The Great Rebel: Che Guevara in Bolivia
New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1969. 23.5x16cm: 254pp. First Edition. Translated from Spanish by Helen R. Lane. Publisher’s khaki cloth with black lettering to spine. Color illustrated dust jacket. Bumped spine just starting to fray. Top edges soiled. Scattered foxing to text block edges. Dust jacket has light spotting to verso, a bumped spine, faint scratching, and indentations to recto, rubbing to front flap and a small tear near top edge. Illustrated with black-and-white photos and a map. Inscribed by Barney Rosset to the front endpaper. “5/30/69 / To two people—one who is dead, and one who is very much alive—Joe Liss—without his gentle patience, humor, and courage, this book could not have come into being. / Love, Barney Rosset.” Near Fine in a Better than Very Good dust jacket.
Veteran Bolivian journalists Luis González and Gustavo Sánches Salazar’s history of Che Guevara’s guerilla campaign was the first thorough account, in English, of the Bolivian insurrection. The narrative employs intelligence reports, taped interviews with officials, soldiers, and captured guerrillas, and on-the-ground reporting. Published during the height of the Che hysteria in the US, when publishers were flooding the market with literature on the controversial figure, the book was praised for its objectivity, although both González and Sánchez Salazar considered themselves staunch anti-imperialists. After the end of the Bolivian revolution, several publishing houses, both mainstream and underground, attempted to procure Guevara’s diary (described by Publisher’s Weekly as the “Che Guevara Sweepstakes”). Joining the race, Grove Press owner Barney Rosset sent friend, writer, and off-and-on Grove employee Joe Liss to Bolivia with $6000, instructing him to pose as a filmmaker collecting material for a film on Guevara. Liss was unable to acquire the diary, as it was scattered among numerous Bolivian generals. He connected with Sánchez Salazar and González, however, who not only had a small photocopied portion of the diary, but also photos of the conflict. Rosset flew down to put together a deal, with the present volume the result. A paper drink coaster from the Gran Hotel Ambassador in Cochabamba, Bolivia – presumably where the deal was negotiated – is tipped to the front pastedown. Also, tipped in is an awful review of the 1969 movie, Che!, stating its abundant inaccuracies and stating that no actual texts including his diaries were used to help create the screenplay.
Barney Rosset, a firm anti-censorship activist and pioneer, bought Grove Press in 1951 and quickly began rocking the publishing world with revolutionary literature and counterculture poetry. Rebelling against book bans, he published D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley's Lover, fought the Supreme Court for First Amendment rights and won, and did so again several more times. Rosset was also the first to publish famed Beat poets William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in his literary magazine Evergreen Review.
Price: $450.00
Item #10211