Chappaqua

Very rare first edition, one of 150 copies signed at the colophon by Conrad Rooks. OCLC records only two copies at the American College of Greece and at Princeton University Library.

Spine and boards marginally sunned, two stains to the right margin of the rear board.

Presentation copy, inscribed, dated and signed "to Sueeva Viegand with appreciation for kind thoughts and friendship. Sincerely Conrad Rooks 5/7/1963 / Paris 26 rue Saint Beniot [Benoît] ’

Extremely rare first edition of Conrad Rooks's poem, written amid fumes of alcohol, peyote, and hallucinogenic mushrooms, adapted into one of the most important films of the Beat Generation, directed by Robert Franck.

No copy has appeared at auction according to RBH.

"desperate now

I poured the iodine

of whiskey, beer and pastisse,

bottles and rivers of liquid fire balm

on the spreading cancerous sore

....

what augury

contained in the amber Johny [sic] Walkers

and Dewar's White Label"

Following the sudden death of his father in 1962, Conrad Rooks put an end to a period of dependency on alcohol and narcotics and travelled to Switzerland for a cure. He emerged drug free and enlightened. In January 1963, he had this poem privately printed by the Athens printer Christos Christou, and dedicated it to the memory of his father, a wealthy businessman. Rooks's opulent upbringing had swiftly led him into addiction: "Litte rich boys/ We are all doomed immured in pleasure/ and desire/ there are no Buddhas on Wall Street" he writes in these lines. The poem's title refers to the town in New York State where Rooks had lived from the age of nine. "Chappaqua" is said to be a Native American word meaning a "sacred place of running water," where certain tribes buried their dead, who were believed to pass into a spiritual state:

"I have returned to Chappaqua

sacred place of Running waters

to the swing on the dying

old tree

Etearnity [sic] is galloping now

down Roaring Brook Lane"

An excerpt from the poem appeared in 1963 in the first issue of the Greek avant-garde review το Άλλο στην τέχνη (To allo stin techni, The Different in Art) edited by Leonidas Christakis. Rooks was then living in Greece within a circle that also included, at various points during the 1960s, Sinclair Beiles, Gregory Corso, Harold Norse, Ted Joans, Alan Ansen, Philip Lamantia, John Esam, and Dan Richter, and works by these authors appeared in small magazines close to the Beats (Maria Nikolopoulou "The Transfer and Appropriations of the Beat Generation in Greece", Beat Literature in a Divided Europe, 2018).

Rooks subsequently conceived the project of making a film adaptation of the poem. The process intended to serve a therapeutic function and help prevent any relapse. In January 1964, Rooks began filming Chappaqua, which ultimately took over nearly three years. The film was financed by his father's inheritance as well as by loans taken from his family and close acquaintances, for a total amount of around $450,000. The largely improvised shoot relied on a method whereby Rooks would deliberately induce in himself a state of frenzy and panic in order to make contact with his psyche and creative faculties; he filmed according to the inspiration of the moment, sometimes without interruption for twenty-four hours. The film was shot in France, Mexico, India, Ceylon, England, and in forty-eight American states. Among the cast, besides Rooks himself in the lead role ('Russell Harwick'), were Jean-Louis Barrault ('Dr. Benoit'), William Burroughs ('Opium Jones'), Allen Ginsberg ('Messie'), Ornette Coleman ('Peyote Eater'), and Moondog ('The Prophet'), with music by Ravi Shankar in collaboration with Philip Glass.

One of the very few surviving copies inscribed in Paris by the wandering writer to a mysterious woman - writer, beatnik or perhaps paramour?