Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Several months ago I received an email from an editor at Black Dog Publishing which operates out of London. Black Dog prints books on a variety of topics such as photography, architecture, film and design. They did a book on Independent record shops that I am dying to own. One of the publisher’s upcoming projects is a book on German rock, experimental and electronic music, and the 1960s counterculture. The editor contacted me for some images of Rhinozeros, a German little magazine published out of Hamburg, edited by brothers Rolf-Gunther and Klaus-Peter Dienst from 1960-1965. Klaus-Peter provided the iconic calligraphy. Burroughs appeared in four of the ten issues. I had Issues Five and Seven, which I purchased at the legendary Nelson Lyon Sale in 1999. I happily provided the images.

The request got me obsessed with Rhinozeros. I have touched on this remarkable little magazine in a piece I wrote about Burroughs’ early 1960s mag appearances in Germany and Belgium. There is not a lot of information on Rhinozeros in English, and I do not have much to add to what I wrote in that piece, but I did start digging around the internet looking to piece together a complete run of this visually stunning publication. A bookseller in Switzerland had several issues and a click to Powell’s website filled in the holes. Now I have all ten issues.

So here are the covers of all ten issues as well as scans of all the Burroughs appearances. The images make clear that some of the most exciting visuals in all of Burroughs’ oeuvre in any format, be it novel, broadside, magazine or painting, reside within the pages of Rhinozeros. The Dienst brothers were interested in the Beat Generation, concrete poetry, and the cut-up technique. Klaus-Peter knew Brion Gysin and would have been aware of the cut-up soon after its rediscovery. The Dienst brothers then discovered Burroughs through Gysin. In turn, Rhinozeros helped introduce the cut-up to a small German audience. Not surprisingly, Burroughs was a major presence in the magazine, but his influence spread throughout Germany during a renaissance in that country’s poetry and literature of the 1960s. German writers like Carl Weissner, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, and Jurgen Ploog took immediately to the work of Burroughs, particularly the cut-up.

Issue Five usually gets singled out for special attention by American collectors. This is the Beat Issue and features Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure and Peter Orlovsky in its pages. The issue is also the only one in color which makes for some remarkable visuals. Peter Ellis Booksellers, operating out of London, has a truly special copy of this issue for sale. Tipped in with the mag are four T.L.S. from Rolf-Dieter Dienst to Whalen and David Meltzer requesting material for his magazine and a projected anthology. Whalen has doodled on one of the letters and has written: “How far off is our history” and “How far off our history is.” The letters makes this special issue of Rhinozeros even more so.

My copy is signed by Burroughs and Gregory Corso. Interested parties might be aware of Burroughs’ importance in German literature of the 1960s, but Corso’s equally important role might be less well known. After a trip to Venice in the Summer of 1960, Corso arrived in Berlin in July of that year and stayed there for several months. In that time, Corso performed readings, wrote poetry, and met with poets and academics. Two years earlier, Corso began work on a German anthology of Beat writers with Walter Hollerer, a professor out of Berlin. In letters from late summer / early fall 1960, Corso writes on the topic of Beat anthologies and he hoped his anthology would be published within the year. Junge Amerikanische Lyrik was eventually published in 1961, introducing the poets of Donald Allen’s New American Poetry anthology to Germany. So it could be argued that Corso was the face of the Beats for German poets at this time. Not coincidentally, Rhinozeros was started in 1960, possibly around the time of Corso’s sojourn in Germany. Without a doubt, Corso’s presence raised awareness of the Beats in Germany and helped spread the word about New America Poetry throughout the country.

Rhinozeros Covers

Rhinozeros 1
1960

Rhinozeros 2
1960

Rhinozeros 3
1961

Rhinozeros 4
1961

Rhinozeros 5 (View complete issue)
1961

Rhinozeros 6
1962

Rhinozeros 7
1962

Rhinozeros 8
1963

Rhinozeros 9
1964

Rhinozeros 10
1965 (?)

Burroughs Texts in Rhinozeros

Wind Hand Caught in the Door
Rhinozeros 5
1961

Novia Express
Rhinozeros 6
1962

Be Cheerful, Sir (Cut-Up)
Rhinozeros 7
1962

Der Doktor auf der Bühne (Cut-Up)
Rhinozeros 9
1964

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

In 1963, the Times Literary Supplement announced the arrival of Dead Fingers Talk with a cry of Ugh! Later that year, Burroughs received the first issue of My Own Mag and responded with a resounding, Yes! In Jeff Nuttall, Burroughs found a fellow traveler who delighted in tweaking the noses of the establishment. For the next two years, they created some of the most interesting work of the mimeo revolution.

Here on RealityStudio, I have attempted to cobble together a history of My Own Mag with bibliographies, chronologies, essays, personal histories and, of course, images. The first issue of Mimeo Mimeo featured a 2500 word essay on My Own Mag that was distilled from a larger 8000+ word mishmash of notes and commentary delving deep into Burroughs’ work in My Own Mag. I have hammered this material into readable shape and offer it here as a supplement to the material already available on RealityStudio.

Some of the material will be familiar to those who have read the various essays on RealityStudio or Mimeo Mimeo, but there is also lots of new information as well. The new sections include close examinations of mimeography as a process and how it shaped and influenced the work of Burroughs and Nuttall. As far as I know, linkages of this type are in the early stages. Stenciling, inking, cross-hatching, paper size, printing techniques, and typography are all put under the microscope, particularly in The Dutch Schultz Issue in My Own Mag No. 13. In addition, links have been made beginning the process of connecting My Own Mag to underground comix and graphic novels, particularly the collaborations with Malcolm Mc Neill.

This is by no means a final statement on My Own Mag. It is in fact a request for information. If any readers have further insights or corrections, please past them along. I would be particularly interested in hearing from anybody with a working knowledge of the mimeograph process. Any details on other mimeos, like TISH, C: A Journal of Poetry, Fuck You, a magazine of the arts, Floating Bear, particularly on how they were created and how that process influenced the content would be appreciated. My knowledge of mimeo is second hand and far from fully developed, and I would love to build on it. Please forward any articles, manuals, or other material on mimeo that you might have.

Desperate Times

Jeff Nuttall published the first issue of My Own Mag in a time of desperation. Despite the excitement generated by the Beatles and the development of an active youth culture, England in 1963 had yet to awaken into the full bloom of the Swinging London of 1966. Occupationally, Nuttall was stuck in a rut teaching at an English art school. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), in which Nuttall staked his political hopes, had stalled. The marches and speeches of CND seemed like dull pantomimes forcing Nuttall to frustration over their lack of relevance and effectiveness. Artistically, Nuttall’s plans for an art installation were stillborn, and the participating artists could only twiddle their thumbs until the logistics of what Nuttall suspected would be a dull show could be resolved.

Nuttall decided to start a mimeo literary magazine. Nuttall commandeered the art school’s mimeo machine. Bob Cobbing, a fellow poet and publisher, taught French at the school. He provided technical know-how and encouragement. The first issue was a mere three pages, but it packed a wallop. In Bomb Culture, Nuttall’s memoir / study of the underground, he writes, “The magazine, even those first three pages, used nausea and flagrant scatology as a violent means of presentation. I wanted to make the fundamental condition of living unavoidable by nausea. You can’t pretend it’s not there if you are throwing up as a result.” Nuttall mailed the first issue to roughly twenty people he thought might be interested, including Anselm Hollo, Ray Gosling, and William Burroughs. The inclusion of Burroughs testifies to his legendary status in the underground. In the 1960s, he was hardly “el hombre invisible” — he appeared seemingly everywhere on the little magazine circuit. Like Charles Bukowski, Burroughs first gained an audience from the alternative publishing scene, and he remained extremely active there even as his reputation grew in the 1960s.

In 1963-1964, William Burroughs stood at a crossroads as well. In the foreword to his bibliography, Burroughs writes, “1964… No. 4 Calle Larachi, Tangier. My Own Mag… smell of kerosene heaters, hostile neighbors, stones thudding against the door. Jeff Nuttall sent me a copy of My Own Mag and asked me to contribute. I recall the delivery of the first copies to which I had contributed was heralded by a wooden top crashing through the skylight.” The activities at No. 4 Calle Larachi (drug use, homosexuality, the constant comings and goings of British and American expats) raised the ire of Burroughs’ Arab neighbors who proceeded to harass him on a daily basis. Burroughs wanted to escape from this desperate and potentially dangerous situation. In addition, Burroughs’ attempt to connect with his son Billy failed in late 1963. Burroughs sent his son back to the States to live with his grandparents, so he was exhausted and upset by the experience. The first issue of My Own Mag provided some much needed comic relief. Burroughs inscribed the first issue of My Own Mag from collector Nelson Lyon’s complete set that was put on the block by Pacific Book Auctions in 1999, “this rare item My Own Mag cheered me when I was under siege in Tangier.”

Creatively, Burroughs also needed cheering. Grove Press planned to publish the final cut-up novel, Nova Express, in hardcover, in the summer of 1964. Burroughs realized that the cut-up novel was something of a dead end, but maybe more distressing was the fact that he had run out of usable source material. The seemingly endless Word Horde of notes, manuscripts, and drafts that resulted from the writing and editing of Naked Lunch was exhausted with the upcoming publication of Nova Express. The Yage Letters was published by City Lights in 1963, so Burroughs had mined his correspondence. Most of the letters to Ginsberg were too painful and too personal to publish. Similarly, Queer, Burroughs’ other manuscript from the 1950s, still cut too close to the bone for Burroughs to think of bringing it before the public eye. Burroughs needed a new direction.

On a more positive note, Burroughs for the first time in his life was in a secure financial position of his own creation. He received a sizable advance from Grove Press for Nova Express. In addition, Grove Press, unlike Olympia Press, provided royalty checks on a regular basis. These revenue streams provided him with the freedom to pursue the non-commercial cut-up to the fullest. Creatively, the cut-up provided a much needed outlet. As Burroughs realized, he just skimmed the surface of the technique’s possibilities in the cut-up novels.

What cheered Burroughs in that first issue of My Own Mag? In an editorial note on the cover, Nuttall writes, tongue firmly in cheek, My Own Mag “will appear every now and then… will be devoted to creations of unparalleled nobility… morals of unquestionable soundness high literary standards of traditional finesse. No dirty pitchers.” Nuttall’s flaunting of good taste, his sense of humor, and his willingness to toy with obscenity laws appealed to Burroughs. Burroughs saw in Nuttall a kindred spirit, and more importantly, a kindred spirit with a literary outlet.

Possibly, Burroughs was also drawn to the fact that My Own Mag was a mimeo production. The idea of taking the means of production into one’s own hands and out of the clutches of the established publishing industry went in line with Burroughs’ feelings towards the mainstream media. Burroughs understood the power of the corporate press, represented by the Time-Life Empire, to manipulate word and images. In the essay “Ten Years and a Billion Dollars,” Burroughs writes, “Journalism is closer to the magical origin of writing than most fiction. That is, at least a few operators in this area — people like the late Hearst and Henry Luce — certainly quite clearly and consciously saw journalism as a magical operation designed to bring about certain effect. And the technology is the technology of magic; in the case of newspapers and magazines, mostly black magic.” Yet as Burroughs wrote in the Talking Asshole section of Naked Lunch, “there’s always a space between, in popular songs and Grade-B movies, giving away the basic American rottenness.” The mimeograph revolution served as a “space between” or “technology of magic” that could foster oppositional sentiment. In a letter to Nuttall reprinted in My Own Mag 9, Burroughs writes, “Well I hope pamphlet publication gets going have always yearned nostalgically for the old pamphlet days when writers fought in the streets.” Alternative publishing dovetailed with Burroughs’ ideas of smashing control.

Nuttall understood the creative and ideological possibilities of the mimeograph, and he drew attention to the mimeo process from the earliest issues of My Own Mag. Issue 1 is subtitled “a Super Absorbant (sic) periodical.” Images of Kleenex and toilet paper come to mind. The link to a tampon is especially strong given the cover illustration of a woman’s vagina and the text referencing childbirth. The idea of My Own Mag as a disposable, inconsequential “rag” is foregrounded. Yet “super absorbant” (sic) also refers to the process of transferring ink to paper that was such a delicate art with the mimeograph.

The foregrounding of the mimeo process continues in issue two subtitled “an odour-fill periodical.” The reference to toilet paper dovetails with the scatological impulse of Nuttall. The title conveys the impression that the contents of the magazine are “shit.” But My Own Mag is good shit, as in a powerful drug. The subtitle plays on the distinctive odor of mimeo and ditto machines. In his memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson writes, “Of all the tragic losses since the 1960s, mimeograph paper may be the greatest. With its rapturously fragrant, sweetly aromatic pale blue ink, mimeograph paper was literally intoxicating. Two deep drafts of a freshly run-off mimeograph worksheet and I would be the education system’s willing slave for up to seven hours.” Bryson’s memory is a little fuzzy as he is probably confusing the spirit duplicator or the rexograph with the mimeograph. Nuttall used a Roneo or Gestetner mimeograph machine that utilized stencils. Like the urban legend of smoking banana peels, the myth of the intoxicating smell of the mimeograph is strong. A Google search of “smell of mimeograph” highlights its power of association. For many, the mimeograph triggers trips back to childhood and school. Nuttall working and printing in an art school would be well aware of the odors surrounding various primitive print technologies as well as the myths surrounding them.

The idea of printing cut-ups in a mimeo must have appealed to Burroughs. Burroughs frequently suggests that the cut-up causes a derangement of the senses and possesses intoxicating qualities. Interestingly, Burroughs cut up the writings of Rimbaud in the early experiments included in Minutes to Go. In The Third Mind, Brion Gysin links reading cut-ups with getting high. In “Cut-ups: A Project for Disastrous Success,” Gysin writes, “I hope you may discover this unusual pleasure for yourselves — this short-lived but unique intoxication.” In the same essay, he equates the permutation poems with an ether experience. These examples show that Burroughs would be receptive to the druggy in-jokes presented in My Own Mag and may have seen mimeo as uniquely suited for publishing cut-ups.

There is a tenuous link between the mimeograph and Burroughs’ family history. Any business machine, such as a mimeograph, computer, or typewriter, conjures up images of Burroughs’ grandfather William Seward Burroughs, the inventor of the adding machine. In The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of the Typewriter, Darren Wershler-Henry writes of the importance of the typewriter to Burroughs as a writer. Wershler-Henry writes, “With a family tree entwined so explicitly with the history of the technology of typewriting, it’s not surprising that William S. Burroughs uses the typewriter as a metaphor for God.” Burroughs realized that he could use the typewriter as a weapon against the corporate system and against his family legacy. Both were represented by Burroughs Adding Machine Company. Although Burroughs Corporation did not manufacture mimeograph machines, the adding machine resides in the same family of machines as the mimeograph: a combination of typewriter and printing technologies. The mimeograph is another business machine that Burroughs could use as a force for rebellion. 

My Own Mag Issues 1-4: The Cut-up Method as Feeling Out Process

Burroughs’ first appearance in My Own Mag gives little indication of just how far Nuttall and he would explore the boundaries of mimeo and cut-up in the later issues. In issue two, Burroughs contributes a short cut-up letter expressing his interest in My Own Mag. The cut-up in the form of a letter appears in Burroughs’ correspondence soon after the method’s rediscovery by Gysin in the late summer of 1959. The publication of the Yage Letters by City Lights in 1963 brought the epistolatory cut-up before the eyes of the public. Prior to 1963, bits and pieces of the Yage Letters appeared in little magazines, like Floating Bear. Like the cut-up novels, the cut-up letter did not radically experiment with the page as a field. The format was limited to the standard block of the paragraph.

