Beats Kandel Lenore / The Love Book First Edition 1966

Description: This is a rare and collectible first edition of "The Love Book" by Beats-Kandel Lenore, published in 1966 by Stolen Paper Editions. The book is a softcover wraps and is in its original form. The author has not signed the book. The book is written in English and covers the topic of poetry. It belongs to the category of Antiquarian & Collectible and Books & Magazines. The book is a great addition to any collection and is a must-have for poetry enthusiasts. This is from the publisher who has been a friend of mine for some 30 years. It's a great piece of history.On an unseasonably warm afternoon in late November of 1966, hundreds of San Francisco State University students jammed shoulder-to-shoulder on the campus commons, enraptured by a handful of English department professors who took turns reading passages from an 825-word book of erotic poetry. Just a few weeks prior, Lenore Kandel’s “The Love Book” had barely sold any copies. Then it was discovered by San Francisco’s obscenity squad, a police officer duo who raided local shops and entertainment venues to prevent the public from watching or reading about subjects they deemed to be scandalous. Their punitive response, which eventually led to a weeks long obscenity hearing, ultimately caused Kandel’s book to skyrocket in popularity. Kandel sticking the “F-word” in close proximity to mentions of angels and deities was a step too far, a sacrilegious decision, in the eyes of officers Peter Maloney and Sol Weiner, who confiscated copies of the book from the Psychedelic Shop on Haight Street (where Slice House is now) and City Lights bookstore. They subsequently arrested the booksellers on charges of peddling obscene content; the cops also derided the book as “hard-core pornography” and sought to get it banned, believing, perhaps on a deeply personal level, that it “excited lewd thoughts.” But to Kandel, a writer and student of Zen who straddled both the Beatnik and hippie eras, her poetry was describing the act of sex as a sacred and holy experience between people who were in love. Notably, this was presented from the perspective of a woman with a candidness that was considerably ahead of its time. Even the November 1966 reading and lecture at San Francisco State — while supportive in theory of Kandel’s work — grew contentious at various points, as the all-male panel of faculty argued among themselves about the meanings of pornography and obscenity. “So much has been said already that anything I say will be an anticlimax,” Kandel joked an hour into the demonstration, causing the crowd to break out in laughter. “I’m very happy that there are different points of view because things are being talked about that haven’t been talked about for far too long a time.”

Price: 199 USD

Location: Novato, California

End Time: 2024-11-04T18:01:23.000Z

Shipping Cost: 7.38 USD