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About This Item
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926. First Edition. Good. First edition, first printing. Publisher's red cloth with gilt spine lettering; lacking the dust jacket. Good+, with reading creases to spine, light rubbing at spine ends and corners, small spots of discoloration to cloth. Boards dinged along the edges. Previous owner name and price to front endsheet; front and rear endsheets offset. Pages lightly wavy throughout. An early 20th Century professional burglar and hobo's vividly-written autobiography, which was hailed by Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs as an important literary influence.
Synopsis
William Burroughs, at the age of 13, was inspired by this book, as he mentions in a preface to Naked Lunch. You Can't Win is a memoir that explodes our ideas about the supposedly lawful past; Jack was a drifter, robber, junkie, and hustler that survived from the frontier times til the depression era...apparently. He became a librarian of sorts, wrote his memoir, and then vanished...
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Details
- Bookseller
- Burnside Rare Books, ABAA
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 140938388
- Title
- You Can't Win
- Author
- Black, Jack
- Book Condition
- Used - Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First Edition
- Publisher
- The Macmillan Company
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1926
Terms of Sale
Burnside Rare Books, ABAA
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Burnside Rare Books, ABAA
Biblio member since 2010
Portland, Oregon
About Burnside Rare Books, ABAA
Burnside Rare Books specializes in literary first editions and works of cultural and historic significance. We are located in Portland, Oregon and welcome visitors by appointment.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Offset
- A technique of printing where the inked image or text is ...
- Gilt
- The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Rubbing
- Abrasion or wear to the surface. Usually used in reference to a book's boards or dust-jacket.
- Good+
- A term used to denote a condition a slight grade better than Good.
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