by Matthias Penzel

Burroughs in German (flyer from Kosmik Blues)

1969

Translation work started proper after Carl’s return to Germany. More or less in the function of Editor for Joseph Melzer Verlag in Darmstadt (between Frankfurt and Heidelberg / Mannheim further south), Carl edited and translated:

Cut up. Der sezierte Bildschirm der Worte (Joseph Melzer Verlag, Darmstadt 1969) with several entries by William S. Burroughs, Mary Beach, Harold Norse, Jeff Nuttall, Claude Pélieu, Brion Gysin, one by himself and one by Jürgen Ploog.

ACID. Neue amerikanische Szene, more groundbreaking and with many more texts, also by Zappa etc, edited by the late Rolf Dieter Brinkmann with Ralf-Rainer Rygulla, published, after some kind of mini-revolution downstairs in the same building, also featured Weissner’s translation of Mary Beach, an extract from The Electric Banana; and Harry Mathews: Das Drehbuch.

1970

James Graham Ballard: Liebe + Napalm (Joseph Melzer Verlag, Darmstadt 1970). Re-released a couple of times, most recently as Liebe und Napalm: The Atrocity Exhibition (Milena Verlag, Vienna 2008), an association that led to Weissner’s German writing being published there ever since.

Charles Bukowski: Aufzeichnungen eines Außenseiters (Joseph Melzer Verlag, Darmstadt 1970)

1971

Andy Warhol: A (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1971)

1972

William S. Burroughs: Die elektronische Revolution (expanded media editions, Göttingen 1972) The publisher in charge here was Udo Breger, friend of Weissner and together with Ploog editor of the avant-garde magazine UFO, which was for some time also co-edited by Jörg Fauser. Weissner, Ploog, and Fauser would continue, with Walter Hartmann, the less cutting-edge but more legendary lit-mag Gasolin 23.

Allen Ginsberg: Indische Tagebücher (Hanser Verlag, München)

Allen Ginsberg: Iron Horse (expanded media editions, Göttingen 1973)

1973

William S. Burroughs: Ali’s Smile (bilingual, expanded media editions, Göttingen 1973)

1974

Charles Bukowski: Gedichte, die einer schrieb, bevor er im 8. Stockwerk aus dem Fenster sprang, poems (Maro Verlag Gersthofen 1974) This is where Fauser’s first book came out, followed by his very first one published by Breger’s expanded media editions.

George Herriman: Krazy Kat, with others (Joseph Melzer Verlag, Darmstadt 1974)

1975

Bob Dylan: Texte und Zeichnungen (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1975)

Allen Ginsberg: Der Untergang Amerikas (Hanser Verlag, München 1975)

1976

Charles Bukowski: Kaputt in Hollywood, stories (Maro Verlag, Gersthofen 1976)

Leonard Cohen: Parasiten des Himmels — Gedichte aus 10 Jahren (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 1976)

Anthony Scaduto: Bob Dylan, Die Biographie (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1976)

Bob Dylan: Tarantula (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1976)

1977

Charles Bukowski: Schlechte Verlierer, stories (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1977. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1981)

Charles Bukowski: Faktotum, novel (1977. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1997, 20th print-run in 2009)

Charles Bukowski: Das ausbruchsichere Paradies. Stories vom verschütteten Leben, stories (1977). The first seven stories also published as Pittsburgh Phil & Co., the second lot as Ein Profi.

Charles Bukowski: Flinke Killer, poems, translated with Rolf Eckart John (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1977)

Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones Songbook. 155 Songs mit Noten, translated with Teja Schwaner, Jörg Fauser, Helmut Salzinger (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1977)

Frank Zappa: Plastic People Songbuch, republished after approval by Zappa as Plastic People Songbuch — Corrected Copy (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1977)

1978

Harold Norse: Beat Hotel (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1978

William S. Burroughs: Ali’s smile. Naked scientology (expanded media editions, Bonn 1978)

Allen Ginsberg: Gärten der Erinnerung, possibly translated with Heiner Bastian (HeyneVerlag, München 1978)

William S. Burroughs: Junkie (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1978)

William S. Burroughs: Auf der Suche nach Yage (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1978)

William S. Burroughs: Naked Lunch (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1978)

William S. Burroughs: Nova Express (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1978)

Charles Bukowski: Das Leben und Sterben im Uncle-Sam-Hotel, stories (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1978

Edited with Charles Bukowski: Terpentin on the rocks. Die besten Gedichte aus der amerikanischen Alternativpresse 1966-1977, story collection (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1978 & 1980. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1981 & 1984 $ 1985 & 1996)

1979

Charles Bukowski: Western Avenue. Gedichte aus über 20 Jahren, poems (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1979), extracts have been re-published as Der größte Verlierer der Welt — Gedichte 1968-1972 (1979), Charles Bukowski: Diesseits und jenseits vom Mittelstreifen — Gedichte 1972-1977 (Hanser Verlag, München 1984), and Eintritt frei — Gedichte 1955-1968 (Hanser Verlag, München 1984).

Charles Bukowski: Die Stripperinnen von Burbank & 16 andere Stories, stories (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1979)

William S. Burroughs: Die alten Filme (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1979 & 1995)

Allen Ginsberg: Das Geheul und andere Gedichte (Limes Verlag, Wiesbaden 1979)

Jack Micheline: Skinny Dynamite (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1979)

1980

William S. Burroughs: Die wilden Boys (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1980)

William S. Burroughs: Port of Saints (Arbeitsjournal zu Die wilden Boys) (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1980)

Charles Bukowski: Das Liebesleben der Hyäne, novel (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1980) Republished several times (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1980)

Will Eisner: Ein Vertrag mit Gott und andere Mietshaus — Stories aus New York (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1980)

1981

Nelson Algren: Calhoun. Roman eines Verbrechens (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1981 & 1982)

Charles Plymell: Panik in Dodge City (expanded media editions, Bonn 1981)

1982

Denton Welch: Freuden der Jugend (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1982), also republished many times, with a foreword by William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs: Die Städte der roten Nacht (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1982)

Hans Hillmann: Fliegenpapier nach Dashiell Hammett’s Kriminalgeschichte Flypaper (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1982 & 1983)

Charles Bukowski: Eine Kinoreklame in der Wüste. 102 neue Gedichte, poems (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1982)

Charles Bukowski: Pacific Telephone – 51 Gedichte, poems (1982)

Charles Bukowski: Die Girls im grünen Hotel, poems (1982)

1983

Nelson Algren: Der Mann mit dem goldenen Arm (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1983; Verlag Volk & Welt Berlin, GDR 1984 & 1987)

Howard Kohn: Wer tötete Karen Silkwood? (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1983)

Charles Bukowski: Das Schlimmste kommt noch oder Fast eine Jugend, novel (Hanser Verlag, München 1983)

1984

Charles Bukowski: Der lange Job, stories and poems with comics by Mathias Schultheiss (Heyne, 1984), a condensed version of this and Ein Reader have been published as Die schönste Frau in der ganzen Stadt (1991)

Charles Bukowski: Kaputt in der City, stories and poems with comics by Mathias Schultheiss (Heyne, München 1984)

Charles Bukowski: Gedichte vom südlichen Ende der Couch, poems (1984)

Marvin Israel and Diane Arbus: .diane arbus. (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1984)

1985

Denton Welch: Jungfernfahrt (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1985; Steidl, Göttingen 1996)

Charles Bukowski: Hot Water Music, stories (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1985)

Ken Kesey: Einer flog über das Kuckucksnest (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1985)

1986

Charles Bukowski: Nicht mit sechzig, Honey, poems (Hanser Verlag, München 1986)

Gerald Locklin: Die Jagd nach dem verschwundenen blauen Volkswagen (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1986)

1987

William S. Burroughs: Exterminator (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1987)

William S. Burroughs: Die letzten Worte des Dutch Schultz (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1987)

Denton Welch: Schicksal (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1987)

Mohammed Mrabet with Paul Bowles: M’Hashish. Kiffgeschichten aus Marokko (Goldmann, München 1987)

Bob Dylan: Liedtexte; translated with Walter Hartmann (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1987)

Nan Goldin: Die Ballade von der sexuellen Abhängigkeit (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1987)

1988

William S. Burroughs: Western Lands (Limes im Ullstein Verlag, Frankfurt/Berlin 1988)

Robert Del Tredici: Unsere Bombe (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1988)

Charles Bukowski: Die letzte Generation, poems (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1988)

1989

William S. Burroughs: Homo (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1989)

William S. Burroughs: Briefe an Allen Ginsberg 1953-1957 (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1989)

Charles Bukowski: Roter Mercedes (Gedichte 1984-1986), poems (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1989)

1990

Nelson Algren: Nacht ohne Morgen (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1990)

Diane Arbus: Zeitschriftenarbeit (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1990)

Charles Bukowski: Einmal New Orleans und zurück, story (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1990)

Charles Bukowski: Hollywood, novel (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1990

1991

Nelson Algren: Das letzte Karussell (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1991)

LaLoca: Rote Sonne über Echo Park. Gedichte von Liebe & Hass, translated with Pociao de Hollanda (Maro, Augsburg 1991)

Nicholas Shakespeare: Die Vision der Elena Silves (Kellner, Hamburg 1991)

1992

Harold Norse: Bastard. Die Memoiren eines gefallenen Engels, translated with Walter Harmann (Rogner & Bernhard, Juni 1992)

1993

William Bedford: Fish & Chips & Elvis (dtv, München 1993)

Armistead Maupin: Tollivers Reisen (Rogner & Bernhard, Frankfurt/M. 1993)

Charles Bukowski: Jeder zahlt drauf, stories (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1993)

1994

Charles Bukowski: Kamikaze-Träume, poems (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1994)

Armistead Maupin: Die Kleine (Rogner & Bernhard, Frankfurt/M. 1994)

1995

Richard Bausch: Eine unmögliche Liebe (Steidl, Göttingen 1995)

Charles Bukowski: Der Andere, story (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1995)

Charles Bukowski: Ausgeträumt, novel (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1995), re-released as Pulp. Ausgeträumt

1996

Charles Bukowski: Auf dem Stahlroß ins Nirwana, poems (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1996)

Frank Zappa: Zonx (Texte 1977 – 1994) (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1996)

Robert Lowry: Die falsche Sanftmut des Schnees (Rogner & Bernhard, Frankfurt/M. 1996)

Robert Lowry: Tag, Fremder (Rogner & Bernhard, Frankfurt/M. 1996)

1997

Robert Lowry: Lebendig begraben (Rogner & Bernhard, Frankfurt/M. 1997)

