£75
FIRST EDITION, 8vo, pp. [iv], 279, [5] + 11 small ephemeral items in pocket inside front board as issued. Original thick red boards backed in black cloth, 2 printed labels to front board, rear board printed in black, spine lettered in gilt, edges red. A little toned. A touch of rubbing to edges.
The first edition of Symons' first novel, a scandalous homosexual autofictional account of a man trying to write a novel and instead opting to publish his journal. It is unusually frank in its descriptions of gay sex for a book published two years before Canadian decriminalisation and this led to Symons' thinly-veiled narrator being described as 'the most repellent single figure in the recent history of Canadian writing' in The Toronto Star newspaper. Despite poor reviews, it won the Beta Sigma Phi First Canadian Novel Award in 1967 and was later named one of Canada's 100 most important books by the Literary Review of Canada. The book itself is published in a form that emulates a notebook, with faux-handwritten notes front and back, and a pocket to the inside front board containing faux-newspaper clippings, postcards and brochures.
