Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Before the internet and web publishing, offset printing was the major innovation of 20th Century printing. I view offset printing as commercial printing, i.e. large volume printing. (See Wikipedia.) I think of glossy, large distribution magazines, like Life or Time, or novels with huge print runs from the major publishing houses. Offset equals mainstream publishing. For me, the little magazine should be printed on a personally owned letterpress or mimeograph. Alternative writing could only be published if writers took to the act of printing themselves. Of course, this is not the case. By the late 1950s, offset printing costs were low enough that writers and editors not willing or able to physically print themselves could scrape together enough money to pay a professional printer.

Yugen was a case in point. Leroi Jones and Hettie Cohen prepared the magazine for publication, but Troubadour Press did the actual printing. They used the offset method. Even for such a small print run, prices had lowered enough that printing with a professional printer in the United States was feasible. As I stated, this was a recent development. Due to the strong dollar, City Lights printed the Pocket Books series, including Howl, in England with Villiers. In 1956, Villiers made 1000 copies of the first edition of Howl. In the early to mid-1950s, Robert Creeley also found printing cheaper overseas. While living in Mallorca, Creeley paid a local printer to handset the Divers Press titles, including Olson’s The Mayan Letters and Creeley’s The Gold Diggers. Black Mountain Review (1954-1957) was printed in Mallorca as well.

The printing of a true little magazine with a professional printer in the United States seems a contradiction in terms. Kulchur also used a professional printer. For me, the look and feel of the magazine is too slick, too professional. In many cases, the covers of Kulchur feature striking layouts and designs by artists who would become major figures. Yet the covers are too shiny, too polished. The magazine is perfect bound, not hand sewn or stapled. The binding is too tight which makes believe that the writing inside is too. The mimeograph magazine threatens to fall apart; the contents seem to be bursting at the seams threatening to attack the reader.

This is even more noticeable in Evergreen Review. The print run for the Review was huge: 100,000. In comparison, Wallace Berman ran a couple hundred copies of Semina. In little magazine circles, a thousand copies was a large print run. For example, Big Table was a huge success selling out its print run of 10,000. Some editors of Big Table (Paul Carroll) thought 10,000 copies were excessive. Evergreen Review bordered on a mainstream magazine. Functioning as the publicity arm for Grove Press, Evergreen packaged the avant garde for Middle America. Kids in Kansas read of the Paris, San Francisco and New York literary scenes. For a few readers, it was the defining moment of their lives. There is no denying the importance of Evergreen Review‘s content, but as an object I find it very boring. The magazine is the Reader’s Digest of little magazines.

This is the direct result of how it was printed. Like Kulchur, the magazine has some cool covers, especially the photographs of Jackson Pollock or motorcyclists in the early issues. But the magazine is cold, distant. The type, the paper, the binding are all safe and boring. The magazine is small and tidy. I get the sense that the revolutionary content has been sanitized for public consumption. Everything that was dangerous about Tropic of Cancer, Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Naked Lunch seems art-brushed out. The treatment of Naked Lunch in Evergreen Review proves this point. It was in Evergreen Review that Burroughs published “Deposition Concerning a Sickness,” which was included in the Grove Press Naked Lunch. Here Burroughs made Naked Lunch understandable. He categorized it, distanced himself from it, and placed it within a tradition. The “Deposition” muted Burroughs’ cry in the wilderness and made it palatable for Middle America. Evergreen‘s staid, Reader’s Digest-like appearance promised readers something familiar while it fed them a healthy helping of alternative literature. That was how it had to be for this literature to reach a wider audience, but I do not have to treasure the magazine, just respect its importance.

During Evergreen‘s existence, readers ran away to San Francisco, but they did not catch the fever to start a magazine. Readers of Ed Sanders’ Fuck You started magazines. I understand that this is because Fuck You‘s audience was a small community of artists already plugged into the creative world, not thousands of teenagers across the country. But I definitely feel that the way Fuck You looked and felt (the way it was produced) energized its readers in ways Evergreen Review, or on a smaller scale, Kulchur never could. Mimeos look deceptively simple, slapdash. You get the sense that anybody could make a mimeo even if the actual production was complicated, messy, and arduous. Fuck You exudes the Do-It-Yourself spirit that led to the punk fanzines of the 70s and web publishing of today. In addition, Fuck You courses through your fingers to this day; it jumps off the bookshelf and demands to be opened. Evergreen just sits there.

Offset printing, like in Evergreen, Yugen, Big Table, means advertising. I have mixed feeling about ads in a little magazine. My gut feeling is that a true little magazine cannot have advertisements. Of course, Fuck You breaks this rule. Fuck You Magazine‘s want ads shade into extremely funny art pieces. Notices for literary magazines, readings, upcoming novels, printing presses strike me as useful and necessary for readers. Yugen and The Outsider have many ads of this type. Evergreen seems to cross the line. Like in Yugen, the advertisements are fun reading for their peek into what was going on at art galleries, museums, publishing houses and bookstores. The magazine featured a who’s who of readings or exhibitions. The names were more likely to be Robert Lowell or Paul Goodman than Charles Olson: more New York Intellectual than Black Mountain or New York School. It all seems pretty tame and commercial. Case in point is an ad for Beat humor featuring Café Espresso and a Beat Romeo and Juliet. Or the ad for John Begg scotch, which is “one of the things you need when Beatniking.” Beat crosses over into beatnik. Substance becomes style; a way of life becomes a lifestyle. Evergreen Review brought alternative literature to the mainstream but like all such projects, there was a tremendous dilution in the process.

