Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

To be blunt, the New York Antiquarian Book Fair is the shit. Prior to the fair, I went to the Morgan Library to see their Gutenberg Bible and soak in the atmosphere of J.P. Morgan’s study. The display at the New York show was even more impressive to me, Gutenberg Bible aside. To be honest, I would not be surprised to see the most important human achievement of the second millennium sitting under glass at some rare book dealer’s booth at 66th and Park. This show is that big on the rare book scene. As one dealer told me when I expressed surprise on seeing him, he would not miss this event for the world. He referenced bankrobber Willie Sutton: New York is where the money is.

The Morgan did have one Beat jewel on display amongst the gem-encrusted bindings and the illuminated manuscripts. On the second floor of the Library there was an August 22, 1959 letter from Allen Ginsberg to John Ciardi defending Jack Kerouac against Ciardi’s attack on Maggie Cassidy. There was also a September 3, 1959 postcard follow-up to Ciardi’s reply. Ciardi, the editor for The Saturday Review, wrote a review of Maggie Cassidy in July 1959 entitled “In Loving Memory of Myself.” Critical attacks on Kerouac of this nature were common in the mainstream press. Ciardi follow that up with a larger swipe at the Beats titled “Epitaph for the Dead Beats.” Ciardi is an interesting figure in Beat and Burroughs history. More on him at a later date. The Ginsberg letter includes three paragraphs on William Burroughs. This makes sense since Naked Lunch was published just one month earlier in late July and critics were finally able to assess Naked Lunch as a whole. Ginsberg writes of the relationship between Burroughs and Kerouac as writers, “Burroughs working along similar lines different personal angle shorthand transcription of visual image archetypes encountered in total spiritual exploration.” Ginsberg continues, “Indivious comparisons between Burroughs and Keroauc is the sort of speculation which Jealousy will substitute for happy appreciations. They are old friends and fellow workers and learn from each other.” Ginsberg also quotes the line about Burroughs not imposing plot or story: “I am a recording instrument.” The letter concludes with a handwritten line: “New art should not arouse hostility among the learned, but does and alas always has.” it is a fitting epitaph for the Beats and the lively Beat spirit. All in all it is a remarkable document and an example of the type of treasures on hand at the Morgan.

The New York Book Fair had similar jaw-droppers. The one item that caught my eye was a poster announcing the March 9, 1959 reading with Frank O’Hara and Gregory Corso at the Living Theatre. This reading is legendary and shows the sometimes contentious relationship between the Beats and the New York School. David Lehman provides details of this reading in The Last Avant Garde. At the reading, Keroauc famously yelled to O’Hara, “You’re ruining poetry.” O’Hara quickly returned with “That’s more than you’ll ever do.” The poster documents this important moment in literary history in a material and ephemeral way. Such objects never fail to catch my attention.

Yet I was distracted to say the least. I am sure there were several other great items at the fair but the 2008 New York show was all about one thing and that was the Burroughs Archive of photographs and ur-collages on sale from Brian Cassidy and Ken Lopez. Sure there were other Burroughs items, but they were like the opening band than everybody in the audience struggles to sit through before the headliner. In a show crowded with incredible items, this collection held its own and cast a spell over an audience of jaded spectators who have seen it all. One hour before I got to Ken Lopez’s booth, the collection sold to a gallery owner who plans to exhibit them, but I did get to see the items briefly. Seeing them in person I could understand why the Berg would pass on the items. They were not visually spectacular in the way the scrapbooks from the 1960s are. Those items appeal as art objects and examples of avant experimentalism like mail or Fluxus art. The material in Lopez’s possession was small, unassuming, easy to overlook given that libraries, particularly the Berg, are awash in snapshots of and by Beat figures. That said, this collection exuded an aura. I see these items like I would a fragment of text on a scrap of papyrus from Mesopatamia. Or a glyph on a weathered stone. A portal into beginnings. Could these photographs function like a Rosetta Stone allowing interested parties to get uncoded the genesis of Naked Lunch? Scholar as archeologist. I was reminded of Charles Olson describing himself as an archeologist of morning. From what I could see they have the potential be incredibly useful in just such a project as it relates to Burroughs. The images reveal Burroughs in the process of contructing a composite city, a proto-version of Interzone. These pieces are primitive collage, cut-ups, mosaics, cut and paste from a very early date. Pre-Gysin. Nailing down the date of their creation is crucial. The potential implications are far-reaching. These images tie back to the Yage visions and the Composite City section that so fascinate scholars like Oliver Harris and provide a key to his recent scholarship with Yage Letters and the Latin American notebooks. Thankfully they sold as a collection. Once the Berg passed on the collection there were discussions of selling the collection piecemeal.