Robert Lowry: Aufenthalt in El Paso translated with Antje Landshoff (Rogner & Bernhard, Frankfurt/M. 1997)

1999

Charles Bukowski: Umsonst ist der Tod, poems (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1999)

2000

Richard Bausch: Eine aussterbende Art (Steidl, Göttingen 2000)

Charles Bukowski: Irgendwo in Texas — Gedichte aus dem Nachlaß, poems (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 2000)

2003

Charles Bukowski: 439 Gedichte, poems (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 2003)

2005

Charles Bukowski: Schreie vom Balkon — Briefe 1958-1994, letters (Ginko Press, Hamburg 2005)

Charles Bukowski: Nackt bei 33 Grad, poems (dtv, München 2005)

2006

Charles Bukowski: Den Göttern kommt das große Kotzen, diary (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 2006)

William Cody Maher: Geisterstadt translated with Walter Hartmann (Verlag Peter Engstler, Ostheim/Rhön 2006)

2007

Charles Bukowski: Letzte Meldungen, poems (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 2007)

Charles Bukowski: Ein Ablehnungsbescheid und seine Folgen, story (Büchergilde Gutenberg/Tolles Heft, Frankfurt/M./Wien/Zürich 2007)

2008

Leonard Cohen: Buch der Sehnsüchte translated with others (Blumenbar, München 2008)

2009

Charles Bukowski : Opfer der Telefonitis, stories (dtv, München 2009)

William Cody Maher: Spielsachen translated with Walter Hartmann and others (Verlag Peter Engstler, Ostheim/Rhön 2009)

2010

Charles Bukowski: Ein schlampiger Essay über das Schreiben und das verfluchte Leben; und ausgewählte Gedichte, leftovers (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 2010)

2011

Bill Callahan: Briefe an Emma Bowlcut translated with Evelyn Steinthaler and Vanessa Wieser (Milena Verlag, Wien 2011)

2012

Charles Bukowski: Ende der Durchsage (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 2012)

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

The Last Times was an underground newspaper published in San Francisco in 1967 by poet and printer Charles Plymell. It contained works by William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Robert Crumb, Carl Weissner, Claude Pélieu, Mary Beach, Antonin Artaud, and others. Issue one has become collectible for the contribution by Crumb, printed just a few months before Zap Comix #1. At least two variants of the second issue were published.

Charles Plymell Holding The Last Times
Photograph by Guy B. Taken at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA on 26 May 2011.

The Last Times I

The Last Times I
Collage by Charles Plymell

The Last Times I
“Day the Records Went Up” by William S. Burroughs, photograph of Herbert Huncke

The Last Times I
“Do It Yourself & Dig It” by Claude Pélieu, interview with Buckminster Fuller, photo and text by Charles Plymell

The Last Times I
“The Orion Dream Stuff” by Carl Weissner, “Introduction” by D.A. Levy, texts by Carl Solomon and Bob Kaufman

The Last Times I
Text by Dennis Williams, drawing by Jeff Nuttall, poem by Roxie Powell, “Notes of a Dirty Old Man” by Charles Bukowski

The Last Times I
“Television Baby Crawling toward that Death Chamber” by Allen Ginsberg

The Last Times I
Conclusion of poem by Allen Ginsberg, text by Dave Harris

The Last Times I
“Head Comix” by R. Crumb, collage by Jean-Jacques Lebel

The Last Times I
Found photo

The Last Times II (variant a)

The Last Times II

The Last Times II

The Last Times II
“National Prestige” by Jeff Nuttall

The Last Times II
Poems by Charles Plymell and Philip Whalen

The Last Times II

The Last Times II
Poems by Yvonne Bond and Alan Russo

The Last Times II
Drawing by Erin Matson (friend of Herbert Huncke)

The Last Times II

The Last Times II

The Last Times II
Mini-poster

The Last Times II (variant b)

The Last Times II

The Last Times II
Drawing by Erin Matson (friend of Herbert Huncke)

The Last Times II
“National Prestige” by Jeff Nuttall, “Dominion” by Alan Russo

The Last Times II
Poem by Philip Whalen

The Last Times II
Centerfold by Bob Branaman

The Last Times II
Poem by Yvonne Bond

The Last Times II
Poem by Charles Plymell

The Last Times II

The Last Times II

Letter from William Burroughs to Carl Weissner
30 April 1965

Correspondence with Charles Bukowski

Letter from Charles Bukowski to Carl Weissner
16 October 1976
This letter appeared at auction on ebay in August 2009.

Letter from Charles Bukowski to Carl Weissner
15 Jan 1979
This letter appeared at auction on ebay.

Letter from Charles Bukowski to Carl Weissner
15 Jan 1979
This letter appeared at auction on ebay.

Letter from Charles Bukowski to Carl Weissner
6 Feb 1979
This letter appeared at auction on ebay.

Letter from Charles Bukowski to Carl Weissner
6 Feb 1979
This letter appeared at auction on ebay.

Letter from Charles Bukowski to Carl Weissner
6 July 1988
This letter appeared at auction on ebay in July 2009.

Letter from Carl Weissner to Charles Bukowski
16 August 1988
This letter appeared at auction on ebay in July 2009.

Carl Weissner-Jeff Nuttall Corresondence

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
19 October 1965

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
19 October 1965

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
26 January 1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
14 February 1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
20 March 1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
1 July 1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
3 October 1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
3 October 1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
14 October 1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
2 January 1967

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
15 March 1967

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
28 March 1967

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
9 April 1967

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
19 May 1967

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
27 September 1967

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
19 June 1969

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
19 June 1969

Miscellaneous Correspondence

Letter from Carl Weissner to Roy Pennington
26 February 1973

A Follow-Up to “Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, and the Computer”

by Roger Holden

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jed Birmingham for his courteous offer to submit this correction to his essay “Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, and the Computer.” The premise of his essay was that, to his knowledge, Burroughs seems to have avoided using the computer for any of his creative work. “What would Burroughs have done,” Birmingham writes, “with an Ian Sommerville-type collaborator who knew the nuts and bolts of computers and the Internet, was aware of their philosophical and cultural implications, and also possessed a desire to expand the medium creatively? Like many on the forum at RealityStudio, I wonder what if? It was not to be.”

Happily, I can say that it was to be. I am privileged in this life to have been a friend of William Burroughs and also a collaborator on his visual art — using the medium of the computer. In 1995 I worked with Burroughs on a series of three-dimensional computer-generated stereograms (similar to the Magic Eye images of the 90s) based upon sampling his paintings. William guided me in the process of what to select for input into the computer so as to obtain results that he thought would be appropriate for this visual holographic cut-up collaborative experiment.

One of these images was selected for display in the landmark Ports of Entry exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1996 and was documented in the accompanying book Ports of Entry: William S. Burroughs and the Arts on page 149:

… in 1995, Burroughs joined with computer animator Roger Holden in producing a series of computer-generated stereograms created by digitally scanning a detail of one of Burroughs’ paintings into a computer, color-enhancing it, and printing it with a laser printer. When viewed with relaxed and slightly crossed eyes, the three dimensional effects of these “cybernetic cut-ups” form imaginary landscapes of extreme intricacy and depth not unlike those imagined works described by Burroughs in 1981 [in Cities of the Red Night] as made by “some lost color process… used to transfer three dimensional holograms onto the… pages. You ache to look at these colors.”

Also on page 149, note 333 says: “The title ‘cybernetic cut-ups’ was coined by Holden in a letter to the author June 15, 1995.”

This particular image is now in the permanent collection of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. This image may be viewed online at the following presentation created by the Spencer Museum of Art. It is the 6th image of 8 shown in the presentation.

Quoting from an article from the University Daily Kansan October 28, 1996: “Steve Goddard, curator of prints and drawings at the Spencer Museum of Art, said that Holden’s collaboration with Burroughs was a good example of how Burroughs has continued to stay involved with contemporary trends in art. ‘It’s a very interesting piece that shows Burroughs’ relevance in the Cyberpunk world of computer art,’ Goddard said. ‘His openness in collaborating with other artists demonstrates how he accepts what is unfolding at the moment.’”

I am an inventor who has been aware of the philosophical, cultural, and audiovisual implications of the computer since 1976. I have always desired to expand this medium creatively. In 1982, for example, I designed the animation computer system used by PBS’s Emmy-winning children’s series Reading Rainbow to film their feature books for the first 5 seasons. Rogerreadingrainbow.com is my Reading Rainbow site.

I also co-invented a holographic-like computer image projection system which was featured in 2005 on the Discovery Channel Science of Star Wars series. It was shown as an example of futuristic R2-D2 holographic-like technology being realized in the present. I am presently developing a different and superior holographic-like display technology. A short video of the Discovery Channel segment is at YouTube.

I first met Burroughs formally in 1986 through his best friend and business manager James Grauerholz. In 1988 I produced a music video tribute to Burroughs which aired the same year on the USA Network series Nightflight and also on MTV in 1990 on their first internationally broadcast series, Buzz. It should also be mentioned that throughout the years I was given two wonderful cats by William. One was the White Cat mentioned in Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs and in the text on inter-zone.org.

One day when I was visiting Burroughs in the early 90s, he said “Roger, I want to show you the painting I finished today. It’s called Jack the Ripper.” Looking, I discerned that it consisted of reddish paint splotches and twirls on a white canvas. William then said, “Do you see Jack?” I looked carefully and replied, “William, I might sense the ambience of Jack in an abstract sort of way.” Immediately he said, “No! No! No! Do you see Jack?” I said I didn’t, but please show me. He then pointed to a specific area, a small area toward the bottom right side of the painting. Sure enough, I did see it, a leering evil face with a derby hat on top of his head. It was cartoon-like, somewhat warped in appearance but immediately recognizable. Burroughs then turned the painting upside down. In the same exact area where I had previously seen Jack the Ripper he pointed and said assuredly, “There’s his victim.” He was right. There was an equally vivid warped caricature of a woman’s face grimacing in an expression of horror! It was absolutely amazing to witness this, as it was a prime example of what he would call a “Port of Entry” into an image. William painted with a faith that his process of painting could serve as a vessel for evocative magic. These emerging images were searched for and discovered only after he painted the entire canvas. Naturally, after that experience, I wished for the day that we could collaborate using the medium of the computer in a likewise visual and shamanistic manner.

