Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Onward, as Robert Creeley would say. Let’s move to Kulchur 4. What strikes me about this issue is Burroughs and Kerouac’s picture on the cover. Gilbert Sorrentino guest-edited this issue. In his essay in The Little Magazine in America collection, Sorrentino writes, “Marian Zazeela, Marc Schleifer’s wife, gave me a snapshot of Kerouac and Burroughs taken in Paris about 1955, and that became the cover; the title page identifies it as a photograph of Inspector Maigret and Sam Spade.” Steve Clay and Rodney Phillips quoted a longer version of this passage in A Secret Location on the Lower East Side. So Sorrentino’s statement has been accepted as fact. This has always puzzled me, as a little knowledge of the Beats throws into question the date and the location of the photograph.

Neither Burroughs nor Kerouac was in Paris in 1955. I don’t think the two writers met at the Beat Hotel or anywhere else in France. Kerouac traveled to France in 1957 and in the late 1960s (recounted in Satori in Paris). In both cases, Burroughs was not present. Looking at the photograph Burroughs looks like a proper Viennese doctor. As for Kerouac where are the Levis, the lumberjack shirts. What is with the hat? This is not Kerouac in the 1950s. Clearly, this is an early photograph.

This picture captures the very beginnings of the Beat Generation in New York in the mid-1940s. In fact, it was taken in 1945 at Columbia University along with another iconic shot. At the Edwin Blair Auction in March 2006, one of these pictures came up for sale. Lot 295, a snapshot of Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac and Hal Chase, was one of the highspots of the sale. The picture graces the cover of the auction catalog. The catalog description reads in part, “Rare, and one of the most important Beat Generation images, if not the most defining image, taken from where it all started, Columbia University.” The image sold for over $7000, one of the top three items of the auction. John Tyell placed the image on the cover of his landmark study Naked Angels.

The photo on the cover of Kulchur 4 must have been taken the same day. The background of the two photos is identical. Note the buildings in the upper left corner. Clearly, Burroughs wears the same overcoat, tie, and gloves. He has glasses in one shot and not in the other, but the dress is the same.

This photograph of Kerouac and Burroughs tells an interesting story discussed in Oliver Harris’ The Secret of Fascination. Harris writes of the relationship between Kerouac and Burroughs, and the influence as a writer Kerouac had on Burroughs. The impact of Kerouac writing Burroughs as Will Dennison in The Town and the City is huge. The influence ran both ways. Harris, of course, discusses the fascinating aspect of Burroughs as well.

The role of Burroughs as intellectual pied piper is told in great detail by John Lardas in The Bop Apocalypse: The Religious Visions of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs. I don’t think there is a fuller examination of the early years of the Beat Generation trio than Lardas’ book. Lardas treats the early Beats as intellectual and religious questors. Time and sober scholarship has proven that this was the case, despite early depictions of them as “know-nothing Bohemians.” In these early years, Burroughs was a major influence on Kerouac and Ginsberg, introducing them to Spengler, linguistics, and French thought. Sammy Sampas and Lucien Carr are the other lightening rods of this time. The photograph in Kulchur 4 highlights the close relationship between Kerouac and Burroughs as well as suggesting the role of Burroughs as teacher and dispenser of knowledge (reading the newspaper). In any case, get a hold of Lardas’ book. It is worthwhile reading.

What is the reason for the confusion of Sorrentino? The caption that goes with the photo in Kulchur suggests that the editors were aware of the proper chronology. The reference to Inspector Maigret and Sam Spade comments, not just on Burroughs and Kerouac’s appearance, but also on their literary collaboration undertaken at the time of the photograph. As discussed recently in the Burroughs forum, And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is a legendary lost classic of the Beat canon. One of the earliest instances of creative writing from Burroughs and Kerouac, bits and pieces have surfaced over the years. The novel documents the murder of David Kammerer by Lucien Carr that occurred in 1944. The style of the novel mimics the manner of Hammett, Raymond Chandler and other hardboiled detective writers. Possibly, Kerouac and Burroughs were playing on their hardboiled personas in this photograph. The caption suggests the editors of Kulchur possessed an intimate knowledge of the image’s history.

