Sometime back in '07, I made my first major acquisition of items from the College de 'Pataphysique. The hodgepodge collection features upwards of 60 items, spanning an array of the regular series & various individual volumes throughout each decade of the College's activities. I haven't mentioned the collection before because I never typed up the complete bibliographical info; for whatever reason, I found this necessary if I wanted to properly document the purchase. Of course this is not the case. Furthermore, I shall let the camera do most of the talking, instead of trying to point out various details, which would leave me typing into tomorrow. Many of the more recent items are in amazing condition, but several other of the items are in poor shape & deteriorate a little bit more each time I peruse them.
The longview of a purchase of this size & variety is that it handcuffs you when you want to complete a series of the individual journals. To continue one must either try the difficult task of tracking down the remaining specific numbers in a pricey & limited market or face the reality of having a fair number of duplicates. As I've continued to collect items from the College, this later outcome has won out so far, & now I have several handfuls of duplications. At the same time, the acquisition of the set helped galvanize & clarify the College's bibliography to me somewhat, prior to which I found largely confounding.
Various issues from the series of journals, including
Subsidia Pataphysica,
Monitoires &
Organographes (only a few issues from the earlier
Cahiers &
Dossiers were included):
Subsidia:
Organographes:
Monitoires:
An exemplaire from the
Dossiers, followed by several photos of its contents, including centerforld:
Various individual items:
Front & Back of
Promptuaire Duplications, one of which has a stamp on the verso w/ a Chicago address, followed with a glance at some contents, offering a sculpture by Boris Vian:
A survey of Ferry:
More Ferry: more than 30 loose leaves kept in a fragile folder w/ a Vian sheet laid in: the biggest item in the collection:
The littlest item in the collection, from Opach:
Additional variety:
A smallish Ferry treat with a neon center:
From the closest to a Queen He ever got (except we are all queens):
* * *
If you thought that was good, rezip your pants. The three items that follow all contain various folded this-or-that lurking within, revealing marvels of a scale unexplored in the previous items.
Innocent-seeming from the outside:
The contents:
[It is unclear if the 2nd piece is an actual part of this volume or rather a separate item simply tipped in for safekeeping.]
Numero deux. Some tipped in items followed by the larger foldout:
The followup to the piece just above:
(Verso of preceding photo:)
Rounding out today's survey, the helpful issue of
Evergreen Review dedicated to the College along with two, seemingly entirely unassociated volumes that somehow found their way into the bin:
By way of P.S. simply a reminder that all above images are clickable so as to see a much larger version.
