Recently, I wrote about the threatened closing of John Calder’s bookstore in Great Britain. Anyone reading the literary blogs, like Silliman’s Blog, or similar information sources on literary topics get the sense that the independent bookstore is going the way of the carrier pigeon. Such closings are quite a blow to general readers and creative artists alike. To my mind, the independent bookstore is an essential institution, one needed for a healthy and happy existence.

In his memoir Early Plastic and in the excerpt on Eighth Street Bookshop, Bill Reed tells many tales of life on the Lower East Side. One of my favorite ancedotes was his description of seeing William Burroughs leafing through a book of poems by Charles Bukowski in the stacks at Eighth Street. I love the linking of Burroughs and Bukowski, but I also enjoy the fact that Burroughs haunted the alternative bookstores in his community. In his memoir on the Sixties, Barry Miles tells a similar story of Burroughs frequenting the Indica Bookshop at 102 Southampton Row in London. Burroughs lived nearby and was something of a regular there. Miles writes, “Bill had pinned a sign on the bookshop noticeboard some weeks before offering free Scientology auditing sessions to anyone who wanted them in order to improve his own auditing technique — even giving his home address and telephone number, which I thought was very trusting as he usually wanted to keep that very much a secret.” Despite his desire for a low profile, Burroughs was very much an active member of his neighborhood and something of a bookstore junkie.

One book in my collection highlights the important role of the independent bookshop in Burroughs’ social and creative life. Kaddish, Naked Lunch, Soft Machine, and Bomb were all written in part at the Beat Hotel, but the book that most captures the spirit of 9 rue Git-le-Coeur is Minutes To Go. In his editor’s note to Brion Gysin Let the Mice In, Jan Herman describes the Beat Hotel atmosphere as like a “laboratory,” and Minutes To Go is certainly the most representative result of those experiments in lifestyle and literary technique.

I want to focus on the community of bookstores involved with this cut-up collection. In fact independent bookstores made Minutes to Go a pubished reality. Minutes to Go was issued by Two Cities in 1000 copies on April 13, 1960. A limited edition of ten copies included a manuscript page. This reminds me of the limited edition for the C Press Time. I have never seen the limited Time or Minutes to Go for sale on the rare book market. The John Hay Library at Brown possesses a copy of the Minutes to Go and displayed it prominently at their Burroughs exhibition years ago.

Two Cities was a bilingual (French and English) magazine edited by Jean Fanchette, a young doctor. Fanchette published expats like Henry Miller, Alfred Perles, and Lawrence Durrell. The first issue was dedicated to Durrell. Years later, the correspondence between Fanchette and Durrell from this period would be published by Two Cities as well. Anaïs Nin was a correspondent for the magazine. With Gysin designing the covers, Fanchette fashioned Minutes to Go to mirror the magazine.

Fanchette ran his magazine out of George Whitman’s Mistral Bookstore. The Mistral was a hang out for expat writers along the lines of Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company. In fact, Whitman would close the Mistral and reopen as Shakespeare and Company in the mid-1960s. From the Merlin Group around Alexander Trocchi (the Group that discovered the fiction of Samuel Beckett and published him in English with the assistance of Olympia Press) to the writers associated with the Paris Review, Whitman’s store functioned as a water cooler in the literary office that was Paris. In Exiled in Paris, James Campbell writes, “The Mistral doubled as ‘The Left Bank Arts Center’ and announced ‘a program of cultural events’” in 1951. Campbell continues, “The Librairie Mistral was housed in an ancient building near St. Michel, facing Notre Dame Cathedral. Before Whitman bought it… it had been an Arab grocery store. Not content with offering lectures, exhibitions and the rest, he set up a lending library with an estimated 10,000 books.” To this day, George Whitman’s bookstore is a thriving literary hangout and an essential stop for any bibliophile and aspiring Beat.

