Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Q: What is with all the men’s magazines?

A: Oh, I read them for the articles.

Really? In part. Take exhibit A: the July 1961 issue of Swank. For anybody interested in the textual history of Naked Lunch, this issue proves to be very interesting. Burroughs contributes “The Word,” “a first draft of a section of [Naked Lunch] and contains material that has never been published before — given to Swank by poet Allen Ginsberg.” In the introduction to the piece, John Fles, a former editor at Chicago Review during the Naked Lunch scandal in 1958, writes “The Word is the striptease the author does for you with the snake of language. The Word — this is just a thin slice of a 60pp unpub’d ms. — is the précis of all of Naked Lunch…” In fact, this piece of The Word manuscript appears in cannibalized form in the Atrophied Preface section of the Olympia Press and Grove Press Naked Lunch. The prefaces of the Grove and Olympia printings differ from each other and differ from this selection in Swank. In fact, this piece from Swank does not directly correspond with the version of “Word” that was published in Interzone.

In July of 1961, Naked Lunch had yet to be published by Grove. The book was, in certain circles, highly anticipated and expected at any moment. A note attached to Fles’ Introduction states that publication was expected in April or May of 1961. The book was not officially released until November 20, 1962, over a year later. One reason for the delay was the expected (and rightly so) obscenity trial following the novel’s publication. Barney Rosset and Grove Press were waiting until the time was right to defend the novel in the courts and the court of public opinion. The trials surrounding Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Tropic of Cancer set the stage. The potential obscenity trial surrounding Floating Bear 9 which published “Roosevelt After Inauguration” in June 1961 further put matters on hold. Every magazine appearance and review relating to Naked Lunch was potential material for the trial, so even this issue of Swank can be viewed as an exhibit for the defense of the novel.

This section of “The Word” coupled with Fles’ introduction stands alongside the more obvious “Deposition: Testimony Concerning A Sickness” and “Letter from a Master Addict to Dangerous Drugs” as a document that provides a statement of purpose for the seemingly immoral and inexplicable Naked Lunch. “The Word” is described as a “striptease” and a “précis.” It is an unveiling, a revealing of the mysteries of the novel. In it, Burroughs lays the text bare in his own trademark style. He shows his hand. I have written elsewhere about how the prospect of an obscenity trial dictated critical and readerly approaches to the novel that continue to be in force to this day. The peek into the flesh of Naked Lunch that Burroughs allows in Word becomes something of a complete revelation in the Deposition. Or does it? Elsewhere, I have also discussed how these statements of purpose are a drain on the power of the novel, and can be considered a con of sorts. Such ideas are by no means original to me or to critics, like Jennie Skerl or Robin Lydenberg, who made similar statements in William Burroughs: At the Front: Critical Reception, 1959-1989. There were concerns about the literary cost entailed in defending Naked Lunch back in the 1960s.

Take “Sigma Project No. 13,” the minutes from the inaugural meeting of John Calder’s Writers Night at Better Books in November 1964 that included Peter Brook, John Arden, and Adrian Mitchell discussing The Theatre and Its Future. This single mimeographed sheet was a supplement to the Moving Times, a rather nebulous newspaper / little magazine project of Burroughs’ that appeared in My Own Mag as well as in a broadside poster issued by the Sigma Project as Project No. 1. The minutes state, 

How much longer must we wait before it dawns on us that the world of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch is far more real and even at its most phantasmagoric, more to the point than this blind, self-perpetuating, hysterical delusion we call modern civilization.

The fact that we can allow ourselves again and again to be sidetracked into “seriously” discussing whether Burroughs’ book is “obscene” or “art” or anything else underscores how deeply we are immersed in our delusion and just how widely we have missed the point he is making.

Our tactics for defending its publication must surely be relative to the nature of the resistance it engenders and, if they are to be effective, must break entirely with the terms in which that resistance in (sic) expressed. They must be an OUTFLANKING.

The time is NOW. The climate is changing. Let us indulge no longer in the kind of mutual masturbation that will allow the Times Cultural Consensate to show your benevolent faces (incolour) lined up behind Mr. Wesker’s record player as is pumps Bach’s 42nd concerto for Wind, Culture and Community down the coal-mines of the Provinces.

Calder published Naked Lunch in the United Kingdom in 1964 so a similar process of defense to Grove’s was in progress at the time of this meeting. Champions of Naked Lunch were offended by all the various stripteases surrounding Naked Lunch. Some things should be left to the imagination.

Clearly, the July 1961 issue of Swank proves of interest to those immersed in Burroughs on several levels. This issue advertised itself as “the search for sex in hipdom’s high society.” Here are articles on jazz (Charles Parker), blues (Billie Holiday), the French, modern art, and beatniks. Jonas Mekas, the critical voice of underground cinema, contributes an article entitled “The Honest Art of Hollywood.” Tuli Kupferberg, who later gained fame as a member of the Fugs, writes an article. Check out Tuli’s staple bound treasures from around 1961/1962, Yeah and Birth, if you get a chance. They are a sign of the times around the corner. Similarly, the gumbo of obsessions that boiled over later in the decade is present in this issue of Swank.

I mentioned in an earlier post that a collection of men’s magazines is an inexpensive way to collect the writers of the Beat Generation. As you can see from this issue of Swank, such a collection is very informative as well. The multifaceted role of sex in the avant-garde and counterculture is a field that has been turned over by scholars for years, but there is much left to uncover. Publishers, like Taschen, have issued multiple volumes on the history of men’s magazines, but for the most part these books reproduce images rather than study them. Stephen Gertz’s book, Dope Menace, provides a similar look into elements of sleaze in drugstore paperbacks. Yet his essay introducing the book is worth a close look as well and opens the door to future scholarly attention. Gertz’s book has gotten quite a bit of notice in the media. At last count, two dozen University libraries have purchased the book, and Gertz has been asked to lecture on the subject at the University level.