Around the publication of the second issue, Nuttall and Burroughs met each other. In Bomb Culture, Nuttall writes, “Burroughs sent his first testing letters from Tangier. In the bitter winter of 1964, he came to London.” Nuttall downplays this meeting and highlights the awkwardness of it. As Nuttall describes it, he got drunk at the local pub with Burroughs and Tony Balch. Conversation faltered with Nuttall feeling left out. Nuttall stumbled home somewhat embarrassed and disappointed.

The meeting between Nuttall and Burroughs must have made more of an impression on both men than Nuttall lets on. It served as a feeling-out session for further collaborations. The face-to-face solidified the meeting of the minds that had occurred through the mail. The Special Tangier issue of My Own Mag followed in May 1964. As discussed below, only in issue 5 does My Own Mag hit its stride and does the Burroughs / Nuttall collaboration hit the ground running. The Special Tangiers Issue features Burroughs on the cover thus announcing the fact that Burroughs was a focus of and major contributor to the magazine. Likewise, Burroughs becomes a character in the “Perfume Jack” comic strip that runs through many issues of My Own Mag. Clearly, Burroughs made an impression on Nuttall.

The feeling was mutual as Burroughs saw in Nuttall a new source of inspiration for the cut-up other than Brion Gysin. Issue four of My Own Mag contains a grid experiment. Burroughs took the idea of the grid from Brion Gysin. Gysin’s permutation poems and his calligraphy paintings explored the grid in detail. Burroughs incorporates visual elements by drawing lines and inscribing the piece. In creating the skin for the mimeo machine, Nuttall probably forged Burroughs’ handwriting. Nuttall responded to Burroughs’ grid experiment in issue 6 with the cut-up issue. The format of Issue 6, like “Warning Warning Warning Warning,” is a grid. Ports of Entry, Robert Sobieszek’s book on William Burroughs and his achievement as an artist, mentions “Warning Warning Warning Warning” and My Own Mag in its opening chapter. This chapter situates the cut-up in a poetic tradition including Mallarmé, the surrealists and Dadaists, Fluxus and concrete poetry. The book provides a picture of Burroughs’ grid cut-up that was a manuscript page from The Third Mind that Burroughs and Gysin began work on in New York City in 1965. Jackson MacLow and composer John Cage worked with grids in the mid-1960s. The grid allowed the element of chance into composition and created complex guidelines for reading or writing a poem that decreased authorial control. The appeal to Burroughs is obvious. 

Like the letter, the grid format represents an early phase of Burroughs’ experimentation with the cut-up. Since his discovery of the method in the Beat Hotel, Gysin had been the major influence in Burroughs’ pursuit of the cut-up. However given Gysin’s artistic background it is strange that the early cut-ups highlighted textuality and ignored the visual aspects that could be achieved via collage and assemblege. So it could be argued that the cut-up experiment had reached an impasse as it had been published up to January 1964. The presentation of the cut-up stagnated in rigid formats like blocks of text. Burroughs’ invitation to cut-up and read the grid “any which way” suggested an escape that needed further exploration. Nuttall and My Own Mag provided another way out.

My Own Mag Issues 5-10: The Third Mind of Nuttall and Burroughs and the three-column and newspaper formats

While much has been made of Gysin’s creative impact on Burroughs, particularly regarding the cut-up method, little has been written on the relationship between Nuttall and Burroughs. Nuttall provided the publishing outlet, the encouragement and the collaboration Burroughs needed for the next phase of the cut-up. Like Gysin, Nuttall helped stir up the creative impulse in Burroughs. In the winter of 1964, around the time Nuttall and Burroughs met, the cut-up entered a new stage of development. As Barry Miles discusses in the final chapter of El Hombre Invisible, Burroughs began experimenting with the three-column format in February 1964. Miles writes, “At the same time as working on the photographic collages, Bill began to develop the three-column technique he had begun to experiment with in New York in the sixties. He began to produce texts which explored this fact and, as usual, did a great number of them. He started to keep a diary in February 1964 which exploited the three-column technique. If he were to take a trip to Gibraltar, which he did frequently, he would write an account of the trip in one column, just like a normal diary: what was said by the officials, what he overheard on the airplane. The next column would present his memories… The third column would be his reading column, quoting from the books he had with him.” Scarcely three months later in May, Nuttall published the first of these efforts.

It should be noted that the three column layout did not appear first in My Own Mag. In 1961 in Outsider 1, a section of the Soft Machine was structured in three columns but this may have been the work of the editor, Jon Edgar Webb. The format was used again in Floating Bear 24. Again this could have been Leroi Jones and Diane Di Prima’s decision, not Burroughs’. The work featured in the Outsider and Floating Bear is, in essence, poetry. The work is in line with the poetic cut-ups presented in Minutes to Go and The Exterminator.  

In Issue 2 of My Own Mag, Nuttall presented a text of his own in three-column format. This may have inspired Burroughs to explore the format in earnest. In The Special Tangier Issue (issue 5), Burroughs’ first three column piece, The Moving Times, appears. In its simplest form, this format, as used in The Outsider and Floating Bear, is another form of the grid. In The Moving Times, Burroughs gives directions on how to read the piece, guiding readers from column to column. The piece could also be read across the three columns. This crisscross and crossover effect represents a derivation of the “read any which way” of “Warning Warning Warning Warning.” The similarities to the grid in issue 4 are quite noticeable.  

Yet The Moving Times provides a twist that Burroughs would explore for over a year. Burroughs links the three-column cut-up to the format, content, and culture of the newspaper as well as to the act of reading a newspaper. In The Moving Times in issue 5, the mock newspaper is simple in layout. There are no images and the format mimics the front page of a daily paper like the New York Times. In Bomb Culture, Nuttall spends a few pages describing this new phase in Burroughs’ development. Clearly, Nuttall realized that the material Burroughs sent for the Tangier Issue marked an exciting new path creatively for Burroughs. Other readers noted the importance of this issue as well. Burroughs and Nuttall received responses from Carl Weissner, Claude Pélieu and Mary Beach after this issue. This correspondence and the resulting collaborations would form the closest thing to a movement or school relating to the cut-up. 

The development of the three-column technique and its link to the newspaper cannot be separated from Burroughs’ evolving relationship with My Own Mag and Nuttall. Seeing the possibilities of the mimeograph and Nuttall’s obvious talent with mimeo layout may have encouraged Burroughs to explore this avenue further. In addition, My Own Mag radicalizes and parodies the form and content of the long tradition of boy’s magazines in Great Britain. Periodicals, like Gem and Magnet, provided easily digested fantasies about public and private school adventures of a cast of easily recognizable stock figures. The falsity of these fantasies and their repressive nature must have been on Nuttall’s mind as he taught in art school. In 1939, George Orwell wrote an essay analyzing these magazines. He mentions that they were stuck in a fantasy vision of England in 1910 oblivious to the changes in the world order. At the end of the essay, Orwell wonders why a left leaning boy’s weekly never developed. Nuttall provides that weekly. Nuttall’s title, My Own Mag, refers to actual titles of boy’s weeklies. Boy’s Own Paper and Boy’s Own Magazine are two examples. In the two copies of issue 12 that I have studied, Nuttall attaches two pages of Our Own Magazine, a moralistic “penny dreadful” from the Victorian Era. Burroughs may have seen this connection and was encouraged to create a cut-up newspaper. In pieces like The Moving Times, Burroughs radicalized and parodied the mainstream newspapers particularly the New York Times.  

Burroughs linked the three-column format with the act of reading a newspaper. In an interview published in Paris Review in 1965, Burroughs states, “[C]ut-ups make explicit a psychosensory process that is going on all the time anyway. Somebody is reading a newspaper, and his eye follows the column in the proper Aristotelian manner, one idea and sentence at a time. But subliminally he is reading the columns on either side and is aware of the person sitting next to him. That’s a cut-up.” Experimenting with the newspaper as form and reading activity refers back to the discovery of the cut-up technique. Tristan Tzara, the surrealist who first discovered the cut-up, writes, “To make a dadaist poem. Take a newspaper. Take a pair of scissors.” In the late summer of 1959, Gysin rediscovered the technique by slicing into some newspapers that were behind a canvas he was working on. So in a sense, the next stage of the cut-up as a form was always present, but Burroughs relationship with Nuttall and My Own Mag may have helped encourage this development.

Burroughs also incorporated the text of newspapers into his My Own Mag cut-ups. As Davis Schneiderman explores in a draft research paper, the three-column experiments (for example, The Coldspring News, Moving Times) featured in My Own Mag and other places, like The Spero, all utilized the same front page of the New York Times from September 17, 1899. Numerous postcards mailed to Nuttall may reveal why. The postcards are postmarked from Gibraltar and feature scenes from the area. As Miles points out, Gibraltar was an area of fascination for Burroughs and a key source for the new direction the cut-ups were taking. One postcard in particular makes reference to the Southport Gates inscribed with the date 1899 and the cut-up experiment The Coldspring News (Nov 21, 1964: “Old arch there with The Coldspring News. [Date on the arch is 1899]“). Burroughs viewed Gibraltar as a magical place, a portal allowing travel in time and space. The Southport Gates symbolized this point of intersection. The cut-up recreated such points repeatedly. Possibly, Burroughs chose an edition of the New York Times from 1899 due to the date inscription on the Southport Gates in Gibraltar. 

No matter how the idea of the newspaper format first developed, Burroughs and Nuttall understood that they were providing an underground newspaper even if such periodical had yet to become commonplace in 1964. One of the Burroughs supplements was called The Burrough. The reference to a burrow or burrowing highlights the underground nature of the magazine as well as the ability of the cut-up to uncover or dig up the hidden messages within the word and image of the mainstream media. The Burrough also conjures up the idea of an intelligence bureau. Burroughs often viewed himself as an agent operating against the forces of control. 

For quite some time, Burroughs flirted with the idea of editing an alternative publication. In 1958, he and Gregory Corso considered a magazine called Interpol. The editorial policy of Interpol and My Own Mag (as demonstrated by Nuttall’s commentary in the first two issues and Burroughs / Corso’s letter of 1958) share a concern with the irreverent and the obscene as well as providing an alternative regulator to the dominant power structure and media. The Burrough supplement in My Own Mag with its link to policing organizations (The Bureau) is Burroughs’ resurrection of the dormant Interpol concept. (See my pieces on Apomorphine and Mimeo and on Interpol for a fuller discussion of these ideas.) By 1964, the cut-up was the new drug that fascinated Burroughs, and My Own Mag provided the forum to explore this antidote to word addiction.  

Nuttall’s choice of paper also creates associations with newspapers that tie into Burroughs’concepts of the mainstream media. For example, Nuttall utilized colored construction paper for most issues of My Own Mag. Take the Tangier Issue with Burroughs on the cover. The cover is green with Burroughs mimeo’d wearing a fez and smoking a cigarette. The green cover conjures up images of marijuana which plays in perfectly with Tangiers and Burroughs. Yet Burroughs’ cut-ups, particularly the mock newspaper ones, are usually printed on off-white or yellowed paper. In the choice of paper, Nuttall attempts to recreate the look and feel of a newspaper. The suggestion of old and freshly printed newsprint is strong given the choice of colored paper elsewhere. Given Burroughs’ preoccupation with the Hearst Empire and his control of word and image, the paper allows Burroughs and Nuttall to present a counter version of “yellow journalism” in their underground paper. The idea of a Burroughs “edited” supplement developed more fully as My Own Mag pushed on. Burroughs and Nuttall fully explore the possibilities of the newspaper as a form to be complicated and parodied. Articles, comic strips, editorial pages, letters to the editor, Dear Abby style advice columns are all utilized by Burroughs and Nuttall.  

In 1965, Burroughs lent the name The Moving Times to a poster for Alexander Trocchi’s Sigma Project. This project represented Trocchi’s take on the philosophies and politics of the Situationists. Sigma and the Situationists had strong ties to the community around Nuttall. The Sigma Project members and their addresses appear in the magazine. In addition, My Own Mag and the supplements edited by Burroughs can be viewed as examples of detournment, the primary weapon of the Situationists. Sigma is also referred to in the Perfume Jack comic strip where it is linked to the kite in Burroughs’ cut-up “Over the Last Skyscrapers a Silent Kite.” The Moving Times poster was designed to be hung in the London subway and serve as a sounding board for the Project. This use of the broadside goes back to its early roots as a means to disseminate information on the side of barns and the like. On the broadside, there is a small blurb for My Own Mag that states, “Read realnews in My Own Mag…” This highlights the fact that My Own Mag was viewed as an alternative newspaper and an underground news source. Clearly, Burroughs developed and expanded the three-column format at a rapid rate from issue Five. The progression of “The Moving Times” from a simple three column cut-up to a My Own Mag supplement to a broadside disseminating information for a proposed international underground movement testifies to Burroughs’ increasing ambition for the cut-up technique as well as his belief in the cut-up’s revolutionary nature.

A My Own Mag Supplement: A Digression on Nuttall as Editor and Mimeographer

The editorial relationship between Burroughs and Nuttall deserves some exploration. As the scant correspondence I have reviewed shows, Burroughs was allowed free reign and basically submitted to Nuttall his latest cut-up works straight from the typewriter. Nuttall was open to anything. Burroughs’ editorial comments were short and not very detailed so Nuttall had a lot of leeway in how he wanted to present the manuscript. Nuttall retyped Burroughs’ manuscripts onto the mimeo skins. In some cases, Burroughs encouraged Nuttall to insert images as he saw fit. (April 6, 1964: “By all means, put your drawings in ‘any picture’ spaces.”) In issue 7, Nuttall drew the images that accompany Burroughs’ cut-up. In addition, Nuttall stenciled the format for the grid / scrapbook / three-column experiment of issue 11. This highlights the collaborative nature of Burroughs’ working method as well as his desire to subvert authorial control. 

According to Carl Weissner, Burroughs trusted Nuttall completely and allowed Nuttall to copy his signature and handwriting (see issue 11 and issue 4). These “forgeries” are uncredited. I hesitate to describe this as forgery as it does not get to the heart of the collaborative nature of the Nuttall / Burroughs relationship and has a negative connotation. Yet the idea of forgery must have appealed to Burroughs familiar as he was to forging the signature of croakers on phony scripts in drugstores.

For example, in issue 15, we can see the transformation of a Burroughs’ manuscript to the pages of My Own Mag. “WB Talking” and “Gas Girls” show that Nuttall possessed a very light editorial hand. I have not done a word-by-word analysis but the basic format of the piece is unaltered and I would suspect the text to be unchanged as well. Yet as these manuscript pages show, Burroughs incorporated color into his manuscripts. The New York Times archives have a page from the “Dutch Schultz” cut-up that appeared in Issue 13. Burroughs painted on the manuscript pages. The color and the brushwork on these pieces remind me of the later artwork painted on manila folders. These later works appear every so often on eBay. In any case, the manuscripts for the later My Own Mags merge the three-column cut-up with abstract painting. Burroughs’ scrapbooks of the period are full of these experiments joining the visual and the textual. Given the limits of mimeo, Nuttall could not faithfully reproduce the full visual nature of Burroughs’ work of this period, yet the effort to recreate all the elements of the manuscript is admirable. The later issues of My Own Mag provide as detailed a look into Burroughs’ exploration of the visual implications of the cut-up as was available for years until Burroughs’ artwork was revisited in exhibitions and catalogs, like Ports of Entry. 

