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

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Harold Norse passed away in June 2009 in San Francisco at the age of 92. For certain “lucky” artists or writers, one of the quirks of old age is that the longer you live the more relevant you become. The critical establishment can no longer ignore you because you slowly become one of the few remaining links to a bygone age and a valuable source of information. Norse was a living library and, it should be remembered, a talented poet. As Memoirs of a Bastard Angel attests, Norse seemingly rubbed shoulders (and more) with everybody who was anybody in 20th century art and letters, particularly in gay circles.

Norse got his start in the literary world as a part of W.H. Auden’s coterie in the late 1930s. At the time, Auden was the premier poet in the post-Eliot universe. By the 1950s, Norse switched teams, poetically, and came under the influence of William Carlos Williams, who called Norse one of the finest poets of his generation. At this time, Williams attracted young poets like moths to the flame. Ginsberg came under Williams’ influence in a similar manner. Norse met Ginsberg at the Beat Hotel in the late 1950s. At the Hotel, Norse came under the influence of Burroughs and, for a brief time, experimented with the cut-up. Beat Hotel is the major example of Norse’s toying with the technique. Norse continued to wander and eventually landed in San Francisco. Norse met and corresponded with Charles Bukowski, eventually settling into the Left Coast literary scene for good.

Given the fact that you could play Six Degrees of Harold Norse, it should have been no surprise that Norse corresponded with Jeff Nuttall. Like Norse, Nuttall was an underappreciated artist and poet who knew everybody in the international underground. Robert Bank, RealityStudio.org European correspondent, passed along a few letters from Norse to Nuttall from the late 1960s. These letters capture a moment in time and give some sense of Norse as an individual and of his interests as a writer.

Harold Norse to Jeff Nuttall
20 Oct 1966

Harold Norse to Jeff Nuttall
20 Oct 1966

Harold Norse to Jeff Nuttall
23 Dec 1967

Harold Norse to Jeff Nuttall
23 Dec 1967

Harold Norse to Jeff Nuttall
20 Jan 1968

Harold Norse to Jeff Nuttall 20 Jan 1968

Harold Norse to Jeff Nuttall
20 Jan 1968

Harold Norse to Jeff Nuttall
26 Apr 1968

Harold Norse to Jeff Nuttall
26 Apr 1968

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Front cover

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Front Endpaper

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Front Endpaper

Bulletin from Nothing 2
William Burroughs

Bulletin from Nothing 2
William Burroughs

Bulletin from Nothing 2
William Burroughs

Bulletin from Nothing 2
William Burroughs

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Roxie Powell and Claude Pélieu

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Claude Pélieu

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Claude Pélieu

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Claude Pélieu

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Claude Pélieu

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Claude Pélieu

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Jeff Nuttall

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Jeff Nuttall

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Claude Pélieu

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Chano Pozo

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Jean-Jacques Lebel

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Bob Kaufman

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Charles Plymell

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Norman O Mustill

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Norman O Mustill

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Claude Pélieu

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Ed Sanders and Peter Orlovsky

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Claude Pélieu

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Claude Pélieu

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Charles Plymell

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Mary Beach

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Mary Beach

Bulletin from Nothing 2
Back Cover

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Front cover

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Endpaper

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Claude Pelieu

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Claude Pelieu

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Claude Pelieu

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Mary Beach

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Claude Pelieu

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Claude Pelieu

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Jeff Nuttall

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Antonin Artaud

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Antonin Artaud

Bulletin from Nothing 1
William S. Burroughs

Bulletin from Nothing 1
William S. Burroughs

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Charles Plymell

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Roxie Powell

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Benjamin Peret

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Benjamin Peret

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Ed Sanders

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Bob Kaufman

Bulletin from Nothing 1
David Omer Bearden

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Leland S. Meyerzove

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Claude Pelieu

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Charles Plymell

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Mary Beach

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Norman O Mustill

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Norman O Mustill

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Norman O Mustill

Bulletin from Nothing 1
Back Cover

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

None of us obsessed with William Burroughs are fascinated by the same writer. Like the agent / addict’s face in Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, our impressions of Burroughs are constantly in flux. When I first fell under Burroughs’ spell, I wanted to learn everything I could about the events surrounding the composition of Naked Lunch. Burroughs was Naked Lunch. The key period was 1954-1959. Tangier, Dr. Dent, the Beat Hotel, Chicago Review and Big Table, the letters to Ginsberg. It was there that I focused my attention.  

