Charles Bukowski

An inscribed first edition of If We Take by Charles Bukowski.

• Charles Bukowski (American).
• [Los Angeles]: Black Sparrow Press, 1970.
• [8] pages. 
• One of 350 copies. 
• Inscribed by Bukowski to Harold Norse: "12 -27 - 69 / For Hal Norse - / We've both been / through the fire, / dear friend, and / there's more to come - / more fire more o / so much more fire, / and we can only / wonder if we will / kill ourselves first, / or they. No matter - / they will never know. / yrs, / Charles Bukowski." 
• Bukowski has also added to inside of front cover an illustration of a man smoking, signed "Buk."
• Original string-tied stiff printed wrappers.

"We've both been through fire, dear friend, and there's more to come"

First edition, association copy, with an extraordinary inscription and drawing from Bukowski at a pivotal moment in his career to Hal Norse, perennial literary scenester and author of the classic cut-up novel Beat Hotel.

Norse was a frequent Bukowski correspondent beginning in the mid 1960s, and it was Norse who recommended Bukowski to Penguin Press for their Modern Poets series — then Bukowski's highest-profile appearance to date (they appeared together in the thirteenth installment). But the two didn't meet in person until January of 1969, a little less than a year before this inscription. Norse recalls the experience in his book Memoirs of a Bastard Angel: "I knew that a wild Falstaffian ruffian had come to shake things up with more fiction than fact, more fantasy than truth [...] Bukowski was misshapen [...] He looked [...] down and out."

Norse and Bukowski remained life-long — if contentious — friends and correspondents (a collection of their letters has been slated, but delayed, for publication since 2002). Quite simply, one of the closest and warmest Bukowski associations we've seen.