The Zirist Rizir Book and Album Rizir, Ziriz Biography,Occult,Pacific Northwest,Travel & Adventure

First edition. Unpaginated, printed on different color stock in various colored inks, rectos only. Bound in stapled wraps with a sewn spine, contemporary ribbed plastic book cover or drawer lining adhered to paste downs; later ad for additional works by author (then based in Prescott, Arizona) pasted onto front wrap underneath plastic cover. Very Good with glue offsetting to front wrap and endpapers, curling to outer covering from shrinkage and yellowing with age. Occasional stickers and pieces of colored tape affixed to pages, presumably by author. A remarkable example of self-published "kook" writing by a truly unique American inventor and hermit whose life, work, and exploits apparently remain unexamined even by chroniclers of such things. Rizir was born Johan Pacifico de Mario; he officially changed his name to the palindromic Ziriz Rizir in 1929 because, as he later told a reporter, that name was "luckier." He grabbed headlines in New Jersey on Nov. 13, 1930 when police were called to investigate his blasting of Garrett Mountain, and found his occult/astrological writings at the scene. Five years later the headline of the Paterson, NJ Morning Call read "Children Nearly Hit As Inventor's Tank Blows Across Street; Man With Fanciful Name of Ziriz Rizir Experimenting in Clifton." He made the papers again when he announced he was leaving New Jersey in 1936 to hunt "a gold hoard." He wound up living in "an abandoned vault" for a few months, then decamped to Idaho where according to at least one Passaic, NJ paper he used his inventions to find a gold vein. Rizir's exploits as well as his advocacy of phonetic spelling, astrological and numerical theories, and esoteric religious thoughts are chronicled in this book. It mixes various genres of writing with photos and illustrations in surprising ways, displaying that oddly-inspiring, avant garde-quality only Outsider art and publishing can. Rare in the trade.