As time goes on, I find myself re-reading the “Burroughs at Large” chapter in Ted Morgan’s Literary Outlaw. I want to learn more about Burroughs’ time in the Beat Hotel during the writing of Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded. The years that matter are now 1962-1966. Increasingly, it seems to me that this is Burroughs at the height of his powers. The creative output is considerable: The Ticket That Exploded, Dead Fingers Talk, Nova Express, APO-33, Time, the My Own Mag collaboration, the sound collages collected in Real English Tea Made Here, experimental films, the Third Mind project, countless little magazine appearances.  

It could be argued that this was also Burroughs at the height of his influence. For example, he helped launch a revival in science fiction. With Naked Lunch and the cut-up novels, Burroughs was understood to be at the forefront of experimental writing. He was featured in the Donald Allen and Robert Creeley New American Story anthology, which attempted to map the landscape of new fiction just as the New American Poetry anthology did for verse. In Tangier, Paris, and New York, literary scenes revolved around Burroughs. For example, during his time in New York City in 1964/1965, the New York avant-garde celebrated Burroughs for almost a year with parties, readings, and little magazine attention. Key Lower East Side players like Ted Berrigan and Ed Sanders incorporated Burroughs into their creative operations. Avant-garde film may have been the most vibrant art form of the 1960s, and films, like Towers Open Fire, placed Burroughs’ name and work in discussions on the topic. From 1962-1966, Burroughs’ presence was felt throughout the Western world in the realms of literature, art, and film.  

Maybe that is why I am so drawn to Burroughs’ little magazine appearances of this period. If I had to list my Mount Rushmore of little magazines, it would include: Semina (1957-1964), My Own Mag (1963-1966), Fuck You, a magazine of the arts (1962-1965), and Floating Bear (1962-1969). Semina is widely understood to be a work of art, but I consider the three mimeos on that level. They should be approached in the same manner as other artists’ books of the period. To me, My Own Mag is the most interesting thing Burroughs did in the 1960s. But I have lost all objectivity. I can no longer look at these magazines with a clear head and a steady eye. Handling them, my palms sweat, my head spins.

Take Bulletin from Nothing. How do I explain my strong feelings for something as seemingly irrelevant as a publication that maybe only a few hundred people read and that ran for two only issues? Let me try to explain myself.

Burroughs appears in both issues of Bulletin from Nothing. In the first issue, Burroughs contributes “Composite Text.” Issue two features “Palm Sunday Tape.” To be honest, these are not my favorite cut-ups from the period. The Dead Star, APO-33, and Time are not only longer and more complex but I think ultimately more successful. Maybe it is the merging of text and image in these cut-ups that appeal so strongly to me. I also like that Dead Star, APO-33 and Time have a central theme that Burroughs works on multiple levels. In all three cases, Burroughs detourns the very texts from which he is getting his material while challenging various forms of commercial and corporate media. “Composite Text” and “Palm Sunday Tape” are much more modest in form and content.

So my love of Bulletin from Nothing does not stem from Burroughs’ contributions to the magazine. Instead, its power comes from the company Burroughs keeps and the associations I make from the grouping. It is interesting to me that Burroughs appears with Charley Plymell, Claude Pélieu, Mary Beach, Norman O. Mustill, Jeff Nuttall, J.J. Lebel, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Bob Kaufman. Bulletin from Nothing is a time capsule from San Francisco circa 1965. I cannot help but think of that famous shot of Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Welch, McClure, Brautigan, and others in front of City Lights taken by Larry Keenan (see the cover of City Lights Journal 3). Like that iconic photo, Bulletin from Nothing provides a snapshot of the scene around City Lights. Beach and Pélieu distributed many of their publications with the assistance of City Lights and were associated with the bookstore. Jan Herman, who was Ferlinghetti’s assistant in the late 1960s, told me that City Lights used a large Midwest offset printer (Edwards Bros.) for City Lights publications. Previously, City Lights sent their books, like Howl, to Villiers in England. The Edwards’ printing rep offered to produce all of Herman’s side projects through an industrial printer in Richmond,CA. That is how Herman got his Nova Broadcasts published. City Lights distributed the Nova Broadcast books. In the mid to the late 1960s, City Lights was one of the home bases for the San Francisco little magazine scene.