Ken Lopez and Brian Cassidy are no strangers to the Bibliographic Bunker. (See Burroughs Literary Archive and Brian Cassidy Bookseller and a Rare Burroughs Letter) So as soon as I heard about the collection I fired off some questions for Brian Cassidy to consider. Instead of writing on all the side acts at the fair (though bookseller Peter Stern’s copy for $6000 had one of the finest, brightest dust jackets that I have seen in a while, how many Olympia Press Naked Lunches can you see?), I present Brian Cassidy’s thoughts about the headline act along with a link to the collection.

The first thing I thought of when I saw this archive was where it came from. Who is Richard Lorenz and how did he get these items?

Lorenz was a noted photographer as well as a photo collector and scholar; he authored several books on the medium including one on Imogen Cunningham. He purchased the WSB items from a New York photography dealer named Sol Lowinsky, who we gather purchased them directly from WSB. They came to Ken Lopez and me through a photography dealer representing the Lorenz estate.

Given that so much of Burroughs’ archives are already in institutions, how rare is it that Burroughs material of this magnitude is still in private hands?

Material like this is certainly scarce. How much remains in private hands, however, can be tough to gauge. For example, Burroughs sold this material probably in the late 1980s to early 1990s. How often he partook of similar “extra-archival” sales to dealers and collectors is unclear. He was certainly not a rich man and it wouldn’t surprise me if he occasionally (if not regularly) raised money by divesting himself of stray pieces of his archive. Also unclear is what remains in the hands of friends, editors (particularly, to my mind, of small magazines), and other acquaintances who had contact with Burroughs.

I think there’s an image of WSB as sort of remote and distant — both intellectually and physically (Kansas, Tangier) — but in fact he maintained an extensive correspondence, had numerous warm and close friendships, hosted many visitors (even in his later years in Lawrence) and was — esp. during his him time in NYC — very much “of the scene,” hanging out with Warhol, Lou Reed, various punk rockers, etc. It seems likely that many of these people over the years retained Burroughs material — whether it be letters, art, etc. — that will find its way to market someday. So one must be careful to differentiate between absolute rarity and market rarity. My guess is in absolute terms there’s probably substantial WSB material yet to worm its way into the public eye (indeed just this past year I’ve purchased a small typescript and a pair of early letters). But from the perspective of the market right now, good primary material from Burroughs remains uncommon.

That said, early and substantive examples such as this archive are exceptional.

What were your first impressions going through the material?

My first impression came via images emailed to me. I was certainly excited about the material and recognized its importance, but the full impact of the work wasn’t clear until I saw them in person for the first time. The collages in particular are smaller than the online catalog probably suggests. As such, they have a strange and awkward delicacy that is difficult to convey in reproduction. Coupled with the wonderful materiality of the aging scotch tape and the aggressive and disjointed nature of collage, the overall effect is quite powerful. They’re extraordinarily effective at conveying both a sense of place and time while simultaneously suggesting the mindset of Burroughs. There’s an immediacy and significance about them that goes beyond their being — perhaps to some eyes — a simple Beat relic.

Are these items mere curiosities or do you see scholarly value in them? Do they provide a port of entry into Burroughs as a writer or person?

Building off what I said in the previous answer, I think the material is of supreme importance to WSB. As I say in my description, the work most obviously echoes his collage experiments (I’m thinking in particular of the C Press Time) and his career-long cut-up work. That said, what I think is far more fascinating (and again, I’m not saying anything my cataloging doesn’t) is how Burroughs seems to be doing in these collages what he was doing in his writing of Naked Lunch and the other Interzone books: remaking in visual form the melding of time, place, and person he was attempting via verbal methods in those novels. In other words, we see the beginnings of the conflict that would occupy the remainder of Burroughs’ career: the tension between word and image.

