Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

For the obsessed, the pursuit of the subject of fascination inevitably ends in minutiae. If that subject is an author, it means that the entire bibliography has been analyzed and devoured. The secondary sources have been exhausted. The pursuit has bled over into related and tangential areas. For Burroughs that means one might have dug deeply into Scientology, Mayan history, language theory, lemurs, or pirates. Slowly but surely nothing remains to be examined. But for those truly under Burroughs’ spell, there always remains more to explore. As Eric Shoaf has shown, new items can be uncovered for the bibliography. These scraps must be obtained and processed.

For the obsessed, there is great significance placed in detritus. Pieces of bone, scraps of cloth, shards of wood, a yellowed sheet of paper. These fragments contain the truth. Juvenilia are a prime example of minutiae. They sit among letters, photographs, and aborted drafts of master works awaiting their time to see the light of day. As Burroughs fans know, letters and the like hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of the man’s creative process. So it is with great anticipation that the faithful awaited publication of And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks.

It is strange to think of the writing of a thirty year old man as juvenilia but that is how I view Hippos. It is the work of a writer in an early stage of development — in writing terms, a work of adolescence. For Kerouac, Hippos sits on the same shelf with Atop an Underwood, Orpheus Emerging as well as the other 1,000,000 words he wrote by his early twenties. Hippos belongs with Burroughs’ early efforts “Autobiography of a Wolf” or “Twilight’s Last Gleaming.” Like Charles Bukowski, Burroughs reached his maturity as a writer later in life. Junkie, published when Burroughs was nearly forty, is his first mature work and contains many of the major themes of his oeuvre.

The fact that Hippos is a collaboration is key. The partnership with Kerouac began a method of composition that would fuel Burroughs’ creative fire for the rest of his life. Kerouac deserves to be placed next to Ginsberg and Brion Gysin in terms of importance as an influence for Burroughs. This goes far beyond the fact that Kerouac titled Naked Lunch. Kerouac provided a model of the writer at work. The struggling writer facing the typewriter day after day replaced boyhood dreams of an opium addicted pretender lounging in luxury. Burroughs acknowledged as much in the essay “Remembering Kerouac.” Burroughs stressed that the most admirable thing about Kerouac was that he was a writer, i.e., he wrote. Kerouac also provided encouragement and criticism, but most important was his model of discipline. Hippos in its structure and method of composition highlights Kerouac’s influence and importance in Burroughs’ development as a writer, not so much on the level of style but on the level of providing an example of the writer at work.

Hippos should put to rest (if Oliver Harris has not done so already) the myth that Burroughs felt compelled to become a writer as a result of the death of Joan Vollmer. Long before that tragic night in Mexico, Burroughs was possessed by the Ugly Spirit, i.e., the compulsion to write and express himself. Like Kerouac, Burroughs was a born writer, and Hippos shows his obsession with and deep knowledge of literature and the writing life. The comments on the forum mention Dennison’s interest in Rimbaud as poet and persona, and all the male characters in Hippos are overcome with the fantasy of living the life of the artist. The murder of Kammerer destroyed Lucien Carr’s dreams of becoming a poet as it gave birth to three other writers. Citing the Surrealist, Dada, and proto-Surrealist texts that formed the philosophy of the early Beats, it could be argued that killing Kammerer was Carr’s most inspired and most terrible poetic act.

Readers will no doubt see connections in Hippos to Burroughs’ later works. The RealityStudio forum has a thread that does just that. A review in the Observer pointed out the scene where Dennison shoots up as a precursor to Junkie. More interesting to me is how we leave Dennison. He is waiting to hear about a shipment of stolen goods obtained from a shipyard. It was just such a shipment that introduced Burroughs to the world of drugs when he obtained some cartons of morphine along with some hot weapons. This led to Burroughs’ meeting with Herbert Huncke and his initiation into the drug underworld. In his afterword, Grauerholz suggested that Burroughs was introduced to the needle after the events depicted in Hippos. If that is the case, Burroughs wrote his experiences with Huncke and heroin back into the Carr-Kammerer story.

The genesis of Queer resides in Hippos as well. Burroughs must have seen how the relationship of Carr and Kammerer mirrored his relationship with Lewis Marker. Nearly a decade later, Burroughs would replay the events in Hippos for himself complete with a murder that provided a shocking twist a la Law and Order. Burroughs was no stranger to sexual obsession. In the late 1930s, his feelings for Jack Anderson lead to a Van Gogh trip resulting in the cutting off of a finger. This early experience made Burroughs uniquely qualified to understand and to humanize a figure like Kammerer.

Other reviewers have categorized Hippos as a period piece, arguing that the book provides a unique perspective on the world of the post-WWII hipster at the time and place of his birth — the rain-washed streets, the seedy bars, the cramped apartments, the corner restaurants. More than Junkie, Hippos reads like a noir novel. Dennison works as a private eye. The cover of Kulchur 4 features a picture of Burroughs and Kerouac from the time of their collaboration in Hippos. They are dressed the part of the noir detective and the caption for the photo names them as Inspector Maiget and Sam Spade.  