I would discuss my computer audiovisual interests frequently with William. One day he called and asked to visit my animation studio, Magic Visions. During the studio visit, I demonstrated a stereoscopic 3D image of a cat sticking its head outside of a computer monitor. On other occasions we might discuss such things as a computer-assisted visual prosthesis project I had received a grant to pursue or my computer-assisted holographic projection efforts. This type of discussion about computers (i.e. 3d stereoscopic imagery, sensory substitution) clearly engaged his interest because we were talking of a direct melding of the mind and computer through altered perceptual states. For example, discussions such as how would blind people perceive such a computer-generated tactile image vibrated onto the skin or how they might perceive a three-dimensional computer-generated audio environment. The studio visit, audiovisual computer discussions and demonstrations eventually led to the following 1994 inscription written for me on the inside cover of his Kurt Cobain CD collaboration, The “Priest” They Called Him, “for Roger Holden, who always has tomorrow’s ideas today.”

As 1994 wound up, I noticed his great interest and enjoyment of computer-generated stereograms. I had previous experience creating some of these myself so I asked him if we could collaborate together by incorporating some of his paintings into computer-generated 3D stereograms. His immediate reply was, “By all means, yes! Lets see what happens.” I first started on the project by using the entire painting as a source. Not much seemed to be happening with that approach. The output was thin and difficult to discern in 3D. Burroughs then directed me to incorporate small samples of his paintings into the computer rather than just simply inputting the whole thing. This was when we struck our pay dirt, as exciting bold 3D shapes began to emerge.

Our collaboration was a true “all into cyberspace” experience for both of us. These images allow for a direct altered state of visual perception just as the Magic Eye images do. However, rather than simply entice you with just a dolphin or 3-D heart, the cybernetic cut-up images can be used to experience directly certain information processes of the mind — specifically, those processes that can form our visual sense of the 3D outside world from the input of even the simplest of sampled information.

William was extremely enthusiastic about this collaboration and equally enthusiastic about the results. In essence, samples of his paintings were input as viral info elements into a 3D computer stereoscopic process. The 3D Cybernetic cut-up output resulted in complex holographic-like landscapes and objects. Our collaboration, including studies, involved more than a dozen images. Like all such attempts in art, some worked out better than others. A special few seemed to demonstrate some intriguing synchronicities. I hope to publish someday a compendium of these studies and completed images.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

16-bit Intel 8088 chip

with an Apple Macintosh
you can’t run Radio Shack programs
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file
you have created on an
IBM Personal Computer.
both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
the CP/M operating system
but can’t read each other’s
handwriting
for they format (write
on) discs in different
ways.
the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can’t use most programs produced for
the IBM Personal Computer
unless certain
bits and bytes are
altered
but the wind still blows over
Savannah
and in the Spring
the turkey buzzard struts and
flounces before his
hens.

– Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski and the Computer

On Christmas Day, 1990, Charles Bukowski received a Macintosh IIsi computer and a laser printer from his wife, Linda. The computer utilized the 6.0.7 operating system and was installed with the MacWrite II word processing program. By January 18 of the next year, the computer was up and running and so, after a brief period of fumbling and stumbling, was Bukowski. His output of poems doubled in 1991. In letters he remarked that he had more poems than outlets to send them to. The fact that several books of new poems appeared in the years following Bukowski’s death in 1994 can partially be attributed to this amazing burst of creative energy late in life. The Macintosh IIsi helped to enable this creative explosion.

Flying in the face of the adage “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” Bukowski kept an open mind about new technologies. Although he wondered if Dostoevsky would have ever used a computer or if he would lose his soul as a writer, Bukowski quickly realized the substantial benefits of the Macintosh and wondered how he ever wrote without one, considering the typewriter archaic. In correspondence, Bukowski championed his computer to friends, stating that they would never regret getting one for themselves. Linda signed Bukowski up for a computer class, and he went willingly, demonstrating his eagerness to master the new technology. A short time later, Bukowski characteristically claimed that he had a secret, foolproof system for dealing with his computer’s many shutdowns and malfunctions, much like he had a system at the racetrack.

In general Bukowski kept abreast of new innovations that would further his writing. In a letter to John Martin, his Black Sparrow publisher, Bukowski mentioned the availability of a technology (the Internet) that would allow him to send poems instantly. The speed and ease of new technologies amazed, excited, and inspired him. When he first got a fax machine, Bukowski immediately wrote Martin a fax poem. In late 1992, Bruce Kijewski approached Bukowski with the idea of electronic books. Bukowski was intrigued. He wrote back, “Yes, you have a strange project: electronic books. It might be the future as more and more people find that the computer is such a magic thing: time-saver, charmer, energizer.” Bukowski’s open-mindedness in old age is refreshing, when you consider all the aging writers who fall back and rely on the familiar, be it in technologies of writing or actual writing style. But there are still reservations and a sense of nostalgia. The same letter to Kijewski continues, “But, still, when [the electronic book] comes I will still miss the old fashioned book.” Despite such statements, it is clear that Bukowski was a writer not afraid of, or pessimistic about, the future.

Bukowski’s embrace of new technology should not surprise me, but it always does. Putting aside the transgressive nature of Bukowski’s subject matter, part of me considers him a conservative poet. On the level of poetics, he rarely impresses me as particularly innovative. For example he never experimented with the page as a field, a technique that I have a weakness for. In addition, his use of poetic form and the line seems rather simple and direct. Yet this was not always so. The poems from the 1960s used a much longer and freer line that incorporated elements of surrealism. There is a playfulness of language in these poems. Bukowski gets drunk on words and the joys of putting them together. This excess gets stripped down later in his career. I tend to see this as a lack of innovation, but it is not; it is an adaptation and, in fact, addresses Bukowski’s intense concern with the line. Bukowski as he got older sought a simpler, more direct poem and used a shorter line. I should think of William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky, or HD when I see Bukowski’s later poems with their four to five word lines. As with new technology, Bukowski possessed an open mind with all manner of writing styles and techniques. He would try anything once. For a brief period in the later 1960s, Bukowski, at the urging of Carl Weissner, addressed the cut-up and flirted with the idea in a few poems. A great letter from the period parodies the cut-up, even though the cut-ups probably came from Bukowski’s imagination rather than the scissors.

I do not want to suggest that Bukowski was pioneer or a radical in his use of the computer. He is no Michael Joyce, to mention a pioneer in the field, and his work never did incorporate the possibilities of, nor test the boundaries of, digital technology, like the more innovative literature of this nature. In fact, Bukowski readily admitted that he used the computer as a typewriter. He marveled at basic capabilities such as formatting, fonts, and spell check. Yet there is more to Bukowski’s relationship with computer than that. In a letter to Ivan Suvanjieff on February 20,, 1992, Bukowski set out in some detail his thoughts on the computer and writing. He writes, “One editor writes me an almost snarling letter. ‘All a computer does is allow you to correct the composition of your work!’ This man understands nothing.” Pound, Olson, and Zukofsky demonstrated the value of the typewriter in composition so this ability on the computer is no small matter, as are fonts and the like, but for Bukowski, the computer actually altered how he felt about and approached his writing. In the same letter he writes, “There is something about seeing your words on a screen before you that makes you send the word with a better bite, sighted in closer to the target. I know a computer can’t make a writer but I think it makes a writer better. Simplicity in writing and simplicity in getting it down, hot and real.” He continues, “When this computer is in the shop and I go back to the electric, it’s like trying to break rock with a hammer. Of course, the essence of writing is there but you have to wait on it, it doesn’t leap from the gut as quickly, you begin to trail your thoughts — your thoughts are ahead of your fingers which are trying to catch up. It causes a block of sorts indeed.” Bukowski directly links the ease of writing on the computer with his later, simpler style. One might think that a computer would lead to a longer line, an increased verbiage, not with Bukowski. The ease of the delete / edit functions was as important as the ability to get one’s thoughts down quickly. In addition, the visual aspect of the screen and the feel of writing on a computer influenced the form of Bukowski’s later poetry.

Bukowski also incorporated the computer as a metaphor in his later writing. From early 1991 to his death in 1994, computers and the act of writing on one appeared repeatedly. In The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship, R. Crumb provided an illustration of Bukowski sitting in front of his Macintosh. The caption reads, “Old writer puts on sweater, sits down, leers into the computer screen and writes about life. How holy can we get?” Clearly, the computer re-energized Bukowski and gave him new life as a writer. Yet much of Bukowski’s late writing was about old age and death. The computer fit into this. In poems, letters, and in The Captain, Bukowski chronicled his struggles with the computer. The shutdowns, the lost poems, the time at the shop for repairs. This mirrored Bukowski’s own health problems and trips to the hospital. The computer represented the writer in old age. The computer and the digital revolution also suggest the end of the book and of print. As a result, the computer spelled the death of the traditional author, a fact that must have struck Bukowski as he faced death himself. Yet all was not doom and gloom as the computer (old age and death) also provides the material and means for new poems. So the computer also represents the old writer’s creative impulse. In the four letters collected in Reach for the Sun for 1994, two mention the computer. In Bukowski’s late writing, the computer simultaneously symbolized the persistent creativity and eventual death of the aging writer.

Considering the importance of the computer to Bukowski’s later work and creative process, I wonder if his computer, hard drives, and disks were sent to the Huntington Library with the rest of his archive. Again the level of study directed at Bukowski’s computer would not be on the same level as, say, a Michael Joyce, but a familiarity with a Macintosh IIsi, the 6.0.7 operating system, and MacWrite II would provide insight into Bukowski’s working habits and the resulting output. Given the creative charge Bukowski felt facing the black computer screen, a scholar would be well served experiencing the same working environment. Did Bukowski tailor his poems to the screen? Was the journal / diary aspect of The Captain derived from the computer in any way? How did Bukowski edit on the computer? Did his writing process differ from his use of the typewriter or his writing by hand? Bukowski mentioned experimenting with fonts and formatting. Did he keep any of these efforts and what was the extent of this practice? How did he format his blank “page” on the screen?

As Bukowski’s letters and other writing of the early 1990s show, he was aware of the importance of these questions. Take the poem “16 Bit Intel 8088 Chip.” Here, the incompatibility of computers is contrasted with the harmony of nature. The themes of rebirth, death and the poet in old age are all present as with much of Bukowski’s writing addressing the computer. Yet the poem also touches on a central dilemma for the contemporary librarian and archivist. How do you store and make sense of all the different computer technologies that proliferate in the digital age? The poem also hints at the transitory nature of computer technology. Like microfiche, tape cassettes and CDs, computer operating systems change rapidly and deteriorate. Unlike paper, unlike the traditional, soon to be “obsolete” book. Despite the changing technology, writers and artists will still create, but how is a librarian to keep track of this output and keep it available ten, fifty, a hundred years from now?

As a generation of baby-boom writers approach the completion of their creative careers, these are becoming central questions for today’s librarians. Currently, the University of Texas Library has 37 author archives that contain computer technology. This number is going to explode in the next decade. Famously, the computers of Ralph Ellison proved a major obstacle in piecing together the thousands of pages of draft of his never-completed follow-up to Invisible Man. Ellison used several different computers with different operating systems to store his drafts.