I am particularly struck by the image of Burroughs in the distance on the beach in Tangier. Was there an image that stuck with you from the collection?

I’m partial to the collage that incorporates Ginsberg’s portrait of Peter Orlovsky from their trip to Yosemite in 1950s. What I like about this is how Burroughs took his friend’s (Ginsberg’s) picture of his (again, Ginsberg) lover in an American landscape and married it to his own image of Tangier. For me at least, I think this reveals a lot about Burroughs’ feelings toward the country and his time there.

I also really care for the images of Billy Burroughs. These would have been his father’s pictures of him from his own scrapbook. And given what happened not only to Billy, but also obviously his mother, I find them quite poignant and a little sad. Doubly so when you consider WSB then subsequently sold them. I think Billy was a part of his life he was never able to fully incorporate or resolve. And I may be reading too much into them, but I think you can see something of their relationship in the rather stern faces Billy reveals in these images.

What are the comparables with an archive of this nature? Do you value these with Burroughs’ scrapbooks in mind or with original photographs by literary figures like Ginsberg or the recently passed Jonathan Williams?

Hmmm. Well, there aren’t any good ones. The most obvious though would be later Burroughs artwork, which in my mind at least created a floor for how these might be priced. Ginsberg’s photos were a useful benchmark in thinking about the loose photos. But when it came to the collages, it was less about finding similar material and much more about understanding their context and importance. For unique items such as these, determining value can be much more art than science. Which is not to say it’s not entirely rational, just difficult to describe. To prove the (science) point: When Ken Lopez and I were considering the purchase, we both came up with prices — both for the archive as a whole as well as the individual pieces — independently of each other and our numbers were nearly identical.

But to further prove the point (i.e. art): the buyer of the archive was another dealer, who — unless he has an immediate buyer — obviously wouldn’t have purchased it if he didn’t think he could market the items at a higher price.

I know the collection was offered to a few institutions. What is the state of affairs of the institutional market?

I’m not sure that the financial situation for institutions is substantially different now than it was a year or two ago. You will hear older dealers lamenting the fact that library budgets are not what they were twenty or thirty years ago. And that does seem to be the case. You don’t see much of the vacuum approach anymore that places like the Ransom took during the Texas oil boom, for example. But I never experienced that first-hand; my timeline is much shorter and from where I stand, special collections are still a strong, necessary and important market. In other words, there are absolutely libraries actively buying. In the last sixth months, I’ve placed everything from a small Henry Miller archive to a collection of papers from a prominent 19th century historian with various large institutions. Of particular interest to Bunker readers: for more than two years I’ve been working with a major library that actually has an endowed fund dedicated exclusively to the acquisitions of the magazines from the mimeo revolution. It’s shaping up to be a great collection.

In your opinion, what is the future role of the individual collector? For example, I see that in a New Yorker article philanthropists have taken over some aspects of journalistic research for the struggling newspaper industry. Are we going to see an increase in private individuals filling the role of archivists with the goal being preservation and not financial speculation?

In the same way that Burroughs — as the avant-garde of his day — prefigured much of the work that was to come after him, private, individual collectors are very much the avant-garde (read: advance guard) of special collections. The best collectors will almost always be way ahead of most libraries simply because they are accountable to no one else and so have no one to whom they need justify their acquisitions.

As for “private individuals filling the role of archivists with the goal being preservation and not financial speculation,” I guess I reject the premise of the question as I don’t see a dichotomy between preservation and long-term financial value. Though the age-old advice to book collectors — “Collect what you love; don’t do it for the money” — still remains very sound, at the levels you’re talking about (important / rare / unique primary material), there’s little reason to believe the rare book market should behave much differently than the art market. And indeed, some recent sales (I’m thinking of the Kerouac On the Road scroll, the WSB archive sale to the Berg, Don Delillo’s recent seven-figure sale of his archive to Texas) suggest that the we may see appreciations in the rare book world similar to those seen over the last fifteen years in the world of art, where prices for the very best and rarest of materials completely out-paces the rest of the market.

