Oakland: Bench Press, 1977. First edition thus; originally published in newsprint tabloid format in 1975. 355pp. Octavo; light blue cloth stamped in silver on front board and spine; lacking a jacket, presumably as issued. A touch of wear/whitening at board corners, else very fine; a splendid, as-new copy.
First and only hardcover edition of this insider account of the 1960s psychedelics movement, mostly centered on the year that Kleps spent living with Timothy Leary et al. at the upstate New York mansion familiarly known as Millbrook. A freewheeling romp of a book which makes no pretense about its subjectivity but is nonetheless chock-full of invaluable insights and decidedly juicy gossip about one of the high- (or perhaps low-) water moments in American counterculture. Kleps (1928-1999) was founder of the Neo-American Church (officially unacknowledged as a "genuine religion" by the United States), author of The Boo Hoo Bible, and one of the era's foremost psychedelic agitators, though his hold-nothing-sacred style of anarchic humor was a sometimes point of contention among his peers.