When I was briefly in graduate school, I was required to be fluent in a foreign language. This was a major roadblock for me. Today, a mastery of computers, their operating systems, their languages, and how they work is becoming mandatory for scholars and librarians. They need to be computer programmers and designers as well as experts on bibliographic matters. The questions this technology raises are numerous. How do you create electronic versions of texts? What are the standards and critical approaches to these texts? How are various electronic drafts to be approached and prioritized? What are the ethics of digging into a writer’s personal computer? What is a writer’s obligation to save drafts and email? Such questions are just the tip of the iceberg.

Kyle Schlesinger, my co-editor on Mimeo Mimeo, sent me a link to the work of Matthew G. Kirchenbaum, an Associate Professor of English at the University of Maryland. He and other forward-looking academics are addressing these questions. Jerome McGann, as I have mentioned before, is one of the pioneers in this respect. His work on the Rossetti Project and with IVANHOE shows what is possible as well as the endless possibilities. I also mentioned in my Beat Critics article about the desire to create an electronic version of On the Road complete with Kerouac’s revisions and scholarly commentary. As Beat criticism moves away from definitions and canon formation, it will have to address many technological questions. Kirchenbaum and others are mapping this field. The white paper, Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use, is a case in point.

William Burroughs and the Computer

This takes me to the William Burroughs archive at the Berg. The index of the archive was just posted on the Berg’s website. It makes for fascinating reading. The breadth of the archive is immense and intimidating. Quite possibly, the traditional book may not be the best manner to present the contents of this archive to the public. For example, maybe an electronic Naked Lunch along the lines of the electronic Melville described in John Bryant’s paper on On the Road is what is needed. Thus, making sense of the Burroughs archive may require a solid knowledge of computers and computer design.

That said, none of the items in the Burroughs archive are born digital, i.e., they were not initially created on a computer or by other digital means. Burroughs used a typewriter or wrote by hand. Everything Lost highlights the incredible set of challenges that results from holograph manuscripts while also showing how modern technology can suggest solutions to these problems. While I have heard mention that Burroughs possessed a computer in Lawrence, I have never seen evidence that he utilized it in his creative process. The Berg shows no computers, disks, hard drives or print outs. This makes sense given that the collection dated from 1951 to 1972, but I am unaware of such items elsewhere, such as Ohio State University. I have never seen an original Burroughs manuscript, such as a laser printout, that shows his work was ever born digital. I believe Last Words was handwritten in a journal. Somebody correct me if I am wrong here.

As far back as the mid-1960s, Burroughs was aware of the possibilities of the computer and computer-generated poetry. In Insect Trust Gazette, Burroughs’ work appears alongside an early computer poem. In his interview with Conrad Knickerbocker in Paris Review, he stated that he had yet to experiment with the computer, but thought that such literature was valid and interesting, if it stood on its own merit. Yet as time passed — again, as far as I know — Burroughs never experimented with the computer. On one level this makes sense given the fact that Burroughs was well advanced in age and set in his ways by the time the personal computer was generally available. You might say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but Bukowski proves that you, in fact, can.

Part of me has always found it weird that Burroughs was not more involved in the Internet and computers. It seems right up his alley. His work has often been connected to cyberpunk fiction as an early influence. His writing is routinely described as a form of hypertext (“You can cut into Naked Lunch at any intersection point”). One might think Burroughs would be curious to explore this aspect of his work further, given the hype surrounding hypertext in the early 1990s. Burroughs readily embraced the technologies of film, tape, and painting into his creative process, so he was open to new media and mediums. The idea of the Composite City and Interzone seem, as critics have noted, to have a particular affinity to hypertext and the Internet. The free-flowing and interconnected nature of the City draws many comparisons to the Web. I tend to link Interzone and the Composite City with Borges’ concept of the Tower of Babel and the all-inclusive library. The idea of an endless novel and a digital archive seem Burroughsian to me. Burroughs, computers, and the Internet seem a match made in, if not heaven, cyberspace.

In 1994, Wired announced the imminent launch of an official Burroughs website in conjunction with Timothy Leary. It never came off. The venture proved to be largely an example of financial speculation, rather than a creative enterprise. The presence of Leary cements this fact for me. From psychedelics to cyberspace, Leary was more P.T. Barnum than anything else. He was a promoter and a popularizer rather than a true astronaut of inner- or cyberspace. Leary was not a creator. Yet this idea of a website with Burroughs’ input continues to fascinate. What would Burroughs have done with an Ian Sommerville-type collaborator who knew the nuts and bolts of computers and the Internet, was aware of their philosophical and cultural implications, and also possessed a desire to expand the medium creatively? Like many on the forum at RealityStudio, I wonder what if? It was not to be.

Maybe the lack of born-digital material in Burroughs’ archives can be simply explained by the fact that the digital age had passed him by in his old age. An interview from 1987 suggests as much. On the question of Burroughs’ involvement with word processors, he answers, “No, I’m very poor with any mechanical contrivances. I don’t know how a typewriter works, for example. I can use it, but I don’t know how it works. Right now, word processors seem just too complicated to get into. I guess they would be helpful, save a great deal of time, undoubtedly, but at this point the effort involved in learning how to use them just doesn’t seem worthwhile.”

But there might be more to Burroughs’ less than enthusiastic attitude toward computers than that. By the 1990s, Burroughs had largely left writing behind and was exploring painting more fully. He clearly still burned with the desire to create. The process of painting excited Burroughs, particularly the use of the hand and gesture. In an interview with Klaus Maek in 1990, Burroughs states, “When I started painting, I said, I will have to see with my hands and I just let my hands do it. And my hands, sometimes they know.” The cut-up was a similar physical process. Burroughs needed that direct confrontation with his materials in order to create. He wrote in Naked Lunch: “There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing.” Painting provided a slightly different intimacy and immediacy. Burroughs states, “For one thing when you are writing you can’t help but know what you’re writing about because it’s right there in front of you, but I never know what I’m painting until I am finished. I sometimes paint with my eyes closed because I see with my hands when I paint. In a sense, painting is easier than writing because you just let your hands do it…” Possibly, the blank computer screen provided too much distance to interest and to inspire Burroughs. As I mentioned Bukowski felt the opposite: the computer got him directly into the writing.

Looking through Burroughs’ archive suggests another roadblock to the computer. The archive clearly demonstrates how intimately Burroughs dealt with the materials of print culture. Burroughs was particularly fascinated by that epitome of mass print culture: the newspaper as well as magazines and journals. Bukowski was interested in the little magazine and underground paper solely as outlets for his work. In contrast, Burroughs sought to detourn mass print culture and turn it back on itself. How mass print culture operated, disseminated, and influenced public opinion intrigued Burroughs. He was also intensely involved with the materiality of print. The printed word was an object to be manipulated. The cut-up and his use of collage in scrapbooks highlight this. Writing on a computer lacks this materiality. Of course this is not true as data recovery makes clear. Even a deleted document leaves a trace burned into the hard drive. Yet the immediacy of the typewriter biting into paper is not there, to say nothing of the pleasure of the act of handwriting. Cutting and pasting digitally lacks the obvious physical effort of scissors and glue. We come back to Burroughs’ pleasure in the tactile.

Nostalgia plays a large role in Burroughs’ work. For all of Burroughs’ claims of embracing the future, moving towards the space age (“We are here to go!”), he felt strongly the pull of the past. He looked back fondly at silent films of the 1920s and the same holds true for the print culture of bygone days like boy’s weeklies. The digital age supposedly spells the death of print. Clearly the newspaper as Burroughs knew it is, if not dying, in a profound period of change. Burroughs would have felt that loss keenly. The age of the electronic book and the Internet may have been a world that Burroughs predicted but it seems, looking at his archive and his interest in painting, to have been a world he chose not to get involved in and maybe, creatively, could not embrace. For the most part, Burroughs approached the digital age with what he ultimately sought and demanded in his writing, silence.

A New Book-Length Text by Carl Weissner
And an Archive Celebrating Weissner’s Publications in the Avant-Garde

Introduction

After going to see the Villa Seurat, where Henry Miller lived when he wrote Tropic of Cancer, we stopped at the Café Zeyer for drinks. The Zeyer, which he described as “a gaudy place with red plush and mirrors and polished brass,” was where Miller often took a fine à l’eau and argued metaphysics with friends. It was a burning hot day in Paris. Carl Weissner ordered beer. His close friend Jan Herman, publisher of San Francisco Earthquake and the Nova Broadcast Press, ordered a kir, as did his wife Janet. “Tell Carl the story about Buk,” I urged.

The previous night Janet had told me about the time Jan took her to meet Charles Bukowski in Los Angeles. They brought a bottle, on Carl’s advice, and ended up finishing it. When they were taking their leave, Buk moved to kiss the young and fetching Janet — and promptly shoved his alcoholic old tongue down her throat. She was disgusted, but it made for a great story a few decades later. “You should have challenged him to a duel on the beach — with sabers,” Carl growled, rubbing his hands together with a glee suggesting that he was really visualizing this oceanside face-off.

Carl, born in Germany during World War II, once joked to me that his greatest ambition was to become an American writer. In a way, he has fulfilled that ambition vicariously. His definitive translations of Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Bob Dylan, Nelson Algren, and others have sold literally millions of copies in Germany. “It was Carl,” Jan once told me, “who really turned Bukowski into something. It was Carl who got him major notice in Der Spiegel. That set off the craze in Germany and boomeranged back here. Bukowski never became a mainstream success till that happened.”

Bukowski made no secret of his gratitude to Carl, not just for his translations but for something much more important — understanding, support, friendship. Buk told one interviewer:

[Weissner's] letters were quite incisive, entertaining (lively as hell), and he bucked up my struggle in the darkness, no end. A letter from Carl always was and still is an infusion of life and hope and easy wisdom. I was in the post office at the time and living with a crazy and alcoholic woman and writing anyhow. All our money went for booze. We lived in rags and a rage of despair. I remember I didn’t even have money for shoes. The nails from my old shoes dug into my feet as I walked my routes hungover and mad. We drank all night and I had to get up at 5 a.m. When I wrote, the poems came out of this and the letters from Carl were the only good magic about.