But even outside of those dizzying financial realms, a good collection is always worth more than the sum of its parts — which is and will continue to be good news for the small collector. Or to put it another way: history suggests that the pendulum is constantly swinging between the power of the individual and the institutional collector. Due to a number of factors, at the moment, I suspect the pendulum is swinging in favor of the individual — both well-healed and thrifty.

What do you see as the future of literary archives? Will an institution or collector ever pay big money for an electronic file of archived email, drafts, or images? How will electronic files be collected — or will they be collected at all?

To be honest, I have trouble imagining an entirely electronic archive. I suspect that authors will continue to interact with the physical draft for some time. This will, however, increasingly and obviously be in conjunction with more and more electronic media (word processors, email, etc.), and this poses several problems. First is the ease of infinite duplication (thereby eliminating the exclusivity of the physical object) which can make determining monetary value more difficult. Second is the danger of corruption (i.e. unintended changes) to the electronic data — something that is not an issue with information in a physical archive. And finally and perhaps most importantly, electronic documents are in many ways even more ephemeral than paper ones. (Can you still open the documents on that floppy disk from your college years?) My guess is that writers, dealers, and libraries will begin to work more closely with each other and at earlier points in authors’ careers to address these issues and ensure that important information is preserved. At least, that’s my hope.

Is the rare book industry prepared to deal with digital collecting or archiving of this nature? For example, Ralph Ellison’s last novel was cobbled together from drafts on computer disks (as well as other sources). Is the rare book field prepared to assess and market this type of material?

No. Generally speaking, I don’t think the rare book world is ready for digital collecting or archiving. But I think this has much more to do with the fact that there haven’t been any real test cases rather than any kind of professional blindness or bias. Indeed, I don’t think most institutions or authors are ready for these changes either.

The problem with an example like Ellison is that it calls into question the very idea of primacy and authenticity upon which the rare book market is built. What is a real draft or a real letter in the age of email and .doc files? What is a “first edition” of an e-book? Now, these questions have been around at least since the development of photography, and have been far better addressed by the likes of Walter Benjamin, but I think you’re right to sense that these questions will be coming to a head in the near future. How it all will shake out, I’m just not sure.

Can you name an author who will be collected electronically?

Perhaps Mark Z. Danielewski, whose House of Leaves was originally published and distributed on the internet.

In the Bunker, I have been commenting on the return of the catalog to the bookseller’s arsenal of selling tools. The personal touch is back. Hopefully, many more booksellers, like Cassidy, will venture into publishing a catalog. Cassidy gets off on the right foot with his effort. Only 40 items are offered, but there are some exquisite selections. The design is simple, but the descriptions of the items and the black and white photographs make this a keeper. The bibliographic and literary details transform this catalog into more than your average affair listing prices and condition descriptions. In spots it is a literary history resource. The entries on John Cage, Ted Berrigan, and Frank O’Hara provide interesting bits of information on little-known works. The piece of ephemera commemorating an early poetry prize won by O’Hara in 1951 is a case in point. This detail escaped the eye of Brad Gooch in his biography of O’Hara, City Poet.

One of the main reasons I am focusing on Cassidy’s catalog is because its centerpiece is a Burroughs item: a one-page letter to Allen Ginsberg from 1969 discussing the E-Meter and Scientology along with a four page manuscript on the E-meter featured in Allen DeLoach’s Special Burroughs issue of Intrepid. As I have mentioned before Burroughs letters and manuscripts from the 1950s and 1960s just do not turn up every day (if at all) and letters to Ginsberg, one would think, are all in institutions, like NYPL, Ohio State, or Stanford. The letter originates from the DeLoach stash that has been trickling out on eBay and into bookseller and collectors’ hands for what seems like years now. The provenance is tip-top. The price is steep: $25,000.