In Literary Outlaw, Morgan writes that Burroughs cruised the store, largely unsuccessfully. Yet Burroughs met his long time companion and collaborator Ian Sommerville at the Mistral. A student at Cambridge, Sommerville worked at Whitman’s bookstore in the summer of 1959. (According to John Geiger’s biography of Brion Gysin, Sommerville was perched on a ladder and dropped a book on Burroughs’ head.) Corso and Ginsberg both read at the bookstore. Burroughs’ first public reading occurred there as described by Harold Norse in Memoirs of a Bastard Angel. Like with Indica or Eighth Street, the Mistral was part of Burroughs’ routine.

My copy of Minutes to Go has the bookstamp of the reopened store. As Minutes to Go did not sell well despite a nice turnout at the publication party, copies were probably lying around the store for years. To the horror of collectors, Whitman diligently stamped the books sold in his store with the Shakespeare and Company logo. He claimed the stamp actually increased the value of the book due to the association with the store. I wonder, but the stamp does link my copy to the Paris bookselling community out of which Minutes to Go took shape as a literary experiment and as a published object.

Fanchette ran out of money and could not bring Minutes to Go to completion, so Gait Froge, the Frenchwoman who ran the English Bookshop, stepped in and saved the day. She ponied up the $500 needed to pay the printers. Froge’s bookshop was another legendary hangout for young writers. Campbell writes the English Bookshop “was a smaller affair [than the Mistral], and necessarily more discriminating in its stock. Whereas the Mistral boasted books ‘in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian and German,’ she offered a mix of classics and the latest productions of the avant garde.” Froge delighted in mixing with writers and artists, opening her bookstore to the creative community of expat Paris. The Merlin Group was headquartered at the bookshop after a falling out with Whitman. Burroughs particularly appealed to Froge’s sensibilities and avant garde tastes. The English Bookshop financed the first pressing of Call Me Burroughs in 1965. This record has French and English liner notes and came out before the ESP LP of 1966.

In Barry Miles’ The Beat Hotel, there is mention of the release party for Minutes to Go in April at Gait Froge’s English Bookshop. Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press supplied the champagne. A large portion of the sales at the English Bookshop came from the tourist market in Girodias’ Traveller’s Companion titles of which Naked Lunch was one (No. 76 in fact). The writers who hung around the English Bookshop (as well as the Mistral) provided Girodias with his stable of pornographers.

According to an interview Ted Morgan did with Sinclair Beiles, the four authors, Burroughs, Gysin, Sinclair Beiles and Gregory Corso, all signed at the party. One prominent bookseller challenges this fact in his description of a dedication copy of Minutes to Go to Gait Froge on sale for $32,500. This book of course lacks the Corso signature. In Literary Outlaw, Morgan recounts that Corso arrived with his girlfriend Sally November and that Froge, herself, commented “Do you have one for every other month as well?” In addition, all of Corso’s letters collected in An Accidental Biography from April 1960 are postmarked from Paris. It would appear that Corso was there and not in Scandanavia as suggested. Burroughs was lucky to make the party. At the time, the French authorities were pursuing Burroughs on a drug charge and suggested that he leave the country. Burroughs left Paris (soon after the publication party) and traveled to England with Sommerville. I believe he also went to Scandanavia as well before returning to Paris once the pot smoke had cleared.

Yet it is true that the Corso signature is unusual given the fact he disavowed all involvement with the book as contrary to his sensibilities as a poet. This is made very clear in a postscript to Minutes to Go. Yet he wavered on this point. The publication of a cut-up with Burroughs in the collaboration issue of Locus Solus in 1961 is proof that he was still associated with the technique after the publication of Minutes to Go. Possibly the dedication copy currently on the market was signed to Froge at a later date or maybe Corso refused to sign it at the party in an act of spite. Corso was nothing if not unpredictable. My copy is signed by Burroughs, Corso and Gysin. I like to think that the book was signed at that party and that in the hustle and bustle Beiles never got around to signing it, but that may be wishful thinking. Sadly, my copy of Minutes to Go lacks the wraparound band that said “Un règlement de comptes / avec la literature.” Translated, to settle a score with literature. Members of the Beat Hotel, the publishers, and those at the signing party would have caught the drug reference.

