Menu
RealityStudio
  • Bibliographic Bunker
  • Texts
  • Bibliography
  • Interviews
  • Biography
  • Criticism
  • Scholarship
RealityStudio

The Burroughs File

William S Burroughs, The Burroughs File, City Lights, 1984San Francisco: City Lights 1984, an edition of 300 copies hardbound in black cloth covered boards with gilt spine lettering and dust jacket. An anthology of writing and photographs.

_____ simultaneous wraps issue.




This bibliography of A-List publications by William S. Burroughs derives from Eric C. Shoaf’s Collecting William S. Burroughs in Print: A Checklist and is published online courtesy of the author, who retains all rights. Published by RealityStudio in April 2007.
Cut-Up Eric Shoaf William Burroughs

2 thoughts on “The Burroughs File”

  1. Daurade says:
    November 23, 2022 at 10:50 am

    I didn’t know where to add this comment so I chose this post because it contains some examples of Burroughs work with columns and newspaper layouts. So we know that in addition to fold-ins and cup-ups, Burroughs experimented with newspaper like layouts, with three columns. He also took actually papers and read across the columns and typed them up to produce new texts. I just learned that a guy named Called Whitefoord experimented with this and published a book of what he called “cross-readings” in 1766.

    Caleb Whitefoord, a neighbor and best friend of Benjamin Franklin, was doing a form of cut-up in the late eighteenth century:

    It was Whitefoord’s genius to notice that when you took a broadsheet newspaper of tightly set columns, and started reading across the paper’s columns—rather than reading down to the column’s next line—you could achieve what he described as “coupled persons and things most heterogeneous, things so opposite in the nature and qualities, that no man alive would ever have thought of joining them together.” Whitefoord called this cross-reading, and he was so amused by it that he would publish sheets of his favorite specimens and hand them out to friends in Fleet Street coffeehouses:

    Dr. Salamander will, by her Majesty’s command,

    undertake a voyage round—

    The head-dress of the present month.

    Wanted to take care of an elderly gentlewoman—

    An active young man just come from the country.

    Yesterday the new Lord Mayor was sworn in,

    and afterwards toss’d and gored several Persons.

    Removed to Marylebone, for the benefit of the air—

    The City and Liberties of Westminster.

    Notice is hereby given—

    And no notice taken.

    Burroughs did exactly that and cut-ups and fold-ins mimic the process.

    1868-70

    Isidore Ducasse/Lautréamont

    Maldoror

    Included lines lifted directly from previous texts, especially descriptions of nature. As Burroughs said: if, say, Konrad had described a treeline perfectly, why not just lift the text and use it as the background for the action in your text, much like collage?

    I think this is Ben Franklin:

    “It was Whitefoord’s genius to notice that when you took a broadsheet newspaper of tightly set columns, and started reading across the paper’s columns—rather than reading down to the column’s next line—you could achieve what he described as “coupled persons and things most heterogeneous, things so opposite in the nature and qualities, that no man alive would ever have thought of joining them together.”

    Whitefoord called this cross-reading, and he was so amused by it that he would publish sheets of his favorite specimens and hand them out to friends in Fleet Street coffeehouses:

    Dr. Salamander will, by her Majesty’s command,
    undertake a voyage round—
    The head-dress of the present month.

    Wanted to take care of an elderly gentlewoman—
    An active young man just come from the country.

    Yesterday the new Lord Mayor was sworn in,
    and afterwards toss’d and gored several Persons.

    Removed to Marylebone, for the benefit of the air—
    The City and Liberties of Westminster.

    Notice is hereby given—
    And no notice taken.

    There is an excellent article here. Any idea if Burroughs ever mentioned Whitefoord?

    https://intercapillaryspace.blogspot.com/2006/05/caleb-whitefoord-cross-reading.html

  2. Daurade says:
    November 23, 2022 at 8:18 pm

    Oops, that comment isn’t what I intended. Sorry. The whole part which begins with Maldoror up until the link was somehow included unintentionally. My apologies for being careless. Please delete it if you want, although I do recommend the link. The author doesn’t mention Burroughs because I think he doesn’t know of his newspaper 3-column texts, but it’s still a good post.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Random Page

  • A William S. Burroughs Bibliography

Recent Comments

  • Demi on Tornado Alley
  • Pam Plymell on #2 – Robert Jackson
  • RealityStudio on #10: The Digit Junkie
  • Peter on #10: The Digit Junkie
  • Michael on The Soft Machine

Links

  • About RealityStudio
  • Contact RealityStudio
  • Mimeo Mimeo
  • Supervert
RealityStudio is a Supervert production □ © Copyright 2023 □ About □ Contact