Nuttall’s manipulation of stencils and the mimeograph deserve special mention here. One of the pleasures of My Own Mag is its physical appearance. Nuttall is wholly responsible for that. His artwork is intricate, funny, and extremely skillful given the limitations of the technology. In a recent book entitled, da levy and the mimeograph revolution, mimeograph techniques are studied in detail. levy’s work with its blobs, its acknowledgement of the physical nature of ink, its superimpositions, and its fading brings to the fore the inking process in mimeo. This is described as “dirty” mimeo. Such work reminds me of Abstract Expressionist and Pop techniques. I am thinking of levy’s Scarab Poems and “AGAIn? Yur primer cord is showing.” The solid band of ink of “AGAIn?” reminds me of a mimeo Rothko, if Rothko incorporated text in his painting. There are splashes of ink and blots like in the work of Jackson Pollock. The superimpositions, fading of text and image, and the failure to re-ink calls to mind Warhol’s Marilyns of the early 1960s where such affects bring to mind mortality, impermanence, transitoriness.

Nuttall stained his magazine (Issue 9) but I do not get the same flashes from his work. Nuttall’s staining is not done with black ink. The yellow / green stain suggests vomit or urine, not paint. The stain also suggests apomorphine as apomorphine stains green. Therefore the cover of issue 9 highlights Burroughs’ view of mimeo as regulator. (See my article on apomorphine and mimeo for a fuller discussion of this idea.) In The Apomorphine Times of issue 12 of My Own Mag, Burroughs lamented that The Burrough only lasted for two issues. He writes that “not even the generous injections of the green and ready could keep it afloat for more than two issues…” For years, I assumed that the green and ready referred to the influx of young writers, like Carl Weissner and Claude Pélieu, drawn to the cut-ups. It does on one level but it also refers to apomorphine. In issue 9, Nuttall cut-out the bottom corner revealing a green page underneath. The green stain and the cut-out could represent the injection of the “green and ready” that Burroughs talks about in The Apomorphine Times. Burroughs’ quote suggests that not even his apomorphine texts of the period could prevent the eventual demise of his mags and My Own Mag itself. This highlights Burroughs’ awareness of the fleeting nature of mimeo. The cover of issue 9 aptly demonstrates the playful interplay between Burroughs and Nuttall as well as the serious ideologies behind such touches. Everything had a purpose in the construction of My Own Mag.

The general fading and illegibility of the text in My Own Mag I take to be “the standard limitations of mimeo” and not an intended and manipulated affect. Nuttall appears less concerned with making his typography illegible. This is not to say that he does not explore the possibilities of typography, script and the technologies of writing (for example an examination of Nuttall’s use of handwriting or his forging of Burroughs’ hand proves that). Instead, Nuttall does not explore creative inking. Unlike levy, Nuttall does not treat printer’s ink like paint. Instead he chooses to add the element of disruption with the use of scissors, the razor, fire or collage. Nuttall attacks the mimeo page like the surface of a canvas. The use of the scissors or razor by Nuttall parallels and comments on the cut-up method that so interested him. The visuals in My Own Mag must have been difficult to create with a stencil. The visuals, like the comic strips and covers in My Own Mag, are meant to come through clearly, maybe an example of what is called “clean” mimeo. Nuttall strives for clarity in his inking. The draftsman, not the painter, in Nuttall comes to the fore.

Nuttall’s concern with the act of stenciling is not surprising given his creative preoccupations. Unlike levy, Nuttall ignores many possibilities inherent in inking, but he explores in great and painstaking detail the act of stenciling. The layouts of his pages are amazing. Clearly Nuttall took care and satisfaction in the cutting of stencils. The fascination with the cut and the creative power of the act of cutting fascinates Nuttall. The act of creating mimeo with stencil or typewriter allowed Nuttall another means to explore the cut-up. Like the scrapbooks Burroughs experimented with at the time, the mimeograph merges word and image in a single creative process.

I would say that Burroughs preferred clean mimeo. Compare Burroughs more visual cut-ups to levy’s Tibetan Stroboscope. Both writers utilize elements of typewritten text and collage, but levy as we have seen deliberately makes his text illegible. Burroughs did not manipulate illegibility in his manuscripts in order to further his creative ideas. Burroughs painted his manuscripts and used colored paper but the text remains of primary importance and always shows through. Enjambment, a form of cutting, distorts text and meaning, but typography remains clear and sacred. Proof of this is his reaction to Ed Sanders work on APO-33. Burroughs objected to the imperfections of this production and felt they were not appropriate. This says much about Burroughs as an established and commercial writer. Imperfect mimeo and poor layout reflected poorly on Burroughs’ reputation as a professional. levy on the other hand embraced this seeming lack of skill in order to challenge the reader’s expectations and to suggest elements of censorship and miscommunication. Burroughs desired an audience and always stressed the communicative aspects of the cut-up. They were never intended to be unreadable.

For an author so intimately concerned with and aware of control, Burroughs greatly valued order. He consistently goes back to the authorial control he exercises over the cut-up even as he sees its disruptive potential. He craved order as he feared it. Interestingly in interviews and essays, Burroughs always stresses the role of the author in editing and selecting the results of cut-ups. The primacy of the author remains. In Issue 11, Burroughs writes, “For God’s Sake, J.N. date your issues.” Despite the time travel aspects of the cut up he championed, Burroughs also liked to be locked in time and space.

My Own Mag Issues 11-13: From the three-column format to the third dimension of the scrapbook

In Issue 11, Nuttall and Burroughs goes even further in their exploration of the cut-up. Burroughs’ frenzied experimentation added another layer to the three-column format. Miles writes, “It was in March 1964, when Bill and Ian were living at the rue Delacroix, that Bill began work on the scrapbooks. As usual, this was yet another extension of the cut-up technique.” In his developing article, Schneiderman writes about the practice of Grangerization or extra-illustration that was a British fad at the turn of the 20th Century. In issue 11, Nuttall begins stapling old magazine articles and illustrations to My Own Mag. These tip-ins are not reprinted using offset or mimeo. They are sliced out of old magazines and journals. The tip-ins differed from magazine to magazine. The issue in my possession contains an article on the abdomen. The issue on RealityStudio features a piece on astigmatism. Again issues regarding the original and the copy abound. As early as Issue 4, Nuttall tipped in additions to the magazine, but only in the later issues does this scrapbook element develop more fully.

Interestingly, Nutall grangerizes with old medical journals and articles. Again this refers to Burroughs’ creative endeavors. Some of Burroughs’ contributions to My Own Mag at this time are letters to the editor of London newspapers defending Dr. Yerbury Dent. Dr. Dent “cured” Burroughs of heroin addiction using apomorphine in the 1950s. The inclusion of medical journals in My Own Mag mirrors Burroughs’ near obsession with the representation of drugs and drug addiction by the medical community. In fact, Burroughs’ first “magazine” appearance was in a medical journal, The British Journal of Addiction, edited by Dr. Dent. APO-33, a cut-up scrapbook Burroughs created at the same time as much of the material in My Own Mag, is in essence an alternative version of a medical journal or article. The act of complicating and parodying an established, authoritative form is familiar to Burroughs as we have seen. In the choice of the source material he selects for grangerizing, Nuttall brings into play Burroughs’ creative life from its beginnings to the most up to the minute cut-up experiments.

This new wrinkle introduced by Nuttall dovetails with the development of the cut-up by Burroughs in March 1964. Throughout the 1950s, Burroughs created scrapbooks that verged on book art. Ports of Entry provides some pictures and commentary on this aspect of Burroughs’ art career. Like the Gibraltar scrapbook mentioned above, this new direction merged the notebook / scrapbook format of the 1950s with the new three-column format. “The Dutch Schultz Special’ (Issue 13) is a prime example of this new work. Time and APO-33 are others. The three-column format now includes photographic images, sometimes taken by Burroughs himself, that comment on the text and provide points of intersection of time and space. The feel is more of a magazine than a newspaper.

Back in Issue 6 of My Own Mag, Burroughs traced the format of page 40 of the September 13, 1963 issue of Time in order to create the layout for a cut-up. This issue of Time features a cover story on Communist China. Page 40 contains an article on humanizing Communism that focuses on Hungary. Communist China is something of an obsession for Burroughs. The single page in issue 6 would develop into an entire scrapbook. In Time published by C Press, Burroughs cuts-up and parodies the September 21, 1962 issue of Time Magazine that features a picture of Mao on the cover. By recreating these issues of Time, Burroughs draws attention to the media’s role in creating the Communist menace. Given Burroughs’ critical view of bureaucracy and the influence of the State in personal and political life, Communism must have been an interesting case study for his libertarian ideas. Burroughs’ creative and intellectual response to Commumism remains to be studied in full.

In response to Burroughs’ creation of a framework using Time in issue 6, Nuttall razors in frames allowing text from other pages to show through. This suggests the cut-up’s ability to alter one’s frame of reference or perception. Burroughs and Nuttall are very concerned with one’s ability to see clearly and cleansing the doors of perception. The inclusion of advertisments on Filtering in Time suggests a similar concept. Like drugs, the cut-up is a means to this end. This is brought home by Nuttall when he grangerizes an article on astigmatism to Issue 11 of My Own Mag on view at RealityStudio. Again it must be remembered that the tip-in differed in each copy of the magazine so other associations are possible and probable. In creating the magazine, Nuttall hammers home the idea of linking the cut-up with clarity of vision with clear inking, with cutting by slicing the page, razoring frames, or clipping articles, and with the act of stenciling.

The Dutch Schultz Special (Issue 13) includes one of the finest reproductions of a Burroughs scrapbook until the color images in Port of Entry. Most people focus on Burroughs’ The Dead Star, but Issue 13 is a tour de force of mimeo by Nuttall. Take for instance the cover. The whole of this layout is immaculately designed. All the line drawing has all been done before the stencil is inserted into the typewriter. Another limitation was that it was impossible to draw cross-hatching — that is why all Nuttall’s shading is in sloping lines. There are two reasons for no cross-hatching:

1. There was every chance of tearing the skin and ruining the stencil.

2. If successful, there was every chance you’d get the black blobs as in striking letters like “o” or “b” too hard.

The image comments on Burroughs’ text. The headshot of Dutch Schultz is the most obvious instance of this, but the more interesting figure is the shadowy man beside Dutch. The figure represents “the third that walks beside you” that so fascinated Burroughs and frequently appeared in his writings. Typed into the image are the key numbers of the Burroughs mythology, like 23.

“The Dying Words of Perfume Jack” in issue 13 is another example of Nuttall’s consummate skill with the typewriter, stylus, and mimeograph. Nuttall’s text incorporates Burroughs’ writing by recycling his words, numbers and characters. This is more noticeable in “The Last Words of Dutch Schultz” in issue 12. Nutall suggests the three-column format. Here, the comic strip meets the newspaper. Nuttall’s presentation is as remarkable as Burroughs’ text. These late issues are some of the finest examples of the mimeo art ever published in a little magazine.

Interestingly, issue 13 also draws attention to the limitation of mimeo. One of the most noticeable aspects of the issue is its size. It is the only one of 17 issues not foolscap. Why not? Nuttall was a very scrupulous editor, but he was confined by the foolscap size of the duplicator. He re-typed every article with the most scrupulous care, but it had to fit within the format. So if you compare what’s in Issue 17 — the last — with the Pélieu and Weissner manuscripts this becomes clear. The manuscripts were extended out to foolscap by attaching extra paper to the bottom. In issue 13, the Burroughs contribution is on a strange size which is just less than A4 290mm x 208mm — A4 is 297mm x 210mm. Nuttall’s parts on duplicator stock are 290mm x 202mm. The pages besides The Dead Star are probably cut down foolscap paper. This means that Nuttall designed the whole issue to Burroughs’ size. The reason The Dead Star is a different size was because Nuttall did not create it himself using the mimeograph. The piece was probably published professionally using offset lithography. Given the fact that the paper used for The Dead Star was not commonly used in Great Britain at the time, Burroughs may have commissioned the printing himself during his stay in New York City. The C Press version of Time looks and feels very similar to The Dead Star. According to Ron Padgett, Time was published professionally by offset at Fleetwood Printing Services. The Dead Star could have been done by the same printer and then mailed by Burroughs to Nuttall in Great Britain.

Why offset? Mimeo could not fully capture the visual complexity of Burroughs’ scrapbooks. Small touches like the grid of the balance sheets on which Burroughs composed The Dead Star were difficult to reproduce on mimeo. Nuttall used every technique at his disposal to comment on and reproduce the scrapbook and the ideology behind it. The meticulous reproduction of a scrapbook page in issue 11 is but one example of this. But in the introductory note to that cut-up, Burroughs demanded that Nuttall date his issues. Clearly, Burroughs was bothered with the lack of order in Nuttall’s editing even though Nuttall stressed clarity in his use of mimeo. Possibly given the problems with the Fuck You version of APO-33, Burroughs demanded an exact reproduction of The Dead Star.

Burroughs realized that his scrapbook experiments needed the resources of a larger, more connected publisher. Through his stay in NYC in 1965, Burroughs with Brion Gysin worked on the manuscript for The Third Mind. As Burroughs and Gysin envisioned it this treatise / art book on the cut-up method would test the boundaries of traditional publishing in much the same way Nuttall challenged and extended mimeo. In 1970, Grove Press intended to issue a lavish production for the art market retailing at $10. Publication stalled as the book proved too expensive. In addition the book proved too difficult for Grove even in a high-end format. The Third Mind was finally published in 1978, but it was a shadow of the project envisioned in the 1960s.

My Own Mag Issues 14-17 and beyond: Where do we go from here?

Paradoxically the most famous, most collectible issue of My Own Mag, The Dutch Schultz Special, published in August 1965 signaled the beginning of the end of the Nuttall / Burroughs partnership. In September 1965 Burroughs arrived at Gatwick Airport for what would prove to be an extended stay in London. Maybe the close proximity to Nuttall dulled the keen edge of their correspondence. The magazine began to appear less frequently and the cohesiveness of the magazine began to unravel. The interplay between Burroughs and Nuttall that made the magazine so special had played out. Burroughs did not appear in the last two issues and only briefly in issues 14 and 15. In the later issues, the Moving Times begins to function like a magazine within the magazine. Material comes not just from Burroughs. This is the Third Mind in action as Burroughs’ work diminishes in the magazine and the cut-up work of his collaborators takes over. Burroughs incorporates his correspondence into Moving Times. Likewise, Weissner cuts up Burroughs’ work and letters to form new material. A handwritten note by Burroughs to Nuttall provides evidence of his excitement over this new correspondence. In the note which is part of the 60s archive in Robert Bank’s possession, Burroughs encouraged Nuttall to contact Weissner and publish him. Nuttall followed Burroughs’ advice, and My Own Mag published Weissner in the late issues. See Robert Bank’s index of contributors. Nuttall felt the pull of other projects, such as Bomb Culture, his pioneering study of the international underground. My Own Mag ended with Issue 17 in September 1966.

With the Dutch Schultz Special, Burroughs reached the height of his achievement in the little magazine published cut-ups, but in doing so he exhausted the possibilities of mimeo as a medium. There was a need for a machine beyond the mimeograph and the typewriter. Issue 15 demonstrates another direction in Burroughs’ thought: the tape recorder. The “Subliminal Kid” piece, like the longer “Invisible Generation,” shows Burroughs’ high hopes for the latest in recording technology to again subvert control and authority. Burroughs’ movement in this direction probably had something to do with the feedback and correspondence he was having with Carl Weissner as well as the difficulty in reproducing his manuscripts. As I mentioned earlier after the Tangier Issue, Burroughs began to get some response from around the world in the persons of Weissner, Claude Pélieu and Mary Beach. This had the makings of a cut-up movement. Weissner would publish Burroughs’ tape experiments in Klacto. Burroughs explored film in this period as well with Tony Balch.