Plymell did the actual printing of Bulletin from Nothing on a large press at Ralph Ackerman’s shop on Mission Street in San Francisco. APO-33 (Beach Books) and So Who Owns Death TV (the first printing with the silver ink on black stock) were printed by Plymell. Plymell also printed Herman’s San Francisco Earthquake No. 1 on an offset machine. I have written about Plymell as a publisher before in discussing NOW, another incredible artifact of the San Francisco Scene of the mid-1960 and very similar to Bulletin from Nothing in content. By no means was Plymell a fine printer like Andrew Hoyem of Arion Press who came out of Dave Haselwood’s Auerhahn Press, but he does have a definite sense of graphic design that I find very appealling. NOW NOW NOW defintely stands out among SF little mags. Bulletin was not a mimeo job. Reproducing the collages was beyond the capability of mimeo. In fact, Plymell never printed on a mimeograph although he was a key publisher in the rather nebulous and ill-defined Mimeo Revolution.  

Bulletin from Nothing appeals to me as an object. I like that it is oversize, yet short and to the point. In contrast, I love the content of Black Mountain Review, but it is presented in a boring academic journal fashion. Most of my favorite magazines are 8 1/2 by 11 or larger (A-4 or legal). I dislike the professional look of perfect-bound magazines and prefer staples. The “bindings” of Fuck You, My Own Mag, or C are my favorite, even if they are completely impractical and unstable. Three quick hits on the left hand side with an industrial stapler. Stacks of sheets strewn all over an apartment or bookstore filled with cigarette and pot smoke. The community of collating parties. The staple binding of Bulletin from Nothing is more practical and creates a panorama effect. This is typical of Plymell’s magazine work. He has an affinity for offset and the fold. The page really opens out and spreads before you. Lots of space. This is great for open form poetry. I like big margins and blank space. Is anything more beautiful than the big pages of The Jargon Society’s Maximus Poems? Such pages give the feel of a canvas or a gallery wall which works for the collages featured in Bulletin from Nothing. Plus they are easy to scan.

Flipping through Bulletin from Nothing, the Chicago Review from the Spring of 1958 immediately comes to mind. In that issue, Burroughs was listed as a San Francisco Poet. At the time, Burroughs had never been to San Francisco and his work had nothing in common with Renaissance poets like Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, or William Everson. Like that game on Sesame Street, Burroughs was not like the others and he did not belong. He stood apart. Nobody was doing what he was doing. He was a freak. Yet in the pages of Bulletin from Nothing, Burroughs fits in. In less than a decade Burroughs had become a writer of reputation and influence. He was at the forefront of a style of writing and he had followers. Even if he was not there in person, Burroughs had made himself a home in the experimental literary scene in San Francisco.  

Yet the Bulletin from Nothing also takes me further back in time to Paris, New York and Berlin / Cologne immediately after World War I. Bulletin from Nothing wears its love of Dada on its sleeve and in its title. Dada is a nonsense word that in German means anything from hobbyhorse to nothing at all. Francis Picabia stated in 1915, “Dada signifies nothing, it is nothing, nothing, nothing.” Over the years there have been several publications called “bulletin” such as the International Bulletin of Surrealism published in 1935, as well as the obscure, and close to my heart, Birmingham Bulletin that featured Burroughs’ “Unfinished Cigarette” in 1963. Yet the “bulletin” in question here might refer to two specific Dada publications. Bulletin D, an exhibition catalog as magazine was edited by Max Ernst. Bulletin from Nothing functions in a similar manner. Issue six of Dada was entitled Bulletin Dada. Pélieu and Beach’s magazine plays with that title. The collage cover provides a further reference to Bulletin from Nothing‘s Dada roots. The ransom note look comes from Dada collage and the roulette wheel references Duchamp’s Monte Carlo Bond from 1924, which was reprinted in the Christmas issue of Xxe Siècle in 1938.