We can debate whether this price is accurate, but clearly for the high-end collector a Burroughs letter and manuscript are at the top of the food chain. At the Blair Sale, manuscripts were selling for around $5000 (“The Goat God” piece for Oui and “The Mayan Caper” from Soft Machine). A manuscript to “The Invisible Generation” for the International Times sold for roughly $4500. The E-Meter manuscript is probably in the $3000-$4000 range. Burroughs’ Peru Notebook sold for over $17,000 at the Ginsberg Auction. I do not remember off the top of my head seeing a letter to Ginsberg ever come up for auction or sale in the last decade. In fact, letters from the 1950s and 1960s just are not available. I would guess that substantial letters, and this is one, are in the five figure range, near in price to the Peru Notebook. That would place the letter and the manuscript in the neighborhood of Cassidy’s list price.

What I like about this Burroughs entry and Cassidy’s catalog in general is how he lets each item’s bibliographic and historic details sell the item. The Burroughs entry is long and informative as befits the price tag. Cassidy’s description attempts to justify the price. The entry provides a brief history of Burroughs and Scientology as well as paragraphs touching on the significance of the Beats, the Ginsberg / Burroughs relationship, and the state of the Burroughs manuscript and letter market. For the Burroughs fan, item 15 is a must read. Cassidy knows his stuff. He is presenting a paper entitled, “Distribution Revolution: Methods of Circulation Among the Publications of the Mimeograph Revolution”, in Minneapolis at a conference this summer on the mimeograph revolution. I look forward to reading it.

Cassidy’s web site demonstrates another aspect of the personal touch that is returning to rare bookselling in the digital age. Just as Cassidy’s catalog is not just a list of books, his web site is not merely a searchable database. He realizes that web pages need a constant stream of content to keep the eyeballs coming back. There is an updated section of new arrivals as well as a blog that lets collectors get an inside look into the rare book business, read up on bibliographic topics, and learn a little bit about Cassidy in and out of the book trade. Here is Cassidy on the reaction to his catalog and a more detailed look at why he issued his catalog at this moment in time.

I think Cassidy will find that images are key. He will get even more hits and sales once he makes pictures of his treasures a centerpiece of his site. If I am any indicator, color images of rarities bring me back again and again to a bookseller’s web page. There is no reason a bookseller’s web page should not be in some respects an image repository. Between the Covers is widely acknowledged to have one of the best bookselling web pages. Tom Congalton is a top-notch bookman, but he is also a savvy Internet businessman. He and his team have created a well-designed look and logo, a bookselling philosophy, and name recognition through magazine articles and speeches. He has rapid turnover of content including a fun and games section that is in the process of expanding.

The blog is a nice touch and potentially a valuable resource for information. This element is in the fledgling stages; let’s hope it grows into something special. Cassidy has the bibliographical knowledge and resource to make it so. Cassidy has been selling books in earnest for only two years. More interesting to me is the fact that he is in his mid-30s. The aging of rare book dealers is an area of concern. Go to a bookfair and you will see bookdealers under 40 to be few and far between. From what I understand only a handful of such dealers are members of the various bookselling organizations. Membership in the ABAA for example symbolizes one’s dedication to and knowledge of the book trade as well as a presumption of permanence and stability. Along with Jeff Maser, the presence of two young, knowledgeable bookmen that sell items I am intensely interested in is a cause for celebration. The book trade needs new blood and according to Cassidy (and Cassidy is proof) it is out there. For example, Bob Moore works at Ken Lopez and he oversaw the William Burroughs archive project. This was a major piece of scholarship. Let’s hope members of this new generation start stores of their own.

There is a similar trend in rare book collectors. Walking through the NYC book fair, I saw very few collectors younger than myself and I am 35. For years, I have been one of the youngest collectors at these events. I am too old now for that to remain the case if the book trade hopes for a healthy future. Those at the forefront of the book trade understand that the rare book collecting is more than just acquiring a financial asset: it is about acquiring information through scholarship, building fulfilling relationships with the literary communities (including booksellers) of the past, present, and future, and constructing a monument that expresses the collector’s own personality and passions. I think Brian Cassidy gets it. Keep an eye out for his next catalog and check out his website. They have the potential to turn Brian Cassidy Bookseller’s webpage into something worth bookmarking.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Much has been made of the imperiled state of the print publishing industry. Just this weekend I read a review of a large format art book entitled The Last Magazine. Everywhere you look there is an article on the future of the ebook or the death of print. The mainstream publishers are on life support. The small press lacks adequate distribution systems. Meanwhile, fledgling writers cannot get their books into print, mid-list writers are getting squeezed out of the shelves, and the blockbuster authors hold the fate of the large publishers in their hands as they put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard). Countless literary blogs bemoan the closing of another independent bookshop. As an email from Robert Bank, subject headed “Disaster!,” informed me, there is another potential nail in the coffin.