No doubt the crowd at the publication party had its share of thrillseekers, but, naively perhaps, I have the sense that they were mostly members of the anglophone literary community around the Beat Hotel, Olympia Press, and the independent bookstores. Again a look at Corso’s letters complicates this impression. On roughly April 19, 1960 a few days after the Minutes to Go party, Corso writes in a letter to Peter Orlovsky, “I had it out with Burroughs, his ass-licking friends are bores and they hate, and he, Bill, is okay, but he does not know me.” In an earlier letter also to Orlovsky from April 19th, Corso writes, “Yelled at Burroughs for being the world’s number one stool-pigeon which of course he ain’t.”

Corso is probably expressing his ambivalence about the cut-up and Burroughs’ embracing of the technique. These feelings may have been brought to a boil by the recent party. Yet it hints at a deeper critique of Burroughs. Corso has a reputation as a tragic clown, but he was a brilliant poet and something of a gadfly to the Beat Generation. Corso poked holes in the inflated egos of Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs and challenged the myths of the Beat Cult. I have suggested that Burroughs was something of a scenester. As others have stated, Burroughs thrived in an active community and required contact with others. The mention of Burroughs’ “ass-licking friends” proves interesting and puts a negative spin on this need of Burroughs. According to Corso, Burroughs was far from the lone wolf of the Beat myth and more of a queen bee surrounded by a hive of drones. A literary community could shade into something of a fawning royal court.

From Shakespeare and Company of the Twenties to, well, Shakespeare and Company of the present day, the English language bookstore in Paris has a tradition as strong as the café for writers and artists. Sylvia Beach published the unpublishable in 1922 when Ulysses was issued in its wrapper the color of the Greek flag and the Mediterrean Sea. In the late 1940s, Lawrence Ferlinghetti studied in Paris and was greatly impressed and inspired by these bookstores, particularly Whitman’s Mistral. City Lights was founded on this model. By 1960, the term “Published in Paris” had a long history and the independent bookstore was an important part of it. Not surprisingly, histories and biographies dealing with the Beats in Paris inevitably mention Gait Froge, George Whitman, The Mistral, The English Bookshop, and Shakespeare and Company. Like the Beat Hotel or the Olympia Press, the independent bookstore and its owner play a crucial role in Paris of the Fifties. Quite possibly, the final touches and publication of Naked Lunch and development of the cut-up could only have happened in one city in the world in 1959. It was in this environment that Burroughs flourished and matured as a writer. In the circumstances surrounding its creation and publication, Minutes to Go captures the spirit of the Beat Hotel as well as the central role of the independent bookstore in that literary community.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

I received an email asking about advice in purchasing an Olympia Press Naked Lunch. It is pretty safe to say that the Olympia Naked Lunch will remain a desirable collectible and appreciate nicely for some time to come. This book appeals to far more than William Burroughs collectors. Fans of 20th Century literature highspots, American Literature, the counterculture, drug culture, the Beats, small presses with added points from Olympia, collectible paperbacks, banned books, and erotica will all find something desirable in this title.

Collectors can choose unwisely in purchasing this book. Seemingly, everybody has a copy. Rare book and auction catalogs, rare book websites and eBay make Naked Lunch easy to find, despite the fact that only 5,000 copies were initially published in 1959. The big issue with Naked Lunch is the nagging urge to pinch pennies and save a considerable amount of money purchasing a middle of the road copy. I would advise fighting this desire. To me, condition is much more of an issue here than with other high end Burroughs rarities. I would buy a lesser copy or a true rarity, the Digit Junkie, for example, because just having the opportunity to buy one is rare. Naked Lunch, like the Ace Junkie, must be bought with a very discerning eye. In the case of Junkie, I think I sacrificed brightness and was more lenient on creasing and wear, because I felt I had to get one right away and not break the bank. The wiser choice might have been to save and wait for a truly lustrous, special copy without the common wear and tear. I have a soft spot for signed copies. I am often willing to sacrifice some condition in order to have the signature. I purchased a very poor copy of the Olympia Soft Machine, because it was signed by Burroughs and Maurice Girodias, the publisher. As an investment, I made an error. In the case of Soft Machine and, particularly, Naked Lunch, the fine, unsigned copy can be even more special than a signed, but worn copy. Like On the Road, these books were used, read, carried in backpacks, sprinkled with Tokay wine or coffee. These books have lived in the world of everyday readers.