I am tempted to see Hippos less as a noir novel than as a memoir like Anatole Broyard’s Kafka Was the Rage or Edie Parker-Kerouac’s You’ll Be Okay. If these books explored the same geography years later, Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler’s novel The Young and Evil (1933 by Obelisk Press) provided Kerouac and Burroughs with a model in terms of subject matter, method of composition (a collaboration), and atmosphere a full decade earlier. These books also capture the New York hipster scene described in Hippos. Although an act of misreading, I first approached Hippos as memoir more than novel because so much of the material from Hippos had been cannibalized for the biographical record. You finish Hippos with a sense of déjà vu since in a way you have read it all before in the Literary Outlaw and elsewhere. I see Kerouac’s Vanity of Dulouz in a similar manner.

As a result, reviewers of Hippos have treated the book as a straight telling of the Carr-Kammerer story, more period memoir than novel. This is a dangerous practice. If we think of Hippos in terms of memoir, we have to be acutely aware of what is missing. Hippos purports to be a factual accounting of the murder but it is in effect a cover-up. What is missing is the star witness in the case: Allen Ginsberg.  

In the afterword, Grauerholz states that reader will have a good time trying to place the characters with real people. Besides the main quartet, side players include Edie Parker, Celine Young, and John Kingsland. But where is Ginsberg? As Ginsberg’s journal of the period, The Journal of Martyrdom and Artifice, makes clear he was an intimate on the scene. Included in that journal was Ginsberg’s own novel based on the Kammerer-Carr murder entitled The Bloodsong. This passionate proto-novel was suppressed by Columbia University to prevent any additional bad publicity from infecting the college. Ginsberg was bad press.

Kerouac and Burroughs erased Ginsberg from Hippos for exactly the same reason. As Grauerholz mentions in the afterword, Ginsberg had a sexual relationship with both Kammerer and Carr. Ginsberg was exhibit A for the homosexual obsession that bound the entire New Vision circle. If Ginsberg’s story as told in his journal and The Bloodsong would have gotten out, Ginsberg would have been the star witness for the prosecution, and Carr might have gotten the electric chair. We can understand Ginsberg’s terror in 1948 when his notebooks were seized by police. The hot goods in the car were not the stolen furs and coats but the details of sexual obsession, murder and madness recorded in the journals.

A close reading of Chapter 17 proves very interesting in light of Hippos’ complex relationship with and treatment of homosexual obsession. Kerouac wrote this chapter, and it is full of the literary flourishes and symbolism that would weigh down his first published novel: The Town and the City. There are references to Saroyan and T.S Eliot as well as to foreign movies and popular music of the time. Kerouac and Carr talk repeatedly of writing poetry. No other chapter in the novel reveals so clearly the literary aspirations of the early Beat circle.  

Among the movies playing as Philip Tourian and Mike Ryko walk through the city is Port of Shadows. This French classic about a deserter from the French Army references the recent trials and travails of the pair getting a ship. Kerouac later writes that Philip reminds him of Boldieu and his white gloves in La Grande Illusion. Both these movies reflect the realism and sense of impeding tragedy that Burroughs and Kerouac attempt to capture in Hippos. Yet the movie references can also be read as comment on homosexual obsession. Tourian and Ryko see Korda’s Four Feathers on their way to the Museum of Modern Art. Kerouac writes, “There was an ambush scene where you saw British soldiers and Fuzzy Wuzzies hacking away at each other with sabers and knives and much blood. Most of the picture kept reminding us of Al lying in the yard in a pool of blood, so we couldn’t enjoy it that much. And one of the characters in the story was named Dennison.” This movie depicting combat with a threatening racial Other draws parallels with Tourian’s sacrifice of the dangerous sexual Other in the form of Al. The taint of homosexuality must be exorcised.  

After seeing this disturbing film, the pair retreats to the Museum of Modern Art. Tourian and Ryko seek solace in culture in order to get away from the anarchy of barrooms and darkened alleyways of the City. What they see at the Museum instead are examples of the culture that was the seeds of their destruction. They stop to examine a portrait of Jean Cocteau by Modigliani. The decadence, bisexuality, effeminacy and drug use that fascinated the early Beats is represented by the figure of Cocteau. The portrait was painted in 1916 and two years later Cocteau would meet the 15-year old poet Raymond Radiguet. Cocteau denied there was a sexual aspect to this relationship but rumors hounded the pair. The relationship of Cocteau / Radiguet mirrors that of Verlaine / Rimbaud and of course Kammerer / Carr. Radiguet died young leaving Cocteau distraught. Cocteau turned to opium. Of course, Verlaine shot Rimbaud. Carr provided an ironic twist to this tragic history of literary obsession, by killing his pursuer. 

