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95.
A small collection, including three early book publications accompanied by the author’s duplicated typescripts, c. 1976-84.
i) Myself As A Menu (Excerpts From Something In Progress). Three photocopied quarto size sheets, folded twice for mailing, with author’s holograph note to first sheet: “Dearests - this was in Wallpaper, a guest issue - Susan Hiller asked me (also Carla [Liss]) to be her guest - I’d always wanted to lay something out on a menu - Much love xx L.” (the note is to Bill Levy and Susan Janssen, for whose underground paper, Suck, Tillman had previously worked as an editorial assistant). The piece appropriates the menu from Longchamps, a now defunct New York restaurant, and appeared in Wallpaper #5/6 in June 1976, Tillman’s first commission for a publication.
ii) Meret Oppenheim in NYC, April 1978. Two duplicated quarto size sheets, folded twice for mailing. Tillman’s essay on her meeting and interview with Meret Oppenheim on the occasion of her first one-woman show at the Eugenia Cucalon Gallery in New York, April 1978 (Tillman had previously interviewed Oppenheim with Carla Liss for Art and Artists magazine in 1973).
iii) Weird Fucks. Paris: Handshake Editions, March 1982. First edition. Wrps., perfect bound, 52pp. The first appearance of Tillman’s series of drily observed comic snippets from an unnamed woman’s peripatetic sex life: “I was a slum goddess and in college. He looked something like Richard Burton; I resembled Liz. It was, in feeling, as crummy and tortured as that” (the opening sentence from “An East Village Romance”, the second story in the collection). In another story, “Just An Accident”, the author, by then living in Amsterdam, refers to her friend Carla Liss and (founding member of Fluxus) George Maciunas, and recounts her participation in Jack Henry Moore’s theatre group, The Human Family, in Munich in 1972. The book’s imprint, Handshake, was so named because Jim Haynes’s contract with each author was based on a handshake. Edges of wrappers toned; glue binding intact but potentially fragile. Together with: a) Weird Fucks. Author’s duplicated typescript. 51 quarto sheets. Text corresponds to the Handshake edition, with the addition of two epigraphs (one of them by Meret Oppenheim) not included in the book. Edges slightly age-toned. b) Selected chapters from “Weird Fucks” in BIKINI GIRL #6 (NY: Bikini Girl Magazine, 1980). Ed. Lisa Baumgardner. Printed wrps., stapled, unpaginated (30pp.)., with bound-in transparent flexi-disc record (“Occult Chemistry”). Other contributors include Harry Smith, Kit Knight, Peter Fabrega and Angelo Pastormerlo. Poor condition, with upper and lower wrappers toned, worn and detached from staples.
iv) Living With Contradictions. Buffalo, NY: Top Stories, 1982. First edition. Wrps., unpaginated (44pp.). A collection of aphorisms, accompanied by Jane Dickson’s drawings. The tenth issue of Top Stories, a series of experimental prose publications by women writers and artists. Wrappers slightly rubbed and creased, o/w Very Good. Together with: Living With Contradictions. Author’s duplicated typescript. Four quarto sheets, plus 2pp. typescript titled “Brain Decoration”, not included in Top Stories. Edges of paper age-toned; faint rust marks from paper clip to top edge.
v) Madame Realism. Brooklyn, NY: The Print Center, 1984. First edition. Wrps. (unpaginated). Drawings by Kiki Smith. The first collection of observations by Tillman’s third-person feminist construct, Madame Realism. Spine slightly age-toned, o/w Very Good plus. Publisher’s announcement card laid in, printing quotes from Gary Indiana, Paul Bowles, Alan Moore and Kathy Acker (worn and creased, with ink inscriptions to verso, including Charles Gatewood’s contact number). Loosely inserted autograph card from the author to Bill Levy and Susan Janssen in which she thanks them “for your help with film - leaving tomorrow for Berlin - very nervous” (a reference to Tillman’s feature film, “Testament”, starring Jane Alexander, which was screened out of competition at the Berlin Film Festival in February 1984 and featured early roles for Kevin Costner and Rebecca De Mornay).
vi) Hung Up. Author’s duplicated typescript, with autograph note (“Dearests - Thought you might get a winter’s laugh out of this...”). Four quarto sheets, folded twice for mailing, with original envelope addressed to Bill Levy and Susan Janssen in Amsterdam, postmarked New York, November 29, 1982. Also included is a review of “Living With Contradictions” photocopied from the Poetry Project Newsletter by Tillman and briefly annotated by her. The audio-cassette magazine, Tellus, published Tillman reading “Hung Up” in their seventh issue in 1984.
vii) Wrong In The Past. Author’s duplicated typescript. Eight quarto sheets, folded twice for mailing, with one small holograph amendment by the author. A short story set in Istanbul featuring “Roger and Tony, inexperienced English smugglers” and Cengiz, “a poet and chicken farmer” (published by High Times in December 1984).
viii) Autograph postcard to Susan Janssen and Bill Levy in Amsterdam, postmarked New York, July 14, 1990. Approx. 100 words. Tillman mentions her recent appearance on the same bill as Annie Sprinkle at Franklin Furnace. Very Good.
