"Miserable Miracle", by Henri Michaux, translated by Louise Varese, published by City Lights Books, San Francisco, first US edition, stated "Second Printing December 1967."

This book is an exploration. By means of words, signs, drawings. Mescaline, the subject explored. In "Miserable Miracle", the great French poet and artist Henri Michaux, a confirmed teetotaler, tells of his life-transforming first encounters with a powerful hallucinogenic drug. At once lacerating and weirdly funny, challenging and Chaplinesque, his book is a breathtaking vision of interior space and a piece of stunning writing wrested from the grip of the unspeakable.

HENRI MICHAUX [1899-1984] was born in Namur, Belgium, the son of a lawyer, and educated at a Jesuit school in Brussels. He contemplated entering the priesthood, turned to the study of medicine, then left school entirely, enlisting instead as a stoker in the French merchant marine. Michaux's travels, throughout the Americas, Asia, and Africa, were to inspire his first two books, the extraordinary travelogues "Ecuador and A Barbarian in Asia". Settling in Paris, Michaux began to write and paint, and his work, especially his prose poems recounting the strange and very funny misadventures of the character he called Monsieur Plume. Michaux's wife died in 1948, he devoted himself increasingly to his distinctive calligraphic drawings in ink. He also began to take mescaline at regular intervals, recording his deeply disorienting, often traumatic experiences in a series of unflinching texts beginning with "Miserable Miracle". Celebrated in France and around the world for his accomplishments as a writer and artist, Michaux remained averse to publicity and public honors throughout his life, and in 1965 refused the French Grand Prix National des Lettres.

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Soft cover, 5.1/2" x 8"; 89 pages, 8 b/w plates, a little wear, very good condition. [ohdb]