European culture, particularly French culture as represented by Cocteau, filtered through Rimbaud, Gide, the surrealists and others would prove irresistible to the early Beats. Ryko and Tourian study Peter (?) Blume’s analyses of the decline and fall of the West as well. The reference suggests to the reader Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, a key philosophical text of Tourian / Carr’s New Vision. Given the existential and surrealist underpinnings of the early Beats, the murder of Al / Kammerer can be viewed as less of an honor killing and more of a violent act gratuite. Ur-surrealist Vache’s fantasy of shooting into a crowd would be the precedent. Tourian’s murder of Al can also be viewed as an assisted suicide/sacrifice of a tortured soul.

Ryko and Tourian finish their tour of the Museum by viewing Tchelitchew’s Cache-Cache (Hide and Seek). At that moment, Kerouac writes, “There was a tall blond fag, wearing a striped polo shirt and tan slacks, who kept looking at Phil out of the corner of his eye. Even when we went downstairs to see the one-hour movie, the fag was sitting behind us.” Obviously the fag plays hide and seek with Ryko and Tourian as he tails and shadows the pair. But the blond man also symbolizes the ghost of homosexual obsession that haunts and follows Ryko and Tourian threatening to queer the honor killing defense. Clearly, this doppelganger is on one level Al / Kammerer, but I would suggest that it is more appropriate to view the blond fag as the specter of Ginsberg that hangs at the edges of the entire text and demands to be acknowledged. Ginsberg’s membership in Carr circle and his sexual relationship with Carr and Kammerer endangered Carr’s defense and threatened his life. Kerouac performs a game of hide and seek with Ginsberg by suggesting his presence all the while excluding him as a character in Hippos.

The women in the story were meant to serve as key witnesses for the defense. These heterosexual relationships protect the early Beats against the charge of homosexuality. In the actual Carr investigation, Celine Young testified that Carr was straight and offered their sexual relationship as proof. Yet in Hippos, the female characters are aware of their outsider status in the boys’ club and realize they are in some ways being used as beards. Barbara and Janie repeatedly accuse Ryko and Tourian of being fags throughout the novel. Given Carr’s intended defense, being accused of homosexuality was a matter of life and death.

Homosexuality and homosexual obsession in Hippos are centered on the character of Kammerer and deflected from the other characters. This is most striking in the depiction of Dennison. Dennison is portrayed as straight. He has a wife and has sexual relationships with women in New York. In a scene that shocked me, Dennison feels up a woman’s thigh in an apartment. In order for the honor-slaying defense to be believed, the bisexuality of the New Vision circle had to be suppressed. Yet Burroughs’ true feelings on the subject of women slip out. Dennison’s wife is strategically placed in Colorado. She is a shadowy figure at best. One wonders if she exists or is a cover story. In a statement similar to Burroughs at his most misogynistic in The Job, Dennison punningly states, “Al’s right, my boy… Women, Philip, are the route of all evil.” This line reminded me powerfully of Naked Lunch. It is an act of ventriloquism. Dennison distances himself from homosexuality by speaking through Al. In addition, Dennison speaks Al’s words in a “Lionel Barrymore tone of voice.” Barrymore was famous for his booming voice as well as being a womanizer and ladies’ man. More ventriloquism; more deferral.  

Just before Dennison echoes Al’s thoughts on women, Burroughs as Dennison writes, “Yeah, I said to myself, why can’t we do away with women altogether.” The emphasis is Burroughs’, and it is the key question of the entire novel. The answer is simple: to do so would mean to admit to and make obvious the presence of homosexual obsession within the entire group including Carr. This could result in persecution by society leading ultimately to the death penalty for Carr. Interestingly, Burroughs poses this question in silence to himself. In an age of extreme discrimination against homosexuals, silence was a key defense against prosecution. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Silence coupled with invisibility. As a result, the key witness and chronicler of homosexual obsession in the group, Ginsberg, is gagged and hidden safely away in the margins and afterwords of the text. Not just Carr’s but all the early Beats’ survival depended on it.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

You know you have run out of ideas when you write a column about what you received in the mail. But I will scrape the bottom of the inspiration bucket in order to tell you about a few items that came over my transom by snail mail. This printed matter highlights the fact that the small network of bookstores, little magazines, and small presses that sustained Burroughs throughout his literary life is still going strong today despite all the reports of its demise in the digital age.