I like Bulletin from Nothing because it provides material documentation of Burroughs’ ties to Dada. Cut-up practitioners like Pélieu were inspired by Burroughs but they were also cognizant of the cut-up’s origins in Dada. Burroughs and Gysin make these origins clear in their various manifestos and interviews on the cut-up. In fact, much of Burroughs’ work in the mid-1960s links back to Dada. Sound collages, scrapbooks, cut-up poems and texts all formed a major part of Dada art production. In 1958, Ginsberg and Corso met Tristan Tzara at the Deux Magots. Throughout his life, Ginsberg made an effort to meet his literary idols. He famously sat at Ezra Pound’s feet in Italy in the late 1960s thrusting the work of younger poets under the silent Pound’s nose and forcing him to listen to Dylan and the Beatles. Meeting Tzara at Deux Magots conjures up a host of literary allusions and connections. Dada, Lost Generation, Existentialists. Ginsberg would have been relished all of them. Burroughs and Ginsberg met up with Céline. Around the same time, Burroughs, Ginsberg and Corso met Duchamp and Man Ray. Lebel set up the meeting which was also attended by André Breton’s wife (Breton himself was sick). For Ginsberg, Duchamp was an legendary figure, like a movie star. Burroughs no doubt knew of Duchamp. Ian Sommerville had a homage (consciously or not is open for debate) to The Bicycle Wheel in his room at the Beat Hotel and the sculpture is featured in several photographs of the period. So the figure of Duchamp in a small sense was a ghost in the Hotel. At Lebel’s party, Ginsberg kissed Duchamp’s feet in a camp show of admiration and respect. In an act of Dada, Corso cut off Duchamp’s tie. Ginsberg encouraged Duchamp to bless Burroughs with a kiss. Duchamp obliged. It was a passing of the torch. Duchamp could be considered el hombre invisible of the Dada scene. Burroughs was the Beats’ Duchamp. Mysterious, fascinating, aloof, cerebral, scientific. Artist as chess master. Art Buchwald wrote up the event for the Herald Tribune. Unlike some people I consider the label Beat to be important. Burroughs is a Beat, but that does not mean I do not also consider him a member of other groupings. Burroughs’ presence in Bulletin from Nothing reminds me that Burroughs was a Neo-Dadaist as well.  

A crazed Burt Lancaster graces the cover of Bulletin from Nothing 2. This cover has a Pop Art feel. Taking the cover of issue one into consideration this is not surprising. In the early 1960s when coming to terms with the beginnings of Pop and struggling with how to place and define it, art critics called Pop, Neo-Dada. Artists like Warhol were viewed as warmed-over Duchamp. Interestingly Duchamp exploded back on the art scene in 1963 with his first retrospective showcased at the Pasadena Art Museum. Curated by Walter Hopps, this is one of the most famous and influential retrospectives of the twentieth century and a key moment in modern museum history. For a brief period in the early 1960s, Los Angeles made a play to become the center of American art. So it makes sense that Warhol’s big break came in Los Angeles in the summer of 1962. A one-man show at the Ferus Gallery, also put together by Hopps, featured a room full of Campbell’s Soup Cans. The show closed shortly after the death of Marilyn Monroe, which inspired the Pop Marilyns. Warhol’s transition from commercial artist to artistic genius was assured. He never looked back. The Hollywood glitz and glamour, the seediness of Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, the sense of superficiality and the unreal. Los Angeles was tailor-made and ready for Warhol. Pélieu was interested in Pop so that influence is there in Bulletin.

If LA had the Ferus, SF had The Batman Gallery. Charles Plymell had a show of collages at the Batman in 1963. Wallace Berman was a key figure. He famously fled LA, that City of Degenerate Angels, to set up shop in San Francisco. Bulletin from Nothing has that junk art, mail art, assemblage feel to it, but whether it is there or not, I always see Fluxus when I turn its pages. Let me be clear, Fluxus had not arrived in SF by 1965, but like Pop, Fluxus was recycled Dada. Fluxus merged Man Ray with Marshall McLuhan. It took Dada into the electronic age and got it wired up. Unlike many people I love leftovers. In my artistic and literary tastes, I often find myself picking through the cultural refrigerator gnawing on last night’s turkey leg. Fluxus is much to my taste. I like its belatedness, its warmed-over quality. Stripped of the wide-eyed innocence that accompanies a new artistic or literary discovery, they are decadent movements, full of irony and self-knowledge. Yet in an effort to appear new, Fluxus artists have a frenetic energy and humor, which I find contagious. Like a gumbo that has been sitting around for a while, the flavors and themes get more pronounced. I would like to say more complex, but on the flipside, maybe they just get more obvious. More Cagean than Cage. More Duchampian than Duchamp. I cannot help but “get” Fluxus because it is so in-your-face. Fluxus has no shame.