Yet Sorrentino takes Burroughs and Kerouac out of their proper context. I like that Burroughs can seemingly move freely through time and space. The inability to pin Burroughs down accurately comments on and adds to his mystique as el hombre invisible. Yet as Harris shows in his study of Burroughs’ first trilogy, Burroughs is frequently misread by readers, writers and critics in this manner. These misreadings can provide quite an interesting narrative in themselves

Sorrentino’s slip of memory provides some insight into the state of mind of some of the editors of Kulchur and the state of the magazine. The picture of Burroughs and Kerouac highlights the origin or birth of the Beat Generation. By issue 4, Kulchur was experiencing growing pains and concerns about its origins. Marc Schleifer abandoned the revolution of the Word for the revolution in Cuba. While Hornick is on record as stating that Kulchur 4 was more to her taste than the first three issues, she had yet to fully mold the magazine to her vision of the New York art world. Sorrentino is a dominant figure, but Kulchur in this middle period strikes me as a heavy dose of Leroi Jones as he was questioning his past and transforming into a black nationalist.

After Kulchur 4, the magazine stabilized to some extent (Jones’ intellectual crises aside). Sorrentino expresses a fondness for the issues of this period onward for the next year or so. The magazine possessed a core of editors and contributors, like Frank O’Hara and Leroi Jones. In my opinion, the early and late issues of Kulchur are the most enjoyable. The presence of the Beats in the early issues and the Second Generation New Yorkers, like Ted Berrigan or Ron Padgett, in the later issues captures my interest most.

What is clear is that Kulchur 4 represents a pivot point in the magazine. Kulchur was about to change its editorial leader and its direction. The picture and the confusion regarding its date express an anxiety about origins and a desire to get away from one’s past. In this case, the editors were deeply concerned with Kulchur‘s Beat origins. Hornick aspired for something more refined and self-consciously avant-garde than the rough and tumble Beats. In addition, Jones was experiencing conflicting feelings about his relationship to his Beat past that was essential to his birth as a poet. Possibly providing Sorrentino with this image, Schleifer or his wife slyly reminded the editors of Kulchur to remember where they came from as they stretched out in new directions. As Kulchur 1 and 3 show, Schleifer published, at its heart, a Beat magazine.

The cover is a troubled look back on its past. The cover image also signals the fact that the Beats, like a private detective, were about to go largely undercover and out of sight in the pages of Kulchur. The Beats would never disappear completely. They dominated Kulchur‘s origins and haunted its future in the figures of the Beat-influenced Second Generation New York School. Kulchur 4 has always interested me for what is says about the early Beat years, the relationship between Burroughs and Kerouac, and the state of Kulchur magazine and its editors.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

I have not read all twenty issues of Kulchur cover to cover, but of the issues I have sampled, I enjoy Kulchur 3 the most. Issue 3 presents Kulchur at its most Beat. William Burroughs (“In Search of Yage”), Jack Kerouac (“Dave”), Gary Snyder (“The Ship in Yokohama”), Herbert Huncke (“Elsie,” possibly his first published work), Gregory Corso (reviewing Kerouac’s Doctor Sax), Allen Ginsberg (“Breughal — Triumph of Death”). The issue is heavy on fiction and poetry. The focus on criticism is less apparent here. Yet John Fles’s review of the first seven issues of Yugen provides a bit of cold water on the Beat party with its ambivalent look at Leroi and Hettie Jones’s magazine.

Kulchur 3 also functions as a drug issue. Paul Bowles writes on Kif. Burroughs’ “In Search of Yage” is one of the foundations of the psychedelic era. Kerouac’s piece “transcribes” the monologue of a junkie in Mexico City. Writing of this nature supports the theory that the spirit of the 1960s began in the supposedly silent 1950s. Arthur Marwick in his book The Sixties presents the idea of a long decade from 1958-1974. These pieces, like Burroughs’ “Letter from a Master Addict,” provide a multifaceted view of the drug culture depicting a cornucopia of drugs from opiates to hallucinogens in a variety of exotic settings. By the 1960s, these locales would be swarmed by drug tourists.

Oliver Harris’ writing on The Yage Letters makes this issue even more interesting to me. I have written on how his introductions and critical essays forced me to return and re-read the literary magazines I associated with Naked Lunch. As Harris shows, Kulchur 3 and “In Search of Yage” play a crucial role in the development of the final form and publication of that work by City Lights in 1963 and beyond.

Returning yet again to this favorite issue, I was struck by what was missing from its pages. Harris makes brief mention of a footnote in Kulchur regarding “In Search of Yage.” The Kulchur footnote reads, “‘The Routine’ appears in Floating Bear (#9) distributed solely by mailing list. 25c to The Floating Bear, 309 E. Houston St., New York 2, NY.” Not mentioned by Harris, the publication by Floating Bear came about after a rejection by Kulchur. The story of the publication of “Roosevelt After Inauguration” in the Floating Bear and its subsequent seizure for obscenity has been written about at the Bibliographic Bunker and elsewhere. Fuck You Press published “The Routine” as well, and the piece finally appeared in the third edition of the City Lights edition of The Yage Letters.

