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.

Recollections of Jeff Nuttall, Bob Cobbing, My Own Mag, Writers’ Forum, Group H & STigma in early 1960s London

by David Moore

DM: Please would you tell us a little about yourself and how you came to meet Jeff Nuttall?

IW: I was born and educated in south Wales and, in September 1959, moved to High Barnet, then in Hertfordshire, to live and teach. Within a few days of moving there, hearing some rather beautiful jazz coming from the upstairs room of The Rising Sun, a local pub, I found my way to the room where a small jazz group was rehearsing. I was observed by an individual — who I began to talk to — and discovered that his name was Jeff Nuttall. We found that we not only had an interest in jazz but also that Jeff was a painter. That, within a few days of moving to Barnet, was my first contact with Jeff, a contact which grew and flourished over the years.

DM: You had gone to teach…

IW: Yes. I was teaching in a secondary school.

DM: Which school was that?

IW: It was called Ravenscroft School and it was one of the flagship schools of Hertfordshire — the hundredth school after the war or something like that — and it turned out that Jeff was actually teaching art in a school in Finchley, a few miles away. (Jeff Nuttall and Bob Cobbing taught at Alder School, East Finchley. — DM)

DM: You were, of course, teaching art yourself?

IW: I was teaching art myself, yes. So, from that chance meeting Jeff and I became quite close and we were both, I suppose one would say, anti-establishment — Jeff, perhaps, more than me. We worked in different idioms. Jeff worked in a figurative idiom — ‘out of surrealism-cum-expressionism-cum-whatever’ — whereas I was a fairly middle-of-the-road abstract painter at the time — but we hit it off pretty well. As time went by I made the acquaintance of Bob Cobbing who taught in the same school as Jeff. Bob had run for a number of years an organisation called Arts Together in north London and that comprised: Group H, which was, if you like, the visual and plastic arts side; Writers’ Forum, which was already involved in what these days we call ‘desktop publishing’ using comparatively simple technology; and there was also, I think, The London Film Coop where Bob did rather interesting experimental films and projected films by other people. This was in the early Sixties, which would have been the start of the underground movement internationally, really, and, I think, Bob was one of the founders of this, certainly in this country.

DM: What were your first impressions of Bob Cobbing?

IW: Rather a strong personality with a good beard and a very resonant voice and interested, as I’ve said, in a very wide range of things which, at the time, were somewhat alien to me, such as his visual poems and, later on, his sound poems which have now begun to appreciate to a great degree. But, certainly, with Jeff and Bob working together in the same school some quite interesting things were happening both within the school, either the art work or the writing that the children in the school were doing, and also, I think, some publishing. The school magazines were the difference.

DM: Did you visit them in their school?

IW: No, I didn’t visit the school for various reasons but it’s through Bob coming to Jeff’s — or we would meet in Finchley at Bob’s then home — that I got to know what they were doing and it was about this time, early Sixties, that Jeff, one day, produced his first issue of My Own Mag. Very simple issue. I think four sheets printed only one side of the page and stapled together. ‘My Own Mag a Super Absorbent Periodical Produced by Homo Sap Inc, 37 Salisbury Road…’ (which, in fact, was Jeff’s home). Jeff wouldn’t have had a duplicator, Roneo or Gestetner at home so he might have been producing the stencils at home and drawing and typing on the stencils but then printing them in, I presume, the school premises and, certainly, this is what he did later on when he was teaching some years later at the same school as I was.

DM: With the full approval of the school authorities?

IW: Well, he was using a very small amount of ink and I don’t think they worried. He probably replaced that himself. I’m not sure whether ‘full approval’ would be the correct expression but he certainly carried on doing it at Finchley and then, about 1963 / 64 — certainly by ’64 — he was teaching with me in Barnet and, at that time, he was using the Gestetner duplicator which the school secretary had to relinquish and all the duplicating went on in the art room with Jeff.

DM: When he showed you this first edition what did he say? Did you sense that he was rather pleased with it?

IW: Yes, I think he was because the one thing it wasn’t was tasteful and, if we say anything about Jeff, the whole of Jeff’s work could never be described as ‘tasteful’. I can vouch for that because, at a later period, three or four years later, I tried to produce a piece of artwork — a relief assemblage — in the style of Jeff Nuttall and whatever I did, whatever terrible colours I used, what terrible paints I used — like Woolworth’s gloss paint — everything I did in this piece turned out tasteful. Whereas Jeff could take the most tasteful material and produce something that was the opposite.

DM: Were you surprised when he produced this?

IW: No, I don’t think I was because I knew that he wrote and I had read one or two manuscript novels that he had written at an earlier date before he came to live in Barnet so I knew his literary side and poetic side was there and his method of production, as I say, really enabled him to fly in the face of commercial, tasteful products.

DM: I gather he wrote Mr Watkins Got Drunk & Had to be Carried Home?

IW: Yes.

DM: Was that before then or did it come later?

IW: That was published about 1964, I think. It all came about — and quite a lot of later issues of My Own Mag — through his contact with William Burroughs, the American writer who used a technique called ‘cut-up’ to produce his texts and, certainly, this was the idea behind Mr Watkins Got Drunk & Had to be Carried Home. The context of that was Jeff and his wife Jane decided to hold a party at their house in Salisbury Road and invited a range of people — Group H members, Writers’ Forum members and other people — to attend the party but they had to bring with them a text which described the party and what went on in the party so that it was a forecast of what happened. As well as this he tape-recorded the actual party and the idea was that all these accounts would be cut up and reassembled to produce an analogy to the party but not a logical description of it. As well as taking my forecast of the events of the party along to the house that night I took with me four or five accounts written by pupils I was involved with at the time in school who were remedial education pupils and they, in fact, wrote accounts of the party featuring, of course, me, and one of those accounts was Mr Watkins Got Drunk & Had to be Carried Home. It didn’t actually happen.

DM: It didn’t?

IW: No, I walked home and, if I got drunk, it wasn’t very very very drunk, so the children would have been rather disappointed, but, eventually, after a lot of work by Jeff, who had called himself, I think, ‘the scissor man’ for that publication, it was actually produced and published by Writers’ Forum.

DM: My understanding is that Jeff sent a copy of the first My Own Mag to William Burroughs and that he became involved from then on. Is that what you understood?

IW: Well, certainly by what appears to be Issue Three, I think, William Burroughs features on the cover — My Own Mag ‘Moving with the Times Special Tangier Edition’. Well, of course, William Burroughs was in Tangier, probably at that time, and it mentions William Burroughs. May have been Issue Four… Looking at the price, because Jeff produced these very cheaply on duplicating paper, Issue One was a penny. Issue Two would have been a penny. Issue Three was a penny but the William Burroughs Issue was certainly four-pence-halfpenny because, obviously, the cost of buying reams of duplicating paper must have meant that he had to put the price up but, I would say, that it is something like Issue Four that William Burroughs was first involved himself and there are, later on, letters from William Burroughs that are published in the magazine.