Presumably William Burroughs must have felt the same. In 1966 Burroughs traveled from Paris to Heidelberg to meet Carl. They had been corresponding and publishing cut-ups in the same little mags. “I opened the door,” Carl wrote in a letter later published by Victor Bockris in With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker, “and for a fraction of a second before the hall light went out I caught a glimpse of a tall thin man, about 52 years of age, black suit black tie white shirt w/ black needle stripes black phosphorescent eyes black hat. He looked like Opium Jones.” If Carl thought Burroughs’ apparition was dreamlike, perhaps the feeling was mutual. Years later, after Carl had translated some dozen of his books, Burroughs recorded a dream in My Education that may have harked back to that first meeting: “With Carl Weissner in Germany. I ask him: ‘Just where are we? Germany? Belgium?’”

In the five years after their initial meeting, the writers would intersect in a number of book projects and little mags, including Weissner’s own Klacto. In 1967, Beach Books in San Francisco published So Who Owns Death TV?, a pamphlet containing cut-ups by Burroughs, Weissner, and Claude Pélieu. Herman’s Nova Broadcast Press would publish Burroughs’ The Dead Star in 1969; The Louis Project, containing texts by Weissner and Herman, in 1970; and Weissner’s book of cut-ups, The Braille Film, which contained a “counterscript” by Burroughs, in 1970. In 1972 Agentzia in Paris would publish Cut Up or Shut Up, a compilation of cut-ups by Weissner, Herman, and Jürgen Ploog, with a “tickertape” by Burroughs running across the top of the pages.

Braille Film is the most significant of these books. The title hinted at either a synesthesia (touch compounded with sight) or an absurdity (touch compounded with sight?) that has since become less inconceivable owing to the invention of touchscreens. Doubtless Weissner also intended an assault on every sense possible. The density of the imagery in Braille Film is a key component of the book’s impact. “Weissner,” Jed Birmingham has written, “is one of the foremost practitioners of the cut-up, and when Burroughs scaled back the technique Weissner pushed it forward.” Just as Burroughs was turning to more narrative texts such as The Wild Boys (1971), Weissner emitted this bombshell of relentless images and standout lines. “Dead tissue fades in the searchlights” … “The white labyrinth of silence has no emergency exits” … “I watched him masturbate in the halflight. (Looks like he’s counting money.).” … “The thoughtographs went up in silver dust.”

Though the cut-up technique gradually made its way into popular culture — most notably when David Bowie used the method to produce song lyrics — it was not for experimentation but for translation that Weissner won acclaim in the 1970s. He once explained to me that, of all the books he’d translated, Nova Express was the most difficult. Consider a random phrase, “so the Venusian Gook Rot flashed round the world.” Venusian gook rot? It takes a unique sensibility to translate that. In an essay included in Naked Lunch@50: Anniversary Essays, Ploog describes how Weissner achieved that sensibility. “Weissner,” Ploog writes, “had hung out in jazz joints in Heidelberg frequented by GIs, and he’d spent considerable time in the States. He was the man to get the rude and loose intonation across. Where the Behrens [previous translators of Naked Lunch] had to say ‘opiates,’ Weissner was able to go straight to ‘junk.’” In his Memoirs of a Bastard Angel, old friend Harold Norse pronounced Weissner “the best German translator of the Beats and raw-meat writers.”

Although the renown from his translations enabled Weissner to write for mainstream magazines such as Rolling Stone, literary experimentation never ceased to form an important part of his repertoire. From 1973 to 1986 he co-edited, with Ploog and Jörg Fauser, the little mag Gasolin 23, which published his own work alongside that of Burroughs, Bukowski, et al. In more recent times, Weissner has been working on two novels and further experiments. The latest of these is Death in Paris.

This new text clearly references its namesake, Death in Venice: Thomas Mann’s narrative moves from Munich to Venice, Weissner’s non-narrative from San Francisco to Paris; the cholera plague in Venice becomes a spree of random violence in Paris; Mann’s protagonist, a world-weary writer, becomes Weissner’s cynical but sharp-eyed littérateur; etc. Each text is the story of a man, a city, and a love interest — except that Mann’s hero obsesses over a young man, while Weissner’s anti-hero prefers death, particularly its homicidal forms.

Death in Paris, however, is no simple rewrite of Death in Venice. Weissner does not do the Hollywood remake, “updating the story for today” or some such. What he does to Death in Venice is what a terrorist does when tossing an improvised explosive device into a crowd. He sews chaos, inflicts violence, and, most important, makes a statement. In that sense, the m.o. is creation through destruction — except that to say as much of Death in Paris runs the risk of diminishing the text’s real creativity, its black humor, wisdom, and vitality. Is there a bad metaphor in the thing? I read it (for the sixth time now) and think to myself, “How can a foreigner write like this in English?” Or more simply: how can anyone write like this? Jesus.

RealityStudio is truly thrilled to be able to present this previously unpublished text by Carl Weissner. Death in Paris is available in its entirety to read online or to print. Doubtless it will help to put La Louisiane, the Paris hotel which figures so prominently in the text and where much of it may have been written, alongside the Villa Seurat and so many other places on the literary map of Paris.

Death in Paris

Death in Paris
Read Online or Print

An Archive Celebrating Carl Weissner’s Publications in the Avant-Garde

• In Memory of Carl Weissner
• Carl Weissner in Books and Pamphlets
• Klactoveedsedsteen
• Gasolin 23
• UFO
• Weissneriana
• Weissner in My Own Mag
• Correspondence
• Dripping Wet in Reykjavik: An Airmail Interview with Carl Weissner, by Victor Bockris
• Translations
• A Bibliography of Carl Weissner Translations by Matthias Penzel
• Nothing Here Now But the Lost Recordings by Ed Robinson
• Audio: The Poetry of Equal Time
• Jan Herman & Carl Weissner, Mayor Daley: “i press my lips / to my toetips” (1971)
• Jan Herman & Carl Weissner, President Nixon: “that is the way to make progress” (1971)

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

This piece may be old news as the Groff Auction of Bukowski and the Ronan Sale of Beat Literature took place roughly a month ago, but a look at the financial pages highlights that auctions and collectibles are very much a breaking story. A recent article in Worth magazine dealt with the role of collectibles in a financial portfolio. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal featured a piece on the rise of a new breed of collector who treat their treasures dispassionately as assets to be bought and sold like stocks. In good times or in bad, the wealthy are constantly on the lookout for ways to increase their net worth and protect the wealth they have. For many, collectibles are the perfect means to turn cash into a growing asset. With the Dow pushing over 13,000 and the strength of international spending power particularly in the Far East and Russia, more and more people possess cash on hand to spend on the rare and unusual. The art market is doing a brisk business. It seems that every month or so a new record is established for one artist or another. Case in point was a blockbuster sale at Christie’s that set the bar for Warhol, Rothko, Cindy Sherman and others. A piece from Warhol’s Death and Disaster series in 1963 sold for $71M. This absolutely obliterated the previous high for Warhol. The Journal article states that one investor is divesting a major stamp collection. Doorstops of all things were another high end sale. In the world of high-end collectibles, the auction is king and with all the action and intrigue they can have the energy of a rock and roll concert. (Coincidentally, rock and roll memorabilia is hot. A recent auction of items amassed by former road manager of The Grateful Dead, Lawrence “Ram Rod” Sturtliff, topped $1M with guitars going for six figure sums.)

Counterculture books are no exception. Last year featured the Edwin Blair Sale of Beat Literature. To my mind this was one of the great book auctions of any type in the last 10 years. On April 26th, Pacific Book Galleries presented a double bill: The Thomas Groff Bukowski collection and the Stephen Ronan Beat Literature collection. I am reminded of the turn of the millennium when it seemed that great counterculture book auctions happened on a regular basis. Swann’s consistently had a smattering of Beat books in its Modern Literature sales. Sotheby’s held the great Beat auction: selections from the Ginsberg Estate. Pacific Book Galleries offered sales of collections on Burroughs and the Beats complied by Nelson Lyon, George Fox and Robert Torgerson.

With the 50th Anniversary of Howl, On the Road and Naked Lunch just in the rearview mirror or on the horizon, we can expect a flood of interest in the Beats. It would make sense that some collectors will determine that the market is ripe for selling the fruits of their collecting pursuits. The results of the Blair Sale would seem to support such thinking. Sales topped $200,000 and the auction received news coverage in San Francisco and elsewhere. Unfortunately, the disappointing showing of the Groff and Ronan sales may scare away collectors looking to make a buck on their word hoards.

How disappointing was it? (See chart.) Over 50% (roughly 57%) of Groff’s 228 items failed to sell for the low estimate. This number is not completely out of line with previous counterculture sales at Pacific Book Auctions, but a full 15% failed to sell at all. Unfortunately, only twelve items (or roughly 5%) went over the high estimate. The Ronan Sale did not fare any better. Again 57% of Ronan’s 221 items missed the low estimate. Forty items (or 18%) went unsold. Twelve percent of the items surpassed the high estimate, but only thirteen percent fell in the estimate window. It was a depressing scene. The high number of unsold items is the most shocking to me. One would think that somebody would take a flyer on some of these items, but that was not the case. Only two of the 168 items available at the Lyon Sale were passed over.

If I am any indication, these were highly anticipated sales. When the sale was announced on the PBA Galleries web site, I definitely marked my calendar and started socking money away with the intention of spending big. The Ronan Sale was what interested me most with the potential for Burroughs items. In the end, I stayed away for a host of reasons that I will address in this piece.

Let’s look at the Groff Bukowski Sale first. From what I could tell snooping around Bukowski chat rooms, this sale generated quite a bit of interest. Groff’s collection is extensive covering the entire range of Bukowski’s career. Some highlights included the legendary first edition of At Terror Street and Agony Way with the word “Street” misspelled on the cover ($1265) as well as James Lowell of Asphodel Bookshop’s copy of Terror Street ($4313); Bukowski’s unpublished love letters to Linda King (60 in all with poems) ($69,000); tons of limited edition Black Sparrow titles with original drawings and artwork by Bukowski including a limited edition presentation copy of Women ($9200); early chapbook appearances like Steve Richmond’s copy of A Man Insane Enough to Live With Beasts ($2875); and a sprinkling of Black Sparrow broadsides. These were some of the top performers at the auction. Groff did not just skim the cream in his collecting. He gathered a solid selection of more pedestrian titles by Bukowski as well as LPs, critical work, and later little magazine appearances. The sale would seem to have something for the hardcore Bukowski collector and plenty for the low-level buyer just starting to make his mark.