This is only part of the story as I found out reading Lita Hornick’s memoir The Green Fuse. Hornick became associated with Kulchur after reading Issue 1. She became president of Kulchur Press, Inc after Issue 2. She had no input in the magazine until that point. It was Marc Schleifer and the contributing editors’ project. Schleifer gathered the material for issue 3. Given the new arrangement, this material needed approval from Hornick. Hornick writes, “Little did I know that [Schleifer] only wanted backing for #3, which was to be an inflammatory issue, before disappearing into the Cuban Revolution.”

What was so controversial about this issue? I quote Hornick in full:

When I finally saw the galleys of Kulchur 3, I was worried about going to jail, because it was on me, as publisher, that the legal responsibility rested. One would not raise an eyebrow at this material today, but it was a different story in 1961. I told my husband about it, and he was not worried at all. He could not believe that little wifey could get into trouble with the law. He didn’t bother to read the galleys himself, but he told me if I was really worried I should take them down to our lawyers. And so I took the galleys to Eugene Klein…. As Eugene leafed through them, he turned pale. He said, “I’ll show them to our pornography expert. Come back tomorrow.” The next day he told me, “Our pornography expert says, if you publish these galleys, you will definitely be arrested by the New York Vice Squad. You will have to spend at least one night in the Women’s House of Detention until we can bail you out. You will lose in the lower court, but we will win in the Supreme Court!” I was agaga; but I took the galleys from Eugene and, after eliminating the two items that were really dangerous for that time, I went ahead with publication. Eugene notwithstanding, nothing ever happened to me. The two things I eliminated were Burroughs’ now famous routine about Roosevelt, for which Leroi Jones was arrested at gun point when he published it in The Floating Bear, and a story by Paul Goodman drooling over a sailor.

Kulchur 3 with its depiction of homosexuality, drug use, and pornographic political satire was to be a bombshell statement on obscenity, pornography and censorship. Donald Phelps’ essay, “A Second Look at Pornography,” that appeared in the issue provides the critical thrust for an enlightened look at these issues. Phelps’ essay does not address the work included in Kulchur 3 directly. In addition, his treatment of pornography tends more to the high art traditions of erotica like Asian art and the art film, but in a footnote, he mentions an essay of Goodman’s on pornography in a favorable light. Clearly, Kulchur 3 was an issue with a purpose and a message.

The issue was meant to deal a blow in the fight against censorship. The legal battles surrounding Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Tropic of Cancer and Lenny Bruce are all in the mix. Of course, so are Naked Lunch and William Burroughs. Burroughs’ work is not mentioned directly in Phelps’ essay, but some of Phelps’ comments on an expanded role and definition for pornography are relevant. Phelps writes,

The best medium of pornography is probably the hard, metallic daylight of satire, allegory, the lyric poem or the critical essay. Before American criticism began to take on the aspect of an extended slumber party, writers… availed themselves of pornography’s intensity, raffishness and occasionally, sexuality… Like the pyrotechnic blasts of these critics, the pornography of Balzac’s Contes Drolatiques, or the Decameron, specializes in flare-lighting the incongruities of any and all pretensions, or relationships. The methods of such pornography are the methods of comedy: undercutting relationships with the common denominator of sexual desire, and deploying the chief weapons of comedy, action and time, to show absurdity in motion.

These comments could apply specifically to “Roosevelt After Inauguration,” a brilliant mix of the obscene, comic and satiric. The Talking Asshole Routine and many of the extended pieces in Naked Lunch provide other “pyrotechnic blasts.” The criticism surrounding Naked Lunch and Burroughs in the late 1950s and 1960s draws from the same pool of thought expressed here by Phelps.

Hornick mentioned in her memoir that issue 3 was not to her taste. The selections in the next issue and thereafter were more to her liking. Without a doubt, the editorial vision expressed in the first three issues differed from all that follow. Schleifer possessed a political bent as evidenced by his decision to go to Cuba shortly after Issue 3. The material gathered by Schleifer in Issue 3 was “inflammatory” ammunition for his revolutionary ideals. Censorship and obscenity laws were on one level about protecting children from sexual images or four-letter words. In addition, they calmed adults’ base sexual desires. Yet as Phelps’ essay makes clear such laws protect the capitalist system and mass consumerism by discouraging masturbation, symbolic of self-sufficient and wasteful activity. Therefore, a blow against censorship of pornogrpahy was a blow against an oppressive capitalist, materialist system. These obscenity laws also condemn alternative lifestyles and political opposition. It could be argued that Hornick’s editing of Goodman and Burroughs’ pieces from the pages of Kulchur played into the hands of the dominant culture that sought to excise these oppositional elements from view.