And then there are the photos. The recent death of Betty Page brings to the forefront that many images from men’s magazines in the 1950s and 1960s have become iconic. Many people appreciate them as art. Many enjoy their comic elements, just as many others despise them. For better or worse, the men’s magazines of the post-WWII era are a major part of the story of not just the sexual revolution but the myriad other revolutions occurring after Hiroshima. As a brief scan of these magazine covers related to Kerouac and Burroughs reveals, much has changed in the presentation of sex since the 1950s and 1960s, but much has remained the same. The story of the sexual revolution is still in the act of being told. Whether you are telling a cautionary or celebratory tale, a close look at the photos and articles of men’s magazines are an essential part of the history.

William Burroughs in Swank

“The Word”
Swank
(Front cover)
Vol. 8, no. 3: 51-55. New York: July 1961 (50 cents).

Download

“The Word”
Swank
(Introduction by John Fles)
Vol. 8, no. 3: 51-55. New York: July 1961 (50 cents).

“The Word”
Swank
(Burroughs text, page 1)
Vol. 8, no. 3: 51-55. New York: July 1961 (50 cents).

“The Word”
Swank
(Burroughs text, page 2)
Vol. 8, no. 3: 51-55. New York: July 1961 (50 cents).

William S. Burroughs in Men’s Magazines

• Burroughs and Beats in Men’s Magazines: Introduction
• Burroughs in Men’s Magazines
• William Burroughs Appearances in Adult Men’s Magazines
• William Burroughs’ Word in Swank

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 related and tangential areas. For Burroughs that means one might have dug deeply into Scientology, Mayan history, language theory, lemurs, or pirates. Slowly but surely nothing remains to be examined. But for those truly under Burroughs’ spell, there always remains more to explore. As Eric Shoaf has shown, new items can be uncovered for the bibliography. These scraps must be obtained and processed.

For the obsessed, there is great significance placed in detritus. Pieces of bone, scraps of cloth, shards of wood, a yellowed sheet of paper. These fragments contain the truth. Juvenilia are a prime example of minutiae. They sit among letters, photographs, and aborted drafts of master works awaiting their time to see the light of day. As Burroughs fans know, letters and the like hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of the man’s creative process. So it is with great anticipation that the faithful awaited publication of And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks.

It is strange to think of the writing of a thirty year old man as juvenilia but that is how I view Hippos. It is the work of a writer in an early stage of development — in writing terms, a work of adolescence. For Kerouac, Hippos sits on the same shelf with Atop an Underwood, Orpheus Emerging as well as the other 1,000,000 words he wrote by his early twenties. Hippos belongs with Burroughs’ early efforts “Autobiography of a Wolf” or “Twilight’s Last Gleaming.” Like Charles Bukowski, Burroughs reached his maturity as a writer later in life. Junkie, published when Burroughs was nearly forty, is his first mature work and contains many of the major themes of his oeuvre.

The fact that Hippos is a collaboration is key. The partnership with Kerouac began a method of composition that would fuel Burroughs’ creative fire for the rest of his life. Kerouac deserves to be placed next to Ginsberg and Brion Gysin in terms of importance as an influence for Burroughs. This goes far beyond the fact that Kerouac titled Naked Lunch. Kerouac provided a model of the writer at work. The struggling writer facing the typewriter day after day replaced boyhood dreams of an opium addicted pretender lounging in luxury. Burroughs acknowledged as much in the essay “Remembering Kerouac.” Burroughs stressed that the most admirable thing about Kerouac was that he was a writer, i.e., he wrote. Kerouac also provided encouragement and criticism, but most important was his model of discipline. Hippos in its structure and method of composition highlights Kerouac’s influence and importance in Burroughs’ development as a writer, not so much on the level of style but on the level of providing an example of the writer at work.

Hippos should put to rest (if Oliver Harris has not done so already) the myth that Burroughs felt compelled to become a writer as a result of the death of Joan Vollmer. Long before that tragic night in Mexico, Burroughs was possessed by the Ugly Spirit, i.e., the compulsion to write and express himself. Like Kerouac, Burroughs was a born writer, and Hippos shows his obsession with and deep knowledge of literature and the writing life. The comments on the forum mention Dennison’s interest in Rimbaud as poet and persona, and all the male characters in Hippos are overcome with the fantasy of living the life of the artist. The murder of Kammerer destroyed Lucien Carr’s dreams of becoming a poet as it gave birth to three other writers. Citing the Surrealist, Dada, and proto-Surrealist texts that formed the philosophy of the early Beats, it could be argued that killing Kammerer was Carr’s most inspired and most terrible poetic act.

Readers will no doubt see connections in Hippos to Burroughs’ later works. The RealityStudio forum has a thread that does just that. A review in the Observer pointed out the scene where Dennison shoots up as a precursor to Junkie. More interesting to me is how we leave Dennison. He is waiting to hear about a shipment of stolen goods obtained from a shipyard. It was just such a shipment that introduced Burroughs to the world of drugs when he obtained some cartons of morphine along with some hot weapons. This led to Burroughs’ meeting with Herbert Huncke and his initiation into the drug underworld. In his afterword, Grauerholz suggested that Burroughs was introduced to the needle after the events depicted in Hippos. If that is the case, Burroughs wrote his experiences with Huncke and heroin back into the Carr-Kammerer story.

The genesis of Queer resides in Hippos as well. Burroughs must have seen how the relationship of Carr and Kammerer mirrored his relationship with Lewis Marker. Nearly a decade later, Burroughs would replay the events in Hippos for himself complete with a murder that provided a shocking twist a la Law and Order. Burroughs was no stranger to sexual obsession. In the late 1930s, his feelings for Jack Anderson lead to a Van Gogh trip resulting in the cutting off of a finger. This early experience made Burroughs uniquely qualified to understand and to humanize a figure like Kammerer.