DM: Did you meet William Burroughs?

IW: No, I didn’t, no. In a way, although, on one level, I was quite closely involved with Jeff, he did have a social cultural life which meant that he spent a lot of time in London proper and met all sorts of people who were just names to me, but he had a terrific circle of friends and acquaintances, a lot of whom, in fact, contributed to My Own Mag. I think the initial My Own Mags were Jeff’s own work but, later on, he had contributions from all sorts of people.

DM: Did you know any of the other contributors?

IW: Some I knew, some I didn’t, and in this one here, which is still one penny, we have: Anselm Hollo, who I think was quite well-known; Ray Gosling, who still broadcasts on BBC; Keith Musgrove I knew. So there were a few in that one that I knew quite well. Keith Musgrove was part of the whole thing for quite a long time.

DM: And you contributed yourself?

IW: I contributed to a few of them. I think two, maybe three of the Mags. The last one I contributed to was when I was in the States in ’65 / ’66 and, I think, two or three Mags were published while I was in the States and, I think, the last one just after I got back and Jeff sent me copies in the States which is why I managed to get a copy of every issue.

DM: How were you approached to write for it?

IW: Um, I think it very informally. It just happened. Because I did the occasional bit of poetry which I took along to one of the Writers’ Forum poetry evenings which were held at Bob Cobbing’s but there were so many high-powered poets there that I felt reluctant to read in front of them but then some things that I wrote very much on the kind of cut-up principle, I suspect, were found in some of My Own Mags and, at that time, I was very interested in the idea of ‘found’ poetry. Nothing I wrote or invented myself but things I would find written on walls or whatever. One of these, which is, in fact, published in Mr Watkins Got Drunk & Had to be Carried Home, if I remember rightly, is a very simple poem which goes: ‘Bedded in Betws, brecwast in Bangor and a naked Bowen’s red-tipped breasts in Bethesda’. Now, ‘the naked Bowen’s red-tipped breasts in Bethesda’ was a graffiti I found on a toilet wall in Bethesda, wonderfully rich in image. Far better than I could have invented. So I just added the ‘bedded’ and ‘Brecwast’ and then ‘in Bethesda’ at the end and so, because of that, I was producing things that, I suppose, it just became natural that they went into My Own Mag at some time.

DM: As the magazine progressed can you remember whether it took up quite a bit of Jeff’s time?

IW: Yes, but, then, Jeff always seemed to be working one way or another. He might have been drinking a pint of beer in a pub but he would have either been working in terms of discussing with people things that mattered like nuclear disarmament or the anti-apartheid movement. All of these things worked together at that time and we were all part of it. Some people involved were artists and others weren’t. One of the people, in fact, who marched with us on marches and used to baby-sit for Jeff and his wife is now a very respectable MP in Parliament — a Labour MP, I must say. So, you know, all sorts of people came our way.

DM: How do you feel that My Own Mag relates to Jeff’s wider creative work?

IW: I think, stylistically, it relates very closely. The graphics, the imagery, that he uses — both the verbal but also the drawn — relates very much to his work in the field of sculpture and painting. It’s very much part of the same person and the throwaway nature of My Own Mag — i.e. printed on duplicating paper, sometimes, like the one I’m holding at the moment, the front page has been burnt, charred at the bottom. Another one will be torn. One would be cut-up. There is one which looks as though someone has urinated over it. I hope he hasn’t, but maybe…

But all of these things are ephemeral and his work at the time, his sculpture work, was very ephemeral. One of the things I much regret is that, in exhibitions we had — and, through Bob Cobbing, Group H showed very often in the libraries in north Finchley and east Finchley — his work would go into a Group H exhibition and it would be priced at ‘two thousand five hundred pounds’ or ‘ten shillings’. At the time I was living in a series of bed-sitters and works that he produced — and which are no longer with us because of their ephemeral nature — if I had the space I would have bought. I would have had to pay the ten shillings not the two thousand pounds — but I would have bought them and stored them and, I think, they would have been, today, very important evidence of what he was doing.

DM: In many ways it’s amazing that these magazines have survived at all.

IW: Yes, but, of course, how many have survived? I was lucky to be working close to Jeff in the first half of the Sixties. I had a copy of every one and realised their importance because, I think, they were amongst the first underground publications. ‘Desktop publishing’, in those days, was not normal. You printed off things in school programmes for events in school and things like that. But how many people were producing cyclostyled, mimeographed, duplicated — literary works? Bob Cobbing had been doing that. Very often the material he produced, if it was in the form of a booklet, would, in fact, have been done by lithography by a commercial printer, but, to actually work, if you like, on your own desk producing this stuff I think was a very important part of publishing for the underground. By the late Sixties, early Seventies, of course, everybody had access to photolithography and so magazines which, I suppose, were underground magazines, like Oz, the Richard Neville one, that was produced by the offset process. You could do wonderful things — psychedelic kind of colour changes and so on — with it which, of course, you couldn’t do on the old Roneo or Gestetner. But I still think these were important and, of course, I saved them but how many of these went out to people and were thrown away?

DM: Do you know how many were produced in the first place?

IW: No. It would be very difficult to say. Paper came in reams of five hundred. I doubt if he would have produced five hundred of any one copy. I presume a hundred or so would have been a maximum and they would be sent out to friends, so, I suppose, sold to acquaintances. I don’t know. I don’t think I ever paid for any of mine.

DM: I believe some of them were sold in Better Books?

IW: Well, that is quite likely because Bob Cobbing by 1963, maybe by ’62, was managing the paperback bookshop of Better Books in Charing Cross Road and he sold there a lot of underground material, anti-establishment material. But, of course, Better Books, at that time, also became the focus for a number of other things because, in 1964, Jeff, together with Bruce Lacey, John Latham, David Trace, I think Keith Musgrove, a Greek architect who also contributed to My Own Mag called Criton Tomazos and myself collaborated on an installation in the basement of Better Books. This was called STigma.

DM: This is illustrated in My Own Mag.

IW: I think it is in one of the later issues, yes. This happened before I went to the States in ’65. So it may have been early ’65 and this consisted of a rather harrowing, I suppose, ‘conception, birth, life, death’ labyrinth in the basement of Better Books.

DM: Was Jeff Nuttall the kind of lead figure in all this?

IW: Yes. Whilst he was talking at that time with people like William Burroughs, he was also talking with Alexander Trocchi, and he, in fact, published, I think, a magazine called Sigma and I think the STigma came out of that title. Now the concept began in discussions through the Group H, really. Criton Tomazos, being an architect, had come up with a concept for a very large — perhaps an outdoor — structure, which would have been, sixty, eighty foot high or more, but the same labyrinthine quality to it. I think the meetings we had at this time — informal meetings — eventually, through Bob, materialised in the STigma production in Better Books.