A few weeks ago I received an email from Jon Beacham attaching images of his latest publication. As you may remember, Beacham runs Hermitage Books in Beacon, NY. I raved about his store, and this email only reinforced my enthusiasm. Take a look at these images of Beacham’s latest work: Process Number Two printed in an edition of 20 copies of which only 14 are for sale ($200). Process Number One was produced in an edition of just eight copies, and he was able to sell them all. I hear that MOMA purchased one for their collection. That is a big deal. As MOMA’s interest shows, the book arts are exploding right now. Book dealers are specializing in this area with work of days gone by as well as the latest experiments in the field. Museums and galleries are featuring exhibits and exhibitions in increasing numbers. This rise in interest touches on the Beat Generation. Currently at Columbia College in Chicago, there is an exhibit that focuses on that relationship between artists’ books and experimental literature that takes the On the Road manuscript as its point of departure. This exhibit includes an article I wrote for Beat Scene, “On the Road Scroll as Art.” Please contact Kevin Ring to purchase a copy if you are interested. In addition, Issue 24 of The Journal of Artists’ Books (also known as JAB), edited by Craig Dworkin and Kyle Schlesinger, will examine experimental literature and Artists’ Books. Kyle Schlesinger is the co-editor of Mimeo Mimeo. By the way, the second issue of Mimeo Mimeo with an essay on TISH and its imprints, an article on the early literary magazines of Robert Duncan, an interview with fine press publisher Alan Loney, and an essay by book artist Emily McVarish on her Flicker project, is at the printers. Copies should be available soon.

One of the key concerns of the Bibliographic Bunker is establishing the fact that Burroughs was intensely concerned with the concept of the book. Works like Time, APO-33, Ah Puch (with Malcolm Mc Neill), The Dead Star, and My Own Mag challenged the restrictions of books and magazines as a technology. Even the Olympia Press Naked Lunch, although traditional in format, turned topsy-turvy the idea of how manuscripts are constructed, edited, and put to press. Likewise, Beacham explores the concept of the book with great interest, creativity, and intelligence. Talking briefly with Beacham and scanning his bookshelf of core texts, I know that Wallace Berman is a major source of inspiration. Beacham’s latest printing effort brought Semina to mind. In an email, Beacham writes, “The journal consists of 7 items laid into a manila printed folder. The work is poems, printed works, and one original collage for each copy. All items are on individual sheets.” Any time I see a folder / pamphlet format with individually printed pieces I cannot help but think of the full run of Semina that I saw at the Grey Gallery in New York City. The way Beacham presents Process Number Two at the Hermitage provides a direct parallel, though Beacham (unlike Berman) did not solicit work from fellow writers — he is the sole author and artist. I am particularly excited by the collage work. There is an element here of Burroughs’ scrapbook work, especially in “down low with sentiment like snow.” Burroughs utilized a typewriter instead of a letterpress. Given the success of Beacham’s first project, I would suspect that 14 copies will not last long and that in purchasing one you will be following the lead of the collecting vanguard in the realm of the book arts.

Shortly after receiving Beacham’s email, imagine my surprise when I opened a manila envelope (sent via the good old-fashioned post office) and saw a series of Berman’s hand-held transistor radios staring back at me. A closer look revealed that the radios were really iPods, and the cover was digitally generated not Verifax. This twist of Berman’s iconic image served as the cover for the fourth issue of Richard Owens’ little mag Damn the Caesars. The cover announces the presence of an editor with humor and intelligence.

The contents of the magazine do not disappoint. Damn the Caesars 4 places center stage 50+ pages (pp 75-126) of Kyle Schlesinger’s “The Family.” Michael Cross’ introduction to this literary experiment reminded me of Burroughs’ introduction / instructions to his cut-ups of the 1960s. “Grid #1″ and “Grid #2″ in Insect Trust Gazette 1 jump to mind. To me, the process of “The Family”‘s construction is a major part of the poem’s pleasure. Just as Burroughs cut up Time in order to examine and exorcise the power of its text and images, Schlesinger cuts up Sidney Lumet’s Serpico in order to explore the concept of the family. Schlesinger deftly repeats and juxtaposes key phrases to unlock hidden meanings. I could not help but think of Brion Gysin’s permutation poems that appeared with Burroughs’ poetic work in Minutes to Go and The Exterminator.

The introduction to “The Family” comments on the influence of the work of Louis Zukofsky. Talking with Schlesinger I know that he is intensely interested in the shorter work of Zukofsky, and “The Family” demonstrates the fact that Schlesinger has read Zukofsky’s work to great benefit. To my mind, the poems in “The Family” participate in a conversation with Zukofsky’s “A”-11. Many critics consider “A-11″ to be one of Zukofsky’s finest achievements. This lyric rondo purports to address Zukofsky’s wife and son after his death. Just as “The Family” incorporates Serpico, “A”-11 reinvents a work by Cavalcanti. Both Schlesinger and Zukofsky translate original works for their own purposes. Schlesinger reads Zukofsky as well in that the poems of “The Family” echo the music of the rondo used in “A”-11. The typical Baroque rondo pattern is ABACADA. The poems in “The Family” open in a similar pattern that weaves throughout. I must admit that I approached “The Family” for the first time with some skepticism but the work bears re-reading. New juxtapositions and associations keep coming to light. I would love to hear this work performed at a reading.