Other reviewers have categorized Hippos as a period piece, arguing that the book provides a unique perspective on the world of the post-WWII hipster at the time and place of his birth — the rain-washed streets, the seedy bars, the cramped apartments, the corner restaurants. More than Junkie, Hippos reads like a noir novel. Dennison works as a private eye. The cover of Kulchur 4 features a picture of Burroughs and Kerouac from the time of their collaboration in Hippos. They are dressed the part of the noir detective and the caption for the photo names them as Inspector Maiget and Sam Spade.  

I am tempted to see Hippos less as a noir novel than as a memoir like Anatole Broyard’s Kafka Was the Rage or Edie Parker-Kerouac’s You’ll Be Okay. If these books explored the same geography years later, Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler’s novel The Young and Evil (1933 by Obelisk Press) provided Kerouac and Burroughs with a model in terms of subject matter, method of composition (a collaboration), and atmosphere a full decade earlier. These books also capture the New York hipster scene described in Hippos. Although an act of misreading, I first approached Hippos as memoir more than novel because so much of the material from Hippos had been cannibalized for the biographical record. You finish Hippos with a sense of déjà vu since in a way you have read it all before in the Literary Outlaw and elsewhere. I see Kerouac’s Vanity of Dulouz in a similar manner.

As a result, reviewers of Hippos have treated the book as a straight telling of the Carr-Kammerer story, more period memoir than novel. This is a dangerous practice. If we think of Hippos in terms of memoir, we have to be acutely aware of what is missing. Hippos purports to be a factual accounting of the murder but it is in effect a cover-up. What is missing is the star witness in the case: Allen Ginsberg.  

In the afterword, Grauerholz states that reader will have a good time trying to place the characters with real people. Besides the main quartet, side players include Edie Parker, Celine Young, and John Kingsland. But where is Ginsberg? As Ginsberg’s journal of the period, The Journal of Martyrdom and Artifice, makes clear he was an intimate on the scene. Included in that journal was Ginsberg’s own novel based on the Kammerer-Carr murder entitled The Bloodsong. This passionate proto-novel was suppressed by Columbia University to prevent any additional bad publicity from infecting the college. Ginsberg was bad press.

Kerouac and Burroughs erased Ginsberg from Hippos for exactly the same reason. As Grauerholz mentions in the afterword, Ginsberg had a sexual relationship with both Kammerer and Carr. Ginsberg was exhibit A for the homosexual obsession that bound the entire New Vision circle. If Ginsberg’s story as told in his journal and The Bloodsong would have gotten out, Ginsberg would have been the star witness for the prosecution, and Carr might have gotten the electric chair. We can understand Ginsberg’s terror in 1948 when his notebooks were seized by police. The hot goods in the car were not the stolen furs and coats but the details of sexual obsession, murder and madness recorded in the journals.

A close reading of Chapter 17 proves very interesting in light of Hippos’ complex relationship with and treatment of homosexual obsession. Kerouac wrote this chapter, and it is full of the literary flourishes and symbolism that would weigh down his first published novel: The Town and the City. There are references to Saroyan and T.S Eliot as well as to foreign movies and popular music of the time. Kerouac and Carr talk repeatedly of writing poetry. No other chapter in the novel reveals so clearly the literary aspirations of the early Beat circle.  

Among the movies playing as Philip Tourian and Mike Ryko walk through the city is Port of Shadows. This French classic about a deserter from the French Army references the recent trials and travails of the pair getting a ship. Kerouac later writes that Philip reminds him of Boldieu and his white gloves in La Grande Illusion. Both these movies reflect the realism and sense of impeding tragedy that Burroughs and Kerouac attempt to capture in Hippos. Yet the movie references can also be read as comment on homosexual obsession. Tourian and Ryko see Korda’s Four Feathers on their way to the Museum of Modern Art. Kerouac writes, “There was an ambush scene where you saw British soldiers and Fuzzy Wuzzies hacking away at each other with sabers and knives and much blood. Most of the picture kept reminding us of Al lying in the yard in a pool of blood, so we couldn’t enjoy it that much. And one of the characters in the story was named Dennison.” This movie depicting combat with a threatening racial Other draws parallels with Tourian’s sacrifice of the dangerous sexual Other in the form of Al. The taint of homosexuality must be exorcised.  

After seeing this disturbing film, the pair retreats to the Museum of Modern Art. Tourian and Ryko seek solace in culture in order to get away from the anarchy of barrooms and darkened alleyways of the City. What they see at the Museum instead are examples of the culture that was the seeds of their destruction. They stop to examine a portrait of Jean Cocteau by Modigliani. The decadence, bisexuality, effeminacy and drug use that fascinated the early Beats is represented by the figure of Cocteau. The portrait was painted in 1916 and two years later Cocteau would meet the 15-year old poet Raymond Radiguet. Cocteau denied there was a sexual aspect to this relationship but rumors hounded the pair. The relationship of Cocteau / Radiguet mirrors that of Verlaine / Rimbaud and of course Kammerer / Carr. Radiguet died young leaving Cocteau distraught. Cocteau turned to opium. Of course, Verlaine shot Rimbaud. Carr provided an ironic twist to this tragic history of literary obsession, by killing his pursuer. 

European culture, particularly French culture as represented by Cocteau, filtered through Rimbaud, Gide, the surrealists and others would prove irresistible to the early Beats. Ryko and Tourian study Peter (?) Blume’s analyses of the decline and fall of the West as well. The reference suggests to the reader Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, a key philosophical text of Tourian / Carr’s New Vision. Given the existential and surrealist underpinnings of the early Beats, the murder of Al / Kammerer can be viewed as less of an honor killing and more of a violent act gratuite. Ur-surrealist Vache’s fantasy of shooting into a crowd would be the precedent. Tourian’s murder of Al can also be viewed as an assisted suicide/sacrifice of a tortured soul.