Yet Hornick was not against fighting these battles. Hornick embraced gay culture and Kulchur provides an insight into the gay New York avant garde. So I would bet she was not shocked by the homosexual content of Burroughs and Goodman’s pieces. Possibly, her fear was more about class and social standing. In issue 8, she published an essay by Michael McClure originally titled “Fuck.” In the Green Fuse, she writes,

It wasn’t really about fucking but about the importance of bringing the Anglo Saxon words back into the language. I was anxious to publish it but wrote to Michael that the postal inspectors would never read it but, when they saw the word FUCK in bold type, would simply impound the magazine. I expected him to write back, “Bourgeois dog! Censorship! Censorship! Censorship!” However, Michael, quite reasonably, suggested that we spell the title in Greek..

Schleifer was not so reasonable and objected to Hornick’s editing of issue three poisoning the relationship between them. It is interesting how the threat of jail, even a single night in Women’s Detention, deterred Hornick from pursuing publication of Burroughs and Goodman’s work. Hornick fears a sense of shock and embarrassment in the court of public opinion. At the same time, the “shock of the new” in the arts appeals very strongly to her. She is very aware and ambivalent about her class status as evidenced by the quote above. Hornick wrestles with these contradictory feelings in her memoir. Diane Di Prima possessed fewer qualms about jail when Floating Bear later published “The Routine.” Di Prima depicts her experience with the authorities in her memoir. Di Prima was pregnant at the time, a fact she used to her advantage.

A more detailed examination of the role of upper class (either by birth or wealth) women in the challenging of obscenity and censorship laws would be interesting reading. In Hornick’s case, her desire to provide a forum for the latest in the avant garde assisted and yet conflicted with her desire for social standing. As The Green Fuse makes clear, she, from an early age, sought to marry up the social ladder. On one level, acquiring a great contemporary art collection assists in that process. It is also a good investment. Yet championing “sick” and “obscene” literature of disputed value is not only socially embarrassing, but also extremely expensive. While Kulchur ran in the red, Hornick refused to let things run out of control financially. She was not about to jeopardize her lifestyle in the fight against censorship. Barney Rosset and Grove Press faced a similar dilemma in financing the legal battles for Lawrence, Miller, and Burroughs. All these conflicts must have faced women (and men) such as Margret Anderson, Jean Heap, and Harriet Monroe, in publishing Joyce and other Modernists. If anybody knows a book or article on the subject of the upper class role in the revolt against established manners as expressed in publishing (and the inner conflicts that created) I would be interested.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Yugen, Floating Bear, Kulchur. I always think of these three magazines together. One reason for this is the editorial and creative presence of the then Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka). The other impetus behind these magazines is Donald Allen’s New American Poetry Anthology or, more correctly, the poetic ferment of the 1950s that made that anthology not only possible but absolutely necessary. Kulchur is essential reading. I have written about Yugen and Floating Bear before, and now the time has come to talk about Kulchur.

I admit that I ignore Kulchur compared to the other two magazines. I cherish my Floating Bears and even have a soft spot for my Yugens, It basically comes down to judging a magazine by its cover. Mimeo (Floating Bear) is more fun to me than offset (Kulchur): I have a prejudice that way. Closer examination reveals that this preference can blind one to the joys of a useful and important document of what was once called “New Writing.” If Floating Bear is a gossip sheet / newspaper and Yugen is a poetry magazine, Kulchur is the New American Poetry’s critical arm. Gilbert Sorrentino (editor of Kulchur for several issues) and Lita Hornick (editor and patron of Kulchur from issue three on) have written histories of Kulchur in the Little Magazine in America essay collection published by Pushcart Press. This collection is absolutely mandatory reading for anyone interested in the history of the little magazine and post-WWII literature. Less interesting to me is the he said / she said bickering and bad blood between all the editors.

Hornick, a patron, student of Dylan Thomas and modern poetry, art collector, socialite, editor, scenester, et al, is definitely a fascinating and frustrating figure. Leafing through the twenty issues of Kulchur, Hornick’s hand is quite visible. Her memoir, The Green Fuse, is part literary / art history and part Warholian diary. Amongst all the boring and repetitious crap about dinner and cocktail parties is some great behind-the-scene stuff on the avant garde. As Burroughs’ whirlwind tour of New York in 1965 shows, the cocktail and dinner parties went hand in hand with the readings and art shows. It all blended and worked together in a type of ecosystem that made the avant garde possible. The commerce of the avant garde. Hornick helped make this fragile world go round. Margret Anderson and Jean Heap of Little Review, Harriet Monroe of Poetry or the salon of Mabel Luhan Dodge provide the historical antecedents. The process continues today. This is Tom Wolfe territory and to be honest I have trouble getting my mind around it.