Maybe that is not exactly true. For example, the cut-up has this same sense of belatedness. Gysin made a re-discovery, not a leap forward in artistic creation. Yet I have found Burroughs’ cut-up texts not just tough to read but tough to get my mind around. While most people highlight the cut-up’s ties to Dada, I have recently been interested in linking Burroughs and the cut-up to Fluxus and related groupings. In the pages of Bulletin from Nothing, Norman O. Mustill, Claude Pélieu, J.J. Lebel, and Mary Beach were all on the fringes of Fluxus, if not fellow travelers.

Burroughs’ connections to Fluxus, if you dig around, are definitely there. Paris in the mid-1960s is a good place to look. Emmett Williams provided the liner notes for Burroughs’ first spoken word LP, Call Me Burroughs. The album was produced at and recorded in the English Bookshop run by Gaît Frogé. Williams, a concrete poet, was a major force in Fluxus. Call Me Burroughs is pretty straightforward spoken word, but the sound collages Burroughs was creating at that time (1965) and that are collected in Real English Tea Made Here and elsewhere are truly Fluxus in spirit.  

Briefly in Paris, Burroughs was on the fringes of Fluxus. The link is clearly Brion Gysin. Gysin was a founding member of Domaine Poétique along with Williams, Bernard Heidsieck and Henri Chopin. This group paralleled and overlapped with Fluxus. As Barry Miles make clear, both groups were interested in “concrete poetry, electronic music, poésie sonore, machine poetry, happenings and performance art.” George Maciunas, the leading voice of Fluxus, was familiar with Gysin’s work and attended Gysin’s performances. Gysin and Ian Sommerville put on Happenings of their own that included sound recordings, slide projections, and readings. For a period in the 1960s the readings of Burroughs were in fact Happenings. His St. Valentine’s Day Reading of 1965 with its mixture of props, spoken word, and tape recordings is a good example. Burroughs’ artistic concerns of the 1960s were the same as Domaine Poétique and Fluxus and on occasion he entered their circle. On May 18, 21, and 22 at the Centre Americain des Artistes at 261 Blvd Raspail, the largest Domaine Poétique event occurred. Gysin, Francois Dufrene, Robert Filliou, Emmitt Williams, Bernard Heidsieck and others participated. Burroughs’ work was included in the performance. In 1965, Burroughs performed in a multimedia experiment with Brion Gysin at the ICA. Domain Poétique, the Lettrists, Fluxus. In the 1960s Burroughs was actively engaged in exploring the same creative terrain as these groups and in some cases he actively participated with them.

About a year ago I was able to buy the two-volume set of Colloque de Tanger published by Christian Bourgois in 1976. These volumes collected the texts from the conference held in September 1975 in Geneva. Unfortunately they are published in French so I cannot read them. There is precious little information in English on the Colloque de Tanger. It is not mentioned in the index of the two Burroughs biographies. It is briefly mentioned in Ports of Entry, but by and large it has been overlooked. The conference was a celebration of the collaboration of Burroughs and Gysin, and to me, it is far more interesting and important than the Nova Convention of 1978. On one level, I bought the collection because one volume is inscribed by Burroughs to bookseller Burt Britton. Yet the other is inscribed by Bernard Heidsieck to Dick Higgins and has proven over time to be far more interesting to me. Heidsieck, like Burroughs, was a man with familial links to wealth and privilege. You have probably had a sip of Piper Heidsieck champagne. Heidsieck was intoxicated by experimental art and literature and became an important figure in the European avant-garde, particularly in the area of sound poetry. Higgins was a major Fluxus figure who operated Something Else Press. The output of Something Else is impressive and his press is one of the finest of the Mimeo Revolution period from 1945-1980. Something Else published Brion Gysin in 1973, which featured texts by Burroughs. Jan Herman edited the volume. He was SEP’s chief editor at the time, having succeeded Emmett Williams. The presence of Burroughs in the Something Else backlist demonstrates Burroughs’ overlapping interests with Fluxus.

The publishing career of Jan Herman performs a similar service. San Francisco Earthquake and the Nova Broadcasts join Burroughs’ work with Fluxus directly. Wolf Vostell (Miss Vietnam) and Dick Higgins (A Book about Love and War and Death) appear in the Nova Broadcast Series, which also featured Burroughs’ The Dead Star. The Nova Broadcast imprint also published Alison Knowles’ The Journal of the Identical Lunch and Ferdinand Kriwet’s Publit. Nowhere is the Fluxus spirit of Burroughs’ work more clear than in the scarce Fifth Volume of SF Earthquake: VDRSVP. Burroughs appears alongside Fluxus artists’ Alison Knowles and Wolf Vostell. Yet more importantly this issue of the magazine epitomizes Fluxus’ interest in experimenting with mass media forms and turning them to creatively and politically radical ends. VDRSVP is a magazine in a poster format and thus does away with the codex. Burroughs contributed “The Moving Times.” Burroughs’ Third Mind experiments and his more advanced cut-up scrapbooks and newspaper pieces similarly challenged and detourned mass media material. The Dead Star is a case in point.  