So what happened? Maybe it was too much Bukowski at one time. I am referring to the 228 items at the sale but also the fact that it had been scarcely one year since the Blair Sale. Maybe the market was flooded. To my mind at the high end of the collection, the Groff sale did not match up well with the Blair Sale. Blair only offered 50 Bukowski items but it seemed that each item leaped off the catalog page. Take Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail for example. Groff’s copy was inscribed by Bukowski to bibliographer Al Fogel. This is a remarkable association. There were condition issues and this would be an underlying theme of the Groff and Ronan Sales. But Blair’s copy was inscribed by Bukowski to Jon Webb. This association is monumental to Bukowski as a writer and a person. A more important copy of this book would be hard to fathom. Importantly, Blair’s copy does not have the rusty staples as is usually found (for example in the Groff copy). Groff possessed numerous Loujon Press titles including a stellar copy of It Catches My Heart in Its Hands with a lengthy inscription ($1495), but can even this splendid example of the Webbs’ work compare to Blair’s copies of the same titles. Blair had the Loujon printing plates for God’s sake.

The Blair Sale benefited from focus and a personal touch. The Bukowski section of the collection focused on the New Orleans years and a more intimate link to the period could not be found. The collection covered that period exhaustively with beautiful items. I think the decision to sell the Bukowski collection in related pieces was a smart move. From what I understand, Blair possessed a comprehensive pamphlet and chapbook collection of Bukowski as well that was sold in its entirety in a separate transaction with an institution. Possibly, Groff should have pared down the sale to the Black Sparrow items and the limited editions in particular, but this is part of the problem with the Groff collection, it lacked a solid focus. The collection was about Bukowski but not dialed in on any particular format, period, or aspect. The collection sprawled.

Blair’s collection had personality in spades. Blair was right in the thick of it in New Orleans and his fingerprints are all over the pieces of this collection. Looking over Blair’s Bukowski items, I felt that I got a glimpse into the mind and soul of Blair as a collector and a person as well as the Webbs and Buk. The collection was sold to help support Gypsy Lou Webb who was wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. The sale had a feel-good element to it that highlighted the personal relationships and literary communities around which the collection was built. These two elements along with an intense interest in the small, independent press held the Blair collection together as a cohesive whole and made it special.

A collection benefits from this cohesiveness and focus. A gathering of highspots is always nice but it lacks that mysterious it that Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarity crisscrossed the country searching for. The core of the Lyon show that made it special was not the signed Olympia Press and Grove titles, but the gathering of rare little magazines and small press titles made even more unusual by the presence of signatures. The complete run of My Own Mag, the highpoint of the sale in terms of price realized and maybe importance, epitomized this fact. A complete run might not be unique but the signatures of Burroughs, Corso and others truly make the item one of a kind. The signed copies of little magazines gave the Lyon Sale a unique flavor. As a whole these may not have been the highest prices items of the sale, but they were the items that were the most unusual and the best investments. The center of the Fox Sale was the San Francisco Scene. The Fox collection failed to perform as well as the Blair and Lyon Sales, but the in estimate and over estimate totals were better than Ronan and Groff. The San Francisco flavor probably helped the collection along. This focus is what inspired the collection and it definitely held it together as a whole. The Ronan collection while gathered in San Francisco lacked a similar sense of place.

Do the Linda King letters trump the letters in the Blair collection? This is a tough call. If so why did the Blair letters outperform King letters so drastically in relation to the estimate. The prices realized by the Blair letters vs the King / Groff letters reveal a truth about Pacific Book Auction’s practices. In both cases, we are dealing with some of the most important documents in Bukowski’s life and one-of-a-kind objects. Like the copy of Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail, these letters form the cornerstone of Buk as a writer and a man. It should be noted that Linda King’s letters were not a part of Groff’s collection but were offered as part of the sale. I assume King saw the prices fetched by Blair’s letters and felt it was time to cash in. The King / Bukowski letters barely missed the low estimate of $70,000 selling for $69,000. Blair’s letters blasted the high reserve in many cases (See lots 9-14). This tells us that the estimates for the Groff sale were too ambitious. The general consensus among people I talked to regarding the estimates at the Groff Sale was “Good Luck.” Most felt the prices were too ambitious. Looking over the counterculture sales of the last seven to eight years at PBA Galleries, the estimates of basic items that appear on the internet sites or in booksellers’ catalogs are consistently over-hyped. I have generally found that the truly unique items like the letters or manuscripts are more reigned in. This was definitely true with the Blair sale as the letters and manuscripts soared over the estimate. I also felt that the signed copies of the rarer little magazines in the Lyon Sale were not over-priced. While several items did not reach the low estimate only two item in the entire sale did not sell at all indicating that the prices were low enough to take a shot on. It would be interesting to see what items like the inscribed Marijuana Newsletters or the Gnaoua signed by Michael McClure and Burroughs, even with its condition issues, would be estimated at now.

Why do auction houses set such high estimates? Is this really in the best interest of the client let alone the prospective buyer? I have talked this over with a handful of dealers and collectors and it seems clear that the estimates scare away potential bidders. In my case, I would have taken a flyer on several items with a lower estimate including items that did not sell at all. Are the auction houses trying to keep out the riff raff? If so they would not post the auction on eBay. The fiasco surrounding the Velvet Underground acetate shows that high-ticket collectibles are a chancy proposition on the internet auction sites. Maybe that is the reason but the high estimates keep away serious bidders as well. A low estimate would get more bidders in the game and that can only result in positive results for the auction house and the seller.

Case in point, Lots 41 and 42 of the Groff Sale, limited editions of the Bukowski / Purdy letters benefitted from the fact that multiple bidders got in the game. Letter Z of 26 lettered copies was available at the Simon Finch Bukowski catalog (along with everything else imaginable) with a Bukowski pastel for roughly $650. The copies at the Groff sale included an inked Purdy poem and some extras. It could be argued that the $1200 low estimate was reasonable. In any case it was low enough to interest multiple bidders. It only takes two to tango. These two lots are a clear case of auction fever as they sold for far more than there value ($2875 and $5463 respectively).

In the handful of auctions that I have taken part in, the urge to overbid once you are engaged is very strong. The high estimates keep this from happening by encouraging bidders not to participate. This includes those leaving bids online. The impulse is that there is no way you have a chance or that the price is too high so why bother. You can’t win if you aren’t in the game. The goal should be to create action and let the action create the higher prices. So auction houses lower your estimates. It is to your benefit. I understand that the auction house has to protect against items from selling too low but the large number of unsold items may offset the benefits of inflated “low” estimates designed to start the bidding at a higher level. The Groff sale presented many common items essential for filling out a Bukowski collection or providing a solid foundation for starting one. Unfortunately the estimates may have kept the lower level collector away from the sale. These buyers were probably the best audience for much of this material.

The Ronan Sale suffered from a lack of focus and high estimates as well. The Grove Press Naked Lunch was estimated at $1000 to $1500. I understand that this is one item in over two hundred but it highlights the outlandish side of the auction houses estimates on common collectibles compared to one of a kind items. I honestly thought it was a misprint and I hope it was.

Yet the word on the street and the auction preview revealed a more serious problem. Condition. The Ronan collection was first and foremost the working library of a Beat enthusiast. It is a blue-collar collection gathered together through the persistent search of San Francisco bookstores and the diligent pursuit of authors for signatures. Ronan used his books and gathered them for use. As a result the blue collar is faded and a little frayed. Condition was not at the top of his list of concerns in gathering the collection together and there is a sense that he bought rather indiscriminately and lacked the patience to pass over problematic copies.

I understand the tendency to waver on condition. I have been known to compromise condition on occasion but I try to do it under certain parameters. My copy of the Olympia Press Soft Machine is a case in point. I bought a truly beat copy of this book. In this condition, it would struggle to reach the $100 mark. Yet the book is signed by Maurice Girodias and inscribed by Burroughs. I decided to roll the dice and take a chance that the link between Girodias and Burroughs (which parallels the focus of my collection) would outweigh the condition. The book gives my collection some personality and I have never seen Girodias’ and Burroughs’ signatures together. I made a similar play on Floating Bear #9. Being that condition is king, these gambles might not pay off financially but they do pay off in the associative meaning and in the value of my collection as literary history.

In a collection of Beat highspots like On the Road and the Olympia Naked Lunch (basically items that are available on the open market) skimping on condition is a drastic mistake. When amassing an unsigned highspot collection, impeccable condition should be the hook that sets your collection apart. The prices realized at auction and offered in catalogs for fine signed and unsigned copies of Olympia Press Naked Lunch over the years demonstrates the wisdom of this approach. I would hesitate to take a similar chance on condition on an unsigned Olympia Press or Grove title. These books are rather common and have to be as close to fine as possible. I stretched on an unsigned Ace Junkie early in my collecting career not being aware of how common they truly are. If I could do it all over again I would hold out for a signed or truly fine copy. I did not make the same mistake with my copy of Naked Lunch.

The Ronan collection possessed less-than-stellar copies of major collectibles like On the Road, Dr. Sax and Naked Lunch. These items suffered and fell below the low estimate. In some cases, a signature saved an item in questionable condition. This was clearly the case with some of the Lyon little magazines. Given their condition, several items in the Lyon Sale would have gone unsold. But the magazines in his collection just are not available signed very often. As a result, collectors will take a shot on a suspect item even with major trouble spots like a dampstain or a library bookstamp. Or so I like to tell myself. In some isolated cases, the Ronan sale managed to have a signature and condition. In those cases, the books sold solidly. The signed copy of Gary Snyder’s Rip Rap ($2070) is a case in point. This book is notoriously fragile and tough to find in collectible condition let alone signed. Ronan hit the mark here and he was rewarded with one of the best performers at his sale

The question remains were the poor sales at the recent auction the result of a perfect storm of circumstances like condition, focus, saturation, and high estimates or is there something larger to worry about in the collecting of Beat Literature. Let’s look at Burroughs in the last five major sales at Pacific Book Auctions. (See chart.) This chart highlights that collecting “A” Burroughs items is something of a losing proposition unless you have a hook of some sort. This is true to some extent about all authors but seems especially on point with Burroughs and other Beats. Kerouac is the exception that proves the rule. Kerouac’s A items can command solid prices unsigned across the board. Kerouac items will generally sell at auction but many Burroughs titles need a little push like a signature. That is why you usually see the Burroughs items at Pacific Book Auctions signed. That extra touch makes them worth the auction houses’ while. I would advise against being a completist in collecting Burroughs and thinking that inclusion will set you over the top. Signatures and condition are a must. The prices for Gnaoua, Ace Junkies, any Olympia title, Grove titles and Roosevelt after Inauguration over the last decade at auction and at rare book dealers fuel this argument.