The direction of Burroughs’ work for the rest of the 1960s was foreshadowed in the pages of My Own Mag. Burroughs’ most sustained work during his London period was a monthly column in the men’s magazine Mayfair. The idea of Burroughs as a talking head with regular column starts with his work in My Own Mag. Increasingly, Burroughs appears in underground newspapers commenting on the issues of the day. His work floated over the Underground Press Syndicate wire with the same pieces running in more than one paper. He sat in on roundtables for Playboy and worked as a reporter for Esquire. Burroughs as guru and cultural expert mirrors his work as an advice columnist and reporter in My Own Mag. In My Own Mag, Burroughs edited his own underground newspaper. Now he sold his services to the underground industry.

Not surprisingly, Burroughs got intensely involved with underground comix and the beginnings of the graphic novel. In 1970, Burroughs collaborated with Malcolm Mc Neill on a comix, the “Unspeakable Mr. Hart,” in four issues of Cyclops. Nuttall was there first with Perfume Jack and the Last Words of Dutch Schultz. Last Words is surely one of the earliest examples of the underground comix, yet Nuttall and My Own Mag are not mentioned in the comprehensive study of the art: Rebel Visions. The character of Mr. Hart was based on William Randolph Hearst and Burroughs’ obsession with the controlling aspects of a multimedia conglomerate are very much in evidence. The concern with the power of the newspaper expressed in My Own Mag carried over into Cyclops. Throughout the 1970s, Burroughs worked with Mc Neill on the never completed Ah Puch Is Here. As envisioned by Burroughs and Mc Neill, Ah Puch, like The Third Mind, would have challenged the concept of the book and would have been truly an artist’s book as described by Johanna Drucker. In an unpublished manuscript, Observed While Falling, Mc Neill details this process. The give and take of artist and author as well as the merging of format, form, and content described in the memoir draws parallels with Burroughs’ experience with My Own Mag.

It could be argued that Burroughs’ perceived “return to narrative” in the Wild Boys was a direct result of his time working with Nuttall and My Own Mag. Maybe he sensed he had taking the method as far as it could go given the limitations of alternative and mainstream publishing. As Observed While Falling and Ports of Entry makes clear, Burroughs still worked on scrapbooks and other ambitious cut-up projects into the 1970s. The radical use of the cut-up never left his bag of tricks, but — with The Wild Boys and the novels and short stories that followed — it was more and more relegated to one tool in the toolbox and one to be used with discretion. As time wore on, the cut-up technique settled back into the novel form Burroughs abandoned in the mid-1960s. The three-columns were abandoned for the traditional paragraph even though he toyed with and threatened to break its confines. Maybe he tired of the limited audience of the mimeo scene. During his entire career as a writer, Burroughs felt spurred on by a receptive listener, a willing receiver. The time had come for a mainstream audience. The youth culture theme of The Wild Boys seems exploitative to me, like a play for relevance. The work of Norman Mailer comes to mind. Burroughs was the old man of Hip. The more traditional narrative elements made his writing more accessible to critics and the more adventurous of general readers.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

It is amazing how a single sheet of paper can capture a special moment in history. My first issue of NOW provides a snapshot into the literary history of San Francisco in the summer of 1963. Similarly my offprint of Tom Veitch’s The Naked Express does the same for the mimeo scene in the Lower East Side in the mid-1960s. A month or so ago I came across this mysterious item in the BeatBooks catalog. Here is the description from the catalog:

Veitch, Tom. The Naked Express. Np: no date. Single sheet, printed on both sides. Credited to Tom Veitch and “Willy”, with, in facsimile holograph, William Burroughs’ signature and the inscription, “(collaborations 1964/1965)”. Burroughsian cut-up and collaged newspaper columns and typescripts (incl. small ads for Joe Brainard’s first one-man show and “C” Magazine), done as the credit suggests, in collaboration with Burroughs in 1964/1965. Short edge-tear; sl. age-toning; faint stains to verso. o/w Very Good plus.

I stopped in my tracks when I saw it. I had never come across this item before. It is not mentioned in the bibliographies by Maynard & Miles or Eric Shoaf. No mention of Veitch in any Burroughs bio that I know of. Daniel Kane does not mention Veitch in his book, All Poets Welcome, which chronicles the literary scene on the Lower East Side in the 1960s. Clay and Phillips do not list The Naked Express in the C: A Journal of Poetry / C Press portion of Secret Location on the Lower East Side. If C Press even published it. What in the hell was this?

I bought it and eagerly awaited the package from London. I was quite happy when it arrived. As you can see from the images, it is a striking item for anyone interested in Burroughs’ newspaper experiments of the mid-1960s. I immediately thought of Time, APO-33, and a host of other magazine appearances, but what seemed most similar was Sigma Project No. 1: “The Moving Times” poster. That poster was designed to hang in London subways in 1965. The Moving Times combined advertisement, underground newspaper, broadside, and poster art all at once. It seemed like a fantastic way to get the word out about Project Sigma, a hazily defined counterculture movement dreamed up in large part by Alexander Trocchi as he was on the nod. Trocchi got the idea from Timothy Leary’s “consciousness revolution” mixed in with the radical thought of the Situationists. Like a lot of Trocchi’s big ideas (think the Long Book), Project Sigma was long on hype and short on results. The poster idea never fully flowered in the days before the Summer of Love. Burroughs’ “Invisible Generation” essay appeared in poster form in 1966 after it was printed in International Times. Listed in Maynard & Miles as yet another Sigma Project item, it apparently never was distributed beyond the offices of IT. The posters proved much too expensive to produce on a large scale. Several hundred (??) copies of The Moving Times were printed, but they never appeared in the tube and the idea was abandoned. The Naked Express looks exactly like one of the smaller size offprints of The Moving Times that were in fact printed on both sides.

When I saw The Naked Express in the BeatBooks catalog I realized that it fit in nicely with the story I am slowly unpeeling, like an onion, on Burroughs in New York City in 1964-1965. While researching that piece way back when, I came across no mention of The Naked Express, but I did run into the name and work of Tom Veitch. In 1964, C Press published Veitch’s first book, Literary Days. That book is mentioned in Secret Location on the Lower East Side and it is a fine example of the C Press aesthetic. Is there such a thing? Anyway, Literary Days is DIY publishing at its best. Think of all those wonderful issues of C: A Journal of Poetry with the Joe Brainard covers. Brainard designed the cover for Literary Days as well. (By the way, I recommend the recently released book celebrating Brainard’s fascination with the Nancy comic strip. Nancy appears on C Issue 11. If you love the artwork of Brainard, The Nancy Book is a must. Re-read Brainard’s masterpiece, I Remember, while you are at it.)

For those interested, copies of Literary Days are available online for $30-$45. A particularly nice copy showed up on eBay around the time that The Naked Express was available. The eBay copy had a photograph of Veitch tipped in and, if I remember correctly, was signed. Some truly amazing photographs of Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett during the period I am discussing were also available. If you were into the Tulsa wing of the New York School (to borrow a phrase of John Ashbery’s), it was a bonanza on eBay. All these items were heavily sought after and a few of them — such as this photograph — have found their way back on the rare book market.

A copy of Veitch’s Literary Days fell into the hands (and eventually the scissors) of William Burroughs, because Burroughs created a cut-up based on the book. Burroughs’ “Intersections Shifts and Scanning from Literary Days by Tom Veitch” appeared in C Issue 9 in the summer of 1964. If you compare the cover of Literary Days with the cover of C Issue 9. They are almost the same. The C Journal cover appears to parody the idea of a Brainard style and the Literary Days cover in particular. Perhaps there is more going on here. Was Brainard, like Burroughs, recycling Literary Days? It is interesting to note that around this time, Brainard drew a cover for “St. Louis Return.” According to the Brainard Archive at UC-San Diego, Brainard drew the cover in 1963, but Burroughs did not return to St. Louis and write the piece until late 1964. Right in the period we are discussing. The “St. Louis Return” cover was rejected and never used. Playboy rejected the piece and “St. Louis Return” was eventually published in Paris Review 35 along with Conrad Knickerbocker’s blockbuster interview with Burroughs. (The published interview also contains a manuscript page from “St. Louis Return.”) Brainard, Burroughs, and Veitch appear one after the other in Issue 9. Perhaps this grouping in the magazine comments on their creative collaborations. “Intersections Shifts” presents Burroughs the poet. Reading it you can see how a piece like this would appeal to poets and artists of the New York School, particularly ones like Ted Berrigan or Brainard who incorporated the cut-up and collage into so much of their work.

When The Naked Express came in the mail, I started digging some more. Who is Tom Veitch? Why would Burroughs cut up his work? Why would Burroughs get a copy of Literary Days? What was the full nature of their “collaboration?” Clearly Burroughs was interested enough in Veitch’s work to cut it up. I started googling and digging. Star Wars fans probably know Tom Veitch for his comic book work. You may have heard of Tom’s brother Rick Veitch. If you have been following the story of Burroughs collaborations with Malcolm Mc Neill, you can see where this is going. Turns out Tom Veitch and Burroughs talked in the mid-1960s about a project to create an illustrated Naked Lunch. Like Mc Neill, the potential collaboration made quite an impression on Veitch. In July 2006, Veitch read at Kingdom Books from a 150-page memoir in progress on his interactions with and thoughts on Burroughs. I contacted Ron Padgett who put me in contact with Veitch. The Burroughs memoir still exists and it is currently on the back burner given Veitch’s incredibly full plate. Hopefully selections will find their way online or in a little mag. Maybe even here on RealityStudio. Has anyone out there heard Veitch read from this memoir? Has anyone seen a hard copy? I would love to hear more about it. Does anybody know any details about a proposed illustrated Naked Lunch project from the mid-1960s? Did I make this up? It makes sense, but I cannot find any details on it.

So The Naked Express was, like the memoir years later, an expression of Veitch’s fascination with Burroughs. According to Veitch, it was more of a tribute than collaboration. Burroughs did not actually provide any of the material. It must have been written in late 1964. The title, obviously, refers to Naked Lunch and Nova Express. Nova Express was released in October of 1964. A close look at The Naked Express reveals all sorts of links to the mimeo scene in the Lower East Side of the mid-1960s. “A Nice Day” was a collaboration of Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett. The holograph at the top of The Naked Express is in the handwriting of Ted Berrigan (the initials are “T.B.”). Berrigan had his own collaboration of sorts with Burroughs in the publication of Time in 1965. The name “Willy”, in reference to Burroughs, has a ton of associations. Burroughs referred to himself in letters as Willy Lee, the junkie writing boy. William Lee, of course, was the pseudonym for the Ace Junkie. There are a ton of others, but in 1965 in the Lower East Side mimeo scene, “Willy” would refer directly to the Fuck You Press publication of Roosevelt After Inauguration. That publication listed Willy Lee as the author, instead of William Burroughs. Burroughs’ other contribution to C Issue 9, “Giver of the Winds is My Name,” features Egyptian hieroglyphics. Possibly, Ed Sanders turned Burroughs on to them. The Naked Express appeared in Issue 3 of Aram Saroyan’s Lines, another wonderful mimeo, in early 1965. Later in that year a Burroughs cut-up turned up in Lines 5.

My details on The Naked Express and the collaboration between Veitch and Burroughs is patchwork at best. Consider this post a call for information. If anybody has any more info on the illustrated Naked Lunch, The Naked Express or similar pieces of ephemera that tell an interesting story about Burroughs, please drop me a line.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

On entering the New York Public Library on 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, the first thing you see is Jack Kerouac’s name lit up in neon. Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the headlining exhibit at the library, is clearly a big deal. Given the 50th Anniversary of On the Road, there has been a tremendous amount of hoopla over Kerouac in the past year. The media attention has been nice. The increased and increasingly thorough scholarly attention has been appreciated. The published version of the scroll has been devoured and enjoyed. But when you get down to it, nothing prepares you and nothing compares to the garden of literary delights that are housed in the NYPL’s Berg collection and documented in Issac Gewirtz’s monograph on the exhibit. Both are quite frankly breathtaking and serve as the icing on the cake for the 50th Anniversary. But icing is too insubstantial; the exhibit is a Beat smorgasbord, a naked lunch, monumental in its presentation and contents.

Paul LeClerc, President of the New York Public Library states in the foreword to Gewirtz’s book, “Clearly, the New York Public Library may now proclaim itself the center for Beat research in the world.” I was aware that the Berg possessed extensive holdings on Kerouac but nothing can prepare you for the experience of seeing all the letters, journals, manuscripts, photographs, and books in one place and all spread out before you. If you have read Ann Charter’s accounts of visiting Kerouac in 1966 for her pioneering bibliography on the King of the Beats, you know that Kerouac kept meticulous records of his literary output. Everything was filed and accounted for. Kerouac may have lived a helter skelter, disorganized life, but that did not extend to his literary existence. He kept records and accounts of everything. I was amazed at how fresh the manuscripts and letters looked. The condition of these incredibly fragile items is impeccable. Collectible first editions of On the Road are in far worse condition that Kerouac’s manuscripts of the novel. One of the many impressions that come from the show is that Kerouac probably lived with obsessive compulsive disorder.

The Gutenberg Bible is currently on view at the NYPL, and so is the Bible of the Beat Generation. As you enter the Kerouac room in the center of the main lobby of the Library, the scroll version of On the Road centers the exhibit. I expected to see a few feet of the 120 foot scroll rolled out for viewing. In fact, a full 60 feet are available for study in a long glass case. There is an annotated sheet to help readers out. The scroll is footnoted at the margins so you can go to a number and start reading your favorite section. Kerouac’s visit with Burroughs in New Orleans is section 12 and 13, towards the end of the 60 feet on view. If taking in the entire scroll gives you chills, seeing Bill Burroughs’ name typed out on the manuscript instead of Old Bull Lee provides its own tingle.

I would have loved to see the end of the scroll where Lucien Carr’s dog famously chewed the manuscript, but that said, seeing just half of the scroll rolled out is a powerful experience. It is a remarkable object. On one level it stands out in its tangibility, its physicality, its size and expanse, but at the same time it is so fragile, delicate and ephemeral. It threatens to crumble and blow away under your inquiring eyes. As the exhibit makes clear, the scroll as an object immediately bring to mind the concept of the road, the path, the journey that lies at the heart of On the Road. For me, this merging of form and content in the physical object coupled with the physical act of creating it (not just the typing but the act of taping together the paper as well) makes the manuscript a work of art on par with any major work of the 20th Century. The scroll is in some sense ahead of its time, predicting the artists’ book, conceptual art and performance art boom of the 1960s and beyond. The scroll got me thinking of book artists like Dieter Roth or Jim Dine (interviewed in the Bunker). It was just that impressive to me on my first viewing.

There is no way to take in the Kerouac exhibit in one swoop. The Gewirtz book will help you digest what you have seen although the book only deals with half of the objects on display. I decided to take the exhibition in pieces and have a focus. As I checked my bag, I looked at my coat check. It was number 23. This seemed like a sign that I should look through the exhibit with an eye out for Burroughs. In fact, the words and ghostly figure of Burroughs run throughout the exhibit. Just to the right of the scroll and at the beginning of the exhibit, the first object that captures the viewer’s gaze is the Ace edition of Junkie (1953). There is a small collection of Burroughs items including a manuscript page of Naked Lunch with Burroughs’ hand edits. This is a page from the “Original material for Naked Lunch and Soft Machine, and earlier” that begins “Panama: Paregoric gags you.” The Gewirtz book reprints the page so you can read and study it after the exhibit. In addition there are a couple of photos including one by Charles Gatewood of Burroughs sitting in front of an E-Meter taken in 1962 also from the Burroughs archive.

