Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting #8: Time. C Press (1965). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. Book collectors are consumed with envy. Covet not thy neighbor’s books. Try as we might, even the most saintly of collectors amongst us…
Search Results for: Time Gysin
Burroughs-Gysin Excursus
Brion Gysin: Dream Machine at the Institut D’Art Contemporain Villeurbanne / Rhone-Alpes. 16 October — 28 November 2010. by Ian MacFadyen Gysin Homage One | Burroughs-Gysin Excursus | Gysin Homage Two Burroughs-Gysin Excursus: Magic Amulet / Silence to Say Goodbye, Brion Gysin / Hassan I Sabbah / Skywriting, I Give You — You Give Me…
A Trip from Here to There (Gysin Homage Two)
Brion Gysin: Dream Machine at the Institut D’Art Contemporain Villeurbanne / Rhone-Alpes. 16 October — 28 November 2010. by Ian MacFadyen Gysin Homage One | Burroughs-Gysin Excursus | Gysin Homage Two Gysin Homage Two: The Great Transducer, Uher / Iki Ga Nagai — Iki Ga Mijikai / Kireji / Chod, 23 Code, The Biologic Film /…
Timothy Leary on William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Bou Saada
Timothy Leary interview, Pataphysics, October 17, 1989 From INTO-GAL, 2006, Editors: Leo Edelstein, Judith Elliston We heard this tape of you with William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Robert Anton Wilson. Oh yeah, that was a recording from the Nova Convention. I’m a great admirer of William Burroughs, who’s one of my real heroes. When did…
Playing with Fire: The Last Painting of Brion Gysin
Brion Gysin: Calligraffiti of Fire by Ian MacFadyen The exhibition of Brion Gysin’s Calligraffiti of Fire at the October Gallery in London is a major event. This is the first time the artist’s legendary final work, executed in 1985, has been shown in Britain and the exhibition provides a unique opportunity to experience the painting…
Yay!: A Moving Times Supplement (An In-Depth Examination of My Own Mag)
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In 1963, the Times Literary Supplement announced the arrival of Dead Fingers Talk with a cry of Ugh! Later that year, Burroughs received the first issue of My Own Mag and responded with a resounding, Yes! In Jeff Nuttall, Burroughs found a fellow…
Time
[M&M A11] New York: “C” Press 1965, Maynard & Miles A11a. A signed hardcover issue lettered A-J each accompanied by a manuscript page from Burroughs and a drawing by Brion Gysin. Illustrated with four calligrams by Gysin. The top half of the cover appears to be an issue of Time magazine and features portraits of…
Time
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Recently, I received an email asking me about a copy of Time, a limited edition collage piece published by C Press. According to its copyright page, Time was published in 1965 in 1000 copies. 886 copies comprised the trade edition. These copies were…
William S. Burroughs Multimedia
Video and Audio of William S. Burroughs One of the many things that make William S. Burroughs unique among writers is the fact that he spent a lot of his creative energy not writing, presumably as a way to accomplish his mission of “rubbing out the word.” Burroughs painted, experimented with collage, manipulated tape recordings,…
Archival Politics, Institutional Bureaucracy:
The Neutralization of Scholarly Research by S.E. Gontarski “Why not appoint a scholar/editor to run a blog at the NYPL [or at Florida State University].” — Jed Birmingham, “A Descriptive Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive,” Reality Studio, 2016. By the time the next round of fellowship/grant applications comes around we [can] have a special…
The Secret Cut-Up
Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, William Burroughs and Moroccan Healing by David Holzer Lou Reed once said that William S. Burroughs “changed my vision of what you could write about, how you could write.” Scholars have explored how Burroughs’ example shaped Reed’s conceptual thinking, subject matter and writing style but not how it might have…
The Exterminator, They Called Him
The Naked Lunch film adaptations by Matías Bragagnolo Excerpt from the book Pull my Daisy y otras experimentaciones. La Generación Beat y el cine, various authors / Matías Carnevale (coordinator) (Alción Editora, 2022). Translated from the Spanish original by the author. The Apocryphal Version of Conrad Rooks Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs’ idea of…
Cyberkampf, Part III: Going Places
An interview with Raf Valvola & Gomma by Christophe Becker – You must have shot an awful lot of tigers, sir. – Yes, I used a machine gun. The Italian Job, 1969 Children of the Italian anarcho-communist scene, Gomma (Ermanno Guarneri) and Ralf Valvola (Raf Scelsi) founded their own underground magazine in 1987 and named…
Interview with Chris Stein on William S. Burroughs
Photographer and Blondie Cofounder on the Man He Considered a Mentor Chris Stein, William S. Burroughs Shooting in Lawrence, KS Though best known as the cofounder and guitarist of Blondie, Chris Stein is also a photographer. While cowriting tracks such as “Rip Her to Shreds” and “Heart of Glass,” Stein was busy pointing his lens…
Davis Schneiderman Interview on The Third Mind
By Dave Teeuwen Though William Burroughs died in 1997, a steady stream of work taken from his archives has been published on what seems like an almost yearly basis. This is due to various scholars around the world digging into the available work to “look beneath the hood” on many of Burroughs’ texts to see…
William Burroughs, the Morro Castle Disaster and the Mystery of “Twilight’s Last Gleamings”: A Conspiracy Theory
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In the annals of Burroughsiana it is common knowledge that “Twilight’s Last Gleamings” is based in part on the Morro Castle disaster of 1934.1 1The origin story of Burroughs’ first “serious” routine, “Twilight’s Last Gleamings,” a collaboration with childhood friend Kells Elvins, is…
Writing Beyond the Grave: William Burroughs and Denton Welch
By Thom Robinson Introduction On publication in 1983, The Place of Dead Roads was received as William Burroughs’ long-awaited Western, a project originally announced two decades before.1 Forming the second instalment of an emerging trilogy, the novel continued the use of genre fiction found in Cities of the Red Night (1981), with much of its…
William Burroughs and the Nota Roja in Mexico
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Psst!! Want to hear a secret? I don’t really collect Burroughs anymore. Sure, when an Albatross came within reach, I grabbed it and if an Icarus 46 fell into my lap I would be ecstatic, but by and large my Burroughs collection, which…
#7 – Jed Birmingham
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series on the The Greatest Burroughs Collectors. #7 is Jed Birmingham. It does not matter if you have five books or five thousand, one’s own book collection is inherently the most important and most interesting. These are the…
Predicting a Pandemic: William Burroughs and COVID-19
by Edward S. Robinson Introduction It would be beyond countenance to ignore the context of the times we’re living in for framing this essay. A year into a global pandemic, our lives have been dominated by a virus, and never before has — thanks to the all-pervading media, social and otherwise — the collective consciousness…
#2 – Robert Jackson
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series on the The Greatest Burroughs Collectors. #2 is Robert Jackson. Robert Jackson is world renowned as a great book collector. Jackson is an attorney based in Cleveland, Ohio, who is a noted writer and speaker on rare…
#1: William Burroughs
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series on the The Greatest Burroughs Collectors. #1 is el hombre invisible himself, William S. Burroughs. What follows is a restored text of sorts. Like Burroughs and Oliver Harris and their Soft Machines, here I am editing texts…
BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS by William S. Burroughs
A Never-Before-Published Cut-Up Masterpiece BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS is the most important new publication by William S. Burroughs not only since the writer’s death in 1997 but quite possibly since The Third Mind made it into print in 1978. Burroughs wrote a number of books in the final decades of his life. His estate, under the leadership…