DM: There was quite a lot of interest, wasn’t there, in this? Wasn’t there a BBC broadcast?

IW: Yes. Somewhere in my archive I have a tape off-air. A reel-to-reel tape in which a broadcaster went through the STigma environment, installation, and, totally unflappable, described his experiences as though he was describing the Trooping of the Colour or something like that. There was no football crowd excitement or anything like that. It was just on a very even level and quite amazing because, even though one worked on the installation, you still felt a bit shattered when you came out of it. But the interest was wide. There is a visitors’ book in one of the Jeff Nuttall archives and this includes such personalities as Mick Jagger and various actors and film stars who actually went through and experienced it but it was, I think, at the time, an event that, in terms of art history, was very very important and, in fact, at the time, although it was recorded by the BBC, it didn’t hit the establishment press in terms of its art content. It might have hit the establishment press in other terms but, of course, recently in ‘The Art of the Sixties’ it is talked about and so that period of My Own Mag, STigma, Group H, and so on, is, at last, being recognised for what it was. The first half of the Sixties was a very exciting time in north London.

DM: So you feel, very much, that these activities have been unappreciated in art historical terms?

IW: Yes — and by the Establishment. I know that Mrs Thatcher, in the early Sixties a Conservative councillor for the borough of Finchley, was not at all happy with what was going on in the libraries and, if freedom of speech and expression hadn’t been allowed and, if she had her way, it wouldn’t have been allowed, then these events wouldn’t have happened.

DM: Did she ever meet Jeff, do you think?

IW: She certainly met Bob Cobbing and, maybe, she did meet Jeff as well. There is an apocryphal story — no, it isn’t apocryphal, I think it’s quite true — that she visited one of the exhibitions in north Finchley library and Jeff had one of his ephemeral pieces of sculpture which was, basically, a rather moth-eaten umbrella, one or two other things added to it, and coated with a bitumen paint, hanging above Mrs Thatcher and she was ranting on about the ‘disgusting’ exhibition and, I’m told, that a little bit of bitumen, which hadn’t hardened, dripped off and fell into her coiffure. I wasn’t there but this is the story.

DM: There seems to be quite a bit of discussion about the order of the first eight copies of My Own Mag.The first one might have been numbered but the others weren’t. Do you have any thoughts on that?

IW: It’s very difficult. Because you’re now talking about — how many years ago? — forty years ago. I would only be tempted to order them by their complexity, the sophistication of the production process and by the price. Certainly, a penny — a ‘penny dreadful’ — was cheap at the time, wasn’t it ? But, the first issue of all, was four pages printed one side only and, later on, you had very complicated procedures. There is one copy here which uses several colours of paper — and this is one of the interesting things about Jeff. I think he found duplicating paper interesting because it is the same colour as toilet paper — pink, pale blue, you know.

DM: You think that is what appealed to him about it?

IW: Yes, because there are places where he says things like ‘a super-absorbent periodical’ and ‘soft to the touch’ which is, of course, pure Andrex / Kleenex advertising — ‘soft, luscious’. But in the copy here he is using about four or five different colours of paper and, in fact, production is complicated because only one sheet is a whole sheet — or two sheets which are the back sheets of the production. The rest of it is cut up into small sections so you’ve got three leaves at the front, three leaves to the right; one, two, three, four, what’s that, that’s twelve, twenty-four small sheets of paper stapled to the main thing. So it is very complicated. But, again, it is used with the cut-up idea because you can read from one to the other so that’s the William Burroughs thing. This issue features Ray Gosling again, B.S. Johnson, another name from the Sixties, Anselm Hollo, William Burroughs and, down the bottom here, I see, Islwyn Watkins. I don’t know what I contributed yet. I’d have to go through it and see.

DM: Presumably Jeff was responsible, largely, for the look of the magazine?

IW: Oh, absolutely, totally, totally, yes, and that is why, as I say, there is one issue which looks as though it’s been urinated on and this was deliberate. As I remember, he did not urinate on it. He used a watercolour or some mixture other than urine.

DM: Can you remember this going on?

IW: I can remember that particular one being done. Yes. I wasn’t present, perhaps, at the whole thing but I would have been around the periphery at the time because, certainly, the printing would have been done at school and, then, the assembly, probably, done at home or after school hours. Anyway, this one is ‘admission sixpence’ so that means that’s a later one and it actually says here ‘First of November 1964′ so we have a date on that one and that has John Latham as a contributor, and Allen Ginsberg, American underground poet. Let’s see who else. Probably William Borroughs again. So, you know, quite a lot of very important people contributed.

DM: You can’t remember Jeff setting fire to any of the copies?

IW: The charred ones I can’t remember. I wasn’t present when he did those but they were only partially charred rather than completely charred.

DM: They do mean, essentially, that you’ve lost a certain amount of the text. That wouldn’t have mattered?

IW: No, well, see, if you think of life — life’s like that. You don’t get everything complete. You get little bits coming in and, then, I suppose, if you really worried about it, then you would have to be creative and fill in the blanks yourself.

DM: It’s a little bit like ‘Destruction in Art’, isn’t it?

IW: Well, of course, that came when I got back from the States in ’66 and early ’67. ‘Destruction in Art’ became one of the themes that, again, was seen in exhibitions in London, again now being appreciated, and I think the first ‘Destruction in Art’ exhibition in London was held in the basement of Better Books with Bob Cobbing. By then I had left London and I was working in Birmingham full-time and I didn’t get down to a number of these exhibitions and performances. I was lucky enough to visit Bob in Better Books sometime after the ‘Destruction in Art’ symposium and exhibition and found a work by the German artist Werner Schreib who burned things as his way of producing his works of art. I found a small work of his there, signed on the back by him, which was left to rot in the basement and so I was able to collect that which, in a way, is another element that should have been destroyed but, now preserved, is a bit of a paradox.

DM: Can you think of anyone else who was so playful and imaginative in the way in which they used the text — in the case of My Own Mag it is typed text — in relation to images or as part of the whole?

IW: Not really. I talked about Oz, which was the Australian-based underground magazine — Australians in this country, Australian émigrés — that had all this wonderful technology that it used. Although even that looks rather primitive now but, because it was produced by a commercial printer, it could not have the same ‘hands-on’ feeling that this has.

DM: Jeff typed it all himself?

IW: Jeff would have done everything himself unless he used collage in one or two of them, which he did and that would have been from another source. The nearest thing to it that I know of, I think, was B.S. Johnson who contributed to these, did produce a book in the Sixties, or maybe early Seventies, where the pages were cut and you could read them in whatever order you wished and that was commercially printed. Don’t have a copy of that which is a pity, in a way, but I really can’t think of anyone that worked like this but, of course, if you think of the world, and the States, particularly at that time, there may have been other people producing material like this — but what has happened to it? Because of my position at the time, my relationship to Jeff at the time, I was able to have a complete run of these magazines.