Ryko and Tourian finish their tour of the Museum by viewing Tchelitchew’s Cache-Cache (Hide and Seek). At that moment, Kerouac writes, “There was a tall blond fag, wearing a striped polo shirt and tan slacks, who kept looking at Phil out of the corner of his eye. Even when we went downstairs to see the one-hour movie, the fag was sitting behind us.” Obviously the fag plays hide and seek with Ryko and Tourian as he tails and shadows the pair. But the blond man also symbolizes the ghost of homosexual obsession that haunts and follows Ryko and Tourian threatening to queer the honor killing defense. Clearly, this doppelganger is on one level Al / Kammerer, but I would suggest that it is more appropriate to view the blond fag as the specter of Ginsberg that hangs at the edges of the entire text and demands to be acknowledged. Ginsberg’s membership in Carr circle and his sexual relationship with Carr and Kammerer endangered Carr’s defense and threatened his life. Kerouac performs a game of hide and seek with Ginsberg by suggesting his presence all the while excluding him as a character in Hippos.

The women in the story were meant to serve as key witnesses for the defense. These heterosexual relationships protect the early Beats against the charge of homosexuality. In the actual Carr investigation, Celine Young testified that Carr was straight and offered their sexual relationship as proof. Yet in Hippos, the female characters are aware of their outsider status in the boys’ club and realize they are in some ways being used as beards. Barbara and Janie repeatedly accuse Ryko and Tourian of being fags throughout the novel. Given Carr’s intended defense, being accused of homosexuality was a matter of life and death.

Homosexuality and homosexual obsession in Hippos are centered on the character of Kammerer and deflected from the other characters. This is most striking in the depiction of Dennison. Dennison is portrayed as straight. He has a wife and has sexual relationships with women in New York. In a scene that shocked me, Dennison feels up a woman’s thigh in an apartment. In order for the honor-slaying defense to be believed, the bisexuality of the New Vision circle had to be suppressed. Yet Burroughs’ true feelings on the subject of women slip out. Dennison’s wife is strategically placed in Colorado. She is a shadowy figure at best. One wonders if she exists or is a cover story. In a statement similar to Burroughs at his most misogynistic in The Job, Dennison punningly states, “Al’s right, my boy… Women, Philip, are the route of all evil.” This line reminded me powerfully of Naked Lunch. It is an act of ventriloquism. Dennison distances himself from homosexuality by speaking through Al. In addition, Dennison speaks Al’s words in a “Lionel Barrymore tone of voice.” Barrymore was famous for his booming voice as well as being a womanizer and ladies’ man. More ventriloquism; more deferral.  

Just before Dennison echoes Al’s thoughts on women, Burroughs as Dennison writes, “Yeah, I said to myself, why can’t we do away with women altogether.” The emphasis is Burroughs’, and it is the key question of the entire novel. The answer is simple: to do so would mean to admit to and make obvious the presence of homosexual obsession within the entire group including Carr. This could result in persecution by society leading ultimately to the death penalty for Carr. Interestingly, Burroughs poses this question in silence to himself. In an age of extreme discrimination against homosexuals, silence was a key defense against prosecution. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Silence coupled with invisibility. As a result, the key witness and chronicler of homosexual obsession in the group, Ginsberg, is gagged and hidden safely away in the margins and afterwords of the text. Not just Carr’s but all the early Beats’ survival depended on it.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Looking over eBay results in the last few weeks and reviewing the prices realized for the latest PBA Galleries Beat sale, I thought of two important little mags from the post-WWII era: Judson Crews’ Suck Egg Mule and Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. Yes folks, I am going to beat a dead horse in this column: the Olympia Press titles of William Burroughs and Fuck You, a magazine of the arts.

There was a fascinating sale that closed on eBay on April 9, 2008. (pdf) The lot was all three Olympia Press titles of William Burroughs in dust jacket stored in clamshell boxes. The Ticket That Exploded was signed and in very good plus condition (a very tight signature by the way). The Soft Machine had some slight rubbing but was also very good plus. But the Naked Lunch. Well, brace yourself; it was described as follows: “As NEW FINE PLUS! There is no better example in the world. The DJ is immaculate. Colors are not only unfaded but pristine. Not a blemish.” The copy was unsigned.

Over at the Bookride blog, they have a field day with internet descriptions like this. In over 15 years of collecting I have seen in person, in catalogs, or on the web about 5-10 “one of a kind copies” of the Olympia Naked Lunch. Check out ABE to get a sense of this. Why the hyperbole? Because truth be told, the book is not that rare, but supposedly fine/fine copies are going the way of the dodo. This is debatable given the number of “impeccable” copies I have seen over the years. In any case you can’t tell anything from scans on eBay, so buyer beware. That said, this “pristine” copy did look quite nice from the scans. Then again, Nicole Kidman looks good on screen but without the squadron of make-up people — look out. I would definitely not pay almost five-figure money for these books unless I handled them myself. Thus the need for book fairs, brick-and-mortar bookstores, and dealers you can trust. Even in the internet age the truly big book sales do not happen on the internet. Or so I thought. Bidding reached $9000 on the Burroughs books, but the seller wanted more and set an astronomical reserve. Therefore the books did not sell.

Let’s break that $9000 down. Fine signed copies of The Ticket That Exploded are at the high end: $1250. Fine unsigned Soft Machines are pricey around $750. So that leaves $7000 for this exemplary copy of Naked Lunch. This is a remarkable price for this title; I don’t care if it looked and smelled like it just came off the printing press and was signed by Burroughs with a blood-tipped syringe. Well, that would be quite a copy, but even superlative signed copies without associations list for around the $10,000 mark (Question to ponder: do they really fetch that price? Or are they always discounted like a new car?), but beautiful unsigned copies top out around $5000-$6000. (The Joseph the Provider copy at $10,000 is an exception as it is basically an unsigned copy. In my opinion, tipped-in signatures do not count as signed.) I saw a wonderful unsigned copy at the New York show behind glass at Peter Stern’s booth for $6000. Will they get this price? The $9000 was bid at auction. Unless the sale was voided in some way or this was a case of people bidding with no intention of paying like the Velvet Underground acetate, this is as good as an auction house price. Personally I don’t think the seller really wanted to sell. He was testing the waters more or less. What was he hoping to get?