Secrets of the Olympia Press Naked Lunch
I bought my first copy of the Olympia Press edition of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch from eBay. I had no idea what I was doing. I had never seen a copy in person. I knew little about the principles of collecting. But I had the money and the itch so I overpaid for a copy…
Interview with Richard Aaron of Am Here Books
Eric C. Shoaf Richard Aaron and William Burroughs arriving in Geneva for the Colloque de Tanger, 1975. Photo by Lilia Aaron What can you tell us about your early years? Born in 1946 in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1957 lived a year in a semi palace on the Bosphorus in Istinye. Here I was first…
Rat
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In my Burroughs searching, I saw that a sizable run (58 issues) of International Times from its first incarnation of 1966-1973 (in total 164 issues) is up for sale from Any Amount of Books (London) for about $1,300. This is roughly $22 an…
Myth
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting An installment in The Visible Man: A Coffee Table Zine of Photographs of William S. Burroughs Photographs are a key component in the creation of myth. For example, the shots of Burroughs in Paris play on the image of Burroughs as outlaw: a…
Auerhahn Press Books in Print Poster 1964
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting There is nothing I like to collect more than ephemera about and printed by Mimeo Revolution presses and magazines. Handbills, announcements, flyers, posters, business cards. Hell, I would even be interested in buying a magazine’s — let’s say Floating Bear or Fuck You…
Chicago 1968
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting An installment in The Visible Man: A Coffee Table Zine of Photographs of William S. Burroughs In the last few years there has been a trend in book-collecting circles of getting away from traditional books in favor of ephemeral documents like photographs and…
Henri Chopin’s Poster for Burroughs
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Once upon a time I worked with a guy who collected posters. Banksy. Shepard Fairey. Robbo. Street artists who moved from working the side of buildings to hanging works inside the white cube. It was nothing for this guy to get two, three…
Don’t Hide the Madness
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Don’t Hide the Madness: William S. Burroughs in Conversation with Allen Ginsberg, edited by Steven Taylor There is no single, right way to tell the story of William Burroughs. Here was a guy who distrusted and refused to believe in the tyranny of…
The Revised Boy Scout Manual
A Review of “The Revised Boy Scout Manual”: An Electronic Revolution, edited by Geoffrey D. Smith and John M. Bennett, forthcoming from the Ohio State University Press. “Lost Masterpiece Rediscovered” claims the blurb on the cover of William S. Burroughs’ “The Revised Boy Scout Manual”: An Electronic Revolution. Without criticizing the marketing team too much,…
“I Always Have Three Weapons on Me”: 1981 Interview with William Burroughs by Alain Pacadis
Uncollected 1981 Interview with William Burroughs from Le Palace Magazine This interview by Alain Pacadis appeared in French in Le Palace Magazine 5 (1981). An eBay seller very kindly provided a scan of it and RealityStudio translated it into English. It is not to be found in Burroughs Live: The Collected Interview of Wiliam S….
Dancing with Mr. B.: William Burroughs, The Rolling Stones, and 1972 American Tour
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I do not know about you but I am a names and dates guy. If you are here in the Studio, I suspect you are too. Just give us the factoids. Drown us with proper nouns. Shower us with historical dates. So maybe…
Auerhahn Press Archive
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Reps at Batman Paul RepsPicture-PoemsBatman Gallery announcement Here is another Batman Gallery announcement; this time for Paul Reps. Reps is who initially got Haselwood and Hoyem together, as Hoyem wanted to publish a book by Reps. Reps is a haiku pioneer in the…
Barely Afloat in New York: Burroughs, di Prima and Floating Bear 31
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg at Grove Press book launch party, 22 December 1964 (photograph by Fred McDarrah) When William Burroughs arrived in New York Harbor on the Independence on December 8, 1964, with seven suitcases full of books and manuscripts, customs officials…
Brother Bill: How William S. Burroughs Influenced Bob Dylan
by James Adams With special thanks to Jed Birmingham. See also “Bob Dylan and William Burroughs — A (Mostly) 1965 Timeline.” Bob Dylan’s classic album Highway 61 Revisited was released in August 1965. The first song on the album, “Like A Rolling Stone,” reached number two on the Billboard charts. It was kept from the…
#1: A Descriptive Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting # 1 – A Descriptive Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive (1973). The final Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. Do not bore me with the facts, as fascinating as they are and as…
#2: My Own Mag No. 12
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting #2: My Own Mag No. 12 (1965). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. In early 2015, I was asked to contribute to a proposed essay collection on Jeff Nuttall to do be issued in…
#3: The Fuck You Press APO-33
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting #3: The Fuck You Press APO-33 (1965). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. Several years ago I drove up to Brooklyn to Jon Beacham‘s studio in order to pick up a mimeograph machine. Jon…
#7: St. Valentine’s Day Reading Program
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting #7: St. Valentine’s Day Reading Program (1965). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. Hey, did you see the Granary Books archive of poetry flyers from the Mimeo Revolution? Around 400 flyers and handbills announcing…
#9: The Soft Machine (Olympia Press Edition)
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting #9: The Soft Machine. Olympia Press (1961). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. Desert island books versus deathbed books. Which do you think of in moments of reverie? One book is for reading when…
#11: The Hardiment/Crowder Archive
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting #11: The Hardiment/Crowder Archive — Jim Pennington aloes books. An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. For my birthday last year, my in-laws bought me 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music by Andrew Grant…
#15: Suck
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting #15: Suck 5 & 6 (1971). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. “[C]omplete breakdown of censorship. There are shops all over town now where you can buy pictures of naked boys with hard ons…
#19: Cyclops
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting #19 – Cyclops 1-4 (1970). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. Nobody has browsed the stacks of the Library of Interzone for decades; its location flickers like light through a Dream Machine. A few…
#20: The Exterminator
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting #20 – The Exterminator by Auerhahn Press (1960). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. In 1958 on the cover of the Spring issue of Chicago Review, William Burroughs headlined a list of “Ten San…
#22: Am Here Books Catalogue 5
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting #22: Am Here Books Catalogue 5: In the Beginning Was the Word (1981-1982). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. In 1922 when James Joyce’s Ulysses sailed the ocean blue through U.S. customs, independent bookshops…
#23: The Dead Star
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting #23: The Dead Star. Nova Broadcast #5 published by Jan Herman (1969). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. Sometimes you have to start at the very beginning in order for anything to make sense….