One of the things that surprised me about “The Family” is how different the poems are from the work in Hello Helicopter (BlazeVOX Books 2007), which led to my hesitation in approaching Schlesinger’s work in Damn the Caesars. “The Family” explores the compacted form of Zukofsky. Hello Helicopter delves deeply into the open forms of poets like Ted Berrigan (“Tussle”), George Oppen (“Mantle with Thom Donovan”), or, again, the versatile Zukofsky. Schlesinger has strong feelings on the topic of the materiality of the poem. Typography, the margins, the layout on the page, spacing between words, the method of printing. The poem as an object. Check out his essay on The Typography of Robert Creeley. It is how I first learned of Schlesinger’s work, and it is a great window into his obsessions. Schlesinger studied with Creeley at the University of Buffalo. If Schlesinger is concerned with feel of the poem, he does not neglect the sound. As “The Family” shows, Schlesinger pays close attention rhythm and repetition. Hello Helicopter also demonstrates an ear fine-tuned to sound and a concern with how words can juxtapose and play with and off each other.

Along with the copy of Damn the Caesars, I received Richard Owens’ new book of poetry, Delaware Memoranda (BlazeVOX Books 2008). Schlesinger’s “The Family” explores a cinematic genealogy of quotation while Delaware Memoranda explores the relationship between history and memory by working the open fields of Pound, Williams, and, most interesting for me, Charles Olson who quoting John Smith wrote “my memory is / the history of time.” On one level, the poem attempts to capture the underlying history of the Delaware River and its environs. I am somewhat familiar with this area since I drove through the Poconos numerous times to get to college in Boston. The Tom Quick Inn, which is featured in Delaware Memoranda, was a major landmark of the trip designating the point of no return in the journey. Take a right turn towards Port Jervis onward to Route 84 up to Massachusetts, and I was truly leaving my home state of Pennsylvania. On the way back from college, a dinner at the Tom Quick Inn was a homecoming of sorts. Owens’ poem made me see this area in a whole new light. There are shades of Williams’ Paterson or Olson’s Gloucester. Pound’s concept of a poem containing history is everywhere in evidence.

Delaware Memoranda also spoke to me on a personal level since I had ties to the area since childhood. Milford and the Tom Quick Inn were also a rest stop on the journey to my father’s house and office in Connecticut. Section VI of Delaware Memoranda, which incorporates letters from Owens’ father, resonated strongly with me. After closing the book, I realized that I do not have a single letter from my father. It was a sobering revelation.

This section of the book deals with biological and literary fathers. In “Dear Ric,” Owens announces the presence of Olson by referring to The Maximus Poems, particularly Letter 41. Olson utilized the form of the letter to great effect in his creative life as evidenced in his magnum opus and in his voluminous correspondence. More importantly, I was also reminded of Olson’s memoir “The Post Office.” There, Olson attempted to capture his memories of his father, a postal carrier. The story Olson tells of the wronging of his father by the postal bureaucracy, which parallels the letters Owens includes from his father working at Reynolds Metal Company. The complex interweaving of pride and disappointment in one’s father was powerful for me. This section also includes a typewritten note card outlining the conceptions of reality of Owens’ other literary fathers: Whitman, Pound, and Williams. The poem ends with echoes of Olson’s famous line from “Maximus, to Himself”: “I have had to learn the simplest things / last.” Weaved throughout section VI (and the entire book) is the trope of the fishing story. As Owens notes at the end of section II quoting a letter from I.H. Finlay to J.F. Henry: “I see it is now possible to make any kind of story a fishing story.” Some quick associations on that idea: the traditional bonding of father and son, casting back one’s memory or lines of poetry, and literary antecedents like Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America, MacLean’s A River Runs Through It, Old Man and the Sea, and, of course, Moby Dick (with a nod to Olson’s Call Me Ishmael and the swordfishermen of Gloucester). As I sat with the closed book on my lap, another line from “Maximus, to Himself” came to mind: “I stood estranged from that which was most familiar.” It was and is a haunting thought.

I found this section of Delaware Memoranda masterfully constructed. Again the image of Olson, particularly his work table in the kitchen of 128 Fort Square piled high with notes, maps, and books, came to mind. Owens seems to work in the same way. The poet as a builder, as maker using the materials at hand (his son, Charles, still lives in Gloucester and makes a living as a builder). The Kingfisher. I see Burroughs of the cut-up period in exactly this manner. A typewriter and scissors lying on a desk covered with letters, manuscripts, popular magazines, photographs, and other ephemera. The raw matter of Burroughs’ creative inspiration awaiting use.

