The White Negro
San Francisco: City Lights Books, [1960]. 21.8x14.6cm: [32pp.]. First Edition in this format, having been previously published in 1957 in Dissent magazine, with all First Printing points present (35 cent price on front cover and publisher’s address on title page). Stapled wrappers, with front cover reproducing a photograph of a man’s face, printed in negative. Faint toning along wrapper edges, most noticeable along spine. Internally clean and bright. Near Fine. Scarce.
Miller’s famous and complex post-war essay explores the white male “hipster’s” (or existentialist’s) sympathy for the plight of Black Americans and their struggle against conformity. These hipsters were “a new breed of adventurers” looking “for action with a black man’s code to fit their facts” and since they had “absorbed the existential synapses of the Negro” they could then “be considered a white Negro.” While controversial, both then and now, the essay maintains its relevance as “an important cultural touchstone” and continues to be studied by literary scholars. The pamphlet also includes a section containing comments on the essay by Jean Malaquais and Ned Polsky, with Mailer’s reply to each.
Cook 26.
Price: $100.00
Item #10423