Many claim to possess a one of a kind copy of Naked Lunch. No tears or creases to the bright purple and white dust jacket; crisp, bright green wrappers; no bumps to the corners; the book itself is tight and unread. Few deliver. This brings me to a true controversy in the collecting of Naked Lunch and all the Olympia Press titles. In January 1960 scarcely six months after the publication of Naked Lunch, the French government revalued the currency. The green rear wrapper of Naked Lunch possesses a price of 1500 Francs. Many copies are stamped in blue with 18 NF over the original price. What this means is that unsold copies of Naked Lunch were re-priced according to the new currency. There was no change to the content or format of the novel. Many dealers will list this book as a first edition, second state in order to indicate the alteration to the integrity of the book. They will also assure you that the stamp makes no difference. To me this is strictly a personal decision. I firmly believe that the stamp makes a big difference. I think the stamp compromises the beauty of the book. The wrapper does not look as clean to me. I would be willing to pay more for such a copy and I think many collectors agree.

The question is always how much. As I stated, copies are always on the market. Average copies average $1500-2000, possibly less on eBay. Recently, I saw an unsigned copy, described as a spectacular copy, for $7500. With Naked Lunch, the truly beautiful copies are once-in-a-lifetime type occurrences and rarely hold up under close scrutiny. Similarly, described copies, some of them second issue, can usually be found in the $4000-7500 range. In my case, I was offered what I considered the most spectacular copy of Naked Lunch I had ever seen at a discount from an asking price of $5000. The copy coupled with the discount forced me to dip into my pockets at a time I did not expect to buy. Every time I place the book in my hands I feel happy with my choice.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

The history and contents of the magazine Locus Solus provide insight into the type of progressive poetry circles and ideas Burroughs started tapping into with his small scale, textual cut-up works of the early 1960s. A testament to refined taste, Locus Solus was impeccably edited by John Ashbery (Issue 3/4), Kenneth Koch (Issue 2), and James Schuyler (Issue 1 and 5). Harry Matthews published the magazine in France. One issue was done in Switzerland. Matthews was the only American member of an intriguing group of writers: OULIPO. OULIPO was a largely French writing society that specialized in complex word games and the surreal. Ashbery, Koch and Schuyler, along with the charismatic and talented Frank O’Hara, formed the core of the First Generation New York School. The New York School, like the Beat Generation (the Beats also had a four-person core — Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Corso), went through two or three generations beyond the initial core group.

Locus Solus took its name from Raymond Roussel’s classic, which betrays the editors’ affinity for the avant garde, the European, and the highly intellectual. The Collaboration issue (Locus Solus II) opens with a quote by Roussel and is then followed by a quote from Lautréamont (both untranslated). The table of contents to the magazine features classic Chinese and Japanese poets, Shakespeare, Aeschylus, John Donne, André Breton, Dwight Eisenhower, Sir John Suckling: in short a wide selection of the history of Western and Eastern culture. The poets were intensely interested in modern art and music. Influenced and inspired by Abstract Expressionists like Willem De Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Franz Kline, the New York School poets lived and worked with Second Generation New York painters, like Grace Hartigan, Mike Goldberg, and Jane Franchlier. The magazine’s squat, plain appearance mimics the style of French publications from Gallimard. The Special Collaboration issue features a few Burroughs cut-ups of Rimbaud with Gregory Corso from Minutes to Go. The Exterminator also published in 1960 offered further examples of the textual cut-up. The New York poets all experimented with cut-up techniques (as well as other surrealist techniques of automatic writing and composition) in the early 1960s. Many of these creations are in the pages of Locus Solus. First and foremost, the magazine served as a vehicle for the New York School poets to express and to spread their artistic aesthetic.