Previously I wrote about the post office’s role in censorship. Hopefully this column will show the other side of the story. The mailbox and the electronic inbox are a source of incredible inspiration. I never know what is going to come through the mail, be it an insightful comment, a request for information, or an interesting little mag. Likewise, communication and correspondence were the keys to Burroughs’ creativity. Throughout the 1950s, the mailman served both as Burroughs’ connection and his distributor obtaining and dispersing the junk mail he needed to construct his books of the period. Later on, the letters from Allen Ginsberg were replaced with letters from Carl Weissner or Brion Gysin. By this time, letters were no longer for sending routines; they were fodder to be run through the cut-up machine. By the 1990s, there existed Burroughs Communications stationery. As Oliver Harris has shown, in many respects, the history of Burroughs as an author lies in his relationship with his mail.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

In the 15 years since I began collecting William Burroughs seriously, I have read a ton of books on Burroughs, post-WWII literature, the book, book collecting, and related topics. I find that five books stand apart in that they completely revolutionized my thinking about my obsessions and that I return to them repeatedly. At the top of the list are Clay and Philips’ A Secret Location on the Lower East Side and Oliver Harris’ William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination. These books are a bottomless well of information and delight. Close on their heels are Reva Wolf’s Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s; Clay and Jerome Rothenberg’s The Book of the Book; and Daniel Kane’s All Poets Welcome. There are two books on this list published by Granary Books, and I could mention the essays of Johanna Drucker in Figuring the Word if only for her essay on offset printing. In time, I will probably get a hold of most of the Granary Books catalog. Is there anybody else documenting the theory and history of the book and print in such a fascinating way?

A new release by any of these authors or publishers is a major event in my little world. So when I received an email from Daniel Kane several months ago suggesting that I might be interested in his new book on New York-based poetry of the 1960s and 1970s entitled Don’t Ever Get Famous, I put money away in anticipation. In the past month, I purchased the book and read it with great pleasure. Like All Poets Welcome, Kane’s latest effort will be dipped into repeatedly for years to come.

My top five list could also mention Silliman’s Blog as a crucial reading and learning experience as well. The task of tackling that blog entry by entry (it began in 2002) was a marathon test but always enjoyable and a definite education. Reading the blog prepared me to some extent for Don’t Ever Get Famous. The book is about New York writing but do not come to the volume expecting the usual suspects. John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Jimmy Schyuler, and Frank O’Hara make brief appearances. For those expecting a treatment of the Tulsa wing of the school, there are essays on C Journal and Ron Padgett, but Kane and his contributors dig much deeper and explore the later generations of the New York School and those on the periphery of that School. Kane’s book is about complicating established definitions and canons. The book espouses a spirit of openness, a move towards expansion and inclusion. The book examines race, gender, sexual orientation, little magazines, and neglectrinos (to use a term from Silliman’s Blog describing those unfairly out of print or otherwise missing from the major anthologies).

The opening essay on Leroi Jones / Amiri Baraka is a case study in the strategies of the entire collection. Baraka is not often labeled as a New York School poet, but from 1957-1965, he was a pivotal figure in the New York scene particularly in the avant-garde circle around the Village. In “‘Against the Speech of Friends’: Amari Baraka Sings the ‘White Friend Blues,’” Andrew Epstein argues that Baraka’s tenure as one of the centers of New American Poetry was possibly his most fruitful and poetically successful period and not one to be explained away as a youthful mistake or a necessary stage to a greater awareness. I have always felt an affinity for Baraka’s work of this time as editor, poet, playwright, novelist, and essayist. It was a remarkable outpouring of creative energy. Epstein demonstrates that Baraka benefitted both personally and creatively from the white avant-garde world of the Village. Baraka always had a conflicted, anxiety ridden relationship to this world but this uncertainty about his position fuels what I feel is his greatest writing. When Baraka left this scene for Harlem and later Newark, he abandoned a whirl of activity that energized his writing. The embrace of Black Nationalism and Marxism stymied his theorical range and limited his creative vision. Epstein writes:

Since the 1960s, [Baraka's] reputation as a very public, radical political figure, as a fiercely ideological writer, has often obscured the experimental poet who loathed conformity, doctrinaire positions, and all forms of definitive closure, who embraced uncertainty and flux, and who declared “a position/for myself to move.”

As Epstein shows to reach his “home” creatively and ideologically, “Baraka had abandon much, had to turn away once and for all from that which had moved him.” For me, the price was too high. I prefer the experimental poet of the 1950s and early 1960s who wrestled with Olson (Projective Verse), O’Hara (Personism), Kerouac (spontaneous prose), as well as issues of sexuality and censorship. Of course, the issue of race was always present, but Baraka’s unstable and conflicted position within the New American scene generated a complex and constantly questioning and evolving stance on that central issue. Epstein’s reading of Baraka’s play The Toilet is wonderful stuff that gets to the heart of Baraka’s conflicted relationship with the white New American Poetics, particularly his much speculated upon interaction both personally and poetically with Frank O’Hara.

Jon Panish’s “‘As Radical as Society Demands the Truth to Be’: Umbra‘s Radical Politics and Poetics” approaches Umbra in a similar manner as Epstein’s essay on Baraka. Panish opens up and complicates the view of Umbra by stressing the magazine’s experimental and avant-garde nature and how that stance intermeshed with black awareness. Panish writes, “Though race is obviously central to Umbra’s mission…Umbra’s approach to race is plural and flexible in ways that the development of mid-1960s nationalism did not allow.” This is reflected in the inclusion of white counterculture writers and interestingly in a wide range of black writers who approached race from a variety of viewpoints and not a single ideological position.

