NY: William Morrow & Company, 1974. First edition. 220pp. 8vo; black boards backed with off-white cloth; gilt spine titles; dust jacket. Light foxing & soiling to textblock edges; sunning to board perimeters; slight forward cocking to spine. Unclipped (“$6.95”) jacket with sunning to spine, toning to perimeters, and light interior damp-staining to spine ends and top of front panel. Very good (-) in a very good jacket. Signed and inscribed by Kligman on the dedication page: “To my dear Kenward, who always makes the impossible happen. I love you. Ruth 1/2/74.”
Presentation copy of this memoir of Kligman’s relationship with American painter Jackson Pollock, Kligman having been the only survivor of the 1956 car crash that killed Pollock and fellow passenger Edith Metzger. From the library of New York School poet, librettist, and publisher Kenward Elmslie (1929-2022). As to the extent of Elmslie’s relationship with Kligman, though evidently warm, we can find only one reference, in a 2002 letter from Elmslie to Lucia Berlin: “I used to go to Weight Watchers with Ruth Kligman, Pollock’s girlfriend in the Death Car. She also dated de Kooning, whom I once glimpsed at her loft.” (Chip Livingston, ed., Love, Loosha, p. 213).