Personally, I dislike the direction Hornick took the magazine, if you judge a magazine by its cover so to speak. The first issue of Kulchur looks a lot like an issue of Yugen. The chapbook feel appeals to me. Rereading Garrit Lansing’s introduction to Letters to Gloucester Times made me see the initial issue in a new light. Lansing noted the power of Olson’s eyes, therefore the premier issue reminds me of Olson looking over and approving the content. He was on the editorial board. More importantly, my mind jumps to Olson’s line “polis is eyes.” Olson’s sense of community permeates the magazine. Of course, Kulchur also cast a critical eye on the contemporary scene.

By issue two, changes were in order and Kulchur got glossy and cleaned up. The look shifted from the chapbook of Yugen to the more polished design of Evergreen Review. By issue four, the distinctive appearance and quarterly schedule of Kulchur was set. I suspect Hornick instituted the black and white visuals that defined the magazine until its demise after 20 issues. Maybe not, but I associate the new design with her presence. The arrival of Hornick lightened the magazine. Issue four onward seems to have more white than black. The Schleifer issues, I am thinking of two and three, are darker. Black is the dominate color. Schleifer’s magazine presents a more politically charged and bleaker vision (see issue three, for example). Hornick introduced gossip and the bright rooms of the gallery showroom.

Still the later covers are fantastic with representative work by the likes of Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers and Robert Indiana as well as photos from underground film and dance. The message is the same as the first issue. Kulchur provides a snapshot of what‚s new in the Arts. Kulchur documented, critiqued, and memorialized. I prefer the rougher look of Kulchur 1 along with the surreal cover that winks at those in the know.

In his essay on Kulchur and Neon, Sorrentino noted Kulchur‘s shift in content and focus. Sorrentino bemoaned the increased involvement of Hornick arguing that the magazine lost force from roughly issue 11 onward. The revolving door nature of the masthead tells this story. For example by issue 20, Hornick was the sole editor. I am sure there were all types of literary politics behind who was placed on the masthead. There is definitely a change in content but not focus. If Leroi Jones and the New American Poetry hover over Yugen, Floating Bear, and Kulchur, the New York art scene remains another dominant factor. More than Yugen and Floating Bear, Kulchur chronicled the visual and performing arts in New York. Lita Hornick was a creature of the New York art world to be sure. The early issues without her influence were heavy on the Beats. Burroughs appeared in some fashion in three of the first four issues. The Black Mountain crowd who dispersed to New York City after the demise of the college in 1957 was also represented as are the first generation New York School. Yet as Hornick got involved, her constant search for the new as a collector and patron took shape. This is the changing shape of artistic New York. Later issues focused more on second generation New York Schoolers with a Tulsa flavor, like Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, and Joe Brainard.

Most telling is the shift from Frank O’Hara to Andy Warhol. In Andy Warhol, Poetry and Gossip, which is essential reading on the New York little magazine scene, Reva Wolf analyzes the literary politics of the Kiss cover and what it states about the strained relationship between O’Hara and Warhol. The tensions between them can be seen as representative of a shift in the New York avant garde. Abstract Expressionist to Pop. 1950s to 1960s. I would suspect alcohol to hard drugs, MOMA to Factory, different definitions of gay, different sections of the city, maybe textual to visual. It is a subject I know little about but would like to learn more. Any information and comments would be appreciated.

To me, Kulchur seems to have evolved along with New York not to have lost focus. Issue 20 still provided the essence of the New York scene or, better stated, of “a” New York scene, and could serve as a time capsule. I find that the later Kulchurs stick to the tenets of William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound in utilizing the magazine format as a means to disseminate and define an artistic community. The community just changed over time. I have written about some of the points above in talking about Floating Bear, Yugen, printing techniques and Fuck You / Kulchur covers. Please see them for more information.

A close examination of Kulchur reveals many interesting points about William Burroughs’ early publishing history and critical reception. Burroughs was something of a constant in the early issues, but also appeared as late as issue fifteen. Burroughs’ work was the first piece in the premier issue. It is interesting just how many times Burroughs contributed to the initial salvo of a literary magazine. Big Table, New Departures, Cleft, Insect Trust Gazette, Gnaoua to name a few. In many cases, Burroughs was the driving force for a magazine’s creation. In others, the presence of Burroughs helped define the magazine’s voice and stance. Burroughs symbolized something, or maybe more to the point stood against something. That something could be defined a myriad of ways: censorship, the literary Establishment, the white picket fence of Middle Class America, the Outsider, the avant garde, the counterculture, drug culture, the Beats, the New American Story. In addition in 1960, Burroughs was much talked about but little read. Quite simply, his books were not available, so the little magazines provided an outlet for his work and in turn they could be assured of a hot selling product.

