The Journal of Albion Moonlight

Kenneth Patchen published The Journal of Albion Moonlight in 1941, in the plague summer of the Second World War, and it reads like the world coming apart at the seams — which it was. Albion Moonlight moves across a wartime American landscape that has curdled into allegory, the text itself fragmenting into poetry, diary, manifesto, and nightmare. Henry Miller called it the most naked, truthful, harrowing account he had encountered. Somewhere between prose poem and anti-novel, it remains one of the most radical American books of the twentieth century — a precursor to Naked Lunch and Gravity's Rainbow that never quite gets the recognition it deserves.

The first edition, published by the United Book Guild in 1941, was controversial enough that Patchen had difficulty finding a press; the book went through five editions in five years, which speaks to the underground audience that found it. This is the 1946 Padell fifth edition, in the bold red, yellow and black dust jacket. A solid copy of an important and hard-to-find title.