William S. Burroughs and Mother
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Davee Mac, Regarding your post to the forum about whether Burroughs fans preferred experiencing cut-ups in the novels or in the little magazines, it is an interesting debate. Please permit me to beat a Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. In the past year, I…
William Burroughs, My Own Mag, and Tangier
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Over the years, the history of William Burroughs’ rendezvous with Tangier has taken on elements of the folk tale. Like the 1001 Arabian Nights, there is an initial framing story, i.e. the exiled Burroughs fleeing his past arrives in Tangier to find an…
Eating the Goat
Excerpt from Dance with the Devil: The Rolling Stones and Their Times, 1984 by Stanley Booth In the early evening of the first day of spring 1970, I was at a flat in Duke Street St. James’s talking with Brion Gysin, who was in London visiting friends. Gysin had been telling me about taking Brian…
The Lost Boys
William S. Burroughs, Ian Sommerville & Michael Portman by Matthew Levi Stevens A chapter from The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs, by Matthew Levi Stevens (forthcoming from Mandrake of Oxford, Autumn 2014.) The magical theory of history: the magical universe presupposes that nothing happens unless someone or some power, some living entity wills it…
Enter Mister Maurice
A Memoir of Maurice Girodias by William Levy “Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none more wonderful than man.” — Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus For over half-a-century whenever authors met talk would eventually come around to the maverick Maurice Girodias and his Olympia Press. Did you or didn’t you? Did you or didn’t you hit…
Retaking the Universe
William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization Edited by Davis Schneiderman and Philip Walsh RealityStudio is proud to present a digital edition of one of the seminal works of Burroughs criticism, Retaking the Universe: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization, edited by Davis Schneiderman and Philip Walsh. Though one essay has been…
Burroughs in London
by Heathcote Williams I first met William Burroughs in 1963. I was working for the now-defunct literary magazine Transatlantic Review and we were planning to publish a piece of his called “The Beginning is also the End.” I’d proposed doing a drawing of Burroughs for the cover and the editor of TR had agreed, and…
Index to the Contents of C: A Journal of Poetry
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting C: A Journal of Poetry No. 1 (May 1963) Cover Page: A title page and table of contents [i] Endless Resoundings Fill the RCMM — Dick Gallup [1] Ember Grease — Dick Gallup [2] It’s Everywhere, Like So Much Glue — Dick Gallup…
Nothing Here Now But The Recordings
William S. Burroughs & the Wreckers of Civilization by Matthew Levi Stevens Genesis P Orridge and William S. Burroughs, circa 1981 (xerox from NME) Sometime in 1973 William S. Burroughs received in the mail to Duke Street an apparently irate letter, complaining: “Dear William S. Burroughs, I’m so tired of you and Allen Ginsberg exploiting…
Alan Ansen, “After the Naked Lunch” (1964)
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Alan Ansen, “After the Naked Lunch,” from City Lights Journal #2 (1964) William Burroughs, The Soft Machine, Olympia Press, Paris, 1961 The Ticket That Exploded, Olympia Press, 1962 Dead Fingers Talk, John Calder, London, 1964 The Naked Lunch marks a turning point in…
Riding the Nova Express
William Burroughs and the (Post) Modern Experiment by William Weiss … Consider an animal cell over which is running a river of cellular fluid, perhaps lymph or plasma. A virus particle appears in the flux and is carried over the cell surface. Both the cell surface and the virus particle are thick with spikes that…
1984 Interview with William S. Burroughs
On the Occasion of the Publication of The Place of Dead Roads by William Weiss Abe Frajndlich, William Burroughs Close-Up, 1984 (© Abe Frajndlich 1984/2013) William Burroughs smokes Players and manipulates them with a hand that is thin and pale and missing the last terrible joint of the fifth digit. We’re drinking coffee and talking…
This Beautiful Corrosion — William S. Burroughs at the ZKM
A Review of The Name Is Burroughs: expanded media at the ZKM, Karlsruhe Curated by Axel Heil, Udo Breger and Peter Weibel March 24 — August 8, 2012 Text: Ian MacFadyen Photographs: Eric Andersen .” . .the city moved in swirls and eddies and tornadoes of image. . .” Off the Map This is a…
William Burroughs’ Cyborg Manifesto
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Malcolm Mc Neill, Observed While Falling and The Lost Art of Ah Pook Is Here For too long I considered the 1970s a period of stagnation for William Burroughs. This is wrong on several levels. First of all, Burroughs was in motion geographically,…
DIY Beat Criticism
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting It is an unseasonably warm night in the alley where the beers are cold and I am a little hot under my admittedly white collar. “I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore!” It is time for…
David Budd rencontre William Burroughs et Earle Brown chez Rodolphe Stadler
1964 Gallery Catalogue William S. Burroughs, Untitled Cut-Up in David Budd rencontre William Burroughs et Earle Brown chez Rodolphe Stadler exhibition catalogue. A SILENT SUNDAY TO THE POST OUR FLAT AT HALF MAST AGAINST TALL BLACK WINDOWS OF THE DORMITORY. / ‘I WILL SING FOR YOU AND I HAVE MAYBE UNDRESSED THERE AND I AM…
William S. Burroughs and the Arts: A Bibliography
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting William Burroughs in Artists’ Magazines 1959 Semina, No. 4 (1959). {M&M C11} “Excerpt from “[Have You Seen] Pantapon [sic] Rose[?].” Excerpt from Naked Lunch. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Larkspur, California, 1955-1964 (1-9). Wallace Berman. See “Semina Culture” 1960 Kulchur, [No. 1] (Spring 1960)….