The fate of Grove titles at auction and in bookstores suggests several points about the Burroughs market. In his comments on the internet, Ken Lopez states that the mid-level rarities are drying up on the eBay and other electronic sources. We could be heading for a new scarcity of mid-level rarities. Granted I need tougher items in my collection now, but around the turn-of-the-century high quality Burroughs items seemed to be everywhere. Just look at some of the stuff I reported on my old website: the William Burroughs Cyber Library. The increasing prices for signed Grove titles particularly Soft Machine highlight this trend. Signed copies of these titles are just not turning up on a regular basis. Picking up these items at auction over the last five or ten years might not have been a bad bet. They were undervalued. Yet the key is signatures and condition. Given the larger print runs of some of the Grove titles these factors are a must. They, like most Burroughs titles, need a hook.

In fact the Burroughs collector needs a hook in the actual formation of a collection. Being a generalist or plucking highspots are not enough. As I have mentioned on the Bunker before, letters and manuscripts are gold. These items have proven again and again at auction, on eBay and at rare bookstores to perform incredibly well. Unfortunately, the well has run dry on these items. Burroughs manuscripts and letters will continue to trickle to the market over the years but with the Jackson Sale to NYPL the hope of getting a substantial piece of the Word Hoard is over. But those who were lucky enough to get ahold of these pieces have a valuable asset. Building around those isolated manuscripts and letters is essential. For example if you have a letter or group of letters that mention a certain aspect of Burroughs’ career, exploit that asset. The Blair sale offered a manuscript of Burroughs’ Oui article from 1973. That letter could be the centerpiece of a Burroughs or Beat men’s magazine collection. A letter discussing the rejection of Naked Lunch by Olympia Press from 1957 is still in private hands. In addition the Blair Sale offered a section of Soft Machine. These letters could form the basis along with catalogs, magazines, contracts, and Beat Hotel items like photographs of Burroughs in Paris or Olympia Press collection.

The focus on letters need not be so expensive. Letters and memorabilia from the Kansas years are still available. This would include artwork. As time goes on, the time at Lawrence will get the study and treatment that it deserves. Currently it is a largely unexplored period in Burroughs’ creative output. A solid collection encompassing ephemera, memorabilia, books, and artwork could be gathered together. The key is focus and specialization. On a the highest level, it worked for Nelson Lyon and Edwin Blair. On a lower level, such specialization will makes your Burroughs collection stand out by amassing undervalued and underappreciated items. Being a completist in these less publicized areas is more fun and more affordable than battling the crowds bidding on the highspots.

Clearly according to periodicals like the Wall Street Journal, collecting is as popular as ever and a great way to diversify one’s investments, but we have to look at who these new collectors are. According to the Journal, they are young Wall Street types. One of the hottest new collectibles is toy banks. Are these the type of guys that are going to be interested in the Beats and particularly Burroughs? The anti-establishment, counterculture stance of the Beats will probably not appeal to these new collectors. Yet historically the Beats have appealed to several generations of high-end collectors like the rock and roll market of the 1960s, the baby boomer generation, the Young Hollywood set, and the internet millionaires. Anytime money or power merges with anti-establishment sentiment the Beats and Burroughs will be a good bet. Is it any wonder the Clinton and Tech Boom years were such glory days for Beat collectibles? The pendulum is always swinging. I would guess that a new generation of collector will develop that will look not to toy banks, but to Beat memorabilia as a passion and an investment. Given the current political and financial climate that is generating new, young collectors, we are in a bit of a lull.

Of course, this focuses on the United States as the source of the boom in collectibles. Clearly the former Soviet Union and the Far East are the new hotspots for collectors. I am unaware whether the Beat Generation has made a huge splash in these new centers of wealth. I don’t see why not. Japan has proven to be infatuated with all things American for years including counterculture items like rock and roll and jazz. The Beats and the counteculture provided a major source of inspiration for the fight for freedom of speech, print and human rights in the Cold War countries, China and Vietnam. Writers such as Allen Ginsberg were published clandestinely, passed around, and read in whispers. Beat writers traveled to these areas as they thawed out and reached westward. The question remains if the newly wealthy will collect writers that challenged consumerism, mass market proliferation, and unfettered global capitalism.

But as one dealer stated to me, how is the next generation of collector going to find out about and appreciate the small press items that make up much of Burroughs’ and the Beat’s publications? In a digital age, how are the new generation of collectors going to be drawn to the world of mimeo and letterpress, surrounded as they are by the typographical wizardry of glossy magazines and the internet? It is an interesting question and for resale value I would like to think that the retro quality of these publications will capture the imaginations of those interested in design and the book as object. Everything comes back into fashion. This much seems certain: libraries were, are, and will be interested in such early Beat works as important documents in the history of 20th Century print. Yet as Nicholson Baker makes clear in The Double Fold, the question remains whether they will want or need hard copies in an age of electronic reproduction. Quite possibly, if these books and magazines are not relegated to the dustbin of history, they will be relegated to the dustbin behind the library as one lucky reader of RealityStudio found out. If so I hope I am there to find them and place them on my shelf.

The Groff and Ronan sales raise many questions about the future of Beat collectibles, but like the current real estate crisis the astute collector is in this game for the long haul despite the wheeling and dealing of the new breed of collector. As the Wall Street Journal states, a Burroughs collection should be treated like a stock deal. Buy undervalued properties like the Kansas Years or develop unique and comprehensive portfolios. If you are going to build around an Olympia Press Naked Lunch buy wisely and complement it with a different focus than a highspot or “A” list collection. Hopefully I will never have to depend on my collection to reward me financially. The thrill of the search and the use of the fruits of my labor are repayment enough. Yet this is small consolation when an object close to your heart slips out of your hands for less than you hoped.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

For background, be sure to read Jed Birmingham’s overview of Nomad.

What was the literary landscape at the time Nomad 1 came out in the Winter of 1959?

Poetry was emerging from a period in which formal and academic values dominated the literary scene. My co-editor Don Factor and I were particularly excited by the emergence of the Beat poets and other figures who drew on the inspiration of their own lives, however chaotic, rather than on their knowledge of the classics.

What was your background that lead you to get interested in literature and eventually a little magazine?

I had both a scholarly and an aesthetic interest in the little magazine genre. I had purchased a used copy of Hoffman, Allen and Ulrich’s The Little Magazine, a pioneering study of American little magazines (Princeton University Press, 1946), and at U.C.L.A. (where I was a history major) I wrote my senior thesis on the history of transition, the famous little magazine of the Parisian avant-garde of the Twenties. Donald was studying at U.S.C., where my mother was taking an advanced degree. When she heard that he was also interested in modern poetry she put us together.

Don had a collection of recordings by contemporary poets and I remember we were very stimulated by these. Also there was a revival of interest in poetry readings in Los Angeles at about this time. Peter Yates, who had founded the famous concert series Evenings on the Roof (originally on the roof of his own home) now collaborated with the violinist Sol Babitz to present poetry readings on this site and at the Babitz home (where the teen-aged Eve Babitz, future L.A. confessional novelist, was an undoubted ornament). Don and I and a number of our friends attended these readings on a regular basis — without being particularly drawn to any of the poets on offer. Our closest association with an established poet was with Tom McGrath, who invited us to his house for more evenings devoted to discussions of poetry — our feeble attempts and his own more accomplished ones.

Los Angeles could boast of only one significant little magazine at the time, Coastlines, and from our perspective the tenor of this publication was still too formal and too wedded to old-fashioned left-wing politics. (Its setting is the subject of Estelle Gershgoren Novak’s anthology, Poets of the Non-Existent City, Los Angeles in the McCarthy Era, University of New Mexico Press, 2002.) We were charmed by the scandalous rumor that Ginsberg, who had been invited to read by the Coastlines editors, responded by taking off all his clothes. So we decided to take the clothes off poetry by starting our own little magazine.

Nomad looks a lot like Yugen in appearance. How did the design of the magazine come about? You used the same printer as City Lights. How did you decide on a printer?

We did not consciously base our format on any other magazine. At an early stage in our plans we were introduced to James Boyer May, who not only had his own magazine, Trace, but served as the U.S. representative for Villiers Publications Ltd., a London firm that was already publishing Ferlinghetti’s Pocket Poet Series. Boyer May went over the technical particulars involved in typography and layout and helped with the format of the first issue. Soon thereafter we obtained the services of Richard Langendorf, a student of architecture (he later designed a house for Don in Beverly Hills). Dick served as a kind of design editor for us, gathering illustrations, designing the cover of our second issue, and assisting in layouts. I did most of the layouts for later issues. The cover illustration for the first issue was drawn by my childhood friend, Leigh Peffer — later long-time proprietor of Wilshire Books in Santa Monica.

Quite possibly Nomad is best known for having published Charles Bukowski at an early date. In fact before his first book, Flower Fist and Bestial Wail, in 1960. How did Bukowski come to open the first issue of Nomad?

Bukowski was just beginning to publish his work and we were happy to serve as a vehicle for his heretofore unrecognized talents. I think we could sense, from the outset, that here we had a poet who possessed the imagination, the fluency and the freedom in his choice of subject matter that heretofore we had experienced only in the Beats. I suppose, as well, we were happy to include an L.A. poet who could rank with the best of the avant-garde.

Curiously, given his later celebrity, it has to be noted that during the Nomad era Bukowski self-consciously took no part in the public poetry scene. When our branch of the Pacifica network, KPFK, wanted to present a reading of his work on public radio, he asked me to read his work for him. This I did. He told me he enjoyed my reading, and I hope he wasn’t just being polite — though that doesn’t sound like Bukowski. We continued to publish his work whenever possible. I would say that his poem “So Much For The Knifers, So Much For The Bellowing Dawns,” which we used as a prologue to our “Manifesto” Issue, epitomized the anti-academic tone we were keen to sponsor.

The early issues feature Judson Crews of Naked Ear and James Boyer May of Trace. Can you discuss the importance of those two editors in the little magazine scene of the fifties?

Crews was one of those inexhaustible whirlwinds of the little magazine publishing scene, but we never met and he had no influence on our efforts. Boyer May, as the representative of our publisher in London, had a lot to do with the success of our magazine and he served as an unofficial advisor in a number of ways. He was a splendid chap who knew many figures in the little magazine world and I always enjoyed my visits to his home in the Silverlake district — where some visiting editor or poet was often on display.

How did you go about soliciting material for the new magazine?

Contributions came from many of the L.A. poets we knew, and we also placed an entry in Trace, describing our efforts. I rented a post office box in Culver City, not far from where my family lived — but a major nuisance as a collection point, it turned out, when we moved to Beechwood Canyon in Hollywood in the summer of 1958. Don and I now sat back and waited for the flood of literary genius to overtake us. What we got instead was sincere but staid, a swamp of clichés and posturing with (not to be too unkind) endless entries by little old ladies with three names. We soon realized that if we wanted to produce an avant-garde magazine we would have to write to poets whose work we admired. And so we did. I also began to make almost annual summer pilgrimages to New York, where I met a number of the poets later featured in our final edition.