Kerouac is the headliner at the NYPL at the moment, but Burroughs waits in the wings for his chance in the spotlight. Hopefully, the position of Burroughs at the entrance of the exhibit foreshadows a Burroughs show in 2009 — the 50th Anniversary of Naked Lunch — on the level of the Kerouac show. I would expect that the Burroughs Archive at the Berg rivals the Kerouac Archive in its depth and breadth. It should make for a remarkable exhibition. According Gewirtz’s book, the Burroughs Archive is ready for researchers. The foreword reads, “To facilitate such research, both the Kerouac and the Burroughs archives were organized, and electronic finding aids created for them, with the financial assistance of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.” Correct me if I am wrong but I do not think the Burroughs archive is available yet on the NYPL’s webpage of finding aids.

The Kerouac exhibit is organized roughly chronologically and it becomes clear just how influential a figure Burroughs was on Kerouac early on and vice versa. The exhibit includes a draft manuscript for the legendary And the Hippos Boiled in their Tanks, Kerouac and Burroughs’ collaborative account of the Kammerer murder. The manuscript (in impeccable condition) bears the original title “I Wish I Were You: The Philip Tourian Story” with Kerouac and Burroughs’ names as authors written in Kerouac’s hand. The upper right corner reads “45 Ryko Tourian.”

In this same section, there is a Kerouac journal from November 10-Dec 26, 1944 opened to a page that gives a clue into the power of Burroughs’ influence as an intellectual mentor. The journal reads, “Write about Burroughs’ Gideanism — the acte gratuite, he so indiscriminately champions” He continues later on the same page, “Morality is a word [Burroughs] as frankly disavows as Nietzsche does idealism.” The central role of Burroughs in the concept of the New Vision that held together the early Columbia circle could not be clearer. Another journal from the fall of 1946 contains a section entitled “On Bill Burroughs.” In this journal, Kerouac declares his independence from Burroughs’ influence. Yet there follows a description of Burroughs in his apartment attempting to get high from smoking birdseed. I immediately thought of Oliver Harris’ book The Secret of Fascination. For years after their initial meeting, Kerouac would attempt, like Oliver Harris decades later, to get to the heart of Burroughs and explore Burroughs as an object of fascination.

Burroughs was no less influenced by Kerouac. The Burroughs archive contains a folder dedicated “to Kells Elvins and Jack Kerouac.” These two men early on encouraged Burroughs to become a writer. Burroughs in essays and in interviews has credited Kerouac with being instrumental in this regard. Gewirtz’ book contains a quote from Burroughs’ essay “Jack Kerouac” to that effect.

Another possible but tenuous link to Burroughs appears in Kerouac’s juvenilia. At an early age and continuing on to adulthood, Kerouac constructed an elaborate fantasy life revolving around role playing games of baseball and horseracing. In 1936 (Kerouac was 14), Kerouac created handmade newspapers (Tuft Authority, Romper’s Sheet, Daily Owl, Stake Special, The Sportsman are a few of them) recounting these fantasy contests. In 1950, Kerouac created a draft of On the Road in a newspaper format entitled American Times. These works reminded me of Burroughs’ three column cut-ups of the 1960s, like Moving Times. I wonder if Burroughs saw Kerouac’s newspapers. If so, somewhere in the back of Burroughs’ mind, these works of Kerouac might have influenced Burroughs’ in taking up this format.

In addition, Kerouac, again in 1936, kept scrapbooks dedicated to his fantasy games. These scrapbooks continued later in Kerouac’s life. The Book of Dreams manuscript contains a collage with a linkage to numerology. Kerouac fixates on the number 69 (Burroughs was fascinated with 23). Another scrapbook work entitled By Memere also contains sexual references revealing an oedipal component to Kerouac’s relationship with his mother. Collage and scrapbooks were early expressions of creativity for Kerouac that continued throughout his career.

Kerouac’s mother figures prominently in another item that features Burroughs. In 1958, Memere wrote Allen Ginsberg a nasty letter telling Ginsberg and Burroughs to stay away from her son. The letter focuses on all the worst aspects of Burroughs and derides him as a pernicious influence on Kerouac. Nearby is a less threatening letter with a maternal theme from Ginsberg to Burroughs from 1959. Few of Ginsberg’s letters to Burroughs from the 1950s survive. In this letter, Ginsberg mentions his poem in progress, Kaddish, that was dedicated to his mother, Naomi.

Photographs are a big part of the exhibit and several of them feature Burroughs. There is a photo of Burroughs birthplace taken in 1912/1913 when Mortimer and Laura Lee bought the home on 4664 Berlin Avenue. Burroughs was born in 1914. The street was renamed Pershing Avenue after WWI. Several photos from 1953 are sprinkled throughout. Burroughs visited New York City in late 1953 in an effort to reconnect with Ginsberg after years in Mexico. Ginsberg famously rejected Burroughs sending the dejected lover to Tangier. Many of these photos have become iconic shots. The pics of Burroughs without a shirt at a desk at 206 East 7th St as well as the pic of Burroughs lecturing Kerouac on a couch in this same apartment are included. There is also a photo of Burroughs with Alene Lee. Lee was Mardou Fox in The Subterraneans, and she typed up the manuscript for The Yage Letters. There is another interesting photo of Burroughs outside the San Remo with Alan Ansen from the same period. As a group, these photos document a pivotal moment in Burroughs’ life and capture a slice of New York City in the 1950s, when the city was the world’s center for art and literature.

There are a few photos from Tangier as well, including the famous shot of Burroughs in a business suit lying on the beach. This is from the period in which the Naked Lunch manuscript was constructed with Kerouac typing large chunks of it at lightning speed. Later in the exhibit, there are four snapshots of Big Zoco (Big Market) and Zoco Chico (Little Market) in Tangier from 1954. Taken shortly after Burroughs’ arrival in Tangier, the blurry pics give the briefest of glimpses of the marketplace that in part provided the backdrop for the Market Section of Naked Lunch. “The Composite City where all human potentials are spread out in a vast silent market.”

One of the odder pieces in the exhibit also possesses a link to Burroughs. As I mentioned before, Kerouac compulsively kept lists and statistics. In his writing, he meticulously monitored his daily progress in terms of words and pages produced. He also detailed his sexual conquests. Remarkably, in a list of over fifty names, Joan Adams (Vollmer) is listed as number 23. The number is coincidental but still I was amazed by this sexual link to Burroughs. Kerouac notes that they slept together 175 times. This is more frequently then he slept with Edie Parker or Joan Haverty and second only to Alene Lee, Kerouac’s girlfriend at the time of Burroughs’ visit in 1953. Clearly, the early Columbia Circle was incestuous (Kerouac also slept with Celine Young, Lucien Carr’s girlfriend), but I was unaware of the extent of Vollmer and Kerouac’s relationship. Vollmer remains a shadowy figure in Burroughs’ life and in Beat history in general. She was an intimate member of that early circle on many levels. By all accounts (scanty as they are), she was a remarkable woman who captivated Burroughs and clearly possessed some hold on Kerouac as well.

Another exhibit on display at the NYPL got me thinking about Burroughs. Graphic Modernism in the Baltic and Balkans conjured up images of Burroughs’ small press output of the 1960s. Works by El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and others link, in terms of design, to the newspaper and scrapbook works. Certain pages of Moholy Nagy’s Malerei, Photographie, Film (1925) got me thinking of Time and Apo-33. The Polish Journal, Zdroj (Source), looks exactly like a Lower East Side mimeo. In fact, Modernist little magazines and the samizdat tradition in Eastern Europe foreshadow the mimeo revolution of the post-WWII era. You cannot look at Fuck You, a magazine of the arts or C: A Journal of Poetry without thinking of these earlier predecessors. The Expressionist innovations in layout, design, production and use of printing materials were something for the mimeos of the post WWII era to build on and react against.

I exited the New York Public Library and was greeted by a January thunderstorm. The bad weather brought to mind the Ghost of the Susquehanna section in On the Road. The exhibit included manuscript and journal versions of that section including pages with drawings of the Ghost. The exhibit also had several drawings of Dr. Sax. Of course, Dr. Sax features an epic storm as well. Dr. Sax was in part modeled on William Burroughs, and Kerouac wrote much of the novel while living in Mexico with him. The exhibit contained a photo of 212 Orizaba Street where Joan and Burroughs lived in 1950 and Kerouac and Bill Garver later resided in 1956. Dr. Sax is in many ways Kerouac’s much planned Visions of Bill. Like Visions of Cody written for and about Neal Cassady, Visions of Bill would have captured the essence of Burroughs that fascinated Kerouac from their first meeting. In some ways, Dr. Sax serves that purpose. Walking away from 5th Avenue in the rain, I kept looking over my shoulder. I felt somebody was following me. Call him el hombre invisible, Dr. Sax, Old Bull Lee, or William Burroughs. From the Beatific Soul exhibit, it is clear that Burroughs haunted Kerouac. He haunts me too.

Note: Columbia University has a companion exhibit dedicated to the art work of Kerouac and his friends. I was unable to attend this exhibit. In addition, in my single-minded quest to see the scroll I forgot about the book fair at the 25th Street Armory. If anybody attended these two events, please send an account to the comments section. The University of Texas at Austin will have a Beat exhibit starting in February. The scroll will be on hand as will examples of the stellar holdings of the library at Austin, one of the finest in the world. For example, the library houses Kerouac’s On the Road journals, included in the paperback version of Windblown World. Again, if a RealityStudio reader attends that exhibit please send along an account of it.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

RealityStudio bills itself as a digital community, a gathering place for fans, friends, collectors, and scholars of William Burroughs. In recent weeks, we have received some emails that testify to the international nature of that community as well as to the potential of building and sustaining that community online. In the forum, there is a running thread on The Third Mind. Isome23 attended The Third Mind exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. She mentioned that she took lots of pictures and here they are.

This may be your best opportunity to view the visual and textual collaborations of Burroughs and Gysin that were completed mostly in New York City in 1965. My timeline on Burroughs in New York provides some sense of the atmosphere surrounding these works of art. The Third Mind images should be viewed in connection with the complete My Own Mag, particularly The Dutch Schultz Issue (#13), also available on RealityStudio. I hope in the next few weeks to have the complete Time, a Burroughs scrapbook published by Ted Berrigan’s C Press, uploaded as well. This collection of images provides just a glimpse into the incredible artistic output of Burroughs in the mid 1960s. They highlight the visual development of the cut-up that would continue into the 1970′s and lead to the collaboration with Malcolm Mc Neill in the never completed Ah Puch is Here.

The Third Mind manuscript resides in the Los Angeles County Museum with bits and pieces located in a private collection in Paris. Before RealityStudio, the best place to view selections of The Third Mind was Robert Sobieszek’s Ports of Entry: William S. Burroughs and the Arts. The book is out of print, but copies can be purchased from $10.99 to $120 on Amazon. Get a copy. In the past decade, Oliver Harris has completely revolutionized the textual history of Burroughs with his archival research of the early manuscripts. Sobieszek performed a similar service with Burroughs in the visual arts. Ports of Entry is essential reading (and viewing) for anyone interested in Burroughs. The chapter on The Third Mind is the best account of this material available providing literary history and critical analysis.

Until 1970, Grove Press planned to publish The Third Mind in all its glory. The book was to be marketed as an art book costing from $10-$30. According to Ports of Entry, Grove abandoned the project due to high production costs or due to a sense of bewilderment on how to market Burroughs and Gysin’s instruction manual / art book / experimental poetry / textbook. “In his introductory text to the Viking edition of 1978, Gerard-Georges Lemaire… pointed to the work’s complexity and lack of definition: ‘It eludes definition just as it eludes itself; a prey to unfathomable anamorphosis, it rubs itself out and rewrites itself; it allows itself to be read, only to slip away. The Third Mind jumbles the linguistic network, simultaneously revealing and antagonizing it. It is a strange device for confronting semiotic assaults” (quoting from Ports of Entry). Sobieszek continues, “The Viking edition reproduces twenty-six of the collages (reproduced it would seem, from the French edition or the printer’s plates and not the originals), and one of these reproductions does not appear among the originals in the LACMA collection. Not all of the chapters or parts of the original manuscript are included in the Viking edition, nor do the plates in it appear in the precise sequence laid out in the late 1960s.” The published version fails to capture the magnificence of the manuscript as evidenced by the images on RealityStudio. The LACMA holds “70 unique works of art and original visual texts.” Apparently the original manuscript switched hands and locales often so who knows what is still out there or lost forever. As noted in Ports of Entry, “the total number of artworks made for The Third Mind is unknown.” Clearly, the published version of The Third Mind provides only a glimpse, and a black and white one at that, of the original manuscript.

As discussed in the forum, The Third Mind is difficult to get a hold of and expensive. The book was first published by Viking in 1978 under the editorship of Richard Seaver. Seaver began his editing career with Alexander Trocchi’s Merlin Group in Paris in the early 1950s. He continued on with Grove in its formative years. By the 1970s, Seaver went mainstream taking Burroughs along with him. John Calder published The Third Mind in hardcover and softcover in 1979. Seaver, under his own imprint, reissued The Third Mind in 1982. Finally, in 1998, Flammarion printed the book in France. There may be other printings, but these are the ones listed in Shoaf’s Bibliography.

The images of The Third Mind available on RealityStudio provide only a small piece of the available manuscript. Yet coupled with My Own Mag and Time, the jigsaw puzzle of Burroughs’ development and exploration of the cut-up technique can begin to be pieced together. The picture is incomplete and many of the missing pieces reside in libraries, like the NYPL or Ohio State. Slowly, these collections are being made available to scholars and the public. Hard copy publications are not the only outlet. The digital archives on RealityStudio provide another alternative and, in the minds of many commentators, a window into the future.

(Readers interested particularly in Brion Gysin’s contribution the Third Mind may want to consult Brion Gysin: Tuning In to the Multimedia Age, Nothing Is True Everything Is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin, and Brion Gysin: Here To Go.)

Photos of the Works Displayed at the Third Mind Exhibit at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Fall 2007

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

For more information about C Press, see Jed Birmingham’s articles on Time, Ted Berrigan, and Don’t Ever Get Famous.

Andy Warhol provided the cover for issue four of C: A Journal of the Arts. Edwin Denby and Gerard Malanga appear on the silk-screened cover. The cover is reprinted in Reva Wolf’s book on Warhol along with a discussion of the politics and gossip behind this image. Issue 4, like the Mad Motherfucker Issue of Fuck You with the Couch cover, is tough to get a hold of. Ars Libris sold a copy awhile back in a small, incomplete run of Cs. Expect to pay in the four figures if you ever get the opportunity.

Complete runs of C: A Journal of Poetry are elusive. The Fales Library possesses a C Journal archive but lacks a complete run. Syracuse University also holds a number of Berrigan’s papers including dummies for C Journal, yet they lack a complete run. The Berg Collection at the New York Public Library has about half of the issues. The Library’s Rare Book Division houses the editor’s (Berrigan’s) file of the mimeo. The NYPL possesses a complete run but they don’t know it. According to Secret Location on the Lower East Side, Issue 12 is missing from this collection.

Based on an email I received from Ron Padgett, Berrigan never published a twelveth issue of C: A Journal of Poetry. As evidenced by the text in Issue 11, he intended to publish one but the project never saw completion. Again according to Padgett, Berrigan viewed C Comics #1 as essentially the 12th issue. There is no indication as to Berrigan’s reasoning in this bibliographic detail.

