Shakespeare Never Did This includes text by Charles Bukowski and photographs by Michael Montfort, both documenting Bukowski’s1978 trip to Europe. There is a significant amount of text by Bukowski, but this is primarily a photo essay by Michael Montfort of Bukowski’s odyssey.
Montfort was Bukowski’s personal photographer, featuring fine photographs of Bukowski in five books, including Shakespeare Never Did This. Montfort was also responsible for almost all of the biographical photographs that were included in Bukowski’s Black Sparrow Press books. Bukowski chose Montfort because he had a way of capturing him in his natural state, like a fly on the wall.
En route to his birthplace in Andernach, Germany, to meet his uncle Heinrich Fettsen, Bukowski is trailed by celebrity-hunters and paparazzi, appears drunk on French television, blows a small fortune at a Dusseldorf racetrack, does a public reading in Hamburg, and stands in a Cologne Cathedral musing about life and death.
This is the Black Sparrow first edition from 1995. (City Lights first published the book in 1979). This copy is in fine condition in printed paper-covered boards with cloth spine and printed label. Comes with the acetate dust jacket.
The photograph (which is probably worth more than the book itself) is also in fine condition.