Panish’s essay is detailed and clear. It opens up a section in Kane’s book on the little magazine. Essays on C: Journal, Angel Hair and 0-9 follow. I will treat Harry Thorne’s essay on C in more detail later, but Daniel Kane’s essay on Angel Hair and Linda Russo’s piece on 0-9 were revelations. Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh have documented the history of Angel Hair in essays and introductions over the years, but Kane’s reading greatly added to my knowledge of Angel Hair and the Second Generation New York School in general. Kane highlights the multi-faceted element of sociability: resistance to the academy and established poetic communities, the building of a new creative community with a decentralization of power, the collaborative nature of the creative act and the assault on authorial control, and the establishment of new traditions and canons. Granary Book’s Angel Hair Anthology is now a must. I knew little about 0-9, but Russo’s essay demands that I pick up the collection that is currently available documenting its history. In addition Bernadette Mayer and Hannah Weiner have been added to the future reading list if Silliman’s Blog didn’t put them there already. A recent conversation with Jan Herman and Carl Weissner on German performance art as well as reading about Happenings in a book on LA Pop dovetailed nicely with the conceptional nature of Mayer and Weiner’s work. I have shied away from conceptional and performative aspects of post-WWII poetry. It can be ignored no longer.

Kane warned me that Don’t Ever Get Famous was a more academic effort than the social history of All Poets Welcome. This is without a doubt true, but I only felt out of my depth twice. I found Lytle Shaw’s essay on Clark Coolidge and Bernadette Mayer and Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ piece on Anne Waldman tough going. I definitely left those essays feeling that I would have to return to them again after I had read more deeply in the relevant work and had a more solid theorical foundation. I have mentioned Mayer earlier but Coolidge and Waldman also demand a closer look. Both writers seem to turn up on a daily basis in email conversations and internet surfing on experimental poetry.

The opening of a new world of poets and poetry could be the greatest aspect of Kane’s book. Essays on Charles North, Lee Harwood, Joe Ceravolo, Lewis Warsh, John Wieners, and Ron Padgett sparked into a full blaze my smoldering interest in their work. I am particularly eager to explore Wieners’ work after reading bits and pieces in anthologies and in Floating Bear. As I said before, Don’t Ever Get Famous deserves numerous re-readings after I get more familiar with the work in question. As a true beginner in these aspects of New York writing, I got plenty out of these essays but I was left with the sense that I was only scratching the surface. I was more familiar with Baraka’s work, and I found that essay particularly rewarding and insightful.

I was also somewhat more in my element with the essay on C Journal. I found this essay to be the weakest of the collection. It was also the most anticipated which may have to be factored into my reaction to the piece. Entitled “‘The New York School is a Joke:’ The Disruptive Poetics of C: A Journal of Poetry,” Harry Thorne’s essay continues the spirit of inclusiveness and openness. One of Thorne’s major arguments is that C is more than a New York School magazine or a careerist move on the part of Berrigan. I am not so sure. I tend to agree more with Libbie Rifkin’s thoughts expressed in various essays and in Career Moves that argues the opposite. Thorne acknowledges that C was started as a magazine of coterie promoting the Tulsa wing of the New York School. The first issue featured their sonnets, particularly Berrigan’s. It could be argued that Berrigan’s interest in C Press and C Journal was entirely fueled by his desire to establish himself as a poet, publish his work, and establish himself in the New York School and larger avant-garde canon. This seems obvious to me. It is the reason little magazines and small presses have been established throughout their entire history. Why shy away from that fact? It is one of their great strengths and pleasures. Thorne admits that Berrigan drifted away from C by the 10th issue. It is no coincidence that this was close on the heels of the success of the self-published The Sonnets. The activity of C Press greatly diminished after the Grove Press publication of The Sonnets in 1967. Clearly, the press and the magazine had served its purpose. The first three issues support a rather closed New York School reading.

The Edwin Denby issue (Number 4) is really the lynchpin of Thorne’s argument that C is not merely a New York School magazine and that Berrigan possessed a “deliberately disorganized editorial stance.” While this issue may expand the boundaries of the New York School, it is one of the most inside and exclusive of the entire run. A reader has to be intimately involved with the personal and creative history of the New York School to fully understand the contents. I get the sense that readers and contributors had to flash their credentials as New York School scenesters in order to be admitted past a velvet rope of surface understanding. Berrigan might be complicating the definition of the New York School, but his frame of reference and audience is within that small circle all the way. Reva Wolf reads this issue of C in great detail in her book and demonstrates how Warhol used C as an opportunity to rub shoulders with (or rub the wrong way) the New York School, particularly O’Hara. Berrigan’s editing of this issue seems hardly “deliberately disorganized” to me, but instead meticulously planned. Berrigan appears to be far from disorganized as the cover and the placement and selection of Berrigan’s poem is highly stylized and loaded with meaning. The motive behind these editorial choices seems far from mere desire to complicate or include others. Berrigan’s desire to complicate the established avant-garde scene seems closely tied to his own poetic ambitions rather than any personally disinterested desire to shake things up. How much is the inclusion of Warhol a hedging of bets on the hot new star (Pop Art) in New York against the old regime of O’Hara who championed Abstract Expressionism, particularly its second generation. The main intention may be the inclusion and expansion of Berrigan himself rather than the challenging of established boundaries.

