http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/normanspinrad/beats.htm

“‘And Bury the Bread Deep in the Sky’ [from Wild Boys] is the kind of sf story that MIchael Moorcock has made his own, with time and space shifts which enable the protagonist to rewrite history.”

Interesting story on many levels. This meeting must have taken place in early 1965 just after Burroughs returned from St. Louis. In addition it is interesting that Berrigan and Burroughs were not great friends. The relationship was heavily weighted in Burroughs’s favor. “I got out of there pretty quickly.” Kind of like gaining attendance with the King.

Rereading Daniel Kane’s book Poets All Welcome on the poetry scene on the lower east side, I found out that Berrigan sent out copies of the first issue of C Journal to a who’s who of the avant garde literary world (like Ginsberg did copies of Howl; Berrigan is to the New York School what Ginsberg is to the Beats as press agent) including Burroughs. This would be in 1963. Possibly Burroughs responded and initiated the correspondance that would start in 1964 and lead to Burroughs’s publication by Berrigan.

The plot thickens!!

SANDERS, Ed. THE DICK: An Occasional Newspaper of Observation, Literature, and Commentary – Vol. 1, No. 1. n.p. [New York: The F**k You Press, 1967].
First edition. Wraps. Folio. Full-page headline proclaims: “Poet Ted Berrigan Teaches Parrot to Scarf Cock.” And that about captures the tone of
this one-shot from Sanders’ legendary press. A sort of pseudo-community newspaper in the form of a lit. mag…Or a pseudo-lit. mag in the form of a
sex tabloid. A definite oddball, but an intimate (in more ways than one) snapshot of the late-sixties downtown poetry scene. In-jokes abound. Provocative and playful with many of Sanders’ distinctive illustrations. About near fine with some toning at spine and light edgewear. [Clay and Phillips, 167] 8pp.

There is no further information on when the UCLA inscription took place or where. Interesting that Burroughs would inscribe the same book to Berrigan. Possibly that book was particularly dear to Berrigan or just happened to be on hand.

I was surfing Jan Herman’s blog and came across a piece on Ed Sanders and the Fugs. In it, Herman mentions Sanders The Dick, a one (maybe two) shot periodical from Fuck You Press. The headline reads Ted Berrigan Teaches Parrot to Scarf Cock. It got me thinking: could this be a reference to the film Burroughs Buys a Parrot.

Without a doubt there seems to be quite a lot of links between Burroughs and Berrigan. If anyone has any letters or other information please post here.

I wonder if the answer to this difference in success in the publishing industry comes down to the simple hard drug use and homosexuality featured in Burroughs’s work. I think Burroughs’s subject matter and his treatment of it is more fringe than Pynchon’s.

The $20,000 advance is interesting. I would assume Burroughs got that advance for Nova Express from Grove. As you state Burroughs was proud of that advance. He should be. He received only $800 for Naked Lunch merely five years before and the work he was producing was less commercial, less accessable, and more difficult than Naked Lunch. His major project of 1965 The Third Mind would not find a publisher until 1978 and the three column stuff, like APO-33, Time and The Dead Star would never find a mainstream publisher unless you count the smaller pieces in The Burroughs File.

That might be your other answer: form. In matters of form Burroughs is far more “marginal” and experimental than Pynchon. So maybe the answer is form and content.

Burroughs: “And among other moderns, Mr. Ballard and Mr. Moorcock in England [interest him]… I get this quite regularly [holds up a magazine], New Worlds Science Fiction which I believed is edited by Michael Moorcock, and I’ve found some extremely good stories in there.”