Burroughs contributed “The Conspiracy” to Kulchur 1. When booksellers and bibliographers discuss “The Conspiracy,” they all mention that the piece was part of the Naked Lunch manuscript but edited out for the Olympia Press edition. The 1958 Interzone manuscript shopped to City Lights and Olympia Press contained this brief section. The piece provided context to and extended from the Hauser and O’Brien conclusion to Naked Lunch. The decision on that conclusion is a story in itself, part of the myth regarding the publication of the novel. “The Conspiracy” later appeared in book form in Interzone, published by Viking in 1989. The required readings on “The Conspiracy” and the Hauser and O’Brien piece include Oliver Harris’s various articles and introductions for Junkie and The Yage Letters, as well as his book The Secret of Fascination; Carol Loranger’s article on the Naked Lunch text; Barry Miles and James Grauerholz’s introduction to Naked Lunch: The Restored Text; and James Grauerholz’s introduction to Interzone. Oliver Harris’s reading of “The Conspiracy” is particularly interesting. Harris writes,

“The Conspiracy” thematized the essential conflict between spontaneity and control — the dream and anti-dream drugs, East and West, forces of life and repression — within a master narrative well able to organize the disparate elements of his work in progress. But it is more than a question of narrative coherence. When Lee hides out in Mary’s flat off Columbia University, he gives her the alibi that he needs some solitude to “write his thesis.” A university campus is the ideal hideout for someone with a thesis, that is a coherent project. If “The Conspiracy” was a narrative about a theory, it points to Burroughs’ recurrent search for both a narrative and a theory to make his material accountable. In late 1957, he thought he had finally found one that worked, both scientifically and as an explanatory principle, which he called his “General Theory of Addiction”: “Incidentally, this theory resulted from the necessities of the novel.” Far from being incidental, this describes Burroughs’ typical working procedure, in which it is the material itself that gives rise to a theory to account for and develop it, at which point it starts to become counterproductive. In other words, “The Conspiracy” provided the kind of schema Burroughs kept looking for, and yet it’s for this very reason that in the end he aborted it.

Burroughs’ decision to excise this section from Naked Lunch maintained the veiled nature of the novel’s meaning. He avoided a narrative thread in terms of plot as well as a master narrative in terms of the novel’s message. Burroughs embraced mystery, ambiguity, and secrecy.

The appearance of “The Conspiracy” in Kulchur, therefore, raises some interesting questions. Why would Burroughs agree to the publication of this excised section of Naked Lunch before the novel was available in the United States? In a sense, “The Conspiracy,” even if it was not a part of the Olympia text, served as many readers’ first exposure to Burroughs and his work. As we see, the appearance in Kulchur was a defining text on many levels.

In 1960, Grove Press sat on the publication of Naked Lunch while laying the groundwork for the inevitable obscenity trial. “The Conspiracy” served as an exhibit in that trial in the court of critical and public opinion. This performed a similar function to “Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness” and the “Letter from a Master Addict” that were appended to the Grove Press edition.

That which is obscure or seemingly without meaning is generally thought of as obscene. The FBI investigation of “Louie, Louie” is a case in point. The trials and tribulations of James Joyce is another. Naked Lunch contained graphic sex, drug use and profanity, but even more damaging was its ambiguous, contradictory, and mysterious nature. Critics and the public could not safely explain it away. In order to get published in the United States, Naked Lunch had to make sense and speak rationally. The “Deposition” and the “Letter from a Master Addict” presented the voice of an expert as well as introducing a moral message. The links to the satire of Swift or the hellish vision of Dante served a similar purpose.

As Harris argues, “The Conspiracy” laid bare the secret of the novel and baldly provides a key to its contents. In addition, it provided a narrative thread throughout the novel and a sense of closure. Writing Naked Lunch, Burroughs saw this as against his creative vision, but in getting the novel before the American public Burroughs needed to make concessions. Harris makes clear just how important an audience was for Burroughs’ creative process. “The Conspiracy” helped make Naked Lunch understandable to the general public and thus less likely to be labeled obscene.

