THE BLOWTOP: a novel by SCHWARTZ, Alvin, 1916-2011 - 1948

New York: Dial. 1948. First printing. Hardcover. Beige pictorial boards stamped in black, red top page edges. pp (6). 199. [3]. Text paper tanned as always, yellowing to endpapers, musty odor, light damp spot to rear cover, else fine, red top edges not faded. Thin dust jacket has a shallow chip across head of spine, pink portion of spine sunned to white; short split to front flap fold and a copy small tears to panels, VG otherwise, flap price intact, still attractive in appearance. >>>Alvin Schwartz, born in New York City, wrote for comic books for twenty years, penning countless Batman and Superman stories, and creating the durable villian Bizarro, an anti-Superman."In the midst of Schwartz’s comics career he wrote The Blowtop, a novel that was credited by the New York Times as being the first consciously existential novel written in America. Written in 1946, it was inspired by his close relationships to such famous abstract expressionist painters as Jackson Pollock and Willem DeKooning and explored how the post-war years affected the bohemian class in New York’s Greenwich Village, where Schwartz grew up and lived. Due to its frank language and unflinching portrayal of drug use and sex, The Blowtop wasn’t published until 1948 - and even then it was repackaged as a pulp mystery novel. The book became a cult success, and was a favourite of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg when they were students at Columbia University; which led to some claims that the book sparked the Beat Generation of writers." - Brad McKay, sequential pulp. In 1968 he moved to Canada where he wrote documentaries for the National Film Board as well as economic and social studies for the Canadian government. He returned to the world of comics in 1997. He lived on the outskirts of Chesterville, Ontario, for the last 20 years of his life, where he died at age 95, having lived in Canada for over 40 years. The Blowtop begins with the sudden death of a small time marijuana dealer in a Village Greenwich bar. .