Always Love a Stranger
New York: Hillman Books, 1961. First edition. 16mo, 160 pp, paperback.
First and only edition of this novel of bisexual life in Greenwich Village, which was written under pseudonym by the New York School writer Joseph LeSueuer, written while he was living with Frank O’Hara. The actually ends up in the Bill Berkson and Frank O'Hara poem ‘Reverdy' -
"Here are two cups, a Keats, a comb and a brush, four packs of cigarettes, an ashtray labeled “Chance,” two boxes of matches, a rope, Always Love a Stranger, a wire brush and a carved piece of wood, which I cannot understand. This is where Reverdy still lives, inexplicable as ever."
in LeSueuer’s he describes the work as “a quickie novel that was brought out by a tawdry paperback house. My sex-obsessed pennydreadful, schematically worked out so that every other chapter was queer, the other ones being as convincingly heterosexual as I could imagine, was called Always Love a Stranger, a title Don Allen suggested to me.” [LeSueuer, Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O’Hara: A Memoir, p. 173].
Despite these references to the work, LeSueuer’s authorship seems to have been largely overlooked in both scholarship on queer novels of this era and the relationship it has to the underground sexuality of the New York School.
Thanks to the great Zoë Selengut for tracking down the Don Allen reference and confirming the id.
OCLC locates only 5 holdings.
A very good, still vivid copy, lightly cocked at spine, with a small indent to cover affecting the first few pages, and with some creasing and rubbing to extremities. Item #30326
Price: $200.00