The legendary John Calder is in danger of completely shutting up shop. In fact for years, he has curtailed his publishing activities, and his backlist and business operations are in a state of disorganization. Like so many mavericks — I am thinking of Maurice Girodias here, but there are several others — the sense of taste, the desire to upset the status quo, the daring in the face of censorship, the love of fine and experimental literature that make a great publisher do not translate into a financially successful businessman.

Rare is the publisher like John Martin of Black Sparrow who combines sound business acumen with exceptional literary sensibility. But even Martin could not run Black Sparrow forever and larger publishing entities (Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins) stepped in to take over the Bukowski, Bowles and Fante titles. This sale allowed Martin to structure a deal to keep the backlist of Black Sparrow available as well.

Has the Black Sparrow arrangement been valuable for all involved (publisher, writer and reader)? I do not know, but Calder, like Martin, has gathered together a stable of writers to which the reading public should demand access. Calder should be rewarded for the foresight and bravery of getting these writers into print. Like Barney Rosset at Grove and Girodias at Olympia Press, Calder opened British borders and Britons’ minds with publications that challenged the censors and the intellect. Some eighty percent of Samuel Beckett’s output is on the Calder list. Like the Bukowski line at Black Sparrow, it looks like a larger publisher, in this case Faber, will come in and make this work available. What about the other writers published by Calder? Could the proceeds of this sale allow Calder to continue his business or make arrangements like John Martin? Calder published and in some cases holds copyright to Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, Hubert Selby, Henry Miller, Eugene Ionesco, and Henrich Boll. Of additional interest to readers of RealityStudio, Calder brought William Burroughs to British shores, published Alexander Trocchi’s Cain’s Book, and holds the rights to various works of Jeff Nuttall.

In the Times article, Calder states, “I am a great believer in chance… Something might come up, to keep us going.” Hopefully so. Calder also states, “I don’t think there’s ever been such a philistine era.” Maybe so. Clearly, there is a crisis in print culture at every level. Print is in a time of remarkable flux and change, maybe as sweeping as that of its birth in the mid-1400s with Gutenberg. I do not know what is going to happen and given all that I have read in books, magazines, and the Web or have heard in conversation at bookstores, libraries, and lectures, I do not think anybody else does either. Clearly, the history of Calder as a publisher and the current precarious position of his titles and his store are a major part of the story at every level.

I would like to celebrate the legacy of Calder in the only way I know how by writing a little about my favorite Burroughs titles published by his company. In previous columns and on another page, I have written about Calder’s immense importance to Burroughs as well as the pleasures of the British firsts. So bear with me if I cover some of the same ground and at the same time fail to provide a more complete look at Calder’s relationship with Burroughs or the history of Calder as a publisher.

As a matter of personal taste, I much prefer the paperback firsts of Burroughs over the hardcovers. I return again and again to the Ace and Digit Junkies, the Two Cities Minutes to Go, Auerhahn’s The Exterminator. Give me the Olympia Press titles over the Grove counterparts. The Calder editions of Burroughs’ work are in some cases an exception to that rule. Calder’s hardcover of Soft Machine is not one of those efforts unfortunately. Quite possibly, this edition is my least favorite Burroughs hardcover. It is the most boring design-wise. But don’t judge a book by its cover, because as the discussion forum makes clear, Burroughs heavily revised Soft Machine from Olympia Press to Grove to Calder. As a result, the British edition is invaluable and a must-have.

Much more interesting on a visual level is the Calder Ticket That Exploded hardcover. This is a very pleasing title and the fact that my copy is inscribed by Burroughs to his British agent at the time makes it more so. Unlike Soft Machine, the British Ticket reprints the Grove edition without further edits. So what lies between the covers proves less interesting to those who possess the American edition. Even so, the cover art that hints in basic design to the Grove dust jacket makes the British first a desirable object.