In 1962 around the time of Locus Solus II, John Asbery published his breakthrough collection, The Tennis Court Oath. Still a highspot of contemporary avant garde poetry, the collection explores the same ground that Burroughs covered in his early cut-up experiments. Ashbery mixes surrealism, concrete poetry, the yet-to-be established Language poetry, and cut-up techniques to form a radically new art. Ashbery’s comments on these poems are similar to Burroughs’ own ideas and practice. Ashbery states, “And I was also rather interested in trying something new, [and] having difficulty in doing this, living in a country where the language spoken was not my own. And I began a lot of experiments, using collage techniques, especially from American and/or English books and magazines, perhaps to feel that I had a toehold in the English language.” He continues, “My intention was to be after… kind of… taking language apart so I could look at the pieces that made it up. I would eventually get around to putting them back together again, and would then have more of a knowledge of how they worked, together.”

Although I am shaky at best regarding their literary theories, it seems clear to me that Ashbery and Burroughs are using similar techniques and have a similar preoccupation with language and the nature of written communication. Ashbery believed language should ultimately depend on references to meanings generated outside language. Burroughs has no interest in putting words back together in order to learn more about how words worked, like Ashbery. Instead, he seeks to blow apart language in order to reach a higher, more advanced knowledge. Burroughs yearns for silence or a pictorial system of communication like hieroglyphics that merge word and image. I have always been somewhat baffled by discussions of this type and a more informed opinions would be appreciated. What is interesting to me is how Burroughs fits into a larger, international discussion of the time. I think this is symbolized by Burroughs’ move from the isolation of Tangier or Mexico City to the central location of Paris. Although Burroughs still works at the artistic margins in comparison to mainstream literature, his work of this period situates itself squarely in the tradition of the literary and artistic avant garde which often found a home base in Paris.

In poems like “The Skaters,” readers of Ashbery encounter “an intractable flux of verbal ‘found objects,’ shifting styles and registers, teasing literary allusions and echoes, fragmentary narrative episodes and descriptive scenes.” Such a statement could be describing Naked Lunch or the true cut-up novels. I am not suggesting that Burroughs influenced Ashbery or vice versa, but I am stating that Burroughs with the cut-up moved from largely a drug novelist who dabbled in more literary aspects, as witnessed in Junkie, the then unpublished Yage Letters and “Letter from a Master Addict,” to an avant garde writer fully experimenting with literary theory. Not surprisingly, Ashbery supported Burroughs’ inclusion in the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1983. In literary magazines like Locus Solus, Burroughs appeared prominently in an international avant garde circle. Clearly, the poets of the New York School saw at an early date that Burroughs was a fellow traveler along newly laid paths in the postmodern literary landscape.

Locus Solus Cover Archive

Locus Solus I

Locus Solus II

Locus Solus III-IV

Locus Solus V

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

By the late 1950s, literary magazines were much on Burroughs’ mind. He was no longer satisfied with publishing his numerous routines in letters to Allen Ginsberg. Naked Lunch began to take shape as a novel and Burroughs sought a larger audience. Mainstream publishing houses were out of the question. Even Olympia Press rejected the initial manuscript. The literary magazine remained Burroughs’ only outlet. In fact, they carried his hopes and dreams as an author. Black Mountain Review and Yugen saw Burroughs through a period of almost complete despair. The controversy surrounding Naked Lunch‘s appearance in Chicago Review and Big Table finally caught the attention of Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press who agreed to print Naked Lunch as a paperback. After more than five years shouting in the literary wilderness, Burroughs was once again a published writer. In the foreword to his bibliography, he wrote, “So it was publication in a little magazine that led to the publication of Naked Lunch at a time when I had almost given up. For many years I sent out pieces to all little magazines that asked me for a contribution, as this bibliography attests.”