Generally, offset printing created standardization in magazine format and encouraged the commoditization of its contents. Yet the results of offset printing are not all so mainstream. Cheap offset in the late 1950s paved the way for the rise of the underground press from 1966-1975. Here offset printing allowed an alternative voice to see print. Sex, drugs, Vietnam, feminism, race, rock and roll, the generation gap, and class could all be discussed openly and from a different point of view. In many cases, the visual aspects of the alternative press are as striking as their articles. The International Times (London), San Francisco Oracle, East Village Other, Chicago Seed and countless other papers (every major city seemed to have an underground paper) sometimes printed in multicolor formats. These newspapers challenged the traditional newspaper format by incorporating psychedelic, surrealist, and visual poetry techniques. A whole generation of graphic artists arose around the underground newspaper and rock-and-roll scenes, particularly in London and San Francisco. Rick Griffin, Wes Wilson, Martin Sharp, Stanley Mouse, Victor Moscoso, Hapshash and the Colored Coat (Michael English and Nigel Weymouth) are some of the most famous practitioners of psychedelic art seen on album covers and rock posters. Many of these artists produced incredible pieces for the underground press. This is particularly true of the San Francisco Oracle and the International Times. These papers included multicolor front pages, posters, broadsides, and a host of inserts.

Not surprisingly, Burroughs played a role in this new medium. Burroughs contributed a number of articles on a variety of counterculture topics. The “Invisible Generation” essay that was eventually included in the 1967 version of The Ticket That Exploded was first printed in International Times. Burroughs’ most interesting association with the underground newspaper was in collaboration with Michael English. English created a poster/word machine using Burroughs’ “Invisible Generation” text that made cut-ups as an insert to International Times 5. The poster formed the Michael English issue 5.5 in 1966 and it is a highly desirable collectable in its pristine, unused state. In his memoirs, Barry Miles described Burroughs’ reaction to the poster. He wrote, “William thought that the silver on white silkscreen printing made the text unreadable, which it did, and we promised we would do a reprint in gold, which would show up better. After studying it for a while William said, ‘Well, go on then. Cut it up.’ We quickly found him a pair of scissors and he cut up one of the posters and assembled one of the word machines. You turned several wheels with words on them, which lined up in random order. It didn’t really work very well, but William didn’t seem too bothered.” (See also the International Times Archive.)

Newly affordable printing technologies also made possible the emergence of underground comix. Underground comix were self-published and distributed through alternative bookstores and head shops. These new comics challenged the traditional strip and comic book formats while dealing with more mature and controversial themes. Sex, drugs and rock and roll became fodder for the rising stars of comics like R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman and Spain Rodriquez. Zap, Arcade and Raw were new outlets for this artwork. Not surprisingly, Burroughs appeared in this new medium. In Cyclops 1-4, “The Unspeakable Mr. Hart” appeared accompanied by drawings by Malcolm McNeil. Published in 1970, Cyclops, edited by Graham Keen, was Great Britain’s first adult comic newspaper. Again Burroughs material was used to challenge the comic format. This time the challenge was not so much visual as textual and thematic. Burroughs’ piece was an early collaboration between the novelist and comix artist that presaged the work of graphic novels like Sandman or Maus. Burroughs helped blur the line between “real” writers and comix writers. Burroughs’ work gave comix artists new themes to explore and gave textual weight to their illustrations. Late in his career, Burroughs continued to explore this gray area in collaborations with R. Crumb and S. Clay Wilson. In 1980, S. Clay Wilson created the cover art, endpapers and illustrations for Die Wilden Boys (Frankfurt: Zweitausendeins, 1980), the first German edition of Burroughs’ The Wild Boys. Ken Lopez is currently offering an archive of material chronicling the relationship of Wilson and Burroughs from 1979-1991. The archive includes correspondence, artwork and books all for “only” $17,500.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

If the letterpress represents the magazine or book as high art, the mimeograph machine epitomizes lo-fi production. The master of the mimeograph machine must first of all be a master of the stencil. The stencil is a floppy wax sheet backed by carbon paper and a stiff card, bound together at the top. Text and illustrations were either typed into the stencil with a typewriter or cut with a stylus. In Recollections of My Life as a Woman, Diane Di Prima remembered the frustrations of the stenciling process. She writes, “After the editing was over and done with, the rest of the work was chiefly in my hands. I typed the material onto green Gestetner mimeograph stencils with my ancient, heavy IBM typewriter… Correcting mimeograph stencils was painful and painstaking. You applied a liquid plastic, also green, which closed over the typing as it dried, making a new plastic ‘skin.’ You had to make sure the schmear of fluid didn’t adhere to the stencil’s backing sheet, or it would tear off again leaving a big hole in the stencil just when you were ready to print. Then, too, the correction fluid needed to be neither too thin (wouldn’t cover the previous typing) or too thick (you wouldn’t be able to get the new word to “show through” when you typed in the correction). Painful and nerve-wracking, it was the worst part of the process and makes it clear to me that computers came none too soon.” (For more on the mechanics and history of the mimeo, see Wikipedia and alteich.com).

Unlike the letterpress, the mimeograph machine was portable and cheap (to own and to use). In the post World War II era, it seemed that every writer crammed a Gestetner or an A.B. Dick machine into their small, book lined apartments. Any poet could possess the means of their own literary production. Despite the time and effort it took to stencil an issue, the key to the mimeo was speed. Rapid communication to the literary community of up to the minute work by one’s peers was essential.

