CAPUTO, Philip (b. 1941). A collection of 2 typed poems signed with carbon copies ("Philip Caputo"), 2 autograph letters signed ("Phil"), and one typed letter signed ("Phil"), 2 December 1973 - 19 April 1977, a few typed and handwritten corrections. Together 15 pages, 4to, with two envelopes.
Sale 759 - Selections from the Library of Gerald and Barbara Weiner
Oct 8, 2020
10:00AM CT
Live / Chicago
Estimate
$400 -
$600
Sold for $250
Sold prices are inclusive of Buyer’s Premium
Lot Description
CAPUTO, Philip (b. 1941). A collection of 2 typed poems signed with carbon copies ("Philip Caputo"), 2 autograph letters signed ("Phil"), and one typed letter signed ("Phil"), 2 December 1973 - 19 April 1977, a few typed and handwritten corrections. Together 15 pages, 4to, with two envelopes.
Comprising apparently-unpublished poems "The Veterans," and "The Walking Dead," as well as a small group of personal correspondence.
Philip Caputo served as an infantry lieutenant in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. Following his service, he began his journalism career at the Chicago Tribune in 1968, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on election fraud in Chicago. Starting in 1973, and for the next 5 years, he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Tribune. His Vietnam memoir, A Rumor of War, was published in 1977, and has sold over two million copies; the novel was adapted as a two-part television movie in 1980.
In "The Veterans", Caputo writes: On those roads which trace civilization's long retreat, we died of unseen wounds, / Never washed by tears nor gentle rain; / We wonder if it's lust for all we lost / That bids us return to die again." Copies of both The Veterans," and "The Walking Dead" are present in Caputo's papers at Boston University's Howard Gottleib Archival Research Center.
Correspondence includes letters written from Italy and Moscow ("Moscow is about as well as can be expected. This is not the kind of place one can love. I'm hoping I can eventually learn to tolerate it").
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