This is the rarest of Brautigan’s books. Four are currently listed on ABE, ranging from $395 (for an incomplete set) to $1,250.

pleaseplantthisbook.com explains:

Richard Brautigan published Please Plant This Book in the Spring of 1968. It consisted of eight packets of garden seeds, each printed with a poem, all gathered in a small folder.

A version is at pleaseplantthisbook.com. Although the cover of the folder (above) appears to be an actual scan, the packets with verses look like digital facsimiles rather than scans.

The Brautigan Bibliography and Archive has lots of info here, including what appear to be scans of the actual packets (scroll to the bottom of the page). The scans are tiny, and clicking on them won’t make them bigger, but if you right-click on any of them and choose “View Image,” you’ll see a larger version.

The complete Lost Girls will be published as a swanky single-volume hardcover retailing for $45 (Amazon has it for $29.70), compared to the original three-volume set from 2006 that retailed for $75 (and is now out of print). It’s due in April.

Humbug by Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Will Elder, Al Jaffee, & Arnold Roth (Fantagraphics, 2009)

Amazon | publisher’s page

Fantagraphics has posted the entire first issue of Humbug as a PDF.

From the publisher:

Harvey Kurtzman changed the face of American humor when he created the legendary MAD comic. As editor and chief writer from its inception in 1952, through its transformation into a slick magazine, and until he left MAD in 1956, he influenced an entire generation of cartoonists, comedians, and filmmakers. In 1962, he co-created the long-running Little Annie Fanny with his long-time artistic partner Will Elder for Playboy, which he continued to produce until his virtual retirement in 1988.

Between MAD and Annie Fanny, Kurtzman’s biographical summaries will note that he created and edited three other magazines, Trump, Humbug, and Help!, but, whereas his MAD and Annie Fanny are readily available in reprint form, his major satirical work in the interim period is virtually unknown. Humbug, which had poor distribution, may be the least known, but to those who treasure the rare original copies, it equals or even exceeds MAD in displaying Kurtzman’s creative genius.

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Robert The’s artistic medium of choice is the book. The object above is an actual book. (Funny that I stumbled across his work the day after finding out that famed literary biographer Lyndall Gordon has titled her upcoming bio of Emily Dickinson A Loaded Gun.)

Robert The’s website

“The Book Art of Robert The, Cara Barer, and Jacqueline Rush Lee” [Quarterly Conversation]