Compare this eBay auction to the recent PBA Galleries sale of April 3, 2008. Naturally, the sale featured an Olympia Naked Lunch. All Beat auctions do. Remember that even so-called fine copies are not that rare. This auction featured a nice copy with the description: “Two miniscule tears to jacket head, still fine in fine jacket, very rare thus, in custom silk-covered folding box.” I have learned to be wary of PBA’s descriptions (their concept of fine does not jive with mine), but the high and low estimate were $2000-3000. Perfectly reasonable for a fine copy. The book slightly underperformed at $1920. Is this fine copy really $5000 less fine than the eBay copy? In rare-book collecting, condition means value. In this case $5000. As a seller, I would have jumped at the $9000 offered on eBay. If… if I wanted to sell.

The PBA sale was advertised in part as a Beat sale, but it was more accurately a San Francisco sale, like the George Fox sale of years gone by. Case in point, the rock posters, Digger material, examples of SF printing like Four Seasons, Cadmus Editions, and White Rabbit. The general lack of Burroughs / Corso material among the Beat items highlights the West Coast nature of the sale. Kerouac, Snyder, Whalen, and Ferlinghetti are all closely tied to the San Francisco Scene. I also might have marketed the sale as artifacts from the Doss collection. Some of the material came from the library of John and Margot Doss. The Dosses ran a literary salon in San Francisco (admittedly with a Beat focus), and Margot worked for 30 years at the SF Chronicle. I guess the Dosses do not have enough name recognition to carry a sale. But clearly, San Francisco and regulars of the Dosses’ salon were the focus of the counter-culture portion of this sale.

This portion was small: 95 lots total. Roughly 15% of the items did not sell. 43% of the items were under the low estimate. 22% were within the estimates, and 20% outperformed the high estimate. Dovetailing with the small, intimate nature of the sale (in a sense a reflection of the Doss’s literary circle), the best (and most intriguing) performers at the auction benefitted from a personal touch. It does not get much more personal than a letter. The lead dog was an archive of letters from Bukowski to Loss Pequeno Glazier. Glazier edited the 1985 Bukowski Primer. The 16 letters fetched $10,800, slightly over low estimate. A smaller collection of letters, art and typescript involving Philip Whalen and Margot Doss exceeded the high estimate at $720. Gregory Corso’s 1963 “Dream Sketch Journal” with 150 pages of entries, probably all unpublished, nearly doubled the high estimate at $4800. Thirty-two Ferlinghetti books from his personal library (signed) found a new home at $1320.

One of the big surprises of the Beat portion of the sale was a roughly 9″X6″ flyer for the Trips Festival designed by Wes Wilson. The January 1966 Trips Festival had it all: the Pranksters, Kesey, Cassady, the Dead, Stewart Brand (of Whole Earth Catalog), Big Brother and Holding Company, and LSD by Bear himself, Augustus Owsley Stanley III. The Woodstock of 1960’s SF. The flyer quadrupled the high estimate soaring to $1200. Other psychedelic ephemera, like rock posters, postcards, and underground newspapers struggled to reach the low estimate or sell at all.

The biggest disappointment also garnered one of the highest bids. The Don Klein copy (as named in Krumhansl’s bibliography of Bukowski) of the gutter poet’s first chapbook, Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail, failed to reach the low estimate of $8000. It sold for $7800. The high estimate was $12000. This had all the elements of the personal but failed to ignite frenzied bidding. This was Frances Smith’s copy with the covers personally designed by Bukowski. Smith was the mother of Buk’s daughter, Marina Louise. The covers depict a pen and ink drawing of a man lounging in a chair “looking off into space” as the inscription on the cover states. The $7800 is quite surprising given that Ed Blair’s Presentation copy involving Buk and the Webb’s of Loujon Press sold for over $9000. Maybe too many copies of this chapbook have come to market recently, transforming the bestial wail into a stifled yawn. In my opinion, some bidder (hopefully a collector) got a very special item slightly under the estimate.

I am not going to spend much time on the Burroughs items. There were only three besides the above-mentioned Olympia Naked Lunch: a Grove Naked Lunch ($480), a Grove Naked Lunch with a later DJ ($180) and Early Routines ($1020). Almost all of them underperformed. The Early Routines was the exception. The Grove Naked Lunch again had way too high an estimate ($800-1000), and the book description was hyperbolic. The photo in the catalog did not in my opinion match up with the description. I think collectors scrutinized the photo, particularly around the edges of the dj, and stayed away. Barely reaching half the low estimate, it almost did not sell at all. The hope of a four figure unsigned Grove Naked Lunch appears to be something of a pipe dream.

The Early Routines is an interesting book. Published by Cadmus Editions out of Santa Barbara (a further tie to California) in 1981, the book features a portrait drawing of Burroughs by David Hockney. Both Burroughs and Hockney signed a limited run of lettered copies. This is one of those lettered copies. The lot also contained some ephemera from publisher Jeffrey Miller. On one level, this is a very cool title. The book links several generations of SF small press publishers. Graham Mackintosh designed the book. Mackintosh took over White Rabbit Press from Joe Dunn. Macintosh developed into one of the major (if troubled) figures in the SF small press scene. He worked with, taught, and influenced seemingly everybody in West Coast printing after 1960. Cadmus Press is an independent press that developed after Macintosh’s generation (maybe two generations). The publishing figure that lurks in the shadows is Alastair Johnston of Poltroon Press. Johnston was initially approached with the Early Routines project, but he passed not wanting to print what he saw as essentially a glorified reprint.