The Colloque de Tanger celebrated these aspects of Burroughs’ creative career. Work that involved close collaboration with Gysin. Heidsieck signed my copy of Volume Two on page 161 in the middle of his recollection. On that page, Heidsieck circled a passage that mentions the Domaine Poétique events at the Centre Americain des Artistes at 261 Blvd Raspail from 1962. This is the very venue that Burroughs was a part of with Gysin. Higgins and Heidsieck shared an interest in sound poetry. Burroughs’ reading at this venue fits in here as well. The CD Real English Tea Made Here (recorded in the 1965-1966 timeframe) and Burroughs’ readings / Happenings highlight his interest in sound poetry and sound experiments. So even though I cannot read the volume or the inscription, both highlight for me Burroughs’ personal and creative relationship to Fluxus and related movements. An artistic involvement that gets lost in the shuffle, but is in fact a key aspect of what I find the most interesting and influential period of Burroughs’ career. 

 Bulletin from Nothing does the same thing. The two issues whisk you away to Paris, San Francisco, New York and Berlin ranging in time from just after World War I to the dawn of the Summer of Love. All the great little magazines are paper time machines that transport the reader backwards (and in some cases forwards) in time, throughout space, and across geographies. They function as very ports of entry and points of intersection that Burroughs sought to document and to create with his cut-ups. In each little magazine there is a different William Burroughs and maybe that is why I find him so fascinating. He is like a drop of mercury that refuses to be pinned down. Always one step beyond you, Burroughs eludes your attempts to grasp him. The quest to completely understand Burroughs and his work is doomed to failure but the resulting infinite possibilities, meanings, and applications reward you for the effort.  

Come explore Bulletin from Nothing for yourself. The complete run is now on RealityStudio including the elusive Bulletin from Nothing flyer sometimes described as Issue 3.  

Bulletin from Nothing Archive

Bulletin from Nothing 1 (view complete issue)
Front cover

Bulletin from Nothing 2 (view complete issue)
Front cover

Bulletin from Nothing Flyer (view complete issue)
Front Cover

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

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

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

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

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

Desperate Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

In 1992, I attended King’s College in London for two terms as part of a study abroad program. I knew next to nothing about the school, and if I remember correctly, I chose it, because it was located on the Strand and seemed to be in the middle of everything. My interest in the Beats and, particularly, William Burroughs had been growing in leaps and bounds since I first encountered them in the summer of 1990 after my freshman year of college. Little did I know that King’s was the ideal place to expand my knowledge of post-WWII American fiction. In fact, the school was the birthplace of American Studies in Great Britain due to the pioneering work of scholar Eric Mottram. Through his teaching, presence and writings, Mottram placed the work of the Beats under the critical microscope and brought it to a whole generation of British readers. Mottram taught full-time at King’s College until the early 1990s so I just missed him. He continued to teach part-time in a limited capacity until 1994 so his presence was felt in the English Department. His name graced the professorship in American Literature at Kings as testament to his influence. The position was held by Clive Bush, and it was through his class that I first came in contact with Charles Olson and The Maximus Poems.

One of the best aspects of King’s College was that being enrolled as a student granted me access to the University of London’s ring of libraries. The libraries directly associated with King’s were rather small, but the University of London possessed fantastic facilities throughout the city. Senate House provided George Orwell with the architectural inspiration for the imposing Ministry of Truth Building in 1984. Rumor had it that a library office in Senate House served as the model for Room 101 in the Ministry of Love. During WWII, the Ministry of Information was headquartered at Senate House. Orwell worked for the Ministry of Information before writing 1984. For me the library was a great source of information and love. I read in the library voraciously, walking through the stacks of American Literature with abandon. I first read Robert Creeley and J.P. Donleavy in London as well as Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky. To read that book as I traveled with a backpack throughout Europe was a wonderful experience. I found a collected works of D.A. Levy at the library. I read the introduction and then the remarkable poems wondering how I never heard of the Cleveland poet suicided by Middle America. In fact, I have never seen Levy’s work in the United States except at rare bookstores. I like to think that the Levy collection was in London due in large part to the energy of Mottram’s work and personality.