DM: And you felt, at the time, it was important to have a set?

IW: Yes. I thought that Jeff was an important artist. We worked in a very different way although we also had concerns in common. Other people in other parts of the world might have been producing these but, of course, I don’t have the evidence. It’s unlikely that one person in the world was producing this kind of material.

DM: You were aware that, at the time, these magazines were having an impact? People were talking about them?

IW: Yes, yes. I think I said, he sent me some issues to the States and he sent not just one for me but ones I could distribute there and so they, then, had their own influence in the States. So, yes. Responses were very varied. You can imagine.

DM: And do you know people who were outraged by them?

IW: There were always people who were outraged by what Jeff did because he didn’t pull his punches. You know that yourself. Taste and decorum were foreign words to Jeff.

DM: And these are highly-prized possessions of yours now?

IW: Yes. I’m very pleased to have them. Eventually, I hope they will go into the collection of… (Tape runs out).

by Michael Bartholomew

I met Jeff Nuttall round about 1960, when I was 18 years old. I lived in north London and was a member of the Barnet branch of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Jeff was also a member. He was maybe 10 years older than I was. He had a wife and family, lived in Barnet, and worked as an art teacher in a secondary modern school in Finchley, north London. When I got to know him, I often used to babysit for his four children. Eventually, I spent quite a bit of time at his house and learned a great deal from him and his wife, Jane — who had been his teacher at art school.

Jeff’s house had the front room set aside as a studio, where he produced paintings and constructions that fell into no category known to me. He had exhibitions at a couple of local galleries and public libraries but sold little.

He also played the trumpet and led various bands in and around north London.

He spent a lot of time in central London at avant-garde galleries, poetry readings, and happenings of various sorts. He was associated with a venture called ‘The Arts Lab’ and led a troupe of actors called ‘The People Show.’ At some point during the early 60s he must have met Burroughs. I do not know who got them together.

Although Jeff was deeply immersed in the avant-garde, he had his roots deep in very particular aspects of English culture. First, he loved the English countryside and the English pastoral tradition in painting. I remember him turning me on to Samuel Palmer, for instance. This love persisted throughout his life, and it’s interesting that the last paintings he was doing, before his death a few years ago, were beautiful watercolours of the countryside along the Welsh / English border, where he was living. Secondly, he loved British popular culture as it manifested itself in things like the music hall and pre-rock popular music. He never really accommodated himself to rock, even though he was at his most active during the sixties. His first and last musical love was jazz of the 30s and 40s — although he would listen and enjoy almost anything. I think that he once collaborated with Mike Westbrook (pianist and bandleader of some superb, roaring, far-out bands) on a happening in St Pancras town hall that involved my brother making an entry down the aisle on a motorbike.

I can’t remember exactly when Jeff started My Own Mag. I’m pretty sure that it was a lone effort. He didn’t have a team of collators and staplers. I imagine that he worked on the material and then ran if off on the school duplicator after hours, on his own, or maybe with the help of some of the kids. (It was a fairly rough school, but Jeff was able to coax some remarkable bits of junk sculpture out of the kids.) The title of the magazine was a deliberate reference to the titles of the children’s comics and annuals that he’d grown up with. He relished the clash between the nostalgic, innocent resonances of the title and the scabrous material that the magazine contained.

I’d like to be able to say that I eagerly awaited every issue and that I read every word, but the fact is that much of what he was writing and publishing was completely beyond me. It was just one more of Jeff’s bizarre projects. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve kept none of the copies, although I must have received them all.

I went off to college in 1963, but stayed in touch with Jeff and his family. He sent me bundles of My Own Mag as they came off his machine and I distributed them to interested (and often uninterested) students. That’s how Peter Collier came to have some copies. I remember the cut-up and burnt issues. Jeff was then under the influence of Burroughs, and the strange appearance of MOM was a sort of homage.

There was a seminal poetry reading that filled the Albert Hall in, I think, 1964. Ginsberg was the star turn, but it assembled all the young British poets. Jeff was to make an appearance, with somebody else, in a happening of some sort that involved them appearing with their naked bodies completely painted, and stuck over with pages of books. They never made it to the stage, due to drunkenness and the effect of the paint on Jeff’s partner.

Everybody who knew Jeff fell under his spell. When he died, an enormously wide range of people, from all periods of his life, came out to his funeral — although I didn’t go. I imagine that someone somewhere will write a biography of him. And I believe that his daughter is writing something herself. There was a big wake for Jeff in London, and a CD of his fugitive poetry readings and jazz performances was produced.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

In late 1963, Jeff Nuttall sent William Burroughs the 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.” “The Super Absorbant periodical” appealed to Burroughs and he responded enthusiastically, thus initiating a fruitful and influential partnership between the two writers.

The impetus and spirit behind My Own Mag must have sounded very familiar to Burroughs, since in 1958 he and Gregory Corso flirted with the idea of starting their own magazine called Interpol. Contributions to Interpol would include “Bowles (his most disgusting); Tennessee Williams (his most); and your [Ginsberg] bubbling, gooey cocaine writing; and [Jacques] Stern’s most humiliating, and Kerouac’s most maudlin, etc.” Corso continued, “I will tell you what we plan for our format: first an editorial, by either Bill or me or both. In it we will inform our readers that the thing this week is Palfium, or that one needs a prescription now for Diosan in Spain — kind of junk news, etc. Also we will review books, books written by junkies, fiends, cross-eyed imbeciles, huge-footed oafs, etc. We will praise and hail and laud all kinds of bile, and put down, pan, condemn all kinds of respectability and whiteness.” Both Interpol and My Own Mag share a concern with the irreverent and the obscene.

In Bomb Culture, Nuttall adds, “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.” Sounds very much like the spirit behind Naked Lunch. I am reminded of the Ginsberg poem “On Naked Lunch,” that warns “Don’t hide the madness.” Kerouac viewed Burroughs’ novel as a similar glimpse into hidden truths thus leading Kerouac to name Burroughs’ work. Burroughs’ “long newspaper spoon” comes into play here as well.

In isolation in Tangier, Burroughs longed for literary contact and viewed Nuttall as a kindred soul. My Own Mag revived Burroughs’ interest in starting his own magazine and Nuttall, like Ed Sanders at Fuck You Press, possessed a very liberal publishing policy. Yet the interests of Burroughs in 1964 were no longer those of Burroughs in 1958. The Beat Hotel and Brion Gysin introduced Burroughs to the cut-up in the late summer of 1959 and his work and working methods would never be the same. The cut-up technique was not a static method either.