On another level, this title bores me. To some extent it is, as Johnston believed, a dressed-up reprint, a placing of old wine in fine crystal bottles. Graham Macintosh called such book art projects: “Artifical Rarities.” Arion Press is the king of this jungle. Rightly or wrongly, I see the fine press market dominated by projects like Early Routines that take stale, artistically conservative material and try to spice it up with Japanese paper, cork covers, and fancy bindings. The text generally does not challenge the established literary tradition, and the book object does not complicate the concept of the book in an innovative fashion. They are essentially coffee table books. Copies of Fuck You, a magazine of the arts, My Own Mag, or C strike me as far more pleasing on the level of form and content. These mimeos hold more claim to the status of Art than some of the more celebrated work by the lions of the fine press.

That said a Fuck You generally does not have the price tag of a book like Early Routines. It is my personal belief that in time it will, but it does not now. This brings me back to eBay. Recently a copy of Fuck You 3 (God thru Orgasm) turned up on eBay. The first time around the mag had a reserve and a buy it now of $750. At around the same time, somebody suggested to me that early issues of Fuck You were in the $1400 range, because he saw it listed on a database site at that price. The fate of this particular copy of Fuck You 3 is a corrective to such faulty logic. Initially the bidding stalled at $202.50, not making the reserve. It relisted and sold at $200. This is about right. This is the historically correct amount based on years of auction and catalog results. The early issues (one thru four) are in the $200-400 range rising as you backtrack to the first issue. Starting with the 5th Issue, prices can fall to around $100. Issue 5/7 is maybe $100-$150 higher. The Mad Motherfucker issue with the Warhol cover is the only Fuck You title (from the entire Fuck You bibliography) in the four-figure range without signatures and extras. Somebody correct me on that if I am wrong. Over time the Warhol issue has consistently sold at that price in any condition. Roughly a decade ago a complete run sold at Ken Lopez for $2000. What is the price now? $3000? $4000? At four grand, half that amount is the Warhol issue. That leaves about $2000 for twelve issues. You do the math to see that single issues are not $500-$1400 as seen online. All Fuck You prices are sure to rise. Exhibits like the one on the Fugs at Printed Matter, the added attention to the mimeo revolution, and the death of print will make sure of that. But, the value will not immediately shoot up to the four figure range overnight just because of these events. A long-term healthy rare book market depends on just such a steady rising tide, not a tsunami. The current real estate market and the general economy show the wisdom of markets mimicking the pace of the tortoise and the folly of investors chasing hyperactive White Rabbits.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

On entering the New York Public Library on 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, the first thing you see is Jack Kerouac’s name lit up in neon. Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the headlining exhibit at the library, is clearly a big deal. Given the 50th Anniversary of On the Road, there has been a tremendous amount of hoopla over Kerouac in the past year. The media attention has been nice. The increased and increasingly thorough scholarly attention has been appreciated. The published version of the scroll has been devoured and enjoyed. But when you get down to it, nothing prepares you and nothing compares to the garden of literary delights that are housed in the NYPL’s Berg collection and documented in Issac Gewirtz’s monograph on the exhibit. Both are quite frankly breathtaking and serve as the icing on the cake for the 50th Anniversary. But icing is too insubstantial; the exhibit is a Beat smorgasbord, a naked lunch, monumental in its presentation and contents.

Paul LeClerc, President of the New York Public Library states in the foreword to Gewirtz’s book, “Clearly, the New York Public Library may now proclaim itself the center for Beat research in the world.” I was aware that the Berg possessed extensive holdings on Kerouac but nothing can prepare you for the experience of seeing all the letters, journals, manuscripts, photographs, and books in one place and all spread out before you. If you have read Ann Charter’s accounts of visiting Kerouac in 1966 for her pioneering bibliography on the King of the Beats, you know that Kerouac kept meticulous records of his literary output. Everything was filed and accounted for. Kerouac may have lived a helter skelter, disorganized life, but that did not extend to his literary existence. He kept records and accounts of everything. I was amazed at how fresh the manuscripts and letters looked. The condition of these incredibly fragile items is impeccable. Collectible first editions of On the Road are in far worse condition that Kerouac’s manuscripts of the novel. One of the many impressions that come from the show is that Kerouac probably lived with obsessive compulsive disorder.

The Gutenberg Bible is currently on view at the NYPL, and so is the Bible of the Beat Generation. As you enter the Kerouac room in the center of the main lobby of the Library, the scroll version of On the Road centers the exhibit. I expected to see a few feet of the 120 foot scroll rolled out for viewing. In fact, a full 60 feet are available for study in a long glass case. There is an annotated sheet to help readers out. The scroll is footnoted at the margins so you can go to a number and start reading your favorite section. Kerouac’s visit with Burroughs in New Orleans is section 12 and 13, towards the end of the 60 feet on view. If taking in the entire scroll gives you chills, seeing Bill Burroughs’ name typed out on the manuscript instead of Old Bull Lee provides its own tingle.

I would have loved to see the end of the scroll where Lucien Carr’s dog famously chewed the manuscript, but that said, seeing just half of the scroll rolled out is a powerful experience. It is a remarkable object. On one level it stands out in its tangibility, its physicality, its size and expanse, but at the same time it is so fragile, delicate and ephemeral. It threatens to crumble and blow away under your inquiring eyes. As the exhibit makes clear, the scroll as an object immediately bring to mind the concept of the road, the path, the journey that lies at the heart of On the Road. For me, this merging of form and content in the physical object coupled with the physical act of creating it (not just the typing but the act of taping together the paper as well) makes the manuscript a work of art on par with any major work of the 20th Century. The scroll is in some sense ahead of its time, predicting the artists’ book, conceptual art and performance art boom of the 1960s and beyond. The scroll got me thinking of book artists like Dieter Roth or Jim Dine (interviewed in the Bunker). It was just that impressive to me on my first viewing.