Unbeknownst to me at the time I studied there, King’s College Library houses Mottram’s considerable archives. This is a treasure trove for anybody interested in post-WWII literature. Over the years, I have spent considerable time looking up little magazines and little presses in the Mottram collection. The list really reads like a complete bibliography of little magazines / little presses of the period. Unfortunately King’s College is not mining this resource. The website has not been updated since 2000. There were plans for a volume of the Mottram / Duncan correspondence but to my knowledge this has not come to pass. As Robert Bank’s assemblage makes clear, Mottram’s letters are full of valuable detail as well as interesting analysis of the experimental and counterculture scene in Britain and abroad. This correspondence would benefit anybody interested in 20 Century literature. Hopefully, the brief selection of Mottram / Nuttall letters on RealityStudio will open up this resource leading to further extracts being posted in the near future.

As many reading this will know, Mottram wrote the first book-length study of Burroughs’ work entitled The Algebra of Need. He also wrote books on Allen Ginsberg and Paul Bowles among others. Do not think for a moment that Mottram was holed up in the ivory tower writing from a distance about the outlaw literature of the post-war era. Robert Bank’s assemblage of materials chronicling Mottram’s activities in the mid-1960s makes clear that the Beat scholar was in the thick of the action and knew the writers intimately. Mottram talked the talk because he walked the walk.

Read Bank’s piece to get all the details including some great letters to Jeff Nuttall, another valuable chronicler of the counterculture. This material provides a valuable companion piece to my column on Burroughs in the Lower East Side in 1965. Both these pieces highlight the fact that New York City was the center of the creative world, drawing artists, writers, critics as well as hangers-on and tourists.

I want to focus on The Algebra of Need as a means to highlight Mottram’s immersion in the literary community about which he wrote. The first version of the Burroughs study appeared in the Special Burroughs Issue (#14-15) of Intrepid magazine. In a few columns, I have touched on Intrepid. Allen De Loach edited the magazine out of Buffalo in the 1960s and 1970s. If you surf eBay for artifacts from the literary scene of that time, you have no doubt come across material from De Loach’s archives. He died in 2002 and bits and pieces of his considerable holdings (including Burroughs manuscripts and cassette tapes) have been appearing on the Web for quite some time. Mottram taught briefly at Buffalo in the 1960s. At the time, the University was a hotbed for the New American writers of the Donald Allen anthology. Charles Olson, Gregory Corso, John Wieners, and Robert Creeley all taught there. I am sure there were others. De Loach sponsored probably hundreds of readings and lectures. As a result of the poets’ presence, particularly Olson’s, a dedicated and incredibly prolific group of writers and scholars grew out of this oasis. The State Unversity at Buffalo remains a major location on the experimental poetry map to the present. The Electronic Poetry Center and the Poetics Listserv are pioneering and invaluable internet resources dealing with all aspects of what was, is, and will be new and innovative in modern poetry.

Mottram’s study came out of this incredibly fertile time for the academic world around Buffalo. The Special Burroughs issue of Intrepid was a major publication for Burroughs: the first magazine dedicated to all aspects of his career to that point. The little magazine has a long history of being at the forefront of not only publishing the freshest voices in literature before the mainstream publishers dare to, but also of being at the head of the line in providing a critical context for those new writers. This is particularly true of Beat scholarship. While Ann Charters really got the ball rolling with Kerouac scholarship with her monumental bibliography and biography, the little magazine had kept the flame of his reputation burning during the darkest hours of Kerouac’s literary reputation in the 1960s. An essay by Warren Tallman in 1959 on “Kerouac’s Sound” opened many doors and minds as well. Fanzines, like the Moody Street Irregulars, Beat Scene, and The Kerouac Connection, extended Charters’ work in the 1970s doing much of the digging in the archives, texts, and libraries that would uncover the writer behind the myth. The results of this early scholarship are still being realized today.

