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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

The sale of Robert and Donna Jackson’s extensive William Burroughs collection to the New York Public Library made national headlines. The Edwin Blair Beat Literature Sale at Pacific Book Auction features some incredible items, including William Burroughs manuscript material. A recent catalog from Beat Books in London offered two Burroughs manuscripts for sale. Burroughs manuscript material is hot. In fact, it always has been.

The question is: Have recent events taken the pursuit of Burroughs manuscripts to new, maybe even ludicrous heights. I site the example of a typed one-line Burroughs manuscript recently sold on Ebay. (Here’s a pdf in case the auction listing expires.) The line reads “One voice speaks through these pages sharp as an electric scapel Mr. Alfred Chester writes lightening,” signed by Burroughs dated April 20, 1964, Tangier, Morocco. There is a considerable history to this small item. The page comes from the papers of Allen DeLoach, editor of Intrepid. In 1969, Intrepid 14/15 devoted an entire issue to Burroughs. The issue is a landmark in serious scholarly treatment of Burroughs as an author. The entire run of Intrepid is a major example of the mimeo revolution and an important document of the counterculture and post World War II letters. The line references Alfred Chester, an expatriate writer in Tangier and a figure of note in his own right. I believe the line is an original creation and not a quote from a previous work. The signature is early and from Tangier and that creates more interest. The manuscript has impeccable provenance and is in fine condition. Based on how this item performed, there will be more manuscript material available from the Intrepid files in the near future.

This item is very interesting. The public interest in this auction gets to the heart of who, what and why of collecting, Burroughs or any author. What qualifies as a manuscript? Signature versus inscription? Is this manuscript worth more than a lengthy, substantial inscription on a published work? What is the value of a Burroughs signature: early, middle and late career? I will not touch on them all, but the biggest question was: Is it worth over $500? My gut reaction is that $530 is crazy. But a look at the market makes me not so sure. I compare it to the multitude of Bukowski manuscripts that flood the market. Like the Intrepid manuscript, these Bukowski examples are typed, sometimes Xeroxed, poems with no trace of the author’s hand but the signature. Poems of length commonly fetch hundreds of dollars. Drawings, corrections, or inscriptions depending on detail can push the price to $700-1000, even more for truly spectacular examples. The manuscript in question differs from these Bukowski poems by its brevity.

Clearly, the one line Burroughs item is not spectacular, but Burroughs manuscript material is far more unusual than Bukowski’s. Burroughs manuscripts, particularly from the 1950s and 1960s, are largely accounted for and rarely hit the open market. In addition as the many versions of Naked Lunch and Soft Machine prove, Burroughs never really finished a work. They were always open for revision. In many cases, these revisions are major changes in Burroughs’s line of thought. See the publication history of Soft Machine. Clearly, the items in the Jackson collection are important and valuable for scholarly reasons. The items for sale in the Edwin Blair sale and at Beat Books are far beyond the one line manuscript on Ebay. They are substantial pieces that in some cases possess holograph corrections or in the case of the Naked Lunch manuscript at Beat Books possesses an outstanding literary history and significance. These items command thousands of dollars.

An interesting comparison is Burroughs inscriptions on published works. At the Nelson Lyon Sale in 1999, I bought Floating Bear #9 featuring “Roosevelt After Inauguration” signed by both Burroughs and Ginsberg on the front wrapper. On the front wrapper, Burroughs has also written “All the better for a soujourn in Hell. All hope at least pretend to give up waiting your chance,” and additionally signed by Burroughs under his printed name after “Roosevelt.” It is Los Angeles poet John Thomas’s copy. The item is considerably damaged but the history of the document, signatures and inscription is fantastic. The ties to the mimeo and alternative press scene are similar to the Intrepid piece. I purchased it for roughly $100. Granted that was years ago, but it would be interesting to see what the item is worth today. Other ephemera, like postcards or short business letters do not seem to reach the heights of this manuscript. Personally, I appreciate writing in Burroughs’ hand even on a small level, like a correction or inscription, to larger typed material capped with a signature.

In any case, it appears that Burroughs manuscript material in any form is a sure bet on the market. Seemingly, the boundaries of literary and scholarly significance are much broader in dealing with Burroughs in the arena of manuscript material. For me, I will drool over the items in the Robert Jackson collection, Edwin Blair sale, and Beat Books catalog. I will pass on the current item on Ebay, and will look with interest at the other larger offerings from the Intrepid files. Burroughs manuscripts are truly rarified air in Burroughs collecting, maybe even more so than other authors. With much of the work of gathering his manuscripts done, I choose to focus on book and magazine appearances that have passed through his hands marked by a signature or inscription. They are more interesting and valuable to me. It is such personal choice and touches that make any collection special to the individual collector and to the larger community.

P.S. RealityStudio notes: Now there is a 2nd Intrepid manuscript on ebay. (Here’s a pdf in case the listing expires.) The listing shows five pictures of the manuscript: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.