Proletarian Laughter by Charles Willeford (1948)

In my quest to track down and read all of Charles Willeford's books, I looked at the University of Louisville's holdings and found (and was able to obtain and read) Kiss Your Ass Good-Bye, The Shark-Infested Custard, I Was Looking For a Street, and Something About a Soldier. I also noticed a listing for Proletarian Laughter, which I had already read in The Second Half of the Double-Feature (which collects all of Willeford's poetry . . . including some that doesn't seem to have been collected elsewhere), and I thought that it must surely be a reprint, but went ahead and got it anyway. Much to my surprise, it was one of the original Alicat Bookshop Press copies from 1948. It was in deplorable shape, and there were two pages missing, but still . . . I was able to hold Charles Willeford's first book in my hands . . . and that was kind of magical.



There were only 1,000 copies of this beauty in the original print run, so it's pretty amazing that U of L ended up with one of them. Too bad it's in such bad shape, but still . . . it's quite thrilling to have turned those pages.