Again I see nothing scandalous or horrible about this. It is what little magazines and small presses are all about. I am conflicted about one aspect of Don’t Ever Get Famous as it relates to little magazines. Kane’s book stresses multiplicity, inclusion, complexity, openness as forces of creative power, particularly in magazines like Angel Hair, Umbra, and C. Yet are these really the strengths of a great little magazine? Some of my personal favorites are Black Mountain Review, Fuck You Magazine, My Own Mag, and C Journal. Is not what makes these magazines great their focus, their cohesive content, their strong editorial personality, their exclusivity? Call me old fashioned but I firmly believe in the Ezra Pound / William Carlos Williams / Robert Creeley theory of a little magazine. A steady core of writers joined together by their common creative beliefs. The editors and contributors usually react in concert against an established tradition. The editorial stance is not about inclusion but about confrontation. Great little magazines publish a consistent stable of writers and have a definitive editorial voice. Of course the direction and focus can change over time.

Thorne (as does Kane’s book with other little magazines) argues that the exact opposite is the strength of C Journal. Thorne suggests that Issue 10 is one of the strongest of the series. The narrow focus of the early issues of C is under debate but the later issues drift away from the magazine’s early exclusive nature. Issue 10 is larger in size, broader in content, lacks a strong editorial hand, and prefers inclusion rather than discrimination. Is this a good thing and a source of power? Or the sign of a magazine in decline with an editor who has drifted away to other interests and pursuits?

Take the later issues of C as physical objects. They fall apart. The bindings do not hold together due to the increased size. They burst at the seams. The magazine is bulky, even more cumbersome than the early issue due to the increased thickness. This is symbolic of the problem with the later issues as a whole. There is less direction; more of a kitchen sink mentality. The stress is on quantity. Bigger is better. I would suggest that the editors (Berrigan and later Padgett) realized this change as a joke, possibly a critical joke designed to pop the uptight definition of establish schools as Thorne suggests. I believe Thorne missed a major opportunity to bring this point home. Thorne accepts the common assumption that there are thirteen issues of C. As an “intrepid reader” who has tried “to track down every issue,” I know this is not really the case. Issue 11 announces the content for issue 12. Try finding it. I have never seen it. I do not think it exists. Instead as Ron Padgett told me in response to my inquiry about this issue, C Comics #1 was issued instead. Berrigan viewed C Comics as Issue 12. Issue 13 came out and then C Comics #2. As a result, C runs for anywhere from 12 to 14 issues. C Comics could be an editorial comment in line with Thorne’s argument of Berrigan’s lack of seriousness in respecting the laws of the New York School. I would argue that this confusion surrounding the later issues reflects the lack of direction and focus of the magazine and lead to its discontinuance. The magazine is rudderless and meaningless as a literary statement and largely irrelevant to Berrigan’s interests at the time. Truly C becomes a joke. C Comics is the editors’ comment on and admission of that fact. As Thorne states, this could have been Berrigan’s intention all along, but is this lack of focus, editorial direction, and exclusivity a positive? Given the fate of C, I wonder. I find every issue of C to have its charms, but as a little magazine the early issues, including Issue 4, are the most powerful statements. I prefer my little magazines little, capable of being consumed in a single sitting and in the Williams / Pound tradition. Many of the magazines I see at bookstores go, like the later issues of C, in another direction. These 300+ page behemoths may have size, but they lack the roar and editorial voice of a true monster that is terrifying to the establishment and awe-inspiring to the reader.

Finishing Don’t Ever Get Famous, I have a lot to chew over. On one level I felt strongly that the desire to include, to complicate and to diversify expressed in these essays is a necessary corrective to the commonly held views of New York writing. Yet another side of me believes that the exact opposite desires are necessary for a strong creative community, like a little magazine, and are a source of great power to draw from. Maybe the multiplicity of New York writing of the 1960s and 1970s contributes to its neglected and misunderstood nature. This is all complicated by my views as a collector where I value focus and discrimination as highly as I value that golden rule of collecting: Condition, Condition, Condition. As I said I will be returning to this book again and I am sure my views of the book will change just as my approach to my book collection has altered over 15 years. A strong sense of focus does not necessarily mean close-mindedness and an unwillingness to change. The key is to not stare too long in one direction. Keeping your focus sharp requires refocusing. Kane’s book has initiated that process. It is an important book.