Like Kerouac, Burroughs scholarship began in the little magazines. For example, Big Table, Evergreen Review, and Kulchur all published incredibly influential critical pieces on Burroughs simultaneously with his fiction. So the publication of The Algebra of Need in a little magazine out of Buffalo is not so strange and in fact just right. Intrepid 14/15 features artwork by Gysin on the cover that had become a logo of sorts for the magazine. The magazine included older cut-up material from the trilogy as well as new work on scientology and the E-meter. Besides Mottram’s piece, there were recollections and critical pieces by Alan Ansen, Harold Norse and Claude Pélieu.

Later in 1971, Intrepid Press published The Algebra of Need in book form as Number 2 of the Beau Fleuve series. This small press publication again highlights Mottram’s central location in the literary community in which he taught and wrote about. Other publications in this series include: Three Dreams and an Old Poem (Paul Blackburn, Number 1), From Maine (Allen De Loach, Number 3), Black Is Black Blues (Ray Bremser, Number 5), Dear Allen: Ship Will Land Jan 23 58 (Peter Orlovsky, Number 5), Some Plays: On Words (Victor Coleman, Number 6), and Narcissus (Bill Cirocco, Number 7). 100 hardbound and signed copies of Mottram’s book were published along with an additional 1125 hardcovers and 2375 in wrappers. Copies appear on eBay from time to time. As I was writing this, a copy of Intrepid and the paperback verison were both available. The Intrepid issue is a must-have for the magazine collector. The book verison is nice as well. I was lucky enough to find a copy in wrappers at a bookstore in Maine. Like the Special Burroughs issue of Intrepid, the signed copies of Algebra have become something of a collector’s item fetching over $150.

Mottram revised and added material to the book over the years and it has been reprinted. This is testament to the immense influence of this critical work. Despite the early reception of Burroughs’ work in little magazines, Mottram’s study, like Charter’s with Kerouac, really began the process of critical acceptance of Burroughs and paved the way for his contested entrance into the academy and canon. Reading the book, it is clear that Mottram feels the need to legitimize and sanitize Burroughs’ work. By 1970 Burroughs’ work had to be freed of the cloud of obscenity and censorship that had shrouded it since its initial publication. As a result, Mottram had to explain the morality of Burroughs’ work. This is most clear in the description of the ejaculating hanging man images as a satire or comment on capital punishment. The work of Swift comes to the forefront. Kerouac started this line of inquiry in 1957. The thoroughness and intelligence of Mottram’s book would demonstrate this line of thought once and for all, thus establishing in academic circles the literary and critical value of Burroughs’ novels and opening up for inquiry new approaches and new lines of questioning. It is no surprise that criticism in the 1970s and onward would largely take for granted Mottram’s assessments and build on this foundation into the realms of literary theory, language and visual art.

The Algebra of Need in its first edition deals with the first cycle of Burroughs’ career encompassing Junkie, Naked Lunch and the cut-up experiments and novels. Later revisions expanded to include the shift in Burroughs’ work of the late 1960s towards film techniques, youth revolt, and more restrained use of the cut-up. For example, the 1977 reprint of The Algebra of Need included a reading of The Last Words of Dutch Schultz. Mottram quotes the relevant texts extensively. He does not interrogate the manuscripts, letters, and archival material. Only with Mottram’s study could a fuller, more detailed study begin that would take into consideration the raw material that the novels were built from.

To my mind, the most innovative aspect of Mottram’s book was its inclusiveness. Mottram does not ignore the work that appeared in little magazines and the small press. To be sure the study focuses on the major novels but Mottram is clearly aware of the importance of the little magazine and Burroughs’ less well-known works. Particularly with the cut-ups of the 1960s, Burroughs’ most radical work never found a mainstream publisher. Mottram acknowledges the presence of the cut-up experiments like Minutes to Go and The Exterminator as well as the pieces in My Own Mag. More than 30 years later, scholars have yet to take up Mottram’s lead. Much critical work has built up around the Grove and mainstream novels, but the work of the small press and little magazines sits relatively in the shadows of academic inquiry. As a result, a fuller understanding of Burroughs’ achievement remains in our future. Scholars, like Oliver Harris and Davis Schneiderman, are opening the archives and digging into neglected works like Minutes to Go and The Yage Letters as well as the riches in Locus Solus and My Own Mag. Hopefully, they will maintain ties with the vibrancy of the literary and artistic community that remains from the post-war era as well as the one that thrives today. As Robert Bank’s piece shows, Mottram’s work benefited from such contacts. In addition, we can only hope that future critics will possess Mottram’s love and respect of the work, not to mention his perceptive intelligence.