Burroughs appears in Issue 9 and Issue 10 of C Journal. Fuck You Press issued Roosevelt After Inauguration in January of 1964. Ed Sanders included Burroughs in Fuck You, a Magazine of the Arts No. 5 Vol 7 in the summer of that year. Berrigan first published Burroughs in the summer of 1964. At the time, Burroughs still resided in Tangier, but given the flurry of mimeo activity Burroughs could see that the Lower East Side in New York City was the place to be. Burroughs saw this for himself during brief visits in 1963/1964. In C Journal 9, Burroughs contributed two pieces: “Giver of the Winds Is My Name” and “Intersection Shifts and Scanning from Literary Days by Tom Veitch.” Literary Days was published by C Press and I would guess that Berrigan sent Burroughs a copy for his review. As is common in the 1960s, Burroughs responded with a cut-up. In “Giver of the Winds Is My Name,” Burroughs incorporated Egyptian hieroglyphics for the first time. See my column on da levy and Burroughs for a brief discussion of this appearance.

In C Journal 10, Burroughs contributed “Fits of Nerves with a Fix.” According to the Maynard and Miles’ Burroughs bibliography, this issue hit the streets on February 14, 1965, St. Valentine’s Day. For the artists and writers of the Lower East Side, Burroughs must have been on their mind as he gave a famous reading at the American Theatre of Poets on that date. The C Press Time also appeared in 1965.

Burrroughs’ work in C Journal is listed as prose, but these pieces can be considered examples of Burroughs the poet. “Fits of Nerves with a Fix” reminds me of the work in Floating Bear 24 (“Spain and 42st,” “Dead Whistle Stop Already End,” and “Where Flesh Circulates.”) The look of the work on the page is especially similar. “Giver of the Winds Is My Name” also has the look of a poem in a way that differs from the block text and newspaper formats of other cut-ups from the period. This would suggest that Burroughs’ influence on the Second Generation New York School and even First Generation members like John Ashbery, stemmed not just from Naked Lunch and the cut-up novels, but also from the lesser known and underappreciated Minutes to Go and The Exterminator. These two books can be considered books of poetry for the lack of a better categorization and the work therein has similarities to the work in C Journal.

C: A Journal of the Arts

C Journal 1

C Journal 2

C Journal 3

C Journal 4
front

(Thanks to Dan Laufer for the scan.)

C Journal 4
back

(Thanks to Dan Laufer for the scan.)

C Journal 5

C Journal 6

C Journal 7

C Journal 8

C Journal 9

C Journal 10

C Journal 11

C Journal 12

C Journal 13

Michael Brownstein
Behind the Wheel (aka C Journal 14)

C Press

Ted Berrigan
The Sonnets
C Press, 1964

Tom Veitch
Literary Days
C Press, 1964

Ron Padgett
In Advance of the Broken Arm
C Press, 1964 (First Edition)

Ron Padgett
In Advance of the Broken Arm
C Press, 1965 (Second Edition)

Dick Gallup
Hinges
C Press, 1965

Kenward Elmslie
Power Plant Poems
C Press, 1967

Alice Notley
Twenty-Four Sonnets (front)
C Press, 1971

Alice Notley
Twenty-Four Sonnets (back)
C Press, 1971

Elio Schneeman
In February I Think (front)
C Press, 1978

Elio Schneeman
In February I Think (back)
C Press, 1978

Steve Carey
The Lily of St Mark’s
C Press, 1978

Boke Press (Edited by Joe Brainard)

C Comic 1

C Comic 2

Ted Berrigan
Living with Chris
Boke Press, 1965

Ron Padgett and Joe Brainard
100,000 Fleeing Hilda
Boke Press, 1967

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Since the inception of the Bibliographic Bunker, I have been writing about artists’ books and the book as an object. The interview with Malcolm Mac Neill and his memoir Observed While Falling were revelations. Both reinforced my belief that the concept of the book in all its facets was central to Burroughs’ creative and ideological pursuits. From Naked Lunch when Burroughs’ difficulties in physically creating a manuscript from the heap of papers on his floor mirrored his struggles with the novel as a form, the book as an object fascinated and haunted Burroughs. This is probably true of all writers but given Burroughs’ thoughts on the power of text and image the concept of the book looms larger over Burroughs’ work.

A few weeks ago, I heard about an exhibition of the recent prints of artist Jim Dine on display until early December at the CUNY Graduate Center. Dine rose to prominence in the 1960s in an era of great change in the art world. Pop, Op, conceptual, Fluxus and minimalist art all flourished in the period. I looked over the exhibition and was struck by three livres d’artiste featured in the show: Ape and Cat, Pinocchio, and Kali. From childhood, the book as an object has influenced and inspired Dine. For decades now, he has been at the forefront of exploring the artistic possibilities of the book as a form.

Here was an opportunity to interview a major visual and textual artist about art and the book. These are issues dear to me and, if Johanna Drucker is correct, central to 20th Century art. Not surprisingly, Dine has thoughts on such assessments, although his conclusions may surprise. Like Burroughs, Dine focuses on the concept of the book and the book remains central to his artistic concerns at present. This interview explores a full range of topics from his childhood experiences with the book to the role of the New York School as an inspiration and influence to the possibilities of handwriting as art and expression. The results of the interview come from years of hard work and hard thought on these topics. As I have said, Dine is a giant in contemporary art (I remember attending his exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington DC in 2004) and this interview is an articulate and introspective account of nearly a half century of constant activity.

Though they were contemporaries sensitive to the artistic possibilities of the book, Dine sheds little direct light on Burroughs. However, his thoughts on Burroughs’ work are a must-read for those in the forum looking for criticism on Burroughs and a sense of how he was perceived in the 1960s. They also provide a snapshot of a major figure’s ideas on the book in contemporary art. By gathering these snapshots a composite, like Ian Sommerville’s photo experiments that graced the cover of the Olympia Press edition of The Ticket That Exploded, can be created that reproduces the era out of which Burroughs’ concern with the book developed.

Interview with Jim Dine

The catalog to Selected Prints: 1996-2006 mentions the importance of books to your art. I want to sidestep a book’s importance as narrative and focus on the book as an object and technology. How does the book as an object play a role in your work?

The book as an object has always been my only interest in making a book. The narrative, no matter what it is, long or short, written by me or the “Old Testament” is a given but to make a book (BOOK) is my primary goal.

Are there any particular books that influenced or inspired you on the level of design and format?

Since I have been inspired by objects of all sorts all my life, books inspired me for themselves (individually) since I was aware of them. I remember used textbooks in elementary school with someone else’s notes in the margin as objects of mystery. The same with library books and other peoples’ names in the back. I loved it when someone, other than me, “defaced” a text book, ie, a Latin grammar. It brought the page alive.

Picasso’s red abstract dots and lines for Reverdy was a revelation when I held it at the Bibliothèque Nationale, likewise Bonnard’s illustrations for (as I recall) some lesbian turn-of-the-century book. (Eds. Note: Bonnard’s illustrations to Verlaine’s Parallèlement published in 1900 by Vollard) A printer in London named Barry Hall made some books I lusted after in the mid-to-late 1960s. His press was Cape Goliard. He made an Olson book with a very pretty cover. (Eds Note: Cape Goliard published a handful of Olson titles including West, The Maximus Poems IV, V, VI and Archaeologist of Morning.)

In The Century of Artists’ Books, Johanna Drucker states that the artist’s book (livre d’artiste) is the quintessential form of 20th Century art. Given your work in this area, do you have any thoughts on that statement?

I think Ms. Drucker must be nuts or just self-serving for her own book. No one cares about artists’ books except a handful of collectors and, of course, a handful of artists.

The death of the book has been much prophesized as we move forward in the electronic / digital age. What do you see as the future of the book? What is the books future in the world of art? Is the recent interest in the book as object a fetishistic response to the disappearance of the printed book?

No idea about the death of the book. Around my house it’s very much alive. I am in the midst of doing 52 Books that is a book a week for a year.

The book’s future in the world of art is rather thin since the world of art becomes more and more commercial and more and more like the stock market. I am afraid there is no $ to be made. I am not aware of a recent interest in the book as an object any more than there has always been or not.

Let’s look closely at the artist’s books in this exhibit. Ape and Cat has an accordion design. Pinocchio utilizes a wooden box format. How do the formats of these books reflect the content inside and the themes of the artwork? This question suggests a separation/independence between form and content is possible. Is this false? Charles Olson’s statement (via Creeley, with whom who you have worked) “form is an extension of content” comes to mind.

The Pinocchio was put in a rough wooden box because of the relationship of the boy and his maker to wood. After all, he started his journey as a “talking stick.” It was not bound but stacked in the box like a classic French artists’ book so that it could be enjoyed cinematically or in any variety of combination of images.

Ape and Cat was printed as an accordion because Arion Press had some mannered idea about form that I was unable to kick against as my personal life at the time was falling apart. In the end, he did it so it displayed well at “art fairs.” It made no sense with the romantic content.

I am particularly drawn to the Pinocchio book. I see elements of Dada (in terms of typography) and Pop (in terms of image), but I also see an element of Fluxus with the interplay of typography and image? The collage work of the Fluxus artists comes to mind. Speak of the influences and inspirations for this artist’s book.

Pinocchio except for Biotherm (more about this later) is my most inspired work for a book with original prints. Lithographs. I don’t feel the slightest bit of admiration for any Fluxus work except Emmett Williams‘ small book from the 1960s Sweethearts. The rest was warmed over Dada via Cage (John). The method of adding the typography was dictated by the printing process. Michael Woolworth, the printer, is a curious master of mylar transfers from the sheet to a plate via a carbon light. A very primitive method but very useful for me as an old collagist. I was also able to reinvent the chapter headings my way into my poetic interpretations of Collodi’s text (translated). I got a lot of ideas from the way to depict the boy from close observation of my Pinocchio dolls. I was able to invent from them and from the storm in my head.

When I think of the interplay of word and image, William Burroughs comes to mind. Are you aware of Burroughs collage, cut-up and scrapbook work from the 1960s and early 1970s as exhibited in the Ports of Entry show? This work seems similar to the Pinocchio piece. Any thoughts on Burroughs’ as a visual artist? Given the importance of literature in your work, has Burroughs as a writer had any effect on you? You lived in New York City and London at the same time as Burroughs in the 1960s. Did your paths cross? Was he a visible presence in those cities? Any memories of him there?

I was always aware of his cut-up work with Brion Gysin. I found it forced and very empty. Visually nothing for me. Not amazed by content or the cut-up form. I guess you can tell I am not a Bill Burroughs guy. I saw him once at a big party in London in June of 1967 which is where I saw the before-mentioned Barry Hall of Cape Goliard. None of his (Burroughs’) work has ever amazed me period.

Dieter Roth, a King of the book. Everything he did was a great invention done out of humor, sadness, and alcohol. Now he was a Book-Maker!!

I am interested in your book This Goofy Life of Constant Mourning. I find the role of handwriting in art and the artist’s book to be intriguing. Looking at the cover to the book, many associations flashed through my mind: Robert Grenier’s handwritten scrawl poems/pictures, Cy Twombly’s use of handwriting, or even the City Lights publications of Lawrence Ferlinghetti that feature his handwriting with a magic marker (Like the cover for Journal for the Protection of All Beings for example). Can you talk about the act/process of writing and handwriting in your work? Is there a tradition in this line you are reacting to with Goofy Life?

I actually met Grenier once at my then house in Vermont about 1976. He figures in a memoir I’ve written about my life knowing Creeley. I have never seen or taken in his handwritten scrawl poems etc.

My dear friend (late friend) Saul Steinberg, smartest-man-in-the-world, said that Twombly’s work was like “a baby’s cry.”

I wanted to make a digital photographs. I met a guy called David Adamson who has a digital photo studio in DC. I would go there and he gave me a room about 15′ X 10′ with a 4′ X 5′ view camera with a beautiful lens and a digital back.

I would set up objects and write poems on his walls or over the objects and arrange the words and objects in some homogenous way. I would then photograph them and David Adamson would print them like 6′ X 4′ or thereabouts.

I have always had a relationship to my handwriting and my hand. The Goofy words are details of these images and they had been scanned from the original Adamson digitals by Steidl in Gottingen at his digital darkroom for my then catalogue raisonné of my photos called The Photographs So Far.

I took the scans and in my “procrustean” way cut them to fit the Goofy book. You can read it as a tale of a sad time in my life or just look at it as calligraphy on a page.

I would like to focus on one Arion Press publication that has always interested me: Frank O’Hara’s Biotherm. Can you go into some detail about this work in terms of how it came about, the relationship of form and content, the importance of O’Hara and the New York School to you as an artist and writer? Did previous livres d’artiste involving O’Hara (I think of Larry Rivers and Jasper Johns) come into play in Biotherm?

I wanted to do two books at once. Apollinaire’s Zone and Biotherm. Hoyem only went for Biotherm. Too bad. I pinned mylar on the walls of my studio that summer and simply responded to Frank’s text in a free associative way as it came up in the poem. It was done in less than a week and poured out of me the way images flash for one when the engine is stoked. O’Hara was and is one of my favorite poets. I have a lot of romance about the era he writes about. I was an art student in the late 1950s; also his casual way of pathos gets me.

You speak of your love of O’Hara’s work. Can you speak about O’Hara as a personality or about his role in the world of art (curator, critic, etc)? Did O’Hara (outside of his poetry) have an effect on you? For example how he approached art or life in general? From what I have read, he casts a large shadow on all aspects of New York creative life in the 1950s and 1960s.

Frank O’Hara was a great champion of “the New York School of the 50s.” He was a great champion of New York Bohemia in the 50s. He loved Balanchine’s ballet and jazz at the Five Spot etc. He understood the glamour of New York in the 50s after the European surrealists went back home and before Pop Art ruined what was New York 50s glamour. Saying all that he tried to be always up on stuff (in the 60s) but I know he was on a treadmill in society and not really understanding what we were really doing. He once wrote an essay about Oldenburg and me and Red Grooms, maybe others. He got it wrong. Saying that, I keep Lunch Poems by my bed. It still and always gives me pleasure and like a “madeleine” I can taste October 1958 very vividly.

I am curious about the New York School’s relationship to art. Do you see a simple division between the First Generation (Ashbery, Koch, O’Hara, and Schuyler) and the Second Generation (Berrigan, Padgett, Waldman, Warsh et al) on the basis of the art that surrounded them? For example, the First Generation is surrounded by Abstract Expressionism and Berrigan / Padgett / Waldman / Warsh is First Generation meets Pop Art. What are your thoughts on art and the various generations of New York School poets?

NY School of Poetry’s relationship to art in my experience was totally accepting. Since there was no money to be made with poetry it didn’t have any jealousy with painters and sculptors. Just ego. That can be huge too but unlike the jealousy between artists once success has been attained by one and not another these people were merely inspired by our work and were inspiring themselves as poets. I loved all my friendships with poets. I learned a lot from all of them about myself and the American Language.

Does O’Hara and Company speak more powerfully to you as an artist / poet than Berrigan and Company? Did you have more of a relationship (social or creative) with one generation or the other?

It’s all about individual work. For me there is not, nor was, an “and Company.”

I see Kali features your poems and etching. What artist besides yourself would you like to work with your poems?

I am married to the writer / photographer Diana Michener. We speak of collaborating a lot and probably will this winter in my 52 Books. Her book, Dogs, Fires, Me (Steidl Verlag Publisher) really inspired me. We made a small book together called 3 Poems also published by Steidl with our photos and a poem written by us both.

In a similar line, what is your dream artist’s book? For example, Brainard / Berrigan or Jeff Nuttall doing a deluxe mimeo of Lewis Carroll’s The Jabberwock. Or maybe a cave painter (or in a more modern vein, Robert Smithson) working with Gary Snyder’s work? Any dream pairings or project you would have liked to see?