There is no way to take in the Kerouac exhibit in one swoop. The Gewirtz book will help you digest what you have seen although the book only deals with half of the objects on display. I decided to take the exhibition in pieces and have a focus. As I checked my bag, I looked at my coat check. It was number 23. This seemed like a sign that I should look through the exhibit with an eye out for Burroughs. In fact, the words and ghostly figure of Burroughs run throughout the exhibit. Just to the right of the scroll and at the beginning of the exhibit, the first object that captures the viewer’s gaze is the Ace edition of Junkie (1953). There is a small collection of Burroughs items including a manuscript page of Naked Lunch with Burroughs’ hand edits. This is a page from the “Original material for Naked Lunch and Soft Machine, and earlier” that begins “Panama: Paregoric gags you.” The Gewirtz book reprints the page so you can read and study it after the exhibit. In addition there are a couple of photos including one by Charles Gatewood of Burroughs sitting in front of an E-Meter taken in 1962 also from the Burroughs archive.

Kerouac is the headliner at the NYPL at the moment, but Burroughs waits in the wings for his chance in the spotlight. Hopefully, the position of Burroughs at the entrance of the exhibit foreshadows a Burroughs show in 2009 — the 50th Anniversary of Naked Lunch — on the level of the Kerouac show. I would expect that the Burroughs Archive at the Berg rivals the Kerouac Archive in its depth and breadth. It should make for a remarkable exhibition. According Gewirtz’s book, the Burroughs Archive is ready for researchers. The foreword reads, “To facilitate such research, both the Kerouac and the Burroughs archives were organized, and electronic finding aids created for them, with the financial assistance of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.” Correct me if I am wrong but I do not think the Burroughs archive is available yet on the NYPL’s webpage of finding aids.

The Kerouac exhibit is organized roughly chronologically and it becomes clear just how influential a figure Burroughs was on Kerouac early on and vice versa. The exhibit includes a draft manuscript for the legendary And the Hippos Boiled in their Tanks, Kerouac and Burroughs’ collaborative account of the Kammerer murder. The manuscript (in impeccable condition) bears the original title “I Wish I Were You: The Philip Tourian Story” with Kerouac and Burroughs’ names as authors written in Kerouac’s hand. The upper right corner reads “45 Ryko Tourian.”

In this same section, there is a Kerouac journal from November 10-Dec 26, 1944 opened to a page that gives a clue into the power of Burroughs’ influence as an intellectual mentor. The journal reads, “Write about Burroughs’ Gideanism — the acte gratuite, he so indiscriminately champions” He continues later on the same page, “Morality is a word [Burroughs] as frankly disavows as Nietzsche does idealism.” The central role of Burroughs in the concept of the New Vision that held together the early Columbia circle could not be clearer. Another journal from the fall of 1946 contains a section entitled “On Bill Burroughs.” In this journal, Kerouac declares his independence from Burroughs’ influence. Yet there follows a description of Burroughs in his apartment attempting to get high from smoking birdseed. I immediately thought of Oliver Harris’ book The Secret of Fascination. For years after their initial meeting, Kerouac would attempt, like Oliver Harris decades later, to get to the heart of Burroughs and explore Burroughs as an object of fascination.

Burroughs was no less influenced by Kerouac. The Burroughs archive contains a folder dedicated “to Kells Elvins and Jack Kerouac.” These two men early on encouraged Burroughs to become a writer. Burroughs in essays and in interviews has credited Kerouac with being instrumental in this regard. Gewirtz’ book contains a quote from Burroughs’ essay “Jack Kerouac” to that effect.

Another possible but tenuous link to Burroughs appears in Kerouac’s juvenilia. At an early age and continuing on to adulthood, Kerouac constructed an elaborate fantasy life revolving around role playing games of baseball and horseracing. In 1936 (Kerouac was 14), Kerouac created handmade newspapers (Tuft Authority, Romper’s Sheet, Daily Owl, Stake Special, The Sportsman are a few of them) recounting these fantasy contests. In 1950, Kerouac created a draft of On the Road in a newspaper format entitled American Times. These works reminded me of Burroughs’ three column cut-ups of the 1960s, like Moving Times. I wonder if Burroughs saw Kerouac’s newspapers. If so, somewhere in the back of Burroughs’ mind, these works of Kerouac might have influenced Burroughs’ in taking up this format.

In addition, Kerouac, again in 1936, kept scrapbooks dedicated to his fantasy games. These scrapbooks continued later in Kerouac’s life. The Book of Dreams manuscript contains a collage with a linkage to numerology. Kerouac fixates on the number 69 (Burroughs was fascinated with 23). Another scrapbook work entitled By Memere also contains sexual references revealing an oedipal component to Kerouac’s relationship with his mother. Collage and scrapbooks were early expressions of creativity for Kerouac that continued throughout his career.

Kerouac’s mother figures prominently in another item that features Burroughs. In 1958, Memere wrote Allen Ginsberg a nasty letter telling Ginsberg and Burroughs to stay away from her son. The letter focuses on all the worst aspects of Burroughs and derides him as a pernicious influence on Kerouac. Nearby is a less threatening letter with a maternal theme from Ginsberg to Burroughs from 1959. Few of Ginsberg’s letters to Burroughs from the 1950s survive. In this letter, Ginsberg mentions his poem in progress, Kaddish, that was dedicated to his mother, Naomi.

Photographs are a big part of the exhibit and several of them feature Burroughs. There is a photo of Burroughs birthplace taken in 1912/1913 when Mortimer and Laura Lee bought the home on 4664 Berlin Avenue. Burroughs was born in 1914. The street was renamed Pershing Avenue after WWI. Several photos from 1953 are sprinkled throughout. Burroughs visited New York City in late 1953 in an effort to reconnect with Ginsberg after years in Mexico. Ginsberg famously rejected Burroughs sending the dejected lover to Tangier. Many of these photos have become iconic shots. The pics of Burroughs without a shirt at a desk at 206 East 7th St as well as the pic of Burroughs lecturing Kerouac on a couch in this same apartment are included. There is also a photo of Burroughs with Alene Lee. Lee was Mardou Fox in The Subterraneans, and she typed up the manuscript for The Yage Letters. There is another interesting photo of Burroughs outside the San Remo with Alan Ansen from the same period. As a group, these photos document a pivotal moment in Burroughs’ life and capture a slice of New York City in the 1950s, when the city was the world’s center for art and literature.