Dead Fingers Talk published by Calder in boards in 1963 is one of my favorite books soft or hardcover. I find the dust jacket to be stunning. The front reproduces the Olympia Press covers in a montage by Ian Somerville. The manipulation of images by Somerville (reproduction and reduction of the jacket covers into a mosaic of a larger image) parallels the tape experiments of the Beat Hotel period and beyond. The photo of Burroughs on the back cover is haunting, the very representation of el Hombre Invisible. I love the disembodied hand across the cover that bring to my mind Burroughs’s Van Gogh act of the early 1940s when he cut off his finger in an act of desperation and passion.

To my understanding, Dead Fingers Talk is an assemblage of the Olympia Press titles under one cover. Calder issued the book after the international coming-out party of the Edinburgh Writers Conference of 1962 in order to capitalize on Burroughs’ celebrity and to prepare the way for Naked Lunch. Contrary to popular belief, the UGH correspondence in the Times Literary Supplement developed in response to the publication of Dead Fingers Talk, not Naked Lunch. To my great embarrassment, I have never read Dead Fingers Talk since even the 1970s reprint I have is not a true reading copy. Why has this largely unknown title by Burroughs fallen out of print for so long and to my knowledge never been made available in the United States? Hopefully, Calder or another entity will reissue it again in an affordable paperback in Britain and abroad. Secondhand, I have heard that Dead Fingers Talk differs from its original sources, but others have told me that it is a simple cut and paste job. I would like to experience it for myself.

Dead Fingers Talk bears the Calder and Olympia Press imprint. Throughout the fifties and sixties, Olympia Press introduced numerous authors of the Calder and Grove stables first. Olympia Press pornography encompassed some of the best outlaw writing on sex, drugs, and the emerging counterculture. Grove repeatedly reissued the Olympia Press list and Calder did too, most notably with Beckett and Burroughs. As I mentioned above, Girodias, Calder, and Rosset are the three amigos of independent publishing to me. Not only their publications overlap, their personal histories possess many similarities as well.

Every book collection has gaping holes: the empty spaces in the bookshelf waiting for the presently unobtainable, but desperately desired, book. A signed British first of Naked Lunch (1964) is one such title. It is possibly the most obvious gap in my collection. Like Dead Fingers Talk, the Calder (again in association with Olympia Press) Naked Lunch is a visually arresting title, due to the spectral visage of Burroughs on the front cover. The cut-out of Burroughs refers to the cut-up and the red eyes present Burroughs as demonic. The eyes remind me of the Norman Mailer quote that Burroughs was the only American author possessed by genius. The idea of demonic possession threads through Burroughs’ work and his literary theories, most notably and tragically in the introduction to Queer involving the Ugly Spirit.

I love the look of this book even if its white dust jacket makes getting a crisp, bright copy a tough order. I haven’t lacked the opportunity although signed copies hover at the $1000 mark and in some distressing cases double that amount. Unsigned copies are much more common and lately a copy with a wraparound band popped up on eBay. I was unaware of the band, but such added touches are not unheard-of in Burroughs’ publishing history. The Two Cities edition of Minutes to Go should have a wraparound band. Some copies of the Grove Naked Lunch possessed bands as well stating “Recommended for Sale to Adults Only.” These ephemeral pieces are usually torn or even worse missing altogether, ripped apart and thrown in the trash in the process of reading the book.

For much of Calder’s fifty years in publishing, Burroughs has been a defining presence on the maverick publisher’s catalog. Yet this should never be considered a one-sided relationship. Calder was instrumental in introducing Burroughs to a larger audience that extended beyond Great Britain. The Edinburgh Writers’ Conference made Burroughs an international celebrity and Calder continued to champion Burroughs’s work on the world stage from that point on. At one point, Calder nominated Burroughs for the Nobel Prize. If Burroughs would have won such an honor or if he was even seriously considered, the faith and dedication of the fearless Scotsman would have been one of the major reasons why.