Literature Holiday 2022 - 40 - “Don’t Try This At Home”: First Edition Of Thompson’s Hell’s Angels, Inscribed By Him 36. THOMPSON, Hunter S. Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga. New York, 1967. Octavo, original black cloth, dust jacket. $14,000. First edition, first printing, of Hunter S. Thompson’s first book, an electrifying tale of the infamous biker gangs of California, inscribed: “To Frannie—Don’t try this at home. DST. Hunter. 8.24.95—W.C.” Thompson “made his mark in the mid-1960s with an assignment for The Nation, covering a Hell’s Angel motorcycle group, later published as Hell’s Angels, in which he developed what he calls ‘gonzo journalism’” (Stringer, 666). First-issue dust jacket, with front flap containing price of “$4.95,” code “1/67” at lower edge. Laid into this copy is a photograph of William S. Burroughs shooting a rifle in Lawrence, Kansas in May of 1995, which is referenced in Thompson’s inscription. The photograph was taken during a collaboration with Ralph Steadman, where Burroughs fired at original Steadman works. Steadman produced Polaroid portraits throughout the day, with various assistants documenting the process. Though not present for this collaboration, Thompson had been Burroughs’ shooting partner in the early 1990s, and much revered him, calling Burroughs “my hero a long time before I ever heard of him” in Kingdom of Fear (2003). In 1997, Thompson wrote “The Shootist: A Short Tale of Extreme Precision and No Fear” as a sort of obituary for Burroughs: “William was a Shootist. He shot like he wrote—with extreme precision and no fear… he would shoot anything, and feared nothing.” Francine Ness, “Frannie” in the inscription, was a bookstore owner, first founding the Boston Bookstore Annex in 1979 before going on to run Waiting For Godot Books for more than 40 years, specializing in rare literature. Book fine, bright dust jacket crisp and nearly fine with one short closed tear to rear panel and only most minimal wear.
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