Collecting William S. Burroughs and the Arts
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting There are a lot of “what ifs” in book collecting. What if I had bought this and not that? What if I had more money? Or more time? What if I collected this and not that? “What if I did not collect William…
Scientology in the Novels of William S. Burroughs
by David S. Wills William S. Burroughs at the Saint Hill Scientology Bookstore, 1968 In Ted Morgan’s biography, Literary Outlaw, he says that in 1968, Scientology was a “new obsession” for William S. Burroughs, and Barry Miles’ El Hombre Invisible claims that Burroughs’ interest came about in 1967 — the year Miles mistakenly has Burroughs…
The Anti-Environment of the Cut-Up Authors
by Carl Weissner Environments are not passive wrappings, but are, rather, active processes which are invisible. The ground rules, pervasive structure, and overall patterns of environments elude easy perception. Anti-environments, or countersituations made by artists [“and artists” added by Weissner], provide means of direct attention and enable us to see and understand more clearly. Marshall…
Interview with Alan Govenar
Interview with the Director of a New Documentary on the Beat Hotel William Burroughs at the Beat Hotel, 1961, photograph by Harold Chapman One of the most engaging presentations at the Naked Lunch @ 50 conference held in Paris in 2009 was given by filmmaker Alan Govenar. He presented audio excerpts from an interview with…
William S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard
An In-Depth Account Drawing on Interviews, Correspondence, and Unpublished Documents “I got a Christmas card from Burroughs,” J.G. Ballard told an interviewer in 1986.1 It should not have been much of a surprise: he had known William S. Burroughs for about twenty years; he had recently published an enthusiastic review of Burroughs’ essay collection, The…
Terry Wilson: Cutting Up for Real
The Writing of Perilous Passage Terry Wilson in Conversation with Ian MacFadyen As his book Perilous Passage is published by Synergetic Press, Terry Wilson talks with Ian MacFadyen about the 15 years he spent creating this unique work which embodies and develops the radical Third Mind techniques of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin. Wilson was…
Bibliography of Carl Weissner Translations
by Matthias Penzel Burroughs in German (flyer from Kosmik Blues) 1969 Translation work started proper after Carl’s return to Germany. More or less in the function of Editor for Joseph Melzer Verlag in Darmstadt (between Frankfurt and Heidelberg / Mannheim further south), Carl edited and translated: Cut up. Der sezierte Bildschirm der Worte (Joseph Melzer…
In Memory of Carl Weissner
William Burroughs and Carl Weissner (Photographer Unknown) Carl Weissner began corresponding with William Burroughs in 1965. Seeing that Carl was quick to pick up on his experiments with the cut-up, Burroughs decided to visit Carl in Heidelberg. “I am off to Germany next week,” Burroughs wrote to Brion Gysin on May 27, 1966. “Looks like…
My Burroughs
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting William Burroughs’ typewriter at the Beat Hotel in Paris Burroughs means different things to different people. Nobody obsessed with Burroughs fixates on the same writer, artist, or man. In fact some of us, the truly delusional and hopeless cases, are fascinated by what…
Minutes to Go and Mad Men
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I turn forty this year. It has always struck me as odd which birthdays are most meaningful to me. Sixteen, twenty-one, and thirty weren’t real milestones. Thirteen was my first pivotal birthday, a time for realizing who I was. That birthday party at…
A Word Is a Word Is a Collage (1965)
A Profile of William S. Burroughs (1965) By Bill Butler Bill Butler was an American poet who served as one of the influential managers of London’s independent bookstore Better Books. In 1967 he moved to Brighton and founded Unicorn Books, which was subject the following year to a nasty obscenity trial involving its edition of…
Nothing Here Now But the Lost Recordings
The Lost Tapes of Carl Weissner, Claude Pélieu and Mary Beach, 1967-1969 by Edward S. Robinson For academics and fans alike, the archives of the pivotal beat triumvir of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac have long been a source of fascination and a continued wealth of lost texts. Despite the excavation of a…
William and Joan
A Reminiscence of William Burroughs and a Poem for Joan Vollmer by Oliver Ray It was the early 1990s, NYC, and I was about 21 when I first met old William. There was a friend of mine who knew Ginsberg and brought me down to his apartment on East 12th St, across from the old…
2011 New York Antiquarian Book Fair
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Book collecting is in part about ritual, repetition, compulsion, and routine. It is about ordering a chaotic world. Take the 51st New York Antiquarian Book Fair. As always, I take the Regional Amtrak to Penn Station, head out onto Fashion Avenue, take a…
William S. Burroughs, Jacques Stern, and The Fluke
An Archive of Materials by and about Jacques Stern Including the Complete Text of The Fluke William S. Burroughs had known Jacques Loup Stern for little more than a year when he declared the man a “great writer.” Writing from the Beat Hotel in Paris on June 8, 1959, Burroughs reported to Allen Ginsberg that…
A Trip from Here to There
Brion Gysin: Dream Machine at the Institut D’Art Contemporain Villeurbanne / Rhone-Alpes. 16 October — 28 November 2010. by Ian MacFadyen “Everybody here comes from somewhere.” — Michael Stipe “Everything was alive like me on this earth, everything was breathing.” — Brion Gysin Gysin Homage One | Burroughs-Gysin Excursus | Gysin Homage Two Gysin Homage…
Thoughts on the Burroughs Archive
A Trip to the New York Public Library by Thom Robinson In October 2010 I travelled from the UK to spend a week among the contents of the Burroughs Archive in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. The privilege of gaining access to this material was enabled by the receipt of academic…
William Burroughs in Anthologies
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Gene Feldman and Max Gartenberg (editors)Protest: The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men Citadel, 1958 William Burroughs contributes (as “William Lee”) “My First Days on Junk” (Maynard & Miles B1) Gene Feldman and Max Gartenberg (editors)Protest: The Beat Generation and the Angry…
William S. Burroughs, Charles Gatewood, and Sidetripping
by Charles Gatewood Adapted from Dirty Old Man, a Memoir In January 1972, Rolling Stone magazine sent Robert Palmer (writer) and yours truly (photographer) from New York to London to do a feature story on William S. Burroughs. The iconic Beat writer greeted us warmly, and showed us into his modest two-room flat on Duke…
“Burroughs Is a Poet Too, Really”: The Poetics of Minutes to Go
by Oliver Harris Dismissed as Unreadable The long and intimate association of William Burroughs with poets is well known: Ginsberg, most obviously, as well as Corso, Creeley, Ferlinghetti, Leroi Jones, John Giorno, and so on. But to talk of Burroughs’ own material engagement with poetic form and poetics in relation to historical and contemporary practices…
Cut-Up Poems from Minutes to Go
Cut-Up Poetry by William S. Burroughs CANCER MEN. . . THESE INDIVIDUALS ARE MARKED FOE. . . at land coccus germs by a bacilmouth Jersy phenicol bitoics the um vast and varied that specific target was the vast popul – – – – the vast cancers that surgery and Xrays C In the United States…
Painting, Experimenting, Writing
A Previously Uncollected Interview with William S. Burroughs by Fiorella Iacono After years of literary experimentation, cut-ups and fold-ins, both on the page and on tape recordings that conjoin word and image, today William S. Burroughs is exhibiting his pictorial experiments at the Galleria Cleto Polcina in Rome. This exhibition shows works composed after 1987….
