Daumal, René. A Fundamental Experiment. Hanuman Books, 1987. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 63 pp. [private collection, not for sale]

Hanuman Books is a series of small pocket books published between 1986 and 1993 out of the Chelsea Hotel in NYC. It was founded by American art critic and editor Raymond Foye and Italian painter Francesco Clemente after a trip to India where they got inspired by the style, format, and use of Indian prayer books. 

"The books, small in size and bright in color, were always dedicated to the writings of a particular guru or saint, and were intended to be carried around with ease in a shirt pocket for potential contemplation throughout daily life," Matthew Erikson writes in an article about the Hanuman Books (Parkett, 2012). 

Featuring some of the biggest names in the avant-garde culture and NY art scene of the time--Allen Ginsberg, Cookie Mueller, Bob Flanagan, Patti Smith, Dodie Bellamy, Eileen Myles, and so on--the series has since acquired a fan following, with practically each title a highly sought after book. 

In 2024, Shruti Belliappa founded Hanuman Editions, which is inspired on the Hanuman Books series and publishes contemporary cutting-edge writing alongside reprints of the original Hanuman Books. About the publishing project, she writes: 

"We operate across borders and languages, publishing a set of six books every six months and inviting provocative and urgent voices of our epoch to speak in new tongues. We will also present genealogies of the avant-garde through revisiting the work of earlier artists and the republication of select entries in the original Hanuman catalog.

We think with minds open at all times, looking to alter and expand our scope as we proceed. We recognize that a planetary-scale revolutionary cultural program, one free of the strictures of a single or small group of metropolises, would be a non-local phenomenon. As such, we imagine these books as a constellation, a set of disparate points that intimate the contours of a greater, emergent whole."