Just how important was the literary magazine to Burroughs in the late 1950s? So important that he considered, no matter how briefly and how jokingly, of starting his own outlet. While living at the Beat Hotel in Paris with Gregory Corso, Burroughs toyed with the idea of starting Interpol: “the poet is becoming a policeman.” Corso and Burroughs fleshed out the scheme in a letter sent to Allen Ginsberg on September 28, 1958. Burroughs wrote, “When the Human Image is threatened, The Poet dictates forms of survival. Dream police of poetry protect us from The Human Virus. The human virus can now be isolated and treated. This is the work of The POLICE-POET.” Allen Ginsberg was to serve as the magazine’s coeditor. What would the magazine include? “[O]ur content will be of the most sordid, vile, vulgar, oozing, seeping slime imaginable. We only want the most disgusting far-outness,” wrote Corso. This provides interesting insight into how Naked Lunch was viewed at the time even by Burroughs’ peers. Clearly, Burroughs believed he had written an unpublishable novel. 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.”

It all sounds very tongue-in-cheek, but it was crazy enough to work. In The Beat Hotel, Barry Miles describes Interpol as a “forerunner of the underground press.” The time and, possibly, the drug were just not right. By 1965, just such a magazine was demanded by the counterculture. Fuck You Press published two issues of The Marijuana Newsletter. The Newsletter was “published by New York City LEMAR as a public service, to disseminate information toward the legalization of marijuana. The Marijuana Newsletter will print position papers, medical testimonies, and general information about the campaign to legalize marijuana. We shall agitate! We shall print the data. We have the facts about marijuana, the gentle benevolent herb.” The Newsletter contained editorials including two pieces by William Burroughs: “William Burroughs Speaks!” and “William Burroughs answers Jim Bishop.” Bishop wrote an article on the Newsletter entitled “Dope on Marijuana — By Mail.” In the editorial, he supported the enforcement of drug laws. “Cassidy’s Corner: pot market report” provided up-to-the-minute news on drug prices. “The Connoiseur’s Corner” was a “continuing column on grass grades of special interest.” Possibly, the editors (Randolfe Wicker, Ed Sanders, Peter Orlovsky, and C.T. Smith) heard of Burroughs and Corso’s Parisian pipe dream. Probably not, but Burroughs lived in New York City in 1965. He involved himself in the underground located on the Lower East Side.

Interpol reminds me of another cult writer operating on the literary margins who made a foray into editing a literary magazine: Charles Bukowski. Many think of Bukowski as anti-literary, but throughout the 1960s he was quite the literary scenester. He was a fixture in the little magazine world and even active in the Los Angeles counterculture. His regular column, “Notes of a Dirty Old Man,” appeared in the underground paper Open City in the late 1960s. In February or March of 1969, Bukowski and Neeli Cherry (Cherkovski), later one of Bukowski’s biographers, edited Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. It ran for three issues. In his biography, Barry Miles wrote, “It was his chance to rail against Creeley, Olson, and the Black Mountain School and sound off about anything he damn well pleased: he wrote rude remarks on people’s manuscripts before returning them, sometimes mutilating them in the process by smearing jam or wine on them.” Cherkovski’s biography contains quite a bit of information on the magazine for those interested. Laugh Literary proved irreverent and funny as well as publishing some quality writing by Bukowski and others. Copies turn up from time to time on the rare book market and they are worth a look for anybody interested in exploring a relatively unknown side of Buk. One can only imagine what the editorials of Burroughs would have been for Interpol. That is one magazine that I would love to own.

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

I often talk about little magazines in the context of a literary or artistic community. I am filled with nostalgia for the literary circles from 1945-1970, but there are loads of vibrant networks active right this minute. I have been lucky enough to get in touch with a group of artists and creative adventurers joined together by a common love of the literature of the Beat Generation. One of the most fulfilling conversations of my life occurred in a kitchen at the Grand Midway Hotel in Windber, PA at the 2004 Kerouac Fest at 4 am. For roughly an hour, I talked with David Amram and Baird Bryant about a range of topics from Samuel Beckett to the Beat Hotel to Jack Kerouac to William Burroughs.

