to a Hollywood star.

"Gregory was a true New Yorker. He was born in 1930 in the heart of Greenwich Village above a morgue at the corner of Bleeker and MacDougal Streets, then part of Little Italy. He had no memory of his mother, who was barely sixteen when she had him. Abandoned at birth, with a barely older father who could not care for him, he was shuffled around in no less than eight foster homes within a few years. The misfortunes of his life as a child and teenager led him to the notorious Tombs prison. Released, he was left to fend for himself when, at seventeen and following a burglary, he was sent back to prison, this time to Clinton Prison (at Dannemora, near New York). It was here that he discovered literature and poetry. Shortly after his release, when he had found a job and was definitely going to write poetry, he met Allen Ginsberg, who recalled the care Corso took with the poems he gave him: "all of them were typewritten, which was unusual for a boy who lived in the Village and called himself a poet. Ginsberg introduced him to Kerouac.... He was at all the events, meetings and trips and was part of the inimitable 'gang' that was based in Paris in a hotel at 9 rue Gît-le-coeur. This insalubrious place with its 42 rooms, all occupied by artists, preferably foreigners, did not have a name, but it was to be remembered as the Beat Hotel, as Corso called it at the time (a commemorative plaque has since been installed on the facade of the building, which is now the Relais Hôtel Vieux Paris). Was it at this time - in Paris, then, or in California - that Corso met Seberg and crossed paths with Gary? It's hard to say, but it's a fact that between 1950 and 1960 Gary kept going back and forth between Europe and the United States, following Seberg's travels on both continents. Gary, while living in Los Angeles, saw the birth of these protest groups and was very interested in them. Here is his insight into the author of On The Road: "He was a prophet, Kerouac. He was the first and only one to predict fifteen years in advance the America of the hippies, the America of a desperate spiritual quest, which began with marijuana and ended with heroin." (The Night Will Be Quiet).

And even if he is quite ironic when he talks about these 'young American losers', one can imagine Gary coming to the aid of Corso, whom he obviously does not confuse with one of them. These lines from Chien blanc remind us of what he personally experienced at that time, both in his Parisian flat on the rue du Bac and in his Los Angeles home, where he often had to make way for endless meetings of Black Panthers invited by his wife: "Seberg spends his time giving our address to all the young American losers who believe that Atlantis exists, which explains why I once found six beatniks sleeping in sleeping bags in our apartment on Rue du Bac. One of them had had our address for four years, and had shared it with friends.

Tough Poets Press has just published a collection of Corso's work, reminding us that he was a major and founding author in the adventure launched by Kerouac and not just a follower.

This copy is probably the only witness to date of Romain Gary's meeting with one of the major members of the Beat Generation.

From the Romain Gary and Jean Seberg library.

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Details

Bookseller
WALDEN Rarebooks FR (FR)
Bookseller's Inventory #
21101
Title
Long live man
Author
Gregory CORSO
Book Condition
Used
Quantity Available
1
Weight
0.00 lbs
Bookseller catalogs
Holiday edition 23;

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