Floating Bear embodied this element to the fullest. In terms of format, the Bear was no frills. The layout is simple. It is all typewritten text with no illustrations. It looks like a community newsletter than you see for a present day condo complex, except Floating Bear‘s community was the literary circles of New York and California in the 1960s. What counted was the material in the magazine and in some cases it was fine indeed. (See my old website for a description of Burroughs’ role in Floating Bear.) Several writers expressed their gratitude for having this ear to the ground outlet, especially Charles Olson. Poets in the heat of battle could get feedback immediately. Poets at Le Metro took this sense of immediacy to an extreme. At the Les Deux Magots and Café Le Metro, Dan Saxon collected the manuscripts of poems read on the premises on a certain night. Handwritten or typed copies of just performed work were quickly mimeoed. In some cases, poems were stenciled on the spot. The results were distributed to an audience of writers who commented on and incorporated the contents into their own work. Like Floating Bear, the layout and presentation of the poems was simple and direct. Yet some pages read like holograph sheets straight from the poet’s notebook. To own a copy of Le Metro now, it feels like owning the manuscript to a live performance. The cigarette smoke rises from the coffee stained pages.

Not all mimeos were so bare bones. Clay’s book mentions Jack Spicer’s J Magazine as pushing the boundaries of what was possible with the mimeo in terms of design. Ted Berrigan’s C Magazine is another example. I hate to mention it again but Fuck You Magazine demonstrates how the mimeograph could be manipulated to present interesting visuals. Ed Sanders’ interest in Egyptian Culture and hieroglyphics dovetailed nicely with the tools of the mimeo trade. The cheap construction paper (papyrus) and stenciling stylus (Sanders owned one of the few electronic stencil cutters at the time) links the modern mimeo printer with the ancient scribe. I view mimeo publishers as hopped up monks locked in one room apartments slaving over their stencils documenting the soon to be forgotten knowledge of their scene. I feel that the mimeos preserved a fleeting community as well as a poetry that was produced with passion but not with a care for posterity. The poetic practices of Bob Kaufman (Beatitude Magazine) or Frank O’Hara (countless New York mimeos) cared little for cataloging or preserving the work. For example, many of Kaufman’s poems would never have been saved if his wife did not write them down.

I admire the beauty and high quality of the letterpress publications, like The Cat Inside with its fine paper and illustrations. I especially prize the pieces that challenge the form and definition of the magazine like Folder and Semina. I love the craft and dedication that went into printing The Outsider. These publications appeal to my eye and mind, but my heart goes out to the mimeo publications. I get the sense that I could have published The Floating Bear. Although the work behind creating the magazines was difficult, they look so simple. They invite one to try his/her hand at a similar project. I love the fragility and disposability of the mimeo. As a collector, I feel that I am preserving an important and neglected piece of literary history. The print smudges. The staples rust and bleed into the paper. The paper is poor. It yellows or oxidizes. These magazines can not stand against the elements. The magazines have the beauty of a junk sculpture piece, like the husk of an automobile rusting in George Herms’ backyard. Much of the poetry included is forgotten and will not stand the test of time. They are rough, crude, like some of the poetry inside them. Yet the magazines as object are timeless mementos of the era when poetry and poets mattered a larger stage for the last time. In 1967, Ed Sanders found himself on the cover of Life magazine as the face of the New York underground. Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder were looked upon as leaders and spokesmen for American youth. David Lehman calls the New York School the last avant-garde poetry movement. The mimeo serves as a ticket to the literary underworld of the 1960s. Looking at them, holding them, I am transported back to Topanga Canyon or the Lower East Side and I feel that I am privy to an intimate and secret conversation.

I have always associated the mimeo magazines with amphetamines. Speed was the drug of choice for many of the publishers and poets. The drug allowed them to talk, write, and work around the clock. In addition, the mind was sharpened and the hands quickened for the laborious task of stenciling, printing, correcting, collating, and stapling hundreds of issues. Jon Webb describes the arduous work surrounding the publication of The Outsider but that press seems fueled by alcohol and cigarettes. Maybe that is because of the magazines association with Charles Bukowski, but I always felt that The Outsider was in a long line of hard drinking editor/publishers like the tradition of the daily newspaperman. There is considerable writing on the effects of heroin on jazz, LSD on writers of the 1960s or alcohol on the Lost Generation, but I have seen little on the amphetamine boom that occurred in New York in the late 1950s until the psychedelic summers of the mid 1960s. I would be interested in seeing some writing on speed and the role it plays in the introduction of the long line in poetry or repetition in art. Speed was essential in the creative process of Andy Warhol and Jack Kerouac and I think it molded their artistic production.

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 my understanding of the little magazine in the post World War II era. The pictures and bibliographies are fantastic, not to mention essential, for the Burroughs collector.

Before Clay’s book, I believed that the magazines and books of the mimeograph revolution were all made on mimeographs. Actually, only roughly half of the magazines in Secret Location were produced with that technology. The introduction states, “Direct access to mimeograph machines, letterpress, and inexpensive offset made these publishing ventures possible, putting the means of production in the hands of the poet.” I had a dim understanding of what a mimeograph was and how it worked, mostly thanks to my experience with a ditto machine (which is different I later learned) in grade school. Later at the University of Iowa (I was there for two seconds in the Ph.D program), I met Kim Merker of Windhover Press and saw various print technologies up close. Secret Location encouraged me to delve more deeply into the technologies behind the little magazine boom.

