Conversation with Author (2 results)
ONE FOR THE ROAD.
PINTER, Harold. (photographs - Ivan Kyncl; conversation with author - Nicholas Hern):
- Hardcover
Seller: Portman Rare Books, Tonbridge, United KingdomPortman Rare Books
Contact seller4-star sellerCondition: Used - Very good
£ 15.00
£ 25.00 shippingShips from United Kingdom to U.S.A.Quantity: 1 available
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Very good condition, in very good dust wrapper, medium quarto, very faint yellowing to edges, illustrated, 80 pages. [QP].
More imagesLanguage: English
Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1937
- Hardcover
- First Edition
- Signed
Seller: Cat's Curiosities, Pahrump, NV, U.S.A.Cat's Curiosities
Contact seller4-star sellerHardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. 1st Edition. "1937" to both title page and copyright page, copyright page also shows stand-alone letter "A" and the Scribner's colophon -- no later printings mentioned. Thus, first printing of the true first edition. (This is not a translation -- Ludecke (1890-1960) published in English, th…ough possibly with the help of a ghost writer.) A "good" hardcover book with no major flaws (corners of the dark brown boards with their Swastika stamping show some rub) and NO dust jacket. The author has dated "New York City / Nov 25 - 37" and inscribed "To Helen Crane, my dear wife's good and loyal friend, . . ." diagonally in black ink and signed "K. Ludecke" to the blank FFE. (The 1940 U.S. Census found Ludecke living in Detroit with his wife Mildred Coulter Ludecke, his junior by 10 years. Mildred worked for the Detroit Public Library system, meaning "Helen Crane" was almost certainly Michigan-born Helen Mary Crane (1883-1952?), who worked for a time as librarian of the State Teachers College in Valley City, North Dakota, but returned to serve as chief of Acquisitions for the Detroit Public Library in the 1930s.) Crane "made the papers," as it were, when she spoke out in defense of the library's purchase of Hemingway's novel "To Have and Have Not," reportedly the only book banned in America in 1938 (in Detroit and Queens, N.Y.) after a patron complained of "immoralities," later being joined in his or her condemnation by the Catholic Church. (The book's hero, fishing boat Captain Harry Morgan, opts to run contraband between Cuba and Florida, though we suspect "profane language and adult situations" may have featured more prominently.) To the blank page vi, in this copy, Ludecke has additionally hand-written in green ink a new sixth paragraph intended to be inserted in his Introduction, beginning "My ambition was to create a picture of the development and growth of Hitler and the Hitler system . . ." Whether this new paragraph was inserted in later printings we do not know, but that and a final hand-written epitaph at the end of the book -- in the same hand and also in green ink -- indicate this may have been the author's personal "correction" copy. Ludecke dedicated this 1937 book "In Memory of Captain Ernst Roehm and Gregor Strasser and Many Other Nazis Who Were Betrayed, Murdered, and Traduced in Their Graves." An early study of the German Fuhrer and other Nazi leaders by an activist who had been seduced (politically, at least) by Hitler and joined the movement as early as 1922, but who soon lost his position in the S.A. in a quarrel with Hermann Goering. Ludecke actually spent 1924 through 1932 in America (where he founded the Swastika League of America and a publication called the "American Guard.") He returned to Germany in May, 1933, but found himself out of favor, and was soon imprisoned on Hitler's orders in the Oranienburg concentration camp, where he served eight months before either escaping or being released in March, 1934, whereupon he again left the country. He thus escaped that summer's "Night of the Long Knives," when it's presumed he would have been put to death along with Roehm and other increasingly inconvenient veteran S.A. Brownshirt thugs. Ludecke, who reports many verbatim conversations with Hitler, is often cited as a source on the early days of the movement, but carefully. Before World War One -- before he became the fledgling Hitler's emissary, traveling abroad to seek support from Mussolini and even (probably unsuccessfully) from Henry Ford -- Ludecke had been basically a con man, hustler, and gigolo in France, England, and the United States, devising schemes to separate the wealthy (and especially wealthy women) from their money, jewelry, and other valuables. Denied U.S. citizenship in 1938, he was arrested as an enemy alien by U.S. authorities in February, 1942, and held prisoner for four years. Ludecke returned to Germany in the 1950s, dying in Bavaria in 1960. 814 pp. including index. Reduced from $2,250. Contains 8 B&W plates, two of which show a series of six photos of the author with Hitler, engaged in an animated conversation while seated together on a blanket in the woods (illustrator). Inscribed by Author(s).
