Back to top
197.
El Topo, Fábula Pánica con Imágenes.
Mexico: Organizacion Editorial Novaro, S.A., 1970. First edition. Sm. quarto. Wrps., 80pp. Text in Spanish. Illustrated throughout with b/w photographs.
Author’s presentation copy, SIGNED and inscribed on the front endpaper: “Para Martin, el hombre que abrio ima puerta y descubrio ‘El Topo’!” (“For Martin, the man who opened the door and discovered ‘The Mole’!”). Jodorowsky also remarks on the coincidental similarity between the names ‘Topp’ and ‘Topo’.
The identity of the recipient, however, is unclear, since no reference can be found to a Martin Topp, though Marty Topp, the director of “Paradise Now” [1970], a film of The Living Theatre’s performance, and an actress in Ira Cohen’s film, “The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda” [1969], participated with Cohen, Susan Sedgwick, Ross Firestone and others in ‘Conversations with Jodorowsky’ in New York in December 1970, the same month as both the film’s premiere at the Elgin Theatre and the book’s publication. The apparent confusion may be seen as in keeping with the ambiguous nature of ‘El Topo’ itself, the original acid western, and its often provocative writer and director.
Light edge-wear and superficial creasing to wrappers, with small bump to head of spine, o/w a tight, Very Good plus copy of a title seldom found signed or inscribed.
Loosely inserted are two copies of the original programme for “El Juego Que Todos Jugamos” (“The Game We All Play”), a two-act play by Jodorowsky performed with no characters, no costumes and no scenery at Teatro Ofelia in Mexico City in September 1970. Jodorowsky (a member of the Panic Movement collective he co-founded with Arrabal and Topor in Paris in 1962) claims in the programme that the action takes place in the soul of the viewer (“If You Still Have It”) on the eve of the Third World War, and that the purpose of his work was to “Try to Change the Viewer Forever.”.
