Vol. 1, No. 1, October 9, 1942 When I first caught brief sight of the bound collection of "The Finger" on the shelf at the
Great Northwest Bookstore in Portland, Oregon, its name and style led me to believe it must be some sort of radical underground paper from the 1960s. It wasn't until I spied the date on the first issue -- October 9, 1942 -- that I realized it obviously was something quite different.
Although the set had been bound together in hardback form, with "THE FINGER" and "OCT. 9, 1942 - JAN 3, 1944" embossed along the spine, there was no indication of the book's source, although that it had been carefully bound at all suggested it had come from a collection, of some sort, from somewhere. That binding, however, was free of any label or imprint.
The collection then sat untouched for months before I began to seek out information on "The Finger," its origins, and its creators.
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