Tangier Cut-Up (from Esquire)
by William S. Burroughs The September 1964 issue of Esquire features a photo-essay titled “Tangier.” Alongside pictures by photographer Robert Freson, William Burroughs provided captions and the following text. See also Jed Birmingham’s essay, “William S. Burroughs, Esquire, and New Journalism.” In these foreign suburbs here, a map of Tangier on a flaking plaster wall….
Flesh Film
A Cut-Up Novella by Jürgen PloogWith an Introduction by Edward S Robinson Introduction I first encountered the name Jürgen Ploog when I obtained a copy of Claus Maeck’s film, Commissioner of Sewers. The film features an interview with Burroughs, conducted by Ploog, and as a fan and student of William Burroughs of many years, I…
Interview with Victor Bockris on William Burroughs
By Dave Teeuwen Why did you write a book about Burroughs? He’s not nearly as glamorous or popular as most of your other subjects, or was he? At the time I started to write the book, January 1979, William Burroughs was one of the most glamorous and hip people in New York. We were deep…
William S Burroughs: A Man Within
Documentary Directed by Yony Leyser, 2010 Review by Graham Rae “He was the first person who was famous for things you were supposed to hide — he was gay, he was a junkie, he didn’t look handsome, he shot his wife, he wrote poetry about assholes and heroin. He was not easy to like.” —…
Jan Herman as Publisher
The San Francisco Earthquake The San Francisco Earthquake 1 1967 Contains William S. Burroughs, “Word Authority More Habit Forming Than Heroin” (C175) The San Francisco Earthquake 21968 Contains William S. Burroughs, “Salt Chunk Mary” (C217) and “Last Awning Flaps on the Pier” (C218) The San Francisco Earthquake 31968 The San Francisco Earthquake 41968 Contains William S….
Who Was Sinclair Beiles?
by Gary Cummiskey The following is an excerpt from Gary Cummiskey and Eva Kowalska, Who Was Sinclair Beiles?, published in 2009 by Dye Hard Press. The book contains interviews and essays that create a portrait of Sinclair Beiles, the South African poet who worked for Olympia Press, helped to edit Naked Lunch, and collaborated with…
C Items
Burroughs Contributes to Magazines and Journals by Eric C. Shoaf 1974 1. The Expatriate Review No. 4 (Winter/Spring 1974), Burroughs contributes “Cold Lost Marbles” bound in wraps. 2. National Lampoon February 1974, Burroughs contributes “Strange Sex We Have Known” with co-author Terry Southern, bound in wraps. 3. Rolling Stone Magazine February 28, 1974, Burroughs interviews…
B Items
Burroughs Contributes to Books and Anthologies by Eric C. Shoaf 1974 1. Jean Genet in Tangier by Mohamed Choukri, New York: Ecco 1974, translated by Paul Bowles, first edition, Introduction by Burroughs, hardbound in dust jacket. 2. The Wanderers by Richard Price, New York: Houghton Mifflin 1974, Burroughs contributes a blurb to the front inner…
About Burroughs
Articles and Books About William S. Burroughs by Eric C. Shoaf Items listed here are comprised of interviews with Burroughs, criticism of his writings, stories about him, interactions people had with him, and a catch-all as such for printed material related to Burroughs in some way. The majority of items here are serial titles —…
Valentine’s Day Reading
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The Date: February 14, 1965 The first thing I think about when I consider William Burroughs’ St. Valentine’s Day Reading is the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929. On that date, five members of the Bugs Moran Gang and two others were shot…
Interview with Filmmaker Andre Perkowski
Now Boarding The Nova Express by Graham Rae What do you get if you have an explosion in a randomly generated cinematic image factory that rains down vivid burning Technicolor debris far and wide across a chaotic illuminated background, mixing disparate voices and scenes in an obscenely kinetic cut-up narrative mosaic? Possibly the new, to-be-released-eventually,…
William Burroughs and the William Tell Legend
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Last week I had an email conversation with my friend Charles Talkoff about my Burroughs and Heroin piece. As a result of our discussion, he felt compelled to look more deeply into the shooting of Joan Vollmer. Charles posed me a Zen koan…
The Soft Machines
By Dave Teeuwen William Burroughs had the unusual habit of rewriting and rereleasing his novels during the 1960s and 1970s. He is not the only author to have undertaken a revision of a previously published work. Henry James famously revised and added to his novels in the early years of the 20th century for the…
Interview with Graham Masterton on William S. Burroughs
By Dave Teeuwen Graham Masterton is the amazingly prolific author of over a hundred horror and thriller novels, as well as self-help / how-to guides about sex. He has been publishing steadily since the mid-1970s. Earlier in his career, however, he was the editor for Mayfair magazine and later the editor of Penthouse and Penthouse…
Bulletin from Nothing
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting None of us obsessed with William Burroughs are fascinated by the same writer. Like the agent / addict’s face in Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, our impressions of Burroughs are constantly in flux. When I first fell under Burroughs’ spell, I wanted…
Some Disparate Mentionables
by Roy Pennington This text was first published as an appendix to William S. Burroughs, Mayfair Academy Series More or Less, published by Roy Pennington’s Urgency Press in 1973. See also Roy Pennington on Mayfair Academy Series More or Less. Burroughs cites scientific experiments and philosophical argument with gay abandon thru out his work. It…
Beat Critics
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The Beat Studies Association webpage has made available many of the papers from the Beat Generation Symposium (October 10-11, 2008) at Columbia College in Chicago. Kudos to The Beat Studies Association for putting the papers online. The Association was formed in 2004 to…
Abstract (Lip 1969)
A Text by William S. Burroughs With an Introduction by Dave Teeuwen In 1969 William Burroughs published seven short pieces titled “Abstract” and sent them out to various small-press literary magazines and underground newspapers. Throughout the 1960s Burroughs was extremely active with the alternative press. Bibliographies of his work show that he was published hundreds…
Interview with Alex Neish, Editor of Jabberwock and Sidewalk
Jabberwock Talk: The Scottish Drug (Literature) Connection by Graham Rae Well, the internet certainly can lead you to some interesting and unexpected places. After seeing him mentioned on RealityStudio and on Nakedlunch.org, I recently became intrigued by Alex Neish, a Scotsman who put out an issue of the Edinburgh University Review entitled Jabberwock in 1959…
The Letters of Allen Ginsberg
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting When I was briefly in graduate school in 1995, I was fascinated by the fate of the letter in the digital age. While studying abroad at King’s College in 1992, I wrote letters weekly and eagerly checked my mailbox daily. Just three years…
William Burroughs and Andy Warhol
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I just finished reading a catalogue raisonné of Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests. For those who do not know, Warhol shot a series of portrait films from 1964 to 1966, one of the most long-term and ambitious projects in his career as a filmmaker….