I have no dreams combos, anymore, Ted Berrigan is dead and so is Bob Creeley. If it happens or if someone comes along I’ll be lucky. Meanwhile…

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

A Secret Location on the Lower East Side is one of my bibles, but the failure to document the Cleveland mimeo scene in any detail seems a major hole. Granted Clay and Phillips’ book could not cover everything, and Cleveland was briefly mentioned in the introduction, but levy would have been a nice corrective to the book’s largely coastal vision. By building on the framework of Donald Allen’s New American Poetry anthology many diverse voices get silenced. The Marrahwannah Quarterly or the Third Class Buddhist Oracle by levy or even Douglas Blazek’s Ole provide a much more vibrant view of Midwest little mags than that most discussed of little magazines, the Chicago-based, Big Table. A look at the mimeo tradition in the Midwest supports the idea that Main Street was much less sleepy and complacent artistically and politically than commonly believed.

This snub got me thinking about what I consider an interesting omission in levy’s publishing efforts. Given William Burroughs’ willingness to publish anywhere in the 1960s, why did he not appear in Cleveland? Burroughs and levy would seem to be a natural fit. In late 1964, levy journeyed to New York City and immersed himself in the poetry reading scene of the Lower East Side. The chronology complied by Smith and Swanberg states that levy went to readings at Le Metro, The Cellar, and The Paradox. Burroughs read at Les Deux Megots Coffeehouse in 1963 / 1964 as recounted by Daniel Kane in All Poets Welcome, and levy attended the reading. levy stayed in New York for a month performing and immersing himself in the New York scene. This experience was instrumental in levy’s decision to initiate a coffeehouse scene and reading series in Cleveland.

levy met Ed Sanders in 1965 and received copies of The Marijuana Newsletter issued by Fuck You Press. levy may also have received Roosevelt After Inauguration or even the aborted APO-33: A Metabolic Regulator. Burroughs appeared in both issues of The Marijuana Newsletter. Soon after his correspondence with Sanders, levy began The Marrahwannah Quarterly. Burroughs’ stance on drugs would have fit right in with that mimeo, but as we will see later on levy was critical of Burroughs’ drug-induced philosophy and writing (“rug scribbles”). Like levy, Burroughs was personally familiar with censorship and obscenity trials. In addition, Burroughs’ cut-up experiments paralleled levy’s concerns with concrete and visual poetry. Both writers also experimented in a visual manner with collages and incorporated textual and typographical elements from the typewriter and newspaper unlike many other collagists of the time. levy and Burroughs would seem to be two peas in a pod.

I always assumed that Burroughs’ absence was based on his social class and established literary reputation. My cue for this assumption was Charles Bukowski and his supporters. Reading through Bukowski’s letters of the 1960s (a fun and worthwhile exercise by the way), it is clear that Buk resented the Beats, particularly Ginsberg, as fakes and poseurs. In a questionnaire complied by Anthony Linick for a dissertation, Bukowski listed Gregory Corso and Robert Creeley as his least favorite poets. Corso would represent the dislike of the Beats. Creeley stands for the established and successful avant poet, particularly of the Black Mountain variety. Before he was 40, Creeley had made it as a poet and was a leading light to succeeding generations of poets. Bukowski regularly blasted all manner of counterculture and established poets in his letters, Dirty Old Man columns, poems, and in his little mag, Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns.

Given his outsider / underdog status, it seems natural that levy would harbor a similar resentment to established avant-garde figures. In a letter to dr wagner from 1966, levy describes Burroughs as “the adding machine addict.” The reference to the Burroughs Corporation suggests levy’s awareness of the corporate and privileged status of Burroughs. Granted Burroughs clearly benefited from his family connections (nowhere more so than in Mexico after the shooting of Joan), but the myth of his wealth was greatly exaggerated. Kerouac perpetuated the rumor that Burroughs was a millionaire. He was not. Yet he was connected to wealth and privilege. More important and probably more grating on younger writers, Burroughs was connected to the international avant-garde, including major avant publishers like John Calder and Grove Press. By the mid-1960s, “the adding machine addict” had rise from drug-addled obscurity to become a Delphic oracle of sorts who prophesized on all topics of the day. Burroughs was something to measure up to and react against.

This levy clearly did and he is conflicted on Burroughs as an influence. Take Allen Ginsberg for example. I would suspect a bit of jealousy and resentment against the Beat guru who so ruffled Bukowski’s feathers. levy hosted Ginsberg in 1966 at a benefit reading in Cleveland. Ginsberg was in the process of crossing the United States for his Fall of America collection. This was the “Wichita Vortex Sutra” period, a poem that has aged well given today’s current events with its look at war, the media, and Middle America. Reading over Ginsberg’s biography and Smith and Swanberg’s book, it appears to be that the two poets used each other for their own purposes, rather than there being mutual admiration and cross pollination. At least that is the sense I get. Ginsberg kind of blew into town, created a fuss, raised some money, and annoyed the police and the squares. Did he help or hurt levy’s cause? Connections with levy definitely added a feather to Ginsberg’s cap given what levy had come to represent in the counterculture. Clearly, levy has a complicated and conflicted relationship to the Beats.

In August 1968, levy wrote “Suburban Monastery Death Poem.” Written near the end of his life and at the end of his rope, this is a devastating poem that shows the potential and power of levy. levy died at 26, an accomplished poet, but still learning and developing. As mentioned in d.a. levy and the mimeograph revolution, Ginsberg did not write Howl until the age of 30. Who knows what heights levy could have attained? In this poem, levy cries for help: “I don’t want to die in Ohio anymore.” Burroughs is one to whom levy reaches out. levy writes, “William Burroughs — rescue me! / forget that!” The line highlights the attraction / repulsion levy felt for Burroughs. As mentioned before by 1968, Burroughs was viewed as a prophet and a savior to many in the counterculture. With his appearances on album covers, underground newspapers, men’s magazines, and other alternative outlets, Burroughs transformed from a voice in the wildness to a talking head. levy’s line reminds me of “The Seeker” by The Who with the lyric: “I asked Timothy Leary and he couldn’t help me either. They call me the Seeker.” levy and the Who yearn for answers and a guru but at the same time fail to find the guidance they so desperately desire. levy and The Who are also cynical regarding the ability of the counterculture’s leading figures, like the Beatles, to provide answers at all. Timothy Leary and the Beatles are merely media projections and creations. There are no answers. There is only hype. Burroughs represents another media creation of the avant-garde.

Given levy’s interest in concrete and visual poetry, his experimentation with collage, his familiarity with the little mag community, his relationship with the Beat Generation, and his interest in drug and alternative cultures, I believe wholeheartedly that the figure of Burroughs had to be confronted and overcome by levy. levy viewed Burroughs as an important yet ultimately oppressive and, as we will see, inadequate influence. Clearly, levy wrestled with Burroughs.

In a remarkable passage included in a packet of ephemera sent by levy to Marvin Malone of Wormwood Review in the days leading up to his suicide, levy discusses Burroughs as a writer and his relation to his own poetics. The letters and other artifacts he mailed to intimates around the country represent levy’s legacy. They form part of the picture of how levy wanted to be remembered. Michael Basinski in his introduction to the letters mentions that some of the letters discuss the modern poetics of Creeley, Ginsberg and Olson. What is revealed is an intellectual poet deeply involved with the poetics of his time.

In a letter to dr wagner from 1966, levy writes:

I sit down 10-20 times a day and glans equinox dropping thru may STONE hinges sighted on syrian frontier the eglyphian stroboscope study course & its been occuring to me that the STROBE is; when assembled a form less jumble & a master piece of chaos that should even jolt ole Budge out of his gravey TRAINing center — the strobe codex cannot be broken — we have discovered an absolute means of time-warp-jump-the-rope communication that may surpass burroughsian lucidity — or the Rug scribble of the adding machine addict is to easily ascribed to rug scribble — while the strobe is primarily a non-rug scribble — perhaps anti-acid? Rug scene — if you stare at the strobe long enough the obvious patterns vanish — the problem is how can we get passed the censors & get the thing on ToVo (TOVO) as in demi-tovo-western version of TASS which is another version of Ouspenskian political mysticism

In this brief passage, it is clear that levy held many of the same obsessions and concerns as Burroughs. levy’s excitement over discovering “an absolute means of time-warp-jump-the-rope communication” echoes Burroughs’ fervor over the cut-up and yage expressed in various letters and interviews. In The Yage Letters, Burroughs writes, “Yage is space time travel.” In The Job, Burroughs states, “I would say that my most interesting experience with the earlier techniques was the realization that when you make cut-ups you do not get simply random juxtapositions of words, they do mean something, and often that these meanings refer to some future event… Perhaps events are pre-written and pre-recorded and when you cut word lines the future leaks out.”

The concern with passing the censor reminds me of a similar line from Naked Lunch in the Talking Asshole routine. Burroughs writes, “That’s the sex that passes the censor, squeezes through between the bureaus, because there is always a space between, in popular songs and Grade B movies, giving away the basic American rottenness…” Both levy and Burroughs sought a literary form merging high and popular culture techniques that would allow them to explore and maneuver in those spaces in between, the little gaps of freedom in the monolith of the dominant culture and in the controlling aspects of language. levy also expresses his knowledge of Western media control of information and its close ties to Soviet oppression. Both realized the United States and the Soviet Union are heavily invested in stifling freedom of speech and free thought. The manipulation of media outlets is a key element in that process.

levy’s letter to wagner suggests that Burroughs did not appear in levy’s publications because levy was critical of Burroughs’ work. levy writes, “we have discovered an absolute means of time-warp-jump-the-rope communication that may surpass burroughsian lucidity — or the Rug scribble of the adding machine addict is to easily ascribed to rug scribble — while the strobe is primarily a non-rug scribble — perhaps anti-acid? Rug scene…” Burroughs in levy’s opinion was too lucid. levy describes Burroughs’ work as “rug scribbles.” This refers to “drug scribbles” with the “D” removed. Similarly, I also misread this as “rag scribbles” thinking of the British slang for heroin and a prostitute, an “oily rag.” The use of British slang in my mind refers to the fact that in 1966 Burroughs was living in London. In this light, levy felt Burroughs writing was merely drug centered and drug induced rambling whereas his work “anti-acid” and a breakthrough beyond drug-speak. By the mid-1960s, drug jargon and philosophy were becoming old hat, cliché and a straitjacket to open expression. Burroughs, and even Ginsberg and Kesey, were talking of going beyond drugs as a means toward heightened perception.

levy is using “rug” in this manner, but “rug” is also British slang for trite, tired, cliché, obvious. This would tie in with Burroughs’ lucidity. As I have written above, levy prized obscurity and noise in communication. levy states, “Why concrete? What can be more obscene than refusing to communicate.” levy felt quite rightly that his problem with the censor had less to do with four-letter words than his failure to express himself clearly and directly in a manner the common reader could understand. Obscurity equals obscenity. I have pointed out this element of pornography in connection with Burroughs in a previous Bunker column, but levy felt Burroughs did not go far enough with his cut-up and maintained ties to open communication, narrative, and discernable pattern.

levy writes, “if you stare at the strobe long enough the obvious patterns vanish.” Compare the stroboscope to the Dream Machine. levy lays down the problem with Burroughs’ cut-up experiments; they do not abandon “obvious patterns” despite his desire to obliterate word lines, destroy the tyranny of the sentence, and topple the blocks of meaning conveyed by syllabic language. In short they are too lucid. Brion Gysin, the guru to Burroughs, saw Jungian archetypes and visual patterns in the Dream Machine. In an essay on the Dream Machine published in Olympia Magazine, the Olympia Press’ response to Grove’s Evergreen Review (republished in Brion Gysin Let The Mice In, Something Else Press as well as in the Brion Gysin Reader), Gysin writes quoting Ian Sommerville…. “After a while the visions were permanently behind my eyes and I was in the middle of the whole scene with limitless patterns being generated around me.” He writes about “patterns of color” and “elements seen in endless repetition.” On the other hand, the stroboscope as envisioned by levy wants to break and complicate patterns. In an essay on the Tibetan Stroboscope, Karl Young writes, “Technically a stroboscope is an instrument used for industrial and scientific procedures that call for the intermittent flashing of beams of light… Strobe light can seem like a mild means of questioning the nature of perception. Still the strobe light can make what people usually take for granted as perception seem much less certain. Under a strobe, light and darkness constantly alternate, which can be seen in terms of existence and nothingness, or in the dualism of many occult traditions…The news is changes in perception.” Burroughs and Gysin claim to pursue a similar interest in deranging and challenging perception but they continually return to pattern and endless repetition. Take for example Gysin’s permutation poems or his artwork. Pattern and repetition are privileged over plurality of meanings and multiplicity of perception. Karl Young in connection with the stroboscope as envisioned by levy: “The images abound in contradictions, paradoxes, oppositions, and kinds of flipping polarities that at times attract and repel each other.” The Dream Machine moves away from this frantic motion and “flipping” to “limitless patterns” and “endless repetition.” The Dream Machine quickly becomes boring and too lucid.

Perhaps, levy’s literary form of the strobe is a reaction to Burroughs’ writing. Before reading the letter quoted above, I viewed Ed Sander’s Egyptian influenced poems as a major influence on levy’s work in this line and they were, but Burroughs might also play an important role. I think the focus here is in part on the cut-up experiments of the 1960s that appeared in seemingly every major little magazine of the time. Yet I want to narrow down to one magazine in particular and suggest that levy’s comments and his development of the stroboscope provide an interesting critique to a particular experiment of Burroughs’. The magazine in question is C: A Journal of Poetry and Burroughs contribution to Issue 9: “Giver of Winds is My Name.” Here, Burroughs experiments with glyphs accompanying a cut-up. Burroughs also contributes “Intersection Shifts and Scanning from Literary Days by Tom Veitch.” These works are Burroughs at his most poetic. In 1966, Ginsberg stated in a Paris Review interview that Burroughs was really a poet. It is easy to think that Ginsberg had the work from C Journal in mind. I believe levy must have seen Burroughs’ piece in C as well. Given his intimate knowledge of the little magazine scene, particularly in the Lower East Side due to a friendship with Ed Sanders, it is likely levy saw a copy of this issue. C 9 was published in the Summer of 1964 before levy’s stroboscope poem and his letter to dr wagner. As I have mentioned earlier, levy travelled to New York City in late 1964 where he saw Burroughs reading and just as likely read a copy of C 9.

Like in the Egyptian Stroboscope, Burroughs utilizes hieroglyphics in his cut-up in C 9. In The Job, Burroughs states, “The study of hieroglyphic languages shows us that word is an image… the written word is an image. However, there is an important difference between a hieroglyphic and syllabic language. If I hold up a sign with the word ‘ROSE’ written on it, and you read that sign, you will be forced to repeat the word ‘ROSE’ to yourself. If I show you a picture of a rose you do not have to repeat the word. You can register the image in silence. A syllabic language forces you to verbalize in auditory patterns. A hieroglyphic language does not. I think that anyone who is interested to find out the precise relationship between word and image show study a simplified hieroglyphic script. Such a study would tend to break down automatic verbal reaction to a word. It is precisely these automatic reactions to words themselves that enable those who manipulate words to control thought on a mass scale.” Burroughs talks the talk here but his cut-up work fails to satisfactorily break the urge to “repeat the word” or “verbalize in auditory patterns.” The hieroglyphics are mere window dressing. levy realizes that the cut-up experiment, like the Dream Machine, is built on repetition of words and images that construct a pattern despite the desire to break free into silence such as the figure of Lady Sutton Smith appears in My Own Mag and other publications of the period. On one level this goes down to the source material of the cut-ups. Burroughs utilizes the same basic material for many of his cut-ups: recycled bits and pieces from the word horde of Naked Lunch. As Davis Schneiderman demonstrates in an unpublished essay, Burroughs repeatedly cuts-up the same front page of the September 17, 1899 New York Times. In addition, levy feels that Burroughs lays down the same old con. He writes like he speaks, in a monotone, due to his recycling of old material that relies on chance and the scissors for a fresh perception. levy sees that Burroughs is addicted to a static word and image bank and thus condemned to parrot the same old phrases despite the cut-up. Burroughs cannot cut his ties to the forces of control imbedded in “obvious patterns” and word lines. He cannot keep out the echoes of his recycled writing out of his “new” material and thus never truly risks obscurity, silence, or miscommunication. As quoted earlier, Burroughs stated on the cut-up: “I would say that my most interesting experience with the earlier techniques was the realization that when you make cut-ups you do not get simply random juxtapositions of words, they do mean something…” The most interesting aspect of the cut-up to Burroughs is their “lucidity,” their clarity of meaning. Burroughs shys away from “simply random juxtapositions of words.” levy embraces this aspect in the stroboscope at the textual and visual level.

