La muerte de Miss O
[Mexico]: Ediciones Era, 1966. Printed pictorial softcover. 105, [6] pp. 8 x 5 3/4 in. Very good. Item #10396
Ulises Carrión's scarce first book, in its first and only edition.
Carrión (1941-89) was a promising young writer from his early age: as a teenager, he published in the cultural supplement of the Diario de Jalapa and moved to Mexico City to study literature at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). While a student, he worked as an editor for university literary magazines and at the library of the contemporary art institucion La casa del Lago.
Carrión's precocious literary talent, as well as latent expressions of his later conceptual work, are clearly present in La muerte de Miss O. A collection of six stories that ensares the reader in a blend of realism, surrealism and modernist interiority to disquieting effect, the work was well received by the Mexican literati. The stories are also decidedly Mexican, in that many are set in famed locales, such as UNAM's campus, Ciudad Universitaria, and the beach town Acapulco.
In part due to the general ambiance of censorship, repression, and efforts to centralize cultural production under the umbrella of "national culture", in 1964 Carrión declined a grant from the Mexican Association of Writers and departed for Europe. While there, Carrión attended graduate school, published his first two books--La muerte de Miss O and De Alemania--and connected with the European avant-garde, particularly in Amsterdam, where he settled in 1971. His work with the book form, mail art, and conceptual reflections on language earned him an international reputation as one of the most original artists working in the avant-garde tradition. His discovery and celebration by a new generation of artists in the last decade has made his early work highly sought-after, none more so than his first published work.
The first published book by a major Latin American avant-garde and conceptual artist.
Price: $750.00