William Burroughs in Mademoiselle
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting On the flipside of the men’s magazine is the fashion magazine. The porno industry represents the seedy underbelly of the seemingly glamorous fashion industry. Both worlds expressed an interest in the Beats in the 1950s and 1960s. In her landmark memoir, Minor Characters,…
Richard Seaver and William S. Burroughs
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting When I started collecting William Burroughs in 1993, I had little idea of what I was getting into and absolutely no clue as to the shape that my collection would take fifteen years later. As it turned out, the first collectible I bought,…
Rhinozeros Archive
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Several months ago I received an email from an editor at Black Dog Publishing which operates out of London. Black Dog prints books on a variety of topics such as photography, architecture, film and design. They did a book on Independent record shops…
Dead Fingers Talk and Burroughs Proofs
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting A couple weeks ago the Wizard behind the curtain at RealityStudio sent me an email alerting me to a proof copy of Dead Fingers Talk offered by Ken Lopez. As Lopez’s catalog description makes clear, this is a highly desirable book. Try finding…
William Burroughs’ Signature
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I know nothing of the study and verification of signatures and if anybody viewing this page does please e-mail me with information about the characteristics of Burroughs’ signature. That aside, below are five signatures dating from 1960 to 1995. Only one of the…
Buyer Beware
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Desperate times call for desperate measures. Of course, the troubled times refer to the current economy. Its effects are rippling throughout the rare book trade. Booksellers are putting on a brave face, but sometimes the mask slips. Joe McCann in the latest issue…
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting For the obsessed, the pursuit of the subject of fascination inevitably ends in minutiae. If that subject is an author, it means that the entire bibliography has been analyzed and devoured. The secondary sources have been exhausted. The pursuit has bled over into…
Mailbag: Process, Damn the Caesars, and Delaware Memoranda
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting You know you have run out of ideas when you write a column about what you received in the mail. But I will scrape the bottom of the inspiration bucket in order to tell you about a few items that came over my…
C Items
Part Two of “Not in Maynard & Miles” by Eric C. Shoaf In many ways, the magazines and serials are much more difficult to document than books because they were so prevalent at the time. Small press publishing took off in the 1960s, and Burroughs would send something from his “word horde” to nearly any…
FLiCKeR DVD Review
Review by Graham Rae FLicKeR, Written and Directed by Nik Sheehan (2008, 75 Minutes, Not Rated), Alive Mind Media “We must storm the citadels of enlightenment. The means are at hand.” — William S. Burroughs in a letter to Brion Gysin. Dreams. Let’s face it, nobody truly fully knows what they really are. We spend…
1979 Interview with William S. Burroughs (Translation)
Michel Duval En Attendant, November 1979 This interview with William S. Burroughs, which has never been reproduced since appearing in the November 1979 issue of En Attendant, was conducted on the occasion of the Plan K gig on 16 October 1979. It appears here in conjunction with RealityStudio’s dossier on William S. Burroughs and Joy…
1979 Interview with William S. Burroughs
Michel Duval En Attendant, November 1979 This interview with William S. Burroughs, which has never been reproduced since appearing in the November 1979 issue of En Attendant, was conducted on the occasion of the Plan K gig on 16 October 1979. It appears here in conjunction with RealityStudio’s dossier on William S. Burroughs and Joy…
William S. Burroughs and Joy Division
Recently the writer Jon Savage published a thoughtful essay about the literary influences of Ian Curtis, lead singer of the seminal post-punk band Joy Division. Having followed the band from its inception, Savage is in a unique position to offer insights. He notes that “Ian Curtis was an avid reader who became a driven writer,”…
Brian Cassidy on Early Photos and Collages by Burroughs
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting To be blunt, the New York Antiquarian Book Fair is the shit. Prior to the fair, I went to the Morgan Library to see their Gutenberg Bible and soak in the atmosphere of J.P. Morgan’s study. The display at the New York show…
Jonathan Williams, William Burroughs, and England
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting One of my mantras in book collecting is focus, focus, focus. The problem with living by this credo is that it leaves so many great books out of your collection. There are two books that have obsessed me like the white whale haunted…
The Exterminator
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Published by Auerhahn Press in 1960, The Exterminator is one of the forgotten texts of Burroughs’ bibliography. Roughly 1000 copies were printed in the first edition, and I would gather that few of even the most dedicated Burroughs fans have ever read it….
