Starseed [Variant or Trial Issue]

LEARY, Timothy

Published by Level Press c. 1973, San Francisco, 1973

About this Item

A "transmission" by Leary from Folsom Prison, timed with the arrival of the comet Kohoutek. This is a photocopy of nine pages of typewritten text on five stapled pages. The last page reproduces a hand-drawn yin-yang symbol with eight trigrams around it and references one of the hexagrams of the I Ching -- none of which appeared in the published version of this book, which was done by the Level Press and issued as a booklet; this version presumably preceded. According to Leary's bibliographer and the woman who typed Leary's manuscripts for him, including Starseed, this could have been made from Leary's own typescripts (she would have corrected the typos, she said) and issued in small numbers prior to the formal publication. A similar process took place for Neurologic, which was published in late 1973 but had a stapled, prepublication issue done in May of that year that the bibliographer called a "trial issue." Starseed was formally published in September of 1973, and this version -- if what the principals say is correct -- would likely have been done sometime around the time that the Neurologic "trial copy" was done (Neurologic was formally published slightly later in the year than the Level Press Starseed). In any case, an extremely scarce variant of one of Leary's scarcer books, unseen by the bibliographer or by Leary's typist. Near fine. Unless otherwise noted, our first editions are first printings. Seller Inventory # 030748

Bibliographic Details

Title: Starseed [Variant or Trial Issue]

Publisher: Level Press c. 1973, San Francisco

Publication Date: 1973

Binding: No Binding

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

Edition: First Edition.