Thanks to the generosity of Robert Bank and Peter Collier coupled with my own collection, the development of the cut-up technique as well as Burroughs and Nuttall’s editing relationship can be explored. Burroughs first appears in issue 2. “From H.B. William Burroughs” is a cut-up in line with Burroughs’ explorations of the technique from Minutes to Go and The Exterminator. Works of this kind appear in little magazines throughout the 1960s: The Outsider, Rhinozeros, Floating Bear, Cleft. By 1964, these exercises represented something of a dead end and Burroughs sought to extend the cut-up into new territories.

In the winter of 1964, Burroughs and Nuttall met in England. Nuttall describes the meeting in Bomb Culture as a bit of a missed opportunity as Burroughs was not talkative and Nuttall in his nervousness got drunk. Yet I suspect the meeting was instrumental in both men deciding to up the ante in their editorial relationship and to fully explore the possibilities of My Own Mag. Not surprisingly, Burroughs appeared regularly in the magazine after this meeting. In addition, the nature of his role in the magazine changed as well.

In Issue 4, Burroughs submitted “Warning Warning Warning Warning,” a cut-up presented as a 32-space grid. The piece was “to be read any which way.” The first issue of Insect Trust Gazette from 1964 featured the grid experiments with “Heavens Burning Idiot” and “Grid 1 and 2″ along with instructions of how the cut-up was created. Nuttall responded to Burroughs’ grid experiments in issue 6, the cut-up issue. The format of the magazine, 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.

The Special Tangier Issue (No. 5) ushered in a major development in the cut-up technique. As Barry Miles discusses in the final chapter of El Hombre Invisible, Burroughs began experimenting with the three-column format in February 1964. This development cannot be separated from Burroughs’ evolving relationship with My Own Mag and Nuttall. 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.”

Numerous postcards in Robert Bank’s possession are postmarked from Gibraltar and feature scenes from the area. As Miles points out, Gibraltar was an area of fascination for Burroughs. 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]“). As Davis Schneiderman explores in a draft research paper, the three column experiments (for example, The Coldspring News, Moving Times) featured in the My Own Mag and other places, like The Spero, all utilized the same front page of the New York Times from 1899. Possibly, Burroughs chose that year due to the date inscription in Gibraltar. Such coincidences spoke to the power of the cut-up to cross time and even predict the future.

In “Moving Times” in issue 5, the three-column format is simple in layout. There are no images and the layout mimics the front page of a daily paper like the New York Times it cannibalizes. 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 a new path creatively for Burroughs. Not surprisingly, Burroughs and Nuttall received responses from Carl Weissner after this issue. This relationship along with Claude Pélieu and Mary Beach would form the closest thing to a movement or school relating to the cut-up.

The “Moving Times” first appeared as a three-column cut-up. Burroughs then expanded it to a supplement to My Own Mag that he edited. “The Burrough” and “Apomorphine Times” (similar supplements in My Own Mag) are other examples of this editorial page by Burroughs. The idea of a Burroughs supplement did not fully develop until issue 7 with Burroughs cut-ups appearing under a Moving Times faux newspaper format. It is at this point that Burroughs explores in detail the possibilities of the newspaper as a form to be complicated and parodied. In 1965, Burroughs lent the name “The Moving Times” to a poster for Alexander Trocchi’s The Sigma Project. The poster was designed to be hung in the London subway and serve as a sounding board for the Project. Here the broadside goes back to its early roots as a means to disseminate information on the side of barns and the like. What is clear is that Burroughs developed and expanded the three-column format at a rapid rate. The development of “The Moving Times” from a simple three column cut-up to a supplement to My Own Mag to a broadside disseminating information for a proposed international movement testifies to Burroughs’ increasing ambition for the cut-up technique.

In Issue 11, My Own Mag and Burroughs change direction yet again. 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 illustration to My Own Mag. As early as Issue 4, Nuttall tipped in additions to the magazine, but only in the later issues does the scrapbook feel of Burroughs’ writing find a parallel in the format of My Own Mag. At the same time, Burroughs 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.” 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 above, this new direction merged the older scrapbook format 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. As you can see, the three-column format now includes images that comment on the text. The feel is more of a magazine than a newspaper. Possibly, Nuttall’s extra-illustrations comment on Burroughs’ new look.

As the correspondence 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. In some cases, Burroughs allowed 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 may have drawn the image 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. A further examination of the nature of this collaboration remains to be attempted. A close examination of manuscript material would reveal much about the give and take between Burroughs and Nuttall.

For example, in issue 15, we can see the transformation of 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 items 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.

As I mentioned before, Nuttall, like Ed Sanders, felt free to print anything. Their value as editors was not to shape material but to have the bravery and the foresight to provide an outlet for writing that could not be printed anywhere else. I do not want to downplay the editorial genius of Nuttall. The presence of Nuttall is all over My Own Mag. Burroughs’ cut-ups speak on matters and in a manner that Nuttall clearly agrees with. But Nuttall’s worldview comes out as clearly in My Own Mag as Burroughs’. As Robert Bank has shown, Perfume Jack links the entire magazine together into a unified whole. My Own Mag is Nuttall’s magazine first and foremost.

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. Hopefully in the future, RealityStudio will have a column on Jeff Nuttall as mimeograph artist providing a closer examination of his mastery of this difficult and stubborn medium.

Issue 15 demonstrates another direction of 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 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. In the later issues, “The Moving Times” begins to function like a magazine within the magazine. Material comes not just from Burroughs. Burroughs began incorporating his correspondence into “Moving Times.” Likewise, Weissner cut up Burroughs’ work and letters to form new material. A handwritten note by Burroughs provides evidence of his excitement over this new correspondence. 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.

My Own Mag functioned like a laboratory for Burroughs where he was free to experiment. Like Charles Olson’s experience with Floating Bear, Burroughs could get feedback from a receptive audience immediately since the turnaround time on the mimeo machine was so rapid. It had to be because Burroughs’ approach to the cut-up was changing quickly at this time. My Own Mag documents in detail Burroughs’ cut-up experiments. Yet we should never forget that the magazine also memorializes the brilliance of Jeff Nuttall as an editor, writer and artist. To fully appreciate My Own Mag, it must be approached and read in all its complexity. The attentive reader will be rewarded with a truly special experience. Thanks must go to Islwyn Watkins for making available for electronic reproduction his rare complete set of My Own Mag. Due to his generosity, the experience of reading and enjoying this legendary magazine can be yours. Enjoy!!!

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

My Own Mag is a bibliographic nightmare. There is no general consensus on the correct order of the first eight issues of the seventeen issue run. This might be by design. Nuttall, like Ed Sanders, possessed a devilish air and a flair for the bibliographically ridiculous. In an effort to frustrate and confuse collectors as well as parody the numbering of magazines, Sanders altered his bibliographic system at issue five and then continued sequentially from there for eight more issues. In a similar vein, Stan Persky, the editor of Open Space, a San Francisco magazine dedicated to the Jack Spicer circle, made issue nine impossible to obtain thereby making complete runs almost unheard of.