Those familiar with the Beats have probably heard of David Amram. He is a highly respected jazz and world musician. Kerouac and Amram performed some of the first jazz poetry readings in the late 1950s. Amram appeared in Pull My Daisy as Mezz McGillicuddy along with Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, and Larry Rivers. Delphine Seyrig played Larry River’s wife. Jack Kerouac provided the narration in one take of course while playing with bums and slugging wine.

Baird Bryant is less well known, but he is one of the most fascinating individuals that I have had the pleasure of knowing, even if I only see him once a year. Throughout the 1950s, Baird immersed himself in the literary and artistic scene of Paris. Like many Americans, he arrived there looking for the adventure promised by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, and others. Everybody hears about Paris in the 1920s with the Lost Generation and the down and out Paris of the 1930s immortalized by the novels of Henry Miller, the diaries of Anais Nin, and the photographs of Brassai, but I have a soft spot for Paris in the 1950s.

Baird and his then wife Denny quickly fell in with a group of writers, including Richard Seaver, Alexander Trocchi, Austryn Wainhouse, Jane Lougee, and others. Funded by Lougee, this group founded Merlin magazine. Merlin almost singlehandedly rediscovered the novels and short stories of Samuel Beckett. Merlin with the help of the Olympia Press published Beckett’s Watt in 1953 under the Collection Merlin imprint.

The connection with Olympia Press led members of the Merlin Group to try their hand at writing Dirty Books for a quick profit. Baird was no exception. He provided the first translation of The Story of O. The translation was far from perfect and Austryn Wainhouse re-translated it soon after (as The Wisdom of the Lash, 1957). As Willie Baron, Baird wrote one of the most successful and most pirated editions in the Olympia Press Library: Play This Love With Me (No. 5 of the famous Traveller’s Companion Series. Naked Lunch was No. 76.). Full of erotic sculpture, Satanic Black Masses, drugs and sex, Play This Love is a riot. Hearing the 80+ year old Bryant read his battered copy of Play This Love to an enthusiastic audience was one of the highpoints of 2006.

In the late 1950s, Baird hung around the Beat Hotel meeting many of the characters living there, including William Burroughs. Baird has written a screenplay based on those adventures that is currently circulating around Hollywood. You can get the gist of the screenplay and a sense of the Beat Hotel from Baird’s Souvenirs from the Beat Hotel. This is a fantastic snapshot of the infamous Hotel and the depiction of Burroughs is priceless. Please take the time to read it.

In 1962, Baird explored film serving as cinematographer on The Seducers. The Seducers won an award on the European Film circuit, and Baird was off and running in the world of underground film. Over time, Baird would become one of the pioneers of the modern documentary. He worked as a cinematographer on Shirley Clarke’s The Cool World that depicted African American teens growing up in Harlem. Baird was also instrumental in the filming or editing of Celebration at Big Sur, Jimi Plays Berkeley, Gimme Shelter, and Easy Rider. Hearing Baird speak on what it was like to film Meredith Hunter’s murder at Altamont (from the top of a bus on the side of the stage. Baird had no idea he actually captured the murder until reviewing the footage later. It happened too fast.) or recount the graveyard LSD scene in Easy Rider is quite an experience (Baird’s stories of a crazed Dennis Hopper attempting to film road signs in New Orleans, for example).

Baird continued to work and to write into the 21st century. His work on Heart of Tibet, an Intimate Portrait of the 14th Dalai Lama was highly regarded. Baird will tell you that meeting the Dalai Lama was one of the great moments of his life.

This is all a long way of saying read “Souvenirs of the Beat Hotel.” Burroughs fans will not be disappointed. It is a great piece of work by a great and generous man. Maybe we will see it on the big screen someday.