Oliver Harris' "One Shot" (2024)

Germany: Moloko Print (book, inscribed), 2024.
7.375" x 5.5" x 0.75", 274 pages, softcover, ISBN 978-3-910431-58-4.

One Shot: A Beat Generation Mystery, by Oliver Harris as published by Moloko Print (Germany) in 2024.

A book about Oliver Harris trying to understand the context and meaning of one of the most famous of images of the Beat Generation – the photo of Hal Chase, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs in NYC.  This is a fine example of following along with a scholar as they keep asking questions, and working to answer them with data and creativity. Images of Burroughs are throughout this book, as is useful context about Burroughs at that time in his life (the mid-’50s).

This copy was received as a gift from Oliver Harris, and is inscribed from him to me (demi raven).

Contents:

• Acknowledgments
• Exhibit A: The Group Picture:
• PA 101
• The Professor
• I Knew but I Didn't See
• Ce N'est past [sic] la Guerre
• A Secret about a Secret
• Somebody with a Camera
• Boy Gang
• The Beginning is Also the End
• The Crying of Lot 295
• The Fourth Man
• Left to Right
• The Thing
• Do Not Cross
• Beatitude
• Vestimentary Sign
• An Angel
• Photo Shows
• Taken
• Circa
• Minority Report
• Riverside Drive
• 60, 64
• Panic Attack
• Carl Schurz
• Your Single Moment of Life
• Back to the Future
• Take Three
• Back to Back to the Future
• Pin Burroughs Down
• Exhibit B: The Double Act Shot:
• What We See
• Playing a Scene
• The Snows of Yesteryear
• Hammettesque
• If the Hat Fits
• The Wrong Hat
• False Front
• If They Have Hats
• Banker Drag
• Role Model
• A Good Team
• Black Velvet
• Exterminator in Chicago
• My Cast of Characters
• Time Travel
• An Exact Picture
• A Long Range Spitter
• Double Action
• The Obsession's in the Chasing
• Closing Time
• 1930s Backdrop
• Riverside Drive
• Noir Joke
• Time Marches On
• Boiled
• Blah Blah Blah
• The Grain of the Paper
• Detective Anguish
• Exhibit C: The Photoshoot:
• Missing Pieces
• These Our Actors
• Same Roll
• Counterfeiters
• Acting Out
• Sublimated Murder
• Secret Snow
• Photographer Unknown
• El [sic] Mujer Invisible
• One Shot
• Snow Everywhere
• I Must Give Up
• Schicksalzwang
• The Ambition of Ghosts
• Angles Morts
• Spotting
• The Key
• H Is For
• Emeritus