Book cover & inscription: "A Confederate General from Big Sur"

It's been 13½ years since there was a post that was fully about a Richard Brautigan book, so I think it's high time for another. 

• Title: A Confederate General from Big Sur
• Author: Richard Brautigan (1935-1984)
• About the cover: The wave is a portion of the 1831 woodblock print "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" by Katsushika Hokusai. That's Brautigan himself holding the umbrella. I have searched the internets far and wide, but cannot determine who the woman is. Please leave a comment if you know!
• Back cover promotional text: "An amazing story ... You'll feel better about the whole world after reading this." — Los Angeles Herald Examiner
• Original publication date: January 22, 1965
• This edition: This is the Ballantine Books paperback. First printing, June 1973.
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 160
• Cover price: $1.50. (A little pricey for a 1973 paperback! That's the equivalent of about $10.50 today.)
• Dedication: "to my daughter Ianthe"
• First sentence: "When I first heard about Big Sur I didn't know that it was a member of the Confederate States of America."
• Last sentence: "Then there are more and more endings: this sixth, the 53rd, the 131st, the 9,453rd ending, endings going faster and faster, more and more endings, faster and faster until the book is having 186,000 endings per second."
• Random excerpt #1: "I went downtown to see three movies in a Market Street flea palace. It was a bad habit of mine. From time to time I would get the desire to confuse my senses by watching large flat people crawl back and forth across a huge piece of light, like worms in the intestinal track of a tornado."
• Random excerpt #2: "She went down to the pet shop and came back with two alligators. We asked her why she'd gotten two alligators and she said they were on sale."
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.98 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review: In 2007, Kyle wrote: "The best use of weird metaphors, brilliant and silly and vulgar and nothing to do with anything. You can read it in two hours and it will make you happy and sad and think differently about alligators, motorcycle parts, hippies, and hitchhiking down highway one to Big Sur."
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2011, Michael H. Jones wrote: "I first read this novel forty years ago while working as a poll watcher in New Jersey. I forget what party I was supposedly 'watching' for, but my dad and I were the only ones in town. During the long, boring day I read Confederate General and laughed so hard at different times that I cried, and snot dripped down my face. I am sure the other party's watchers are still convinced that Democrats are mental."
• Twitter memory (I'm not calling it X): In 2022, @DougieTraill tweeted: "A Confederate General from Big Sur. It was my gateway to Richard Brautigan. My dad recommended it to me, and let me read through his Brautigan collection. Gave us a shared interest to talk about, and brought us a bit closer when I was being a moody 14-15 year old dickhead!"

Bonus: The inscription in this copy of the book