Complete runs of My Own Mag are rare, but not unheard of. In 1986, Nuttall decided he wanted out of Great Britain and planned an exile in Portugal. Nuttall returned to live in England within the year, but in preparation for his trip, he cleared out his papers in Todmorden and summoned Iain Sinclair to remove the archives. Many may know of Sinclair as the author of a slew of books, such as Downriver and London Orbital, detailing the arcane and underworld history of London. Early in his literary career, Sinclair was a poet influenced by the Beats. Sinclair associated with the British avant-garde scene including Jeff Nuttall. (On an interesting side note, Beat Scene Magazine, edited by Kevin Ring, just reissued the cult favorite Kodak Mantra Diaries in December 2006. The diaries are Sinclair’s account of Allen Ginsberg’s adventures in the British underground in the late 1960s). It is less known that he is also a legendary bookman, one of the pioneers in the rare book market for the Beat Generation. Sinclair’s books often deal with the shadowy world of book scouts, like in White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings. References to the rare book world permeate his novels.

In September 1986, Iain Sinclair Books issued a catalog entitled Jeff Nuttall and the Beats featuring “the bounty from that raid.” The first item in the catalog was a complete run of My Own Mag. Sinclair quotes the Maynard & Miles Burroughs bibliography section on My Own Mag.

Here is the Maynard & Miles explanation of the chronology of My Own Mag in full:

I have used the sequence suggested by Bob Cobbing (who mimeographed the early issues) with the exception of transposing his no. 1 for his no. 2, which order still disagrees with the sequence given to me by the editor in 1968. The sequence here established agrees, however, with the editor’s statements concerning the magazine in his biographical volume Bomb Culture (London, 1968) in which he says that he wrote to WSB only after the first issue was out. However, in the same book he says that issue 8 was the first to contain an issue of Moving Times. This does not agree with Cobbing’s sequence, which shows the first issue of Moving Times as appearing in issue 6. Cobbing’s sequence also shows issue 8 preceding by two issues of The Burrough, which is essentially the same thing as Moving Times (they appear in issues 5 and 7).

The seemingly most helpful entries in the Maynard & Miles bibliography are those dedicated to the haphazard My Own Mag. They are also incorrect as we shall see. The bibliography acknowledges the magazine’s confusing nature. “This magazine is notorious for its lack of numbering and pagination (as well as having pages burned, slashed and stained).” Maynard & Miles’ explanation of their chronology is not that clear either. Jeff Nuttall and Bob Cobbing could not agree on the sequencing of the first eight issues and even Nuttall contradicted himself in various places.

In his catalog, Sinclair provides further comment on the bizarre nature of Nuttall’s bibliographic system: “The note [from Maynard & Miles] produced above gives some idea of the bibliographical complexity of My Own Mag.” Sinclair provides his own chronology in his catalog that differs substantially from that of Maynard & Miles, Nuttall, and Cobbing. Sinclair writes of the rest of the Nuttall material in the catalog, “The rest has either passed through Charing Cross Road like a can of beans, or is locked away from human eyes in a lightless vault known as ‘the 60ies collection.’” Nuttall entrusted Robert Bank with “the 60ies collection” in 1986. Bank met Nuttall in 1980 through Eric Mottram. Mottram taught at King College in London and wrote The Algebra of Need, the first full-length study of Burroughs’ work. Bank writes, “It’s quite a fascinating lot of documents, in fact runs up to the 80s — includes stuff from the British Poetry Revival — but more importantly a manuscript — 3 page cut up, each page signed by Burroughs, together with correspondence from Claude Pelieu and Mary Beach and Carl Weissner…” Bank is scanning the archive, a monumental task, but you can see the fruits of his labor at the Life and Times of Jeff Nuttall web site as well as on RealityStudio.

On the rarity of Nuttall’s magazine, Sinclair writes, “The chances of coming on a complete run of My Own Mag are pretty good: as good as the chances of coming on a piece of the true cross in Brick Lane Market.” But included on the Jeff Nuttall website is yet another complete run of My Own Mag. Bank borrowed this set from Islwyn Watkins, an old friend of Nuttall from the 1960s. Nuttall writes about Watkins in Bomb Culture and immortalized him in the Burroughs-inspired cut-up “Mr. Watkins got drunk and had to be carried home.” Bank scanned the entire contents of My Own Mag. Thank you, Robert!! Bank’s chronology of My Own Mag for the most part recreates Sinclair’s list from the 1986 catalog.

At the 1999 Nelson Lyon auction, a complete run of My Own Mag was lot 155. The Pacific Book Auction catalog describes the lot as “the only complete collection of My Own Mag known to exist.” Clearly, this is an exaggeration, but the fact that each issue is signed and inscribed (in some cases multiple times) by Burroughs with additional signatures by Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg makes Lyon’s set truly unique. The set fetched $3000. Pacific Book Auction relied on the Maynard & Miles entries for its catalog. Interestingly, Lyon purchased this set from a rare book dealer (not Sinclair) and solicited Burroughs, Ginsberg and Corso for the signatures later. BeatBooks’s most recent catalog offered a yet another complete set for sale for under $1500. Andrew Sclanders cobbled together the set himself. A rare feat indeed, but not unique. Even so, complete runs of My Own Mag, like the Digit Junkie, are close to the “true cross” for Burroughs collectors.

While a handful of sets of My Own Mag exist, all parties associated with the magazine agree on the confusion surrounding the order of issues. Thankfully, there is a consensus on the numbering of Issues 9 through 17. These issues provide a high degree of bibliographic sanity compared to the earlier issues. As Robert Bank notes in his essay, Burroughs insisted on this change. These magazines are in some cases dated with a month and year making it possible to create a chronology. For example Issue 9 is dated November 1964. Issues 11 and 12 are dated as well. Just so things would not get too simple, Issue 10, the British Special, is not dated or numbered. The Dutch Schultz Special Issue is dated August 1965 and numbered 13. After Issue 13 every magazine is so marked.

On the other hand, issues one through eight give little useful bibliographic information. They are unnumbered and undated. In order to determine their chronology, it is necessary to delve into the history of the magazine’s creation and tell the story of its relationship with Burroughs. What follows are my confusing explorations into Jeff Nuttall’s correspondence, the history of My Own Mag, and published historical accounts. Robert Bank cuts through all the bullshit and lays it out straight.

