MAILER, Norman. Advertisements for Myself. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1959.

MAILER, Norman. Advertisements for Myself. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1959.

8o. Original red and black cloth (worn, newspaper clippings relating to Mailer's stabbing of his wife pasted to front endpaper); pictorial dust jacket. Provenance: JAMES JONES (inscribed by his wife on the verso of the half-title: "This is the copy Jim had, so that anybody in it could sign it. Gloria Jones"; signatures in text).

FIRST EDITION of Mailer's anthology of short fiction and essays from the 1950s about contemporary culture. JAMES JONES'S "HOUSE COPY", offered to literary luminaries lampooned in the work for their autograph and comment on the page where Mailer's attack appears within the essay "Evaluations--Quick and Expensive Comments on the Talent in the Room." Signatories include: MARY MCCARTHY, GORE VIDAL, SAUL BELLOW, JAMES BALDWIN, NELSON ALGREN, TRUMAN CAPOTE, WILLIAM STYRON and JONES himself. To the passage which begins "The only one of my contemporaries who I felt had more talent than myself was James Jones," Jones has added in the margin: "I approve. James Jones. 17-2-60." GREGORY CORSO has also signed his name within the essay "Hipster and Beatnik: A Footnote to 'The White Negro.'"

Jones received comparatively gentle treatment in the book, although his biographer claims that he was still outraged by its publication: "There is a considerable difference to me between saying these things during a drunken evening of discussion and putting them in a book which will be printed and sold with the dignity of literature" (quoted in Frank McShane, Into Eternity: The Life of James Jones, Boston, 1985). Nelson Algren in his annotation writes a witty retort: "If he had a brain he'd be dangerous." AN EXTRAORDINARY COPY.

FOR MALCOLM X ITEM SEE LOT 375.