The presence of “The Conspiracy,” an explicating text of sorts, fell in line with the critical thrust of Kulchur, thus making it an appropriate choice for the first issue. Burroughs writes as much as a critic here as a fiction writer. The piece provides insight into him as a writer and his theoretical framework. The piece also breaks down into manageable terms his confusing novel. In an interview Gilbert Sorrentino comments on Burroughs and Naked Lunch. He states,

Then there’s the school that thinks of Naked Lunch as a “satire” on authoritarianism and the state. But the text of Naked Lunch presents the reader with a classic aporia: it does not mean to say what we mean it to say. There is something vaguely “insincere” about it. By that I mean that Naked Lunch sends a number of conflicting messages, the most salient of which can be phrased — simplistically and reductively, I grant you — “Oh, how terrifying and horrible and impossible to tolerate is this destructive addiction to heroin… you dumb squares! So the referential function of the text works one way and metalingual function another. Naked Lunch, however, succeeds because of this conflict, i.e., Burroughs as good as tells the reader that the latter is in the hands of a con man, he is a mark. And what is the role of a mark? To believe the con, to think himself, as a matter of fact superior to the con. That’s precisely how he gets conned.

I want to make clear that Sorrentino was not on the editorial board for the first issue of Kulchur, but his comments help explain how “The Conspiracy” worked. Burroughs wrestled with the issue of what Naked Lunch meant and he ultimately decided to excise “The Conspiracy” because it said and defined too much. This is true to Burroughs’ vision as a writer, but in an effort to get Naked Lunch through the censor, Burroughs had to be very insincere. He had to con the courts by supplying an obvious meta-narrative and meaning to the novel, even one he felt uncomfortable with. Critics and the public had to feel superior to the material, i.e, categorize, understand and pin it down into stability and thus harmlessness. “The Conspiracy” helped this to occur. In my opinion, Naked Lunch is as much nostalgia, pornographic fantasy, and celebration of dark forces as it is political commentary, satire and anti-drug novel. Burroughs had to tone down the black magic and Delphic obscurity of the novel for publication.

“The Conspiracy” also paved the way for publication beyond Naked Lunch and provided a commentary on Burroughs’ entire writing project. The text linked back to the ending of Junkie with its discussion of Yage as the final fix. The hardboiled style of the piece looked back to Junkie as well. As Harris demonstrates in his writing on The Yage Letters, Burroughs utilized the little magazine as a laboratory to experiment with the form of that book and sneak it into publication. “The Conspiracy” touched on the themes of The Yage Letters allowing Burroughs to grapple with that material in a public forum. Finally, the paranoia of “The Conspiracy” introduced the reader to the conspiracy theories and Nova Mob themes of Soft Machine that were in progress in 1960. Burroughs immediately began work on Soft Machine after the late July publication of Naked Lunch. “The Conspiracy” also laid the groundwork for the science fiction fantasies of The Ticket That Exploded and The Soft Machine. “The Conspiracy” provided a bridge of sorts from Naked Lunch to the yet-to-be-published material and a link back to the work already available. In a sense, it provided a narrative to not only Naked Lunch, but also to Burroughs’ writing career up to that point.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Rolling Stone magazine just celebrated its 1000th cover with a tribute to / touching up of the legendary Sgt. Pepper album cover. Reportedly, the new cover cost over $1 million to produce. It is fun and interesting, but I doubt it will reach the iconic status of the Sgt. Pepper original or even make the top ten Rolling Stone covers. Enduring images on albums and magazines are hard to consciously generate. They seem more spontaneous or natural. They rarely celebrate milestones or are officially commissioned for special events. Sgt. Pepper is unusual in that the Beatles openly sought to create the greatest album cover of all time and miraculously may have succeeded. Like the Beatles’ music in the album, the cover could only be created in the studio dependent on meticulous staging and artifice. Images of such power usually contain an element of chance and / or luck or at least they give off that vibe.

Annie Leibovitz’s photograph of a naked John Lennon entwined with a clothed Yoko is the greatest Rolling Stone cover and one of the most important rock and roll images of all time. Clearly, the scene was staged but it seems so natural and so emblematic of the relationship of John and Yoko. No other image could capture the essence of John Lennon as the world attempted to express their feelings and thoughts about him shortly after his assassination. Obviously, Leibovitz did not plan for her photo to be associated so closely with Lennon’s death and legacy as she took the photos on the last day of his life. Without planning it, Rolling Stone had the perfect image for a celebration of Lennon’s life. Fate played quite a role in the photo’s enduring status.

From David Cassidy to Jennifer Aniston, naked celebrities prove to be some of the most memorable images in the history of Rolling Stone. The David Cassidy cover (also taken by Leibovitz) from 1972 is relevant to RealityStudio. An early and extensive interview with William Burroughs by Robert Palmer appears in the issue. Cassidy was hoping to spice up his squeaky clean teen image with a more adult look. He definitely received increased attention due to the controversial photo, attention he tried to live down later. The Burroughs interview, like a similar one with Philip K. Dick in the mid 1970s, introduced the cult writer to a larger audience as well as explaining the major themes in his work. The interview would prove to be one of the most important given by Burroughs. The 1965 interview by Conrad Knickerbocker in Paris Review may equal it. Not surprisingly, this issue of Rolling Stone is collectible and frequently appears on eBay where it always receives active bidding.

