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6.
Re/Search No. 8/9.
SF: Re/Search Publishing, 1984. First edition. 4to. Glossy pictorial wrps., 176pp. Illustrated throughout.
SIGNED by Ballard on the copyright page.
Contains interviews with Ballard by Andrea Juno and Vale, and Graeme Revell; an interview with Martin Bax, founding editor of Ambit; extracts from Ballard’s fictional works, including “Crash”, “The Atrocity Exhibition”, “Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan”, and “Notes Toward a Mental Breakdown”; a selection of non-fiction, including “Things I Wish I’d Known at 18”, and “Mythmaker of the 20th Century: William S. Burroughs”; biographical notes (“From Shanghai to Shepperton”); critical essays by David Pringle and Graeme Revell, and William Burroughs’ “Preface To Love and Napalm: Export U.S.A. (The Atrocity Exhibition”); bibliographies; and “Collages by Ballard”, full-page reproductions of the series of five Advertiser’s Announcements taken out in Ambit: “Of course I was advertising my own conceptual ideas, but I wanted to do so within the formal circumstances of classic commercial advertising… To maintain the integrity of the project I paid the commercial rate for the page, even in the case of Ambit, of which I was and still am the prose editor. I would like to have branched out into Vogue and Newsweek, but cost alone stopped me…” (p.148).
Small bump to base of spine, o/w Near Fine. Signed first printings are uncommon.