In my opinion the first issue of My Own Mag corresponds to the published bibliographies of Sinclair and Maynard & Miles. This is contrary to Maynard & Miles’ interview with Nuttall in 1968 and Cobbing’s suggestions but it jives with the events surrounding the beginnings of the magazine. In Bomb Culture, a sociological history of the development of the international Underground, Nuttall blends his personal story with the history of the counterculture. My Own Mag grew out of a stew of the Committee for Nuclear Disarmarment, the scene around Bob Cobbing at Better Books, the work of Cobbing’s Writer’s Forum, and the development of the British Poetry Revival. Allen Fisher described the scene surrounding My Own Mag as follows: Nuttall’s “understanding of Kaprow’s happenings and Burroughs’ fiction, already evident to him in the early 1960s, linked to some aspects of Romanesque sculpture, Ken Colyer jazz and Dylan Thomas, made a unique recipe for My Own Mag and his subsequent poetry and fiction.”

In Bomb Culture, Nuttall writes, “I had just duplicated a book of poems with Keith Musgrove. The possibilities of duplicating (mimeographing) yawned invitingly. I turned out My Own Mag: A Super Absorbent Periodical in November 1963, as an example of the sort of thing we might do.” He continued, “The French teacher at the school where I worked duplicated the first mag for me. He liked it. He said, ‘Do it again.’ His name was Bob Cobbing.”

Bob Cobbing deserves special attention as his influence on My Own Mag cannot be overstated. Cobbing was a sound, concrete and performance poet central to the British Poetry Revival of the 1960s. This page of recollections highlights the power of his talent and personality. In 1963 as an outgrowth of his poetry and performances, he started the Writer’s Forum, a do-it-yourself publishing machine. Cobbing’s output and energy were legendary. In the early 1960s, Cobbing left his teaching position and took a job at Better Books. Better Books on Charing Cross Road became a hotspot for the British Underground. Cobbing began experimenting with the cut-up technique in the 1950s and his interest in concrete poetry and sound experiments paralleled Burroughs’ explorations in the 1960s. Cobbing, as well as Nuttall, is an under-appreciated figure in the history of modern literature and publishing. An essay on Cobbing and the Writer’s Forum appears in A Book of the Book: Some Works and Projections about the Book and Writing. Granary Books, the publisher of the collection, recognizes the importance of Cobbing in the history of the book and publishing as well as the history yet to be written in the years to come. Granary Books should know.

Nuttall distributed the first magazine to roughly twenty people and gave the rest to Better Books to sell for a penny each. Ray Gosling, Anselm Hollo and William Burroughs all responded to the first issue. Given Cobbing and Nuttall’s artistic concerns, not to mention Burroughs’ close ties to and legendary status within the little magazine community, it is not very surprising that the first issue of My Own Mag would land in Burroughs’ hands, and that he would in turn reach out to Nuttall. Clearly, Burroughs received but was not in the first issue despite Cobbing’s claims. Burroughs and Hollo appear in what the bibliography and Sinclair designate as issue two: The Odour Fill Periodical. Sinclair suggested that this issue was published in December 1963 and Maynard & Miles date the issue in January / February 1964. Gosling and Hollo appear in issue three: “newspapers velvet to the touch in super-absorbencies” in February 1964.

This chronology corresponds with Burroughs’ own recollection of My Own Mag. Burroughs inscribed the “Super Absorbency Issue” of My Own Mag from the Lyon set, “this rare item My Own Mag cheered me when I was under siege in Tangier.” In the Odour Fill Periodical, Burroughs added: “My first appearance in this periodical.” In his 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.” These facts support the idea that Burroughs’ first appearance was in the second issue.

Burroughs’s first appearance probably occurred in very late December 1963 or early January 1964. In January 1964, Burroughs sent his son, Billy, back to the United States after a failed attempt to play a more active role in his life. Shortly thereafter, Nuttall and Burroughs met each other. Nuttall writes, “Burroughs sent his first testing letters from Tangier. In the bitter winter of 1964, he came to London.” At their meeting, Nuttall got drunk in a local pub and stumbled home. The Burroughs-inspired Mr. Watkins followed soon after. I would suggest that by the time of their meeting Burroughs already appeared in My Own Mag and that the meeting was something of a planning and / or feeling out session for further collaborations.

After Issue 4, Burroughs took a much more active role in the magazine, editing his own section: alternately entitled The Burrough or The Moving Times. Sinclair and Maynard & Miles disagree on the chronology of Issues 5 through 8. Sinclair follows Nuttall’s recollections in Bomb Culture. Nuttall remembers that the first copy of The Moving Times arrived from Burroughs in May 1964 and was included in the Special Tangier Issue. According to Nuttall, the Tangier Issue was number five. Maynard & Miles place the Tangiers Issue as number Eight after two issues of The Burrough and an issue of The Moving Times. In this case, they misquote Nuttall in Bomb Culture. (See quote from Maynard & Miles above.) In addition, Maynard & Miles side with Bob Cobbing’s memory of events. Cobbing suggested that the first issue of Moving Times was in issue 6 and that two issues of The Burrough preceded the Tangier Issue.

I would side with Sinclair’s suggested list given that he relies on Nuttall’s Bomb Culture written in 1968 near the time of My Own Mag. Cobbing’s recollections seem unreliable. It should be remembered that Cobbing believed that Burroughs appeared in the premier issue. Sinclair’s list also dovetails with the datelines of newpaper articles used by Burroughs in his cut-ups. Given the rapid, timely nature of Burroughs’ three-column works of the period it makes sense that he would incorporate current articles in The Moving Times pieces and then rush them to Nuttall for publication. For example, the dateline in the Tangier issue is February 10, 1964 which is the earliest of the dates mentioned in the disputed issues 5 through 8. This supports Nuttall’s recollection in Bomb Culture and Sinclair’s list.

Correspondence in the possession of Robert Bank seconds Sinclair’s placement of the Tangier Issue and supports Nuttall’s recollection in Bomb Culture. An undated postcard mentions sending material for the Tangier Issue and states that an earlier issue has sold out, probably issue 3 or 4. I suggest that this postcard was from late April / early May 1964. In Bomb Culture, Nuttall remembers that he received his first Moving Times piece in May. The mimeograph was churning out issue 4 by April 1964 (“Glad to hear that the presses are turning” April 6, 1964). Sinclair suggests that issue 4 was printed in March. It would have to be late March or possibly April. On June 18, 1964, Burroughs gave a progress report on the latest My Own Mag in the local bookstores. This was either the Warning Warning Issue (No. 4) or the Tangier Issue (No. 5). Given the mail system, there would be some delay before Burroughs received his copies. I would guess it is the Tangier Issue as Burroughs states he will write in more detail. That would be a letter dated July 8, 1964. In this letter, Burroughs apologizes for the delay in writing and states that the newest issue is selling well (Tangier Issue), and he requests additional copies of a sold-out issue with the burnt edges (issue 4). The date of July dovetails with Sinclair’s chronology for the Tangier issue as does Burroughs’ brief mention of the “newspaper format.” This refers to The Moving Times piece, his first sustained exploration of the three-column format, which appeared in the Tangier Issue. There is no mention of the multicolored cut-up issue at all suggesting it is in the process of publication, has yet to be published, or has yet to be delivered by early July. Who really knows? Not even Nuttall and Cobbing can remember exactly.