As I was scanning images of Kulchur and Fuck You Magazine for RealityStudio, I came across two related cover images that highlight the reasons why I prefer Fuck You Magazine to Kulchur. I have discussed in detail the Couch cover to the Mad Motherfucker Issue of Fuck You Magazine. Interestingly, Kulchur featured a related image on the cover of Issue 13. Issue 13 reproduces a still from Andy Warhol’s movie Kiss just as Fuck You reproduced a still from Couch.

The Couch cover is one of the prides of my book collection. Kulchur magazine is an essential part of my collection but not an item I return to again and again. The Fuck You cover is a highly sought after Warhol collectible and a work of art in its own right. The reason for this is how the Couch and Kiss covers were produced. I assume the Kiss cover was created using the offset printing technique that produced Kulchur magazine. Just how the image went from celluloid to magazine cover I am unaware, but it was a fairly standard process of commercial printing.

The Couch cover is a different story and involved a newly emergent printing technology of the 1960s that inspired several artists such as Warhol and Wallace Berman. Thermofax is a wet process predecessor to the Xerox. According to Art Cloth Studios, “Thermofax screens are lightweight silk screens, created using a thermal imaging machine. The machine is designed to bond a plastic/polyester film temporarily to a carbon (dry toner) photocopy. Releasing the temporary bond creates a silkscreen image that is photographic in quality. These screens last for hundreds of printings and can be used with all wet media, including thickened dyes, discharge chemicals, all textile paints, foil adhesives and resists.”

In 1964, Warhol and Gerard Malanga began experimenting with this new technology. One direction these experiment took was collaborations with Second Generation New York School poets, like Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett. 2/2 Stories for Andy Warhol published by C Press is one example. In Andy Warhol, Poetry and Gossip in the 1960s, Reva Wolf describes this publication in detail. The book consists of ten sheets of the exact same text — a page from an early twentieth-century novel. Padgett selected the page so that it can be read as a loop; that is, the first sentence can be read as if it follows from the last one. The book was read in February 1964 by Padgett, Joe Brainard, Ted Berrigan and the poet Dick Gallup, with Warhol in attendance, along with Gerard Malanga, Edwin Denby, John Giorno and a reporter from Life. When Berrigan published Two Stories as a book, he procured for the cover design a Thermofax copy of a two-frame still (paralleling the ‘Two Stories’ of the title) from an obscure Warhol movie — an image rather hard to read, but clearly a scene showing one man (apparently Robert Olivo, known as Ondine) receiving oral sex while another looks out toward the camera. The Couch cover of Fuck You recreates a similar scene. The Thermofax, like the silkscreen, provided another way for Warhol to distance himself from artistic creation and introduce the machine into his creative process. In addition, Warhol could incorporate elements of repetition as well as explore the relationship of original/copy that so dominate his art.

Wallace Berman was interested in similar themes. Not surprisingly, he utilized the early photocopier in his art from the 1960s until his untimely death in 1976. Verifax, another wet process copier, was an early photocopying technology made by Eastman Kodak. They were forerunners of dry photocopy machines like Xerox. They had a duplicating machine that worked much like developing print film. You exposed a document for a number of given seconds (depending on color of the paper) and then immersed it in a developing solution for a further given number of seconds and then drew the “negative” and the paper the image was to be copied on out together between a “squeegee”.

The emblematic image of Berman’s work of this type is the disembodied hand holding a small transistor radio. Inside the radio, Berman photocopied drug, religious or animal images. Berman used the Verifax as a means to explore photomontage techniques initially discovered by the German Dadaists. The Verifax could print in negative, a feature Berman made much use of in these pieces.

The Verifax and Thermofax represent a newer, more raw, cutting edge technology as opposed to the more professional process that produced the Kiss image. Interestingly, the image depicted on the Couch cover is more raw and more transgressive than the Kiss cover. Both images and both films address similar themes of the erotic, the mundane, the taboo that so fascinated Warhol. Clearly, the Couch image crosses more boundaries than Kiss. This is in line with the nature of Fuck You Magazine and Kulchur. Fuck You was designed to offend and shock. It is gossipy and full of humor. Kulchur was designed to provide a critical thrust to the material provided in Floating Bear and Yugen. Kulchur is a literary journal that reports and educates. The Kiss cover and its means of production reflect the more conservative nature of Kulchur. Fuck You launched a total assault on the culture. The Couch cover lends ammunition to that assault in what it depicts and how it was created.