Even after some research, I am not as knowledgeable about printing as I would like. I have never seen a stencil and I do not have a full grasp how the whole mimeo process works. The same goes for the letterpress and offset printing. If there are any errors in the following piece please correct them. In addition any information on printing techniques would be appreciated. That said, I have definite ideas about what little magazines I like and admire. As I look at my book collection, I find myself returning again and again to the same favorite magazines, like Fuck You Magazine or The Outsider. At the same time, there are magazines that languish failing to attract my attention after the initial purchase, like my Evergreen Reviews. These preferences I have found take into consideration how the magazines were produced. Close examination of my collection reveals that mimeo, letterpress and offset all have their own characteristics that obviously dictate format. In some cases, the production method chosen by a poet publisher directly affects the content. As Charles Olson wrote in Projective Verse, form is never more than an extension of content. I will share some of my impression of various printing methods used in the mimeo revolution below.

I will start with letterpress printing. The letterpress goes back before Gutenberg in the 1400s. Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type and later the mechanization of the letterpress process made mass production of printed matter possible. (For more one how the letterpress works and pictures of the letterpress, see fiveroses.org and Wikipedia.) Yet for me, the letterpress represents the handmade, not mechanical process. This dedication to the handmade highlights the passion for the book as object and the creation of the book as art. The magazine that jumps to mind is The Outsider printed by Jon and Gypsy Lou Webb in New Orleans. Burroughs along with several other Beats appears in The Outsider. The recent Edwin Blair sale presented the rare, and in some cases once in a lifetime, opportunity to purchase publications from the esteemed Loujon Press. Like the books published by Loujon, such as Bukowski’s It Catches My Heart in its Hands or Henry Miller’s Order and Chaos Chez Hans Reichel, The Outsider is a miracle of printing. Painstaking attention was paid to the illustrations, the typeface, and the layout as well as the selections of prose and poetry. As Gypsy Lou Webb writes, “This No. 1 issue was printed on a C & P handpress, with handset type, & it took us, the 2 home editors, about 4,500 hours to get the job done.”

The results are well worth the time. Full of varying typefaces, types of paper, photographs and drawings, The Outsider was a labor of love. As you read through the pages, the incredible amount of manual labor that when into its construction screams out. Webb continues, “Because our press is a no motor job, with a 5lb handle pull, & it takes a minimum of 9,000 pulls to bring off just one page of the Outsider. Goes like this: 1 pull makes 1 impression, but there are extra pulls for inking and we printed 3,100 copies of each No. 1 page… And we’ve done it easy — for one hour. But with some 299,999 impressions to make ahead of us for just the birth of our baby (it took us exactly 9 mos to do this issue), or close onto a million handpulls equaling a l-i-f-t poundage of Four Million plus.” On the thin pieces of paper, you can see where the typeface bit into the paper. The magazine possesses weight; stands out as a physical object. As Keats wrote, “You should load every rift of your subject with ore.” Many pages are crammed with text in tiny type. The magazine is busy always grabbing the reader’s attention. Issue 4/5 dedicated to Kenneth Patchen is massive and beautiful; more of a book than a magazine. The issue is a work of art with emphasis on work. It seems that the Webbs worked their press like a laborer in a factory. Endless repetition and back breaking toil. Like Bukowski who The Outsider helped discover, the magazine is a curious mix of counterculture and blue collar sensibilities.

Another magazine that comes to mind when I think about the letterpress is Wallace Berman’s Semina. Semina ran for nine issues from 1955-1964. The book Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and his Circle contains photographs of the first published inventory of Semina‘s individual components. Semina was one of the first magazines to publish a piece of Naked Lunch. Burroughs appears in issue 4 which was dedicated to Mexico and the drug experience. The run of the magazine featured Allen Ginsberg, Alexander Trocchi, John Wieners, Michael McClure, Baudelaire, Jean Cocteau, Herman Hesse and Artaud as well as artwork and photographs by Jess, Cameron, Dean Stockwell and Walter Hopps.

The content is extraordinary, but even more powerful is the format. Like The Outsider, Semina is an art object. Michael Duncan describes the magazine as follows, “Although a journal comprised of contributions from a number of unique voices, Semina stands as an artwork in its own right, a new kind of assemblage of images and texts. Seven of its issues were printed on loose-leaf pages inserted in a sleeve; five of those issues had no prescribed order or sequence. Photographs, drawings, and collages by Berman and others were juxtaposed with texts, often on the same page… While he clearly conceived of it as a literary journal including both contributions from friends and submissions from readers, Berman also created in Semina a new expressive form.” As Duncan points out, Semina relates to the work of the surrealists; Eisenstein montage; Marcel Duchamp’s The Box in a Valise; little magazines like Dial and transition; and art magazines like View. The magazine presages mail, concept and Pop Art. Wallace Berman strained against the magazine format in the same way Daisy Alden did in Folder and Phyllis Johnson did later in Aspen.