Let me throw my hat in the ring and extend this further to suggest my own chronology based on the datelines used in the cut-ups. According to this method, the Edinburgh Festival Issue (featuring a cut-up article from April 1964) would come before the “Over the Last Skyscraper a Silent Kite,” burnt-hole issue (featuring a cut-up article from May 1964). Naturally, this differs from all previous chronologies. It also does not quite fit the available evidence. Sinclair lists the Edinburgh Festival issue as being published in August 1964. This makes perfect sense since the Festival ran from August 16-September 5 that year. (For more on the Edinburgh Festival see its web site.) Focusing on Burroughs’ work in My Own Mag distorts a proper view of the chronology. So much for my listing.

RealityStudio provides links to the Maynard & Miles (with my notes) and Sinclair. As this column proves, the order of My Own Mag seems as clear as mud which may be as Nuttall intended, or as Robert Bank suggests the result of a hectic life. To this day, the magazine has an aura about it, and it is a unique experience to flip through its pages. As book object and as content, My Own Mag captures the spirit of its time, yet remains fresh for today, and eerily relevant for the future.

Robert Bank cuts through the bibliographic nightmare quite nicely in his essay on Perfume Jack, a comic strip by Nuttall that runs throughout the 17 issues of My Own Mag. Bank’s accounting of the chronology is the simplest that I have seen, the most logical, and the most in line with the magazine itself. In addition, Bank places the focus back on Nuttall proving that a detail study of Nuttall and his work is not only necessary but also fruitful. I would argue that it is also a really good time and time well spent.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

The bulk of Maynard & Miles’ bibliographic entry on My Own Mag is reproduced here in the order in which it was printed. (The same copy accompanies the images on the My Own Mag archive page, where it was reordered to match what is presumably the correct publication sequence.) In parentheses are “Bunker Notes” by Jed Birmingham. Drawing on Iain Sinclair’s bibliography and additional research, these notes expand on the information provided by M&M.

My Own Mag #1: No Burroughs appearance. (Bunker Note: Sinclair 1. Copies of this first issue were sent to Ray Gosling, Anselm Hollo, and William Burroughs.)

My Own Mag #2: “From H.B. William Burroughs” (2:3) (C93) January or February 1964. The cover describes it as “An Odour Fill Periodical.” (Bunker Note: Sinclair 2. Acknowledged by Burroughs as his first appearance in inscription at Lyon Sale. Gosling believed this to be the first issue.)

My Own Mag #3: No Burroughs appearance. (Bunker Note: Sinclair 3)

My Own Mag #4: “Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning” (4:4) (C94). Contains a 32 square grid manuscript. The cover describes the issue as “very late edition” and it is burned away in part on the bottom. (Bunker Note: Sinclair 4)

My Own Mag #5: “Afternoon Ticker Tape” (5: 1-2) (C95). The Burrough (p. 1-2) edited by WSB and mimeographed by Nuttall, and it appears as the last two pages of My Own Mag. Run off pages from the My Own Mag insertion were sent by Nuttall to WSB in Tangier who issued them there in Ex 3, Tangier 1964. A folder containing a variety of loose and stapled sections in no fixed order, one of which was The Burrough. Described on the cover as “Cut Up Issue,” most pages have been cut into eight squares which are stapled at edges to backing sheet. (Bunker Note: Sinclair 6)

My Own Mag #6: “Bring Your Problems to Lady Sutton Fix” (6:2,4) (C97); “Over the Last Skyscrapers a Silent Kite” (6:7-9) (C98). The title of the magazine is one page three and shows through a hole burned on first page. (Bunker Note: Sinclair 7. Burroughs cut up comes from an article dated May 1964. I suggested that this could be issue 8. As the date for the Festival and Bank’s essay proves, such a reliance on Burroughs to date the magazines is a mistake.)

My Own Mag #7: “What in Horton Hotel Rue Vernet” (7:9-10) (C99). Described as “Special Festival Issue.” (Bunker Note: Sinclair 8. Burroughs’s cut up includes a dateline from April 1964 prompting me to suggest this issue was Issue 7. As the date for the Festival and Bank’s essay proves, such a reliance on Burroughs to date the magazines is a mistake.)

My Own Mag #8: “The Moving Times” (8:3-4) (C100). Described as “Special Tangiers Edition,” the cover has a full page drawing of William Burroughs wearing a fez. (Bunker Note: Sinclair 5. Bomb Culture and Bank’s reading of Perfume Jack supports this conclusion)

My Own Mag #9 “Extracts from Letter to Homosap” (9:11) (C101); “Personals Special to The Moving Times” (9:12) (C102). Has a special “Fall Out Shelter” cover and a brown-green stain running down the front. A small square has been cut from bottom of front page. “Special Post-Election” issue. (Bunker Note: Sinclair 9)

My Own Mag #10: All British Issue; No Burroughs appearance. (Bunker Note: Sinclair 10)

My Own Mag #11: “Dec. 29: Tuesday Was the Last Day for Singing Years” (11:14) (C105); Letter to Jeff Nuttall (11:12) (C106); Collage (11:13) (C107). In the form of a letter to Nuttall. (Bunker Note: Sinclair 11)

My Own Mag #12: “The Last Words of Dutch Schultz” (12:12-14) (C111); Letter to Sunday Times (12:15-16) (C113). (Bunker Note: Sinclair 12)

My Own Mag #13: “The Dead Star” (13:7-13) (C122). One of 500 numbered copies. (Bunker Note: Sinclair 13)

My Own Mag #14: Burroughs provides quotes to a Carl Weissner piece. (Bunker Note: Sinclair 14)

My Own Mag #15: “Nut Note on the Column Cut up Thing” (15:15) (C137); “WB Talking” (15:15) (C138); “Quantities of the Gas Girls” (15:16) (C139); Untitled (15:19) (C140). (Bunker Note: Sinclair 15)

My Own Mag #16: No Burroughs appearance (Bunker Note: Sinclair 16)

My Own Mag #17: No Burroughs appearance. (Bunker Note: Sinclair 17)

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

No Burroughs appearance. (Bunker Note: Sinclair 17)

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

No Burroughs appearance (Bunker Note: Sinclair 16)

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

“Nut Note on the Column Cut up Thing” (15:15) (C137); “WB Talking” (15:15) (C138); “Quantities of the Gas Girls” (15:16) (C139); Untitled (15:19) (C140). (Bunker Note: Sinclair 15)

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Burroughs provides quotes to a Carl Weissner piece. (Bunker Note: Sinclair 14)