This analysis is at a textual level and says nothing of the visual elements that deeply interested both authors. In this case I would say that Burroughs preferred clean mimeo. Compare his Time and APO-33 to levy’s Tibetan Stroboscope. Both writers utilize elements of typewritten text and collage, but levy deliberately makes his text illegible. I suggest that Burroughs did not manipulate dirty mimeo in order to further his creative ideas. Proof of this is his reaction to Ed Sanders’ work on APO-33. Burroughs objected to the imperfections of this production and felt they were not appropriate. This says much about Burroughs as an established and commercial writer. Imperfect mimeo and poor layout reflected poorly on Burroughs’ reputation as a professional. levy on the other hand embraced this seeming lack of skill in order to challenge reader’s expectations and to suggest elements of censorship and miscommunication. This is another example of the lucidity that levy saw as a failing in Burroughs’ work.

As I have written before, Burroughs always remained aware of the reader and sought clear communication above all. levy sought to challenge that relationship more confrontationally through “destructive writing.” The strobe as literary form is a “master-piece of chaos.” Burroughs made gestures in this direction but by the late 1960s he would come “back now to write purely conventional straightforward narrative” as he would state in The Job. Burroughs found that purely experimental writing was something of a trap. Perhaps had he lived levy would have felt a similar pull away from the more experimental concrete work of his late career.

d.a. levy and the mimeograph revolution is a revelation for anybody interested in the Cleveland scene, the little magazine, and the alternative poetics of the 1960s. The book centers levy in Cleveland yet succeeds in showing how he searched beyond the city limits for inspiration and how his influence rippled outward from Euclid Avenue. For years, there has been a valuable base of raw material, original and reprint publications, letters, and artwork, on which to build the critical reputation of this misunderstood poet. Smith, Swanberg, and their contributors provide several bricks to that structure. Hopefully critics and writers will seek out levy’s work as there is much to learn from and about him. levy is an inspiration as a poet, a publisher and as a community builder. The project he began in Cleveland has yet to be completed in that city and beyond. The positive benefits of such an effort were sorely needed then and maybe even more so today.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

In my piece on Eric Mottram, I wrote that I first came into contact with d.a. levy while browsing through the stacks at the University of London Library. Looking back on it, it is weird that I had to go overseas in order to discover this most American of poets. levy is American in a sense that is increasingly in peril in these troubled times. He is a figure of protest, dissent, independence and self-reliance. levy might be a counterculture poet of the 1960s, but I can see him fitting in with Thoreau who refused to pay his taxes and went native (even if only half way) as well as with firebrands like Thomas Paine who took to their printing presses in protest against British tyranny. Reading levy in 1992 much closer in age to levy than I am now, I do not think I appreciated what a special poet and person he was. Fascinated with the Beats, I placed levy in that tradition and bought into the myth of a man suicided by society. I remember being somewhat underwhelmed by the poetry in comparison with the myth.

Much has changed in me and the world at large since I first read levy. Many of these personal changes, such as my newly sparked interest in mimeo, printing techniques and the small press; my obsession with creative communities; and my fascination with literature’s role in popular and political culture play right into the obsessions that drove levy. I also require a sense of tradition and literary history as background to fully appreciate a writer, and a dedicated group of scholars and artists are constructing the critical edifice necessary to build up the reputation of this largely misunderstood poet. I think the internet has really helped establish this home base. Several wonderful websites have grown up around the Cleveland mimeo scene and levy in general. Deep Cleveland is a case in point, as is the d.a. levy page. The Cleveland State library possesses a tremendous collection of levy’s work, as does Kent State. The library has been very active in scanning and making available the contents of their collection. From what I can tell they are at the forefront of this trend to make library holdings available on the internet. The power of the Cleveland scene in the 1960s cannot be separated from the vitality of public spaces like bookstores, coffeehouses, theaters, revolving door apartments, and crash pads. In my opinion, it is not a coincidence that the rebirth of Cleveland parallels the city’s efforts to reclaim and examine its rich history. The Rock and Roll Museum is the most obvious (and maybe controversial) example of the role of history in the rebuilding of Cleveland, but institutions like the library are crucial as well. levy realized the value of a well-stocked library when he donated alternative books and magazines to the public institutions of Cleveland. As Ed Sanders suggests, the Rock and Roll Museum would benefit from an exhibit dealing with levy and the Cleveland scene. The Cleveland mimeo scene is certainly intertwined with the rebellious spirit of the popular music of the 1960s.

A reluctance to take old anecdotes at face value seems to be the order of the day in the academic community dedicated to the writers of the immediate post-WWII era. Kerouac, Bukowski, and Burroughs are the Paul Bunyan, Mike Fink and Pecos Bill of American Literature. The tall tales surrounding these writers have obscured their true legacy. The veneer of myth covering these writers and making them so shiny and glossy for short-sighted fans is being rubbed away. Critics are getting at the bedrock surface below. The documentary on Bukowski, Born into This, takes the old, seldom seen footage and lets it speak for itself. The Bukowski letters continue this process. The result is a much more literary and, even in some ways, more sensitive Bukowski. The book Kerouac’s Wild Form (among others) reveals the radicalism of Kerouac by demonstrating his intellectual side and by laying bare his roots in the creative cross-currents of the Post-WWII avant-garde. James Grauerholz examined “the” Beat Myth, the William Tell shooting of Joan Vollmer by William Burroughs, in an effort to get to the bottom of this mystery that lies at the heart of Burroughs’ creative life and of his “secret of fascination.”

The valiant efforts of librarians, collectors and archivists who have saved the ephemera of the Cleveland scene from destruction are beginning to bear fruit. The levyfest in Cleveland is part party and part symposium. The word is getting out about levy beyond a handful of academics and collectors interested in the relics of the mimeo revolution. One proof of this is a recent publication by Bottom Dog Press: d.a. levy and the mimeograph revolution. The book, edited by Larry Smith and Ingrid Swanberg, delves deep into the life and work of levy far beyond the usual mythmaking.

This is most obvious in the treatment of levy’s suicide. For years, I believed that levy was hounded to death by a fascistic Cleveland. Besieged by legal troubles, levy took his own life to escape the oppressive police state atmosphere. This is an important element of the story but it is not the whole tale. At the time of his death, the light at the end of the legal tunnel was in sight. levy, had he held out, would have been cleared in Cleveland. He could have sought out more hospitable pastures like California or New York, and as the book states, such plans were contemplated and were in the works. The circumstances around levy’s death are much more complex: a combination of police-state hounding, a fragile state of mental health, relationship problems, and confusion about his creative future and role. What is clear is that levy was a figure out of Ginsberg’s Howl or Artaud’s essay on Van Gogh. That is if you get to the radical and political center of those works. levy was persecuted by society but it was not for his drug use or use of dirty words. They were the pretext. levy was a wanted man for the critical, questioning, and contrary nature of his thought. levy was an enemy of the state because he challenged the unassailable myths of the United States and the Western world head-on. As the recent essays make clear, levy, like Olson, was a historian. He found out for himself, and the powers that be did not like what he uncovered.

I think the comparison with Olson is instructive, and a major source of my ongoing and growing interest in levy. Like Olson, levy is an archeologist of the morning. levy explores beginnings, roots, and foundations in order to understand where things stand in the Now and in the Future. His interest in Egyptian history and script was one aspect of this digging in the past as was his excavation of the history of Cleveland. Like Olson with Gloucester and William Carlos Williams with Paterson, levy initiated an intense relationship with the city of Cleveland. I can think of few writers so active in community building outside of the major metropolitan areas on the two coasts. Surely, Olson and Williams explored their home bases in depth, but they did not attempt to construct an alternative community outside of the pages of Paterson and The Maximus Poems. Cleveland in many ways was levy’s muse and his major creative project. The city on the lake lies at the heart of his poetry. For example see Cleveland Undercover.

Olson also comes into play with his ideas of composition by field in the essay Projective Verse. A look at levy’s mimeo work reveals a poet greatly concerned with the appearance of the poem on the page. levy’s work recognizes the page as space. Swanberg and Smith’s book is wonderful in this respect, solidifying levy as a concrete / experimental / visual poet. The book also explores how the means of production dovetailed with levy’s literary concerns. This placement of levy in the forefront of the poetic avant-garde is extremely interesting and does justice to levy’s poetic project.

The focus of the levy book may be the mimeo revolution, but the essays in the collection greatly expand the range of levy’s work. The levy presented here is a deeply intellectual poet who was intimately in touch with the political, social, and literary crosscurrents of his time as well as time gone by. levy’s reach extended far beyond Cleveland in inspiration and influence. The levy presented here is less a stereotypical hippie, counterculture poet and more the experimental, avant-garde poet and publisher.

In this line, I found particularly interesting the treatment of levy as an artist. The most obvious example of this is his work with the mimeograph machine. I have read precious little on the actual mimeo process and its effect on and relationship with the creative process. Smith and Swanberg’s book provides many insights here. The book ties together the importance of the typewriter in poem-making as demonstrated by Olson in Projective Verse. The poet could become his own typesetter and lay out the poem on the page. Stencil cutting continues this process in the act of do-it-yourself reproduction. levy mastered the mimeograph, manipulating it for complex visual and typographical affects. I had never heard of the distinction between clean and dirty mimeo until reading this book. I always assumed that smudgy, inky pages were unintentional. Not true. Such effects were harnessed by levy in his concrete works to bring up issues of illegibility, obscurity, censorship, and incomprehensibility. levy incorporated blots and smudges as a typographical form of noise, static or feedback. Karl Young writes,

Taking a cue from blurs and set-off, levy began overprinting texts, sometimes for visual effects alone, sometimes as a technique to obscure some words while leaving others visible, creating a new text out of an old. A number of other mimeographers had reversed stencils, printing texts backwards. This was invariably done to produce results that were merely cute. levy worked reversed stencils in conjunction with other print runs to produce meaningful interactions of directions. His most resourceful use of mimeography came from over-inking stencils. Slight overinks were one of the perennial annoyances for veteran mimeographers. In a number of late works levy achieved a surprising range of text alteration and abstract graphics through various degrees of over-inking and cylinder impression. The initial results of these prints were often single sheets which he then had reprinted offset so as not to disturb the imbalance he had set up. In this process, he had completely jumped over the standard limitations of mimeo, turning it from one of the most tediously restricted forms of letter reproduction into the tool for one of the most dramatic forms of visual poetry of the era.

levy was not incompetent with the mimeo, but a savvy manipulator of the medium who sought to further his interests in concrete / experimental / visual poetry.

The argument is made that levy was one of the foremost practitioners of the mimeograph. His work is very impressive. I am much taken with the work of Jeff Nuttall in My Own Mag. I would characterize Nuttall’s work as clean. Nuttall strives for clarity in his inking and chooses to add the element of disruption with the use of scissors, the razor, fire or collage. The visuals in My Own Mag must have been difficult to create with a stencil, and the painter and draftsman in Nuttall comes to the fore. The visuals, like the comic strips and covers in My Own Mag, are more traditional, more conventional, maybe an example of what could be called classical mimeo. levy’s work with its blobs, its acknowledgement of the physical nature of ink, its superimpositions, and its fading reminds me of Abstract Expressionist and Pop techniques. I am thinking of levy’s Scarab Poems and “AGAIn? Yur primer cord is showing.” The solid band of ink of “AGAIn?” reminds me of a mimeo Rothko, if Rothko incorporated text in his painting. There are splashes of ink and blots like in the work of Jackson Pollock. The superimpositions, fading of text and image, and the failure to reink calls to mind Warhol’s Marilyn paintings of the early 1960s where such effects bring to mind mortality, impermanence, transitoriness. Nuttall stained his magazine (Issue 9) but I do not get the same flashes from his work. The fading and illegibility of the text in My Own Mag I take to be “the standard limitations of mimeo” and not an intended and manipulated affect.

Like Nuttall, levy was also a painter and illustrator. Russell Salamon points out this aspect of levy’s creative endeavor providing color images of the Cleveland Prints. levy created two sets of prints depicting a “used inked condom” in collages. Salamon points out “the free speech element” of these prints. I found these collages very compelling, and I did not know why until I read Karl Young’s essay: “At the Corner of Euclid Ave and Blvd St Germain: d.a. levy’s Parables of Local Necessity and Universal Decentralism.” Young recounts, “Jokes about the difficulties [of mimeo], such as that drawing on a mimeo stencil being comparable to writing with the claw of a hammer on a used condom, made up a sub genre of its own.” It was then that I saw the prints as a comment on the mimeo process. The prints also comment on free speech and communication in another way. In “Intro to the Cement Fuck,” levy writes, “as for obscenity… which is more obscene jacking off into a wastebasket becauz nobody wants to make love, or getting a bayonet in the guts.” In an interview with Andrew Curry of Dust, levy speaks of his work in relation to masturbation. levy was aware of the tie between excess, waste, and obscenity in a capitalist society. The mimeos of Cleveland bypassed normal distribution channels, ignored the mainstream publishing industry, and flooded the limited market with a baffling array of editions, limited editions, and reprints. The theories of Georges Bataille on potlatch and excess production come to mind. In a similar vein, levy states, “Why Concrete? What can be more obscene than refusing to communicate?” levy’s poetry with its failure to communicate its message clearly and simply is obscene. Again his poetry becomes and celebrates wasteful exercise like masturbating in a wastebasket or condom. levy was drawn to concrete poetry in part because of these intellectual, political and philosophical underpinnings. Many of the essays in d.a. levy and the mimeograph revolution make clear the capitalist critique that is implicit in not only his poetry and art, but also in his means of production and distribution.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Little magazines are expressions of and monuments to a thriving creative community. Looking through the pages of My Own Mag brings this fact home. The magazine expanded in size and scope from its first four-page issue into a newsletter for an international avant-garde. Within the mimeo’d pages, the contributors commented on and communicated with each other. Of course, the magazine also disseminated this information to interested readers on both sides of the Atlantic.

While Burroughs is one of the most well known, Jeff Nuttall touched many people throughout his life with his talent, his humor and his lust for life. He was a major source of inspiration and a sounding board for William Burroughs in the 1960s.

In an effort to capture the vortex that swirled around Burroughs, Nuttall, and the magazine and scene that brought them together, the Bibliographic Bunker will be posting interviews, recollections, and comments by contributors to My Own Mag, participants in the British Poetry Revival and Swinging London, friends and collaborators of Jeff Nuttall, readers who came in contact with the mimeo in the 1960s, and anything else that fleshes out this fascinating and important story of the international avant garde community.

• Eric Mottram and the Algebra of Need by Jed Birmingham
• “Live All You Can”: A Memoir of Eric Mottram collated by Robert Bank
• Islwyn Watkins Interviewed by David Moore
• Recollections Of Jeff Nuttall by Michael Bartholomew