Washington DC Book Fair 2008
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Signs, signs, everywhere there are signs. On Friday March 7th, I saw a robin on the way to the train. The Orioles had a game against the Red Sox in Fort Lauderdale later that day. I can feel it coming in the air…
Beat Books Catalogue 48
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The network re-broadcast of Forrest Gump coincided with the arrival of the latest BeatBooks catalog. Gump hit the nail on the head when he said, “Rare book catalogues are like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.” Or something…
Burroughs’ Statements at the 1962 International Writers’ Conference
William S. Burroughs In 1962 William S. Burroughs appeared at the International Writers’ Conference in Edinburgh. He read statements at the panels on Censorship and on The Future of the Novel. RealityStudio has not yet been able to obtain a transcript of the conference (can anyone help?), but later that year the Transatlantic Review published…
The Third Mind Exhibit
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting RealityStudio bills itself as a digital community, a gathering place for fans, friends, collectors, and scholars of William Burroughs. In recent weeks, we have received some emails that testify to the international nature of that community as well as to the potential of…
Interview with Artist Jim Dine
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Since the inception of the Bibliographic Bunker, I have been writing about artists’ books and the book as an object. The interview with Malcolm Mac Neill and his memoir Observed While Falling were revelations. Both reinforced my belief that the concept of the…
Eureka: Locus Solus V
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting While attending a cigar event, a map collector friend informed me that the Walters Museum houses quite an extensive collection of manuscript material. One of the most publicized of their holdings is the Archimedes Palimpsest containing seven separate treatises by Archimedes. Despite all…
The Baltimore Antique Show
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Labor Day Weekend in Baltimore. For those who decide to stay in town, and there are not many, this weekend is a time for sitting on a rooftop deck (the yuppie version of the good old stoop) and cracking Natty Bohs while deciding…
Interview with Malcolm Mc Neill
Artist Speaks about Collaborating with Burroughs on Ah Pook Is Here In 1970 Malcolm Mc Neill received a phone call from a man who asked to meet “the guy who knows how to draw me.” The caller was William S. Burroughs. Mc Neill had recently illustrated a Burroughs text called “The Unspeakable Mr. Hart” for the underground…
Interview with Brown Paper’s Daniel Lauffer
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The one-shot little magazine has always been an interest of mine. The average run of a mag is as short as the career of an NFL running back. Lack of time, lack of interest, lack of material but most of all lack of…
Henry Miller and William Burroughs: A Letter
by Ian MacFadyen RealityStudio sent the text of Henry Miller and William Burroughs: An Overview to a few friends and scholars for input. While everyone made helpful comments, Ian MacFadyen — currently working on the introduction to the volume of essays that will comemmorate the 50th anniversary of Naked Lunch — replied with a spirited,…
Henry Miller and William Burroughs: An Overview
Also see Ian MacFadyen’s insightful response to RealityStudio’s overview: Henry Miller and William Burroughs: A Letter. After finishing with the summer job his father had negotiated for him at the St. Louis Post Dispatch, William S. Burroughs returned to Harvard in September 1935. It was his senior year. An English major, Burroughs had studied with…
Simon Finch and a High-Priced Naked Lunch
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting A few weeks ago, I wrote about Brian Cassidy, a bookseller just beginning his journey in the book world, and about his offering of a high-end Burroughs letter. At the other end of the spectrum is British bookseller Simon Finch who stands at…
D.A. Levy and William S. Burroughs
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting A Secret Location on the Lower East Side is one of my bibles, but the failure to document the Cleveland mimeo scene in any detail seems a major hole. Granted Clay and Phillips’ book could not cover everything, and Cleveland was briefly mentioned…
Jed Irwin on the Insect Trust Gazette
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting For background, be sure to read Jed Birmingham’s overview of the Insect Trust Gazette. Was there a literary or artistic scene in Philadelphia out of which Insect Trust Gazette grew? Bill Levy and I shared an apartment in 1963-64. Bill was studying General…
Burroughs and Bookstores
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting As Bill Reed’s memoir makes clear, independent bookstores are key locales in a creative community. Part employment office, soup kitchen, flophouse, café, and publishing house, the bookstore functions as a communal center like the American Express office in Paris, the barber shop in…
New York Book Fair (2007)
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The April / May issue of Rare Book Review features an article assessing the role of the internet in rare book dealing. Rare Book Review along with Fine Books and Collections is a fantastic resource for bibliophiles and a fun read. Five years…
Burroughs Readings
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting RealityStudio bills itself as a virtual community and for the past year, I have been chronicling Burroughs’ place in the international post-WWII avant-garde. In the forum, RealityStudio members have been discussing the current climate for the arts and speculating pm its direction in…
Eric Mottram and The Algebra of Need
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…
“Live All You Can”: American Experience, 1965-6
A Memoir of Eric Mottram Collated by Robert Bank In the early sixties, Eric Mottram travelled to the United States and met a number of writers, including William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg and others. He became friendly with William Burroughs during his time in London. These contacts resulted in three of Mottram’s best-known critical books;…
Semina Culture
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting You know how today we store up, shoring up, fragments of better days, against these our so fragmentary lives. Stephen Jonas, “A Poem for Tony Sherrod” Floating Bear 35 The weekend before St. Pat’s, I rode the Chinatown bus up to New York…
The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag
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…
Books and Broadside Prints By William S. Burroughs
A Bibliography by Eric C. Shoaf Junky [1953] Naked Lunch [1959] Minutes to Go [1960] The Exterminator [1960] The Soft Machine [1961] The Ticket That Exploded [1962] Dead Fingers Talk [1963] The Yage Letters [1963] Roosevelt After Inauguration [1964] Nova Express [1964] Time [1965] APO-33: A Metabolic Regulator [1965] So Who Owns Death TV? [1967]…
Interview with Gary Lee-Nova
Reading Burroughs Since the Beginning Gary Lee-Nova is a Vancouver-based artist known especially as an important figure in the “West Coast Scene” of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Sometimes working under the pseudonym Art Rat, Lee-Nova has produced a sizable body of work ranging from film to painting, from cut-ups to mail art. Alongside…
A Conversation With William S. Burroughs
By Simone Lazzeri Ellis (Originally Appeared in Contemporanea, 1990) To set the stage for this interview, which was originally published in 1990, Ms. Ellis kindly responded to some questions from RealityStudio. When I did this interview, I was the chief art critic for the Santa Fe New Mexican, which William knew because he’d been to…
William Burroughs in New York City 1964-1965
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting November 30, 1964 – In a postcard mailed from Gibraltar to Jeff Nuttall dated November 21st, Burroughs stated that he would be sailing for New York City on November 30th. Burroughs experienced considerable problems with the locals in Tangier who had enough of…
¿Quien Es?