If the Webbs used their letterpress like a laborer, Wallace Berman utilized his press like a priest or sorcerer. Semina mixes religion and magic. Berman shows that it is impossible to separate the two. As Berman wrote, “Art is love is God.” Hugo Ball, a founder of Dadism and an influence on Berman, wrote, “Magic is the only worship worthy of divinity. Without the use of magic which builds the bridge with God man cannot be saved.” I have only seen Semina in photographs, but even in reproduction the magazine possesses an aura. Unlike The Outsider which exudes weight and physicality, I am struck by Semina‘s weightlessness. It is ephemeral and ethereal. The magazine refuses to stay in one place or remain in one category. Due to its scarcity, I may never be able to touch it. I do not own a single issue, let alone a complete run. I would pay money just to hold an issue. The first issue costs $5000 on the rare book market. The run would cost around $15,000. If I could own one magazine in its entirety, it would be this one. In 1967, Herms printed a tribute to Berman and Semina called “A Portent Semina — Semina #6” in 100 copies. This item is eagerly sought after by collectors. Berman the printer still inspires bookmakers today. In 1991, fine bookmaker Alastair Johnston of Poltroon Press, created a facsimile of the complete Semina for the Love Press. This reproduction signed by George Herms is quite a collectible in its own right continuing the handset letterpress tradition practiced by Berman. Not surprisingly, Burroughs appears in both these later projects.

In its own time, Semina was legendary. Only a couple hundred copies were made of a single issue. Copies could not be purchased. Instead they were distributed through the mail to those in the know. To receive the magazine was to be initiated into a sacred society. In some ways, The Outsider and Semina seem to be at opposite ends of the little magazine spectrum, but their passion for the handmade object and their dedication to art link the two. They are like the ying and yang of handset printing. Berman would definitely appreciate a mystical take on the magazines. Opposites are not in conflict as Berman and the Webbs both sought to give voice to an alternative culture in the face of a conservative mainstream through the power of the press.

The dedication to the handmade continues in today’s fine press tradition. Bookmakers from around the world immerse themselves in the pleasures of handmade paper, innovative layouts, and fine bindings all produced on the letterpress. Several Burroughs publications have been produced in this manner recently. For Burroughs books, the letterpress tradition reaches back to Dave Haselwood’s Auerhahn Press. That press published Burroughs and Gysin’s The Exterminator in 1960 in an attractive, yet simple edition. A more current and elaborate example includes Mummies of 1982 printed and published by Kaldewey Press in Helvetica type on Scheufelen paper. Care and passion are not cheap. A copy of Mummies sells for over $1000. The Cat Inside is another example of fine bookmaking on a letterpress. Printed by the renowned Grenfell Press in 1986, the folio is bound in full limp vellum with a drawing by Gysin stamped in gold to the front cover. The drawings by Gysin are printed in two colors using the duotone process on a hand letterpress. The deluxe edition signed by Gysin and Burroughs sells for over $4000 and is among the rarest items in Burroughs’ catalog.

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 unnumbered and unsigned. 100 copies were signed by Burroughs and Gysin. 10 copies numbered A-J were hard bound and contained a manuscript page of Burroughs and an original colored drawing by Gysin. 4 more were hors commerce. (This French term literally translates as “before business.”) An hors commerce print was used as the color key and printing guide that the printer would use to insure consistency of the print run. These pieces are usually printer’s proofs that are not for sale and are often used for promotional purposes. Ports of Entry: William Burroughs and the Arts provides images from the Joseph Zinnato collection which included an extensive archive of Time. Stephen J. Gertz wrote a great article detailing his experience with the Zinnato collection including a description of the Time archive. I have encountered several descriptions of copies of Time, signed and unsigned.

Burroughs and Gysin signed the book together, as called for in the limited edition of 100 numbered copies. In isolated cases, Ted Berrigan, the editor, signed as well. My copy is signed by Burroughs, Gysin, and Berrigan. Berrigan inscribed the copy to Roger Richards, a Beat friend and patron. He was particularly close with Gregory Corso, who lived with Richards during his later years. I have never seen one of the 10 lettered copies. UCLA possesses a copy (D) in its rare book room.

According to Ports of Entry, “Burroughs created his own version of Time magazine, including a Time cover of November 30, 1962, collaged over by Burroughs with a reproduction of a drawing, four drawings by Gysin, and twenty-six pages of typescript comprised of cut up texts and various photographs serving as news items. One of the pages is from an article on Red China from Time of September 13, 1963, and is collaged with a columnal typescript and an irrelevant illustration from the ‘Modern Living’ section of the magazine. A full-page advertisement for Johns-Manville products is casually inserted amid all these text; its title: Filtering.” The “Fliday Newsmagazine,” “Proclaim Present Time Over,” “File Flicker Tape” are some of the texts. The November 30, 1962 issue of Time was chosen, because the magazine reviewed the Grove Press edition of Naked Lunch in an article entitled “King of the YADS” (Young American Disaffiliates). The looming face of Mao symbolizing the threat of Red China adds an aura of nuclear disaster.

Time, along with Burroughs’ contributions to My Own Mag, is a stellar example of Burroughs’ attempts to merge the collage technique of art with the cut up technique of literature. Time is the fullest expression of Burroughs’ experimentation with the newspaper and magazine format that is part parody and part critique as well as an expression of a new format and form capable of expressing a greater truth than fiction or journalism separately. Time goes to the heart of Burroughs’ distrust of the mass media manipulation of image and news. Many think of Burroughs the visual artist as a flowering of his later years, but as his scrapbooks and pieces like Time attest, Burroughs delved into the visual arts early in his creative life. Elements of surrealism, the collage and assemblage art of Rauschenberg or Wallace Berman and his circle, Pop Art, and Mail Art are all present in Time.