The “Manifesto” issue is just a fantastic example of the value of a little magazine. You seem to have gotten responses from all corners of the literary landscape.

Some of these contributions were unsolicited — we announced publication of this project in Nomad 4 and there may have been a mention in Trace. But again we wrote to poets whose work excited us at the time. We did have an eclectic taste when it came to modern poetry, and we were always willing to include contemporary poetry written under a variety of styles and purposes.

Can you give some details on William Burroughs’ contribution to the “Manifesto” issue? The selection is from Minutes to Go. What was your familiarity with Burroughs’ work such as Minutes to Go, Naked Lunch or even Junkie?

I cannot recall how the Burroughs’ contribution came about, but we certainly had read some of his fiction by this point. Perhaps we had written to Gregory Corso — with our letter catching up to him while he was in Paris — and the collective entry may have been produced there. Under any circumstances we were delighted to receive this response.

I was surprised to see Louis Zukofsky in the issue. Why was his work back in demand in the 1960s after his initial splash in the Objectivist collection of 1931?

If I recall correctly, Zukofsky was one of Allen Ginsberg’s mentors. Zukofsky continued to write poetry long after his heyday and to send it out to editors, and his contribution may have been unsolicited. Incidentally, we also got regular submissions from Ginsberg’s father — but we never published any of his poems.

For me as a collector I first became aware of Nomad because of the Bukowski and Burroughs contribution. Who are some of the lesser known or unjustly forgotten writers that you were proud to publish in Nomad?

None of them have been forgotten by us, but I suppose that many of our authors have slipped from the pages of notoriety — that’s inevitable. One of the poets we were happiest to see in print for the first time was Paul Raboff, a close friend and a former classmate of Don’s at Beverly Hills High. His imaginative and rhythmic work appears in a number of our issues — and he is still writing today. He moved to Israel in the Sixties and has published a number of books, still writing in English. He sent me a new poem last week.

Describe the influence and importance of the New American Poetry anthology of Donald Allen?

The Allen anthology appeared in the mid-course of our efforts, 1960, and we were tremendously excited to see a successor to some of the more academic anthologies that had represented American poetry before this. The collection also introduced us to a number of poets whose work we did not know, but whom we would now try to include in our own publication. I don’t believe that we deliberately set out to alter or improve on Allen’s categories and divisions. But particularly when it came to the New York scene we encountered a new set of affinities and associations and, given the eclectic nature of our editorial philosophy, we set out to represent them.

How did you gather materials for Nomad / New York?

As I have mentioned earlier I was a frequent summertime visitor to New York and by 1960 I had met a number of the authors who would later appear in what turned out to be our final issue. I spent most of the summer months in New York that year and in the three subsequent years as well. In 1962 I sublet the flat of Mitchell Goodman and Denise Levertov in a building later destroyed to make way for the construction of the Twin Towers. I had lots of good advice on which New York poets to include from my friend Michael Benedikt and from Robert Kelly, who was a proprietor of the Blue Yak bookstore in the East Village, a wonderful poet’s hangout. Kelly belonged to a group that called themselves the “Deep Image” poets, and I met them all. John Bernard Myers of the Tibor di Nagy gallery was a friend of Don’s and he agreed to put together a selection of the work of a number of poets, many of whom had a foot in the art world: Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Barbara Guest, Kenward Elmslie, and Bill Berkson. Incidentally, the reference to this group as the “School of New York” in this issue was evidently, but almost by accident, one of the very first uses of this phrase to describe these poets.

What was your sense of the New York Scene in the early 1960s?

New York was a tremendously exciting place during these years and there were undoubtedly many changes under way, not just in the literary scene, but in all the arts, in popular music, and even in public radio. I loved the café and bar scene (I believe I first met Joel Oppenheimer in the men’s room of the famous Cedar Tavern). I revelled in the bookstores and the poetry readings. Don was drawn to the art scene and his essay on Pop Art in our last issue was one of the first to delineate some of the characteristics and contributions of this style.

In the last issue of Nomad you announce a new magazine called Movement that was more critical and political in nature. What lead you to go in that direction? I don’t think Movement ever appeared. What happened there?

As a historian-in-training I had always maintained one foot in the world of politics and society, but there were no divided loyalties in my mind here: today we can see how the attitudes toward government and culture first visible in avant-garde literature soon spilled over into the wider hippie movement and, of course, the anti-war effort. So I thought it might be nice to launch a non-literary magazine at this time — but there were immediate problems with fund-raising, and the fact that my new co-editor, Barbara Corradini, lived in New York, while I lived in L.A., didn’t help matters. Movement remained only an idea.

What happened that caused Nomad to end?

There were just so many other things in our lives at this time that the energy wasn’t there any more. I was completing my doctoral dissertation, I got married in 1964, and that fall I was appointed an instructor in the History Department at U.C.L.A. I was overwhelmed with course preparation, Historiography and 20th Century U.S. History here, and then Western Civilization at Michigan State University — where I took up an appointment in the Humanities Department in 1965. Don began to concentrate ever more on the art scene (he compiled a fabulous collection of contemporary art at one time) and then moved into motion pictures (he produced Robert Altman’s second film, That Cold Day in the Park, in 1969). We actually compiled an issue twelve. I remember that it was to contain some poetry by Andy Warhol’s protégé Gerard Malanga and some of Michael Benedikt’s “Litanies.” But Nomad 12 never appeared.

Reading through Nomad, I feel that the magazine really had its pulse on what was new. Early publications of Bukowski and Burroughs; Pop Art; a supplement to the Allen anthology; a political direction before the merging of poetry and politics in the late 1960s. To what do you attribute the forward nature of Nomad?

It was perhaps a conscious decision not only to print creative work by our poets but also to offer them a format for statements of literary philosophy, such as those provided in our “Manifesto” issue by Robert Creeley, Charles Bukowksi and Joel Oppenheimer or those submitted by many poets in our New York issue. In addition we began to publish transcribed interviews on poetic matters conducted by David Ossman at WBAI: Kenneth Rexroth in our ninth issue, LeRoi Jones (as he was then called) in our New York issue.

What are you most proud of in the publication of Nomad?

I think that we hoped we were working toward the widening of poetic horizons — to include both new styles and a broader range of acceptable subject matter. I think we were proud of the fact that we succeeded in presenting a wide variety of schools and literary cultures — so that in addition to all of the New York poets already mentioned we could also include work by Bay Area figures like Philip Whalen, Lew Welch and Michael McClure, and dozens of poets who belonged to no school or tendency but their own. You can see our desire to widen the net of literary activity in the appointment, in our last year, of Anselm Hollo as our European Correspondent.

A year after our last publication I was undoubtedly pleased that, in my survey of the avant-garde writers for my doctoral dissertation, where over seventy-five magazines were listed by sixty-six respondents, Nomad made it into the top ten (sharing this position with Trobar) in response to the question, “In your opinion, which have been the most significant little or literary magazines published since the Second World War?” The other front-runners, incidentally, began with The Black Mountain Review and then included Evergreen Review, Origin, Yugen, Big Table, Floating Bear, Kulchur, Measure, and El Corno Emplumado.

What is the role and future of the little magazine in the digital age?

This is a really good question because life on the World Wide Web can be very evanescent and, though it’s nice to look things up on your computer, there is nothing like the pleasure of holding something worth reading in your own hand. Perhaps publication on demand, an intermediate step, might be useful in the production of some magazines in the future. I am still wedded to the era of print and this year I plan to publish three books — one on the dogs and their owners in our local park here in London, then a biography of my step-father, the composer Ingolf Dahl, and finally an introduction to long-distance footpath walking in Britain. Perhaps we are being unduly pessimistic about the fate of the little magazine in the digital age; after all, we still have concerts in the age of the compact disc.

How did your background in little magazine publication affect your subsequent academic career?

My mentor at U.C.L.A., George Mowry, knowing of my involvement in the world of avant-garde literature, suggested that I choose this very world as the topic for my doctoral dissertation, mentioned above. I set out in the summer of 1963, therefore, to do my research, visiting a number of libraries and returning to New York for more first-hand interviews. My Nomad reputation stood me in good stead in my approach to a large number of avant-garde figures.

In the fall I undertook a similar trip to San Francisco, where I interviewed Lawrence Ferlinghetti (who had given an L.A. poetry reading sponsored by our magazine), Robert Duncan, Michael McClure, Kenneth Rexroth, and Allen Ginsberg (whose “American Change” we had published in Nomad 9). I will never forget the day I set out to interview Rexroth and Ginsberg — nor will any other American alive on November 22, 1963. I first heard of the Kennedy assassination as I was on the bus at the outset of my research day. I spent hours on Ginsberg’s sofa, watching the television coverage of the day’s tragedy. I remember that Allen was worried that the event might be blamed on Fidel Castro, whose revolution he supported.

A History of the American Literary Avant-garde Since World War II was completed at the end of the summer of 1964. I never published the volume, partly because the dates of the study were so open-ended, literally never ending, and so many of the figures I had included were still active. The work is still available on microfilm, however, and I know that it has been consulted by a number of scholars, even recently.

Since your Nomad days, have you had any connection with the world of avant-garde literature?

Only indirectly. At Michigan State University I twice taught courses on avant-garde literature for undergraduates and to adult education students as well. At the American School in London, where I began work in 1982, I included avant-garde literary materials in my courses on contemporary American literature in the English Department, whose chairmanship I held from 1994 to 2002, when I retired. My wife Dorothy, who was the special projects coordinator at ASL, invited Billy Collins to serve as a teacher in residence in 2002. By the time he arrived for his week with us, he had been named America’s Poet Laureate. We spent a lot of time with him and, naturally, I shared with him copies of Nomad. He was instantly able to recognize our position in the movement (small “m”) just by looking at a list of our contributors but, beyond that, I would say that Billy, in his own work, is very much the inheritor of the stylistic revolution we had sponsored forty years earlier.

For many years I lost track of Don Factor, but about ten years ago I suddenly received an e-mail. He and I were both living in London, as it turned out, and, in fact, there is only about a thirty minute walk between our place in Maida Vale and that of Don and Anna in Notting Hill. Our friendship was revived, with frequent visits to one another’s homes and on joint ventures which the four of us subsequently undertook in India, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Venice, Bilbao, New York, L.A., and Palm Springs, where the Factors spend much of the year now. Don and I share a melancholy moment whenever we learn of the passing of one of our contributors, but we enjoy many a happy moment whenever we stop to recall our Nomadic days.