William S. Burroughs Revisited, Mexico City, 2006 Overview of International Burroughs Symposium By Jorge Cuevas Cid As announced by RealityStudio, a couple of weeks ago, Mexico City held the first international symposium on the work of William S. Burroughs at UNAM. It was an unprecedented event which I think was timely and desirable for all…
Printing Techniques: Letterpress
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I have said it before, but I must once again recommend Steven Clay and Rodney Phillips’ A Secret Location on the Lower East Side. I reread it and it is as informative and fascinating as ever. This book, more than any other, shaped…
Yugen
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Several years ago, I wrote on the potential joys of collecting Charles Olson. Olson loomed as a literal giant over the small press and little magazine scene from 1950 until his death in 1970. As a result, his work appeared in some of…
Yage Redux
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The first edition of Yage Letters published by City Lights in 1963 is a slim and seemingly unassuming book. The cover has become famous and the book sells well, but it remains largely undiscovered territory to scholars. Only 18,000 words long and struggling…
David Meltzer and Nomad
Reports from the Bibliographic BunkerJed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting For more on Jed’s mini-archive of Meltzer letters, see David Meltzer Archive: A Partial Index. A small archive of letters to Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press from the likes of Henry Miller and William Burroughs popped up on Abebooks. Many of the letters are…
Jan Herman and William S. Burroughs
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting It was in 2006 that Jed Birmingham wrote the following text about the relationship between William S. Burroughs and Jan Herman, publisher, writer, artist, and connoisseur of the cut-up. It is with tremendous pleasure that RealityStudio now uses that text as the introduction…
Insect Trust Gazette
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Little magazines tend to streak across the literary sky like a comet briefly full of passion, poetry and prose before disappearing out of view. Few little magazines last several issues and fewer make a lasting cultural or artistic impression. For every Paris Review…
Fuck You Press Archive
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting It was a good day when I finally got my hands on Fuck You Vol. 5/No. 7. Quite possibly the coolest, hippest magazine of the mimeo revolution (Fuck You epitomized the revolution as demonstrated by naming the Steve Clay book “A Secret Location…
Dead Fingers Talk
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting There were a couple of interesting signed books for sale on eBay last week that gets to the heart of what makes a particular book collectible. A 1963 John Calder Dead Fingers Talk sold for about $160 (ebay, PDF) and a Grove Ticket…
Burroughs in Germany and Belgium
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Living in the Beat Hotel in Paris and traveling around Europe in the 1960s, William Burroughs possessed the opportunity to rub elbows with several avant-garde circles active at the time. Previously, I wrote about Burroughs and his relationship with Scottish literary magazines. In…
The NYPL Acquisition of the Burroughs Archive
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting For those of you chomping at the bit to sneak a peek at the Burroughs Archive in the Berg Collection, do not book your ticket to New York just yet. The archive is massive and could take awhile to organize and to catalog….
Burroughs Bibliographies
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting With all the discussion concerning bibliographies, I should mention a few other print bibliographies besides Maynard & Miles and Shoaf’s Checklist. In 1975, Michael B. Goodman published William S. Burroughs: An Annotated Bibliography of his Works and Criticism. This guide usually gets lost…
Beat Vinyl
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Did you know that Neil Young and Rick James were in a band together? I had no idea. I stopped in a local record store to take a look at a beautiful copy of Timothy Leary’s first LP, The Psychedelic Experience, on Broadside,…
Burroughs Blurbs
A Compilation of Book-Jacket Blurbs by William S. Burroughs It’s always hard to know exactly what to make of the blurbs that authors contribute to the jackets of books written by other authors. Are they sincere endorsements of the quality of a book? Are they fragments of sham praise extorted from friends? Are they recommendations…
William S. Burroughs Links
Quality Links Selected by Hand!Updated 6 July 2007 Sites with Burroughs Texts Collaboration with Keith Haring An official version of “Apocalypse,” a collaboration between Burroughs and Keith Haring, can be found at haring.com. Also online is another collaboration called “The Valley.” Burroughs on photographer Gottfried Helnwein “How can a self-portrait depict statuesque calm in the…
Yage Letters Redux
RealityStudio Reviews the New Edition Prepared by Oliver Harris It is an acknowledged paradox at the heart of William S. Burroughs’ work that his greatest books called into question how much they were even his. Whereas Samuel Beckett tried to eviscerate the novel from within — to “naughten” it, to borrow a term from Heidegger…
Notes on Burroughs (1964)
By Marshall McLuhan 1. Today men’s nerves surround us; they have gone outside as electrical environment. The human nervous system itself can be reprogrammed biologically as readily as any radio network can alter its fare. Burroughs has dedicated Naked Lunch to the first proposition, and Nova Express (both Grove Press) to the second. Naked Lunch…
Roundup at the O.P. Corral
Thoughts on Brion Gysin and Wyndham Lewis By Jan Herman I wrote the following article in the summer of 1971. I’m tempted to rewrite it, mainly to improve the prose and eliminate the foolishness. Despite its deficiencies, I offer it here with minor corrections for two reasons though it may be no more than a…
Burroughs Literary Archive
Catalogue Excerpt by Ken Lopez In March 2006 the New York Public Library purchased the William S. Burroughs Literary Archive from collectors Robert and Donna Jackson. This sale was brokered by Ken Lopez Bookseller, who put together an extremely nice catalogue describing the archive and situating its importance in the Burroughs corpus. For those who…
Dead Aim: The Unseen Art of William S. Burroughs
Major Exhibit of Burroughs’ Artwork to Open in London A major exhibit of William S. Burroughs’ artwork will open September 14th, 2005, in London at the Riflemaker gallery. “Dead Aim: The Unseen Art of William S. Burroughs” is the first installment of a three-part exhibition organized in collaboration with the Burroughs Estate. The exhibit is…
Interview with John Geiger
Author of Books on Brion Gysin and the Dream Machine John Geiger is the author of four books. His first two concerned Arctic exploration. His next two, Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and The Dream Machine and Nothing Is True – Everything Is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin, concerned…
Your Education
Dreams about William S. Burroughs Burroughs spoke frequently about the importance of dreams to the creative process. “There couldn’t be a society of people who didn’t dream,” he told Victor Bockris. “They’d be dead in two weeks.” He collaborated with Brion Gysin on the “dream machine,” and he frequently used dreams in his fiction as…
The Mayan Caper
(Excerpt from The Soft Machine) William S. Burroughs Joe Brundige brings you the shocking story of the Mayan Caper exclusive to The Evening News — A Russian scientist has said: “We will travel not only in space but in time as well” — I have just returned from a thousand-year time trip and I am…
Introduction from Queer
William S. Burroughs When I lived in Mexico City at the end of the 1940s, it was a city of one million people, with clear sparkling air and the sky that special shade of blue that goes so well with circling vultures, blood and sand–the raw menacing pitiless Mexican blue. I liked Mexico City from…