All this is an introduction to the question I received. Basically, the collector wanted to know if he possessed one of the 100 signed copies of Time. He sent me an image of his copyright page with the Burroughs signature in pencil. Attached is his scan. The issue number is written incorrectly and is not stamped. In addition, only Burroughs signed the copy and not Gysin. Both Burroughs and Gysin signed the 100 copies. See my copy. What I think happened is that the collector received one of the unsigned, unnumbered 886 copies that somebody, not Burroughs, then numbered and signed with Burroughs’ name. The signature looks suspect especially the William. See my webpage for examples of Burroughs signature over time. I have never seen Burroughs sign in pencil, particularly Time. The numbering of the signature is flat out wrong. Why would Burroughs number his signature if he happened to sign this copy at a later date? The person who signed it obviously saw Burroughs’ signature before but could not reproduce the numbering of one of the true 100 copies.

Time was bootlegged in 1972 by Roy Pennington as an Urgency Press Rip Off. According to Maynard & Miles, Pennington published the bootleg for the Bickershaw Festival. The bootleg was not staple-bound like this forged copy, but stapled at the top. I have never seen the bootleg, so if anybody has a copy please send an image and description.

Time Archive

William S. Burroughs
Time
1965
C Press

Download a pdf of Time

C Press
Advertisement for William Burroughs’ Time
1965

Ron Padgett
1965 Letter from Ron Padgett about the publication of Time
26 April 1965

Time Bootleg

William S. Burroughs
Time (BOOTLEG by Ripoff Urgency Press)
1972

William S. Burroughs
Time (BOOTLEG by Ripoff Urgency Press)
1972

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Recently, I got into a conversation with a book collector friend of mine about collectible broadsides. This discussion forced me to realize that I did not really know what a broadside technically was. I knew one when I saw one. In bibliographic terms, a broadside (or a broadsheet) is merely a large sheet of paper printed on one side only. As a result, a poster, a handbill, and an advertisement, as well as a printed poem, can all technically fit the definition. (For a full set of dictionary entries concerning the term broadside, see Google). For the collector of modern books, the term usually refers to a single poem sometimes accompanied by artwork printed on a single sheet by a fine printer. Ken Lopez Booksellers has a large gallery full of wonderful examples of this fine press art.

The first thing that pops into my mind when I think about the collectible broadside is Black Sparrow Press and Charles Bukowski. In 1966, the first four publications of Black Sparrow Press were broadsides of Bukowski poems: “True Story,” “On Going Out to Get the Mail,” “To Kiss the Worms Goodnight,” and “The Girls.” From these humble beginnings, John Martin built one of the most important presses publishing modern poetry in the world. In fact, these beginnings were not really humble, but a rather impressive example of printing and marketing. Martin produced these broadsides specifically for the rare book market. The first four broadsides were handset poems on expensive, deckle-edged paper signed by Bukowski in a limited edition of 30. The layout is simple, yet elegant placing much of the emphasis on the poem not the design. This type of care in presentation continued the tradition of Bukowski publications like It Catches My Heart in Its Hands and Crucifix in a Deathhand by Loujon Press. The poems were pricey at $10. It was a pretty good investment as these pieces now fetch $3000-$4000 on the market today, if you can find one. These items are legendary rarities and almost never show up in collectible condition. Black Sparrow Press published Bukowski as a broadside artist throughout the life of the press. The poems and their design have become iconic examples of small press publishing.

Several members of the Beat Generation have been published in the broadside format. For me, the most interesting examples are the broadside / pamphlets published by City Lights in the 1950s. I am thinking of Jack Kerouac’s Rimbaud, Gregory Corso’s Bomb and Bob Kaufman’s The Abomunist Manifesto. Technically speaking, these poems are not broadsides as they were printed on both sides of a single sheet of paper, but booksellers often list these heavily sought after items as such. They are notoriously fragile as they were cheaply made on even cheaper paper: the opposite end of the spectrum from the Black Sparrow offerings. Like the Pocket Book Series, these City Lights poems were portable and inexpensive, usually 50 cents. The first printings of Rimbaud and Bomb are now $150-250.

The Beats have also received the high-end treatment. Broadsides of Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen incorporate the poets’ artwork and calligraphy in beautiful examples of the printer’s art. I am thinking of Philip Whalen’s “Goddess” published by Auerhahn Press in 1964. An archive of material dealing with “Goddess” is currently being offered for sale by Ken Lopez. Several printers issued broadsides of Allen Ginsberg as well. One of the most famous collectible broadsides celebrates Jack Kerouac. A Pun for Al Gelpi is a parable involving Jesus and an apricot tree published out of Harvard University in 1966. This is one of the scarcest Kerouac items at 100 signed copies selling for roughly $4000.

Not surprisingly, there are a few broadsides in William Burroughs’ bibliography, but not as many as other Beat writers. This may be because Burroughs is largely a prose writer and the broadside most effectively celebrates the poem. In any case the broadside has played a role throughout Burroughs’ literary career. These appearances divide into two camps: the broadsides that appeared largely in association with magazines in the 1950s and 1960s and the fine press publications later in his career.

Taking an expansive look at broadsides, the most interesting examples in Burroughs’ work of the 1960s are posters: “Martin’s Folly / The Moving Times” in Sigma Project 1, “The Invisible Generation” from Sigma Project and Michael English’s “Invisible Generation Word Machine Poster” in International Times. Briefly, the Martin’s Folly poster returns the broadside to its newspaper roots in the 19th Century as a dispenser of information pasted on a barndoor. It also challenges the traditional newspaper / broadside / poster formats. The Michael English poster links to the Dada posters of continental Europe after WWI, particularly the machine drawings and blueprint diagrams of Francis Picabia. The Invisible Generation piece highlights the definition of broadside as a frontal attack in its revolutionary message.

The magazine appearances of the 1950s and 1960s also utilize the broadside as a means to challenge tradition in this case the look and definition of a magazine. This is most obvious in Semina 4 that produces Burroughs’ “Excerpt from Pantapon Rose?” According to Maynard and Miles, “Pantapon Rose” is “printed on yellow tissue and contained in a pocket located as p. 3 of a folded card cover. The pocket contains 21 separate items in no specific order.” I have previously discussed how Semina sought to redefine the magazine and how it lies in an established tradition of experimentation. The idea of freeing the magazine from the bound format by the use of broadsides captured the imagination of many editors in the 20th Century such as Phyllis Johnson of Aspen and Daisy Alden of Folder. Interestingly, Charles Bukowski’s second appearance in print followed just such a format. In 1946, Portfolio published Bukowski’s “20 Tanks from Kasseldown” as one of several broadsides from authors such as Henry Miller, Kay Boyle, and Jean Genet. These pieces were placed as separate leaves into a large, unbound collection.

Two other magazines featured Burroughs broadsides in the 1960s and both magazines experimented with layouts and typography. The Spero published Burroughs’ “The Coldspring News” in 1965. Like the “Martin’s Folly” poster, this broadside plays with the 19th Century single sheet newspaper format in an avant garde manner. The three column layout allows Burroughs to experiment with visual and textual cut-ups and to display his theory that much of everyday experience is in fact a cut-up. The Spero issued the broadside in three separate ways. First, “Coldspring News” was bound in a limited number of issues. Secondly, it was tipped in and finally Spero issued it as a separate, freestanding piece. The “Coldspring News,” which is included in The Burroughs File, was not the only broadside included in The Spero. In addition, the magazine experiments with an array of type fonts and formats. Included at the end of the issue is a separate publication by small press publisher of Jargon Press and writer Jonathan Williams. This item, like the magazine, takes joy in various typographies and treats words as physical objects to be appreciated on the playing field of the page.

Philadelphia’s Brown Paper, a one-shot magazine from 1965, displayed a similar interest in typography and layout. The magazine’s title highlights an interest in ephemera and in the physicality and variety of paper. In a pocket at the end of the magazine, several broadsides are tipped in including a Burroughs cut-up. The editors sent Burroughs a parody of the cut-up technique that Burroughs promptly re-cut up and returned as a new piece. The editor published the results. The other appearances in Brown Paper reveal a care in the placement of the poem on the page as the pages are expansive and take advantage of large margins and blank space. Not surprisingly, even the paper of the magazine makes a statement with its textuality, color and size.

One of the most famous broadsides of Burroughs’ bibliography is not technically a broadside at all. The separate appearance of The Dead Star published as a Nova Broadcast in 1969 is in fact printed on both sides of a single sheet of paper. This piece appeared as a special issue (The Dutch Schultz issue; Numbered 13) of Jeff Nuttall’s wonderful and daring My Own Mag published out of Great Britain. The Nova Broadcast is part pamphlet, part broadside and part chapbook. Although a slim publication, The Dead Star stresses its presence as a physical object and demands to be opened, spread out, and handled as well as read.

The publications of the 1970s onwards demonstrate the more traditional aspects of the broadside accentuating the broadside as a collectible and example of fine press printing. The two pieces that stand out in Burroughs’ later bibliography are “Where Naked Troubadours Shoot Snooty Baboons” and “Wouldn’t You Polish Floors with a South Africa Ostrich and eat an Albino Gorilla?” Both broadsides are limited editions and signed by Burroughs. Toothpaste Press published “Wouldn’t You” to celebrate a reading at the Walker Art Center in 1979. “Naked Troubadours” was published in 1978 in collaboration with illustrator James Silke. These pieces are prose-poems, but Burroughs has also created the more standard poetry broadside. In 1995, the lyrics for the song / poem “Pantapon Rose” were published as a signed and numbered limited edition on tan paper. Created in West Virginia, this simple, yet beautiful piece prints Burroughs’ handwritten 7-line ditty. Pantapon Rose links back to Burroughs’ first broadside in Semina from 1959 creating a circular effect from the beginning to the end of his writing life. In 1994, White Fields Press of Louisville, Kentucky issued Burroughs’ “Remembering Kerouac” complete with a photograph of Burroughs by Allen Ginsberg. The comix legend R. Crumb illustrated a poster / broadside called Meet the Beats: William Burroughs in 100 copies. Like the broadsides featured on Ken Lopez’s website, these Burroughs items are printed on high quality paper with special attention to printing as an art. While many of the 1950s and 1960s pieces are incorporated into the larger wholes of the magazine format, the later items stand out as separate objects and demand to be set aside and framed.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

I spent some more time on Dave Moore’s page of Burroughs covers the other night. An interesting piece could be written on the cover art and external packaging of Burroughs’ work over the past five decades similar to the essays that have been written on the prefaces, introductions and afterwords that comprise the various editions of Naked Lunch. Burroughs’ work always seems to be adapting to changing times and audiences. This is one reason I think his work will last in the reading public’s imagination.

Looking at Dave Moore’s page, I am always drawn to one image in particular: The Fuck You Press edition of APO-33: The Metabolic Regulator. I would love to own one, but I doubt I will ever get the chance. Like Issue 24 of Floating Bear Magazine, the Fuck You APO-33 is a stopper that you just never hear about and never get the opportunity to see. I saw it for the first time years ago in Maynard and Miles. It has a simple production layout on the covers; I would be interested in seeing the contents. Apparently the layout of the contents concerned Burroughs as well. When he received a copy of APO-33 from Ed Sanders, Burroughs expressed nervousness about the print job and Sanders halted production. According to Maynard and Miles, “Since the mimeo would not print the full width of WSB’s columns before it faded, the columns were typed down the page and a new column started at the top again, which resulted in columns changing a bit from WSB’s manuscript. Also the illustrations, done on the electrostencil, did not turn out too well and were glued in the finished text at places different from where they were glued in the original manuscript (one was glued over some text).” In his biography on William Burroughs, Barry Miles writes, “The technology did not exist to reproduce the photographs on the stencils, so they were done separately, and Peter Orlovsky, Allen Ginsberg’s lover, was responsible for cutting each one out and sticking them on the finished pages. Unfortunately Peter was on amphetamines at the time and set about his task with furious energy, scattering pictures and glue everywhere.”

Burroughs’ reaction has always mildly surprised me. This concern with the layout seems miles away from the author who wrote and published Naked Lunch in 1959. In Naked Lunch, Burroughs goes to great lengths to diminish himself as an author going so far as to say he had little recollection of writing the book and calling himself “a recording instrument.” In addition, Naked Lunch was by all accounts put together in the most haphazard and rapid fashion calling into question if Burroughs ever had a set form in mind as he wrote the novel. The cut-up experiments of the Beat Hotel years and after also assault the primacy of the author and introduce elements of chance and randomness that seemed to interest and please Burroughs. All this points to the fact that Burroughs would be less iron-fisted with the production of his works than demonstrated with the Fuck You piece. Clearly this is not the case showing that Burroughs took great care in how his work, especially the visually rich work of the mid-1960’s like Time and APO-33, appeared on the page. This concern with the visual aspect of words and the physical act of reading places Burroughs alongside the concrete poets. Not surprisingly, Burroughs’ cut-up work in Minutes to Go and The Exterminator appeared in magazines side by side with several concrete poets. More on that to come.

In any case, a few copies of the Fuck You APO-33 saw the light of day, roughly 10-20 copies which were collated before Burroughs’ reaction. According to Barry Miles, an initial run of 5,000 was planned. I have never seen one of these copies for sale on the open market and prior to Dave’s page I only knew that UCLA’s library had one. I assume that the University of Connecticut possesses a copy as well since that institution houses many of Sanders’ papers and a sizable Fuck You Press archive. Back in 1965, the Phoenix Bookshop received a few copies. According to Maynard and Miles, the Special Collection Department of Northwestern University had a copy as well as Barry Miles. It has been 15 years but sooner or later I will see a copy up for sale. I can only imagine what it would sell for.

If the Fuck You APO-33 is forever out of reach, the Beach Books editions of 1966-1967 and the third edition of 1968 are a fine consolation. All three of these editions were printed in runs of 3,000. It should be noted that the third edition states that it is the second printing “(c) by William Burroughs 1966, 1967, 1968.” Burroughs definitely felt comfortable with the Beach Books editions. These editions are a photo offset of Burroughs’ own manuscript. Mary Beach, publisher of several magazines and books that featured Burroughs as a textual and visual artist, passed on recently in her 80s. Various obituaries and celebrations written about Beach mention her relationship with Burroughs. Beach and her husband Claude Pelieu were heavily influenced by Burroughs’ cut up techniques.

I have never given APO-33 its proper due. Time always seemed more important and more inventive to me. I am not alone; Port of Entry scarcely mentions APO-33. Looking closely at APO-33 again, I have to reassess my prior feelings. The Bulletin proves to be a major statement of Burroughs every bit as interesting as Time and central to Burroughs creative output of the mid-1960s. Like Time, APO-33 highlights Burroughs’ concern with the interplay and presentation of textual and visual experiments. Collage and cu-up techniques are on ful display. Where Time played with the magazine and newspaper format, APO-33 also toyed with the format and content of the academic journal harkening back to Burroughs’ beginnings as a writer in the British Journal of Addiction. APO-33 rewrites his 1957 scholarly article. As APO-33 demonstrates, Burroughs was no longer content to experiment with drugs and chronicle drug addiction in works like Junkie and the British Journal. He increasingly concerned himself with exploring the addicting and controlling aspects of language and image as well.

The various editions of APO-33 appear on eBay every so often and sell for under $100. Several copies are available from booksellers on abebooks. There is no reason to spend much more than $100; $150 for an unusually fine copy. APO-33 is cheaper than Time and every bit as interesting. Both pieces highlight Burroughs during one of his most radical creative periods, if not his most non-commercial. In my opinion, these works will find an audience of art collectors, as much as book collectors, seeking to document the relatively undiscovered period between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art of the early 1960s. In time, these art books of Burroughs will be as prized as the later shotgun art work and the collectible first editions.

Read More about APO-33

• Speed, Apomorphine, Mimeo, and the Cut-Up
• Apomorphine and Naked Lunch
• APO-33: A Metabolic Regulator (Shoaf Checklist)

APO-33 Archive

APO-33 Fuck You Press, 1965	APO-33 Beach Books, 1968
(Missing page 5?)