MCELROY, Joseph. Lookout Cartridge. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1974. 8vo. First edition, first printing. Publisher’s cream cloth lettered and decorated in gilt to the spine and front board, in the striking dust jacket designed by Fred Marcellino. Inscribed by the author to title page, ‘for David '[-] my fourth book’. Publisher’s review copy with review slip loosely inserted. A near fine copy, the cloth clean and bright, the gilt decoration a little rubbed and dulled, the binding tight and square, the contents fine throughout. The dust jacket unclipped ($10.00) and fine, minor mark to spine head, but a sharp example and scarce with the author’s signature.
A bit of a white whale of postmodernist reading and book collecting, albeit a fair bit slimmer than some of its fatboy comrades. ‘A gigantic mystery set mainly in London and New York’ as yet unread by this cataloguer but which, reportedly, influenced David Foster Wallace’s opus, Infinite Jest (1996), if at least in its key plot component of a missing film. Very scarce; the print run was low, and an equally small paperback printing in 1985 remains the only such reprint, for now.
MCELROY, Joseph. Lookout Cartridge. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1974. 8vo. First edition, first printing. Publisher’s cream cloth lettered and decorated in gilt to the spine and front board, in the striking dust jacket designed by Fred Marcellino. Inscribed by the author to title page, ‘for David '[-] my fourth book’. Publisher’s review copy with review slip loosely inserted. A near fine copy, the cloth clean and bright, the gilt decoration a little rubbed and dulled, the binding tight and square, the contents fine throughout. The dust jacket unclipped ($10.00) and fine, minor mark to spine head, but a sharp example and scarce with the author’s signature.
A bit of a white whale of postmodernist reading and book collecting, albeit a fair bit slimmer than some of its fatboy comrades. ‘A gigantic mystery set mainly in London and New York’ as yet unread by this cataloguer but which, reportedly, influenced David Foster Wallace’s opus, Infinite Jest (1996), if at least in its key plot component of a missing film. Very scarce; the print run was low, and an equally small paperback printing in 1985 remains the only such reprint, for now.