There are a few photos from Tangier as well, including the famous shot of Burroughs in a business suit lying on the beach. This is from the period in which the Naked Lunch manuscript was constructed with Kerouac typing large chunks of it at lightning speed. Later in the exhibit, there are four snapshots of Big Zoco (Big Market) and Zoco Chico (Little Market) in Tangier from 1954. Taken shortly after Burroughs’ arrival in Tangier, the blurry pics give the briefest of glimpses of the marketplace that in part provided the backdrop for the Market Section of Naked Lunch. “The Composite City where all human potentials are spread out in a vast silent market.”

One of the odder pieces in the exhibit also possesses a link to Burroughs. As I mentioned before, Kerouac compulsively kept lists and statistics. In his writing, he meticulously monitored his daily progress in terms of words and pages produced. He also detailed his sexual conquests. Remarkably, in a list of over fifty names, Joan Adams (Vollmer) is listed as number 23. The number is coincidental but still I was amazed by this sexual link to Burroughs. Kerouac notes that they slept together 175 times. This is more frequently then he slept with Edie Parker or Joan Haverty and second only to Alene Lee, Kerouac’s girlfriend at the time of Burroughs’ visit in 1953. Clearly, the early Columbia Circle was incestuous (Kerouac also slept with Celine Young, Lucien Carr’s girlfriend), but I was unaware of the extent of Vollmer and Kerouac’s relationship. Vollmer remains a shadowy figure in Burroughs’ life and in Beat history in general. She was an intimate member of that early circle on many levels. By all accounts (scanty as they are), she was a remarkable woman who captivated Burroughs and clearly possessed some hold on Kerouac as well.

Another exhibit on display at the NYPL got me thinking about Burroughs. Graphic Modernism in the Baltic and Balkans conjured up images of Burroughs’ small press output of the 1960s. Works by El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and others link, in terms of design, to the newspaper and scrapbook works. Certain pages of Moholy Nagy’s Malerei, Photographie, Film (1925) got me thinking of Time and Apo-33. The Polish Journal, Zdroj (Source), looks exactly like a Lower East Side mimeo. In fact, Modernist little magazines and the samizdat tradition in Eastern Europe foreshadow the mimeo revolution of the post-WWII era. You cannot look at Fuck You, a magazine of the arts or C: A Journal of Poetry without thinking of these earlier predecessors. The Expressionist innovations in layout, design, production and use of printing materials were something for the mimeos of the post WWII era to build on and react against.

I exited the New York Public Library and was greeted by a January thunderstorm. The bad weather brought to mind the Ghost of the Susquehanna section in On the Road. The exhibit included manuscript and journal versions of that section including pages with drawings of the Ghost. The exhibit also had several drawings of Dr. Sax. Of course, Dr. Sax features an epic storm as well. Dr. Sax was in part modeled on William Burroughs, and Kerouac wrote much of the novel while living in Mexico with him. The exhibit contained a photo of 212 Orizaba Street where Joan and Burroughs lived in 1950 and Kerouac and Bill Garver later resided in 1956. Dr. Sax is in many ways Kerouac’s much planned Visions of Bill. Like Visions of Cody written for and about Neal Cassady, Visions of Bill would have captured the essence of Burroughs that fascinated Kerouac from their first meeting. In some ways, Dr. Sax serves that purpose. Walking away from 5th Avenue in the rain, I kept looking over my shoulder. I felt somebody was following me. Call him el hombre invisible, Dr. Sax, Old Bull Lee, or William Burroughs. From the Beatific Soul exhibit, it is clear that Burroughs haunted Kerouac. He haunts me too.

Note: Columbia University has a companion exhibit dedicated to the art work of Kerouac and his friends. I was unable to attend this exhibit. In addition, in my single-minded quest to see the scroll I forgot about the book fair at the 25th Street Armory. If anybody attended these two events, please send an account to the comments section. The University of Texas at Austin will have a Beat exhibit starting in February. The scroll will be on hand as will examples of the stellar holdings of the library at Austin, one of the finest in the world. For example, the library houses Kerouac’s On the Road journals, included in the paperback version of Windblown World. Again, if a RealityStudio reader attends that exhibit please send along an account of it.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Whenever I see a notice for an auction of an individual’s collection, my first thoughts are not so much about the books in the collection, but about the motivation for the sale. Why is he/she selling their books? I must admit the scenarios that run through my head are bleak. If “Condition, Condition, Condition” is a primary law of book collecting, another maxim is “the rare book business revolves around death, divorce and debt.” Not a rosy picture, but when you think of it, selling a collection is often an act of desperation. Why else would someone separate himself from a source of great joy and passion? For the most part, I acquire rare books. I generally do not trade. I probably should as there are books in my collection that I could trade for more desired Burroughs items. My copy of Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa or a signed copy of Bukowski’s It Catches My Heart In Its Hands come to mind. Yet I can never get myself to do it. The Hemingway has associations with my grandparents and the Bukowski actually fills out my collection as it is a prime example of the beautiful work of Loujon Press. In the paranoia of book collecting, everything is tied together and everything fits in.

Yet at some point desperation might set in. In the 1990s, I sold books in my collection for a brief point in time. It was a particularly difficult time for me. For example, I got rid of an Olympia Press first of Beckett’s Watt. I wish I had it now as it would be a nice link to Olympia Press, Alexander Trocchi, Baird Bryant and the Merlin Group to say nothing of its importance as a Beckett publication. Rock bottom must have been when I put my complete set of Fuck You Magazines on eBay. I really did not want to sell them which was reflected in the high initial bid I placed on them. Luckily nobody bid on them, but to this day I get very upset when I think how close I came to losing those mimeos.

Let me add to “Death, Divorce and Debt”: depression. After years of book collecting, for some people, there comes a time when the collection no longer excites or moves. In fact, the presence of all those books becomes oppressive. You feel overwhelmed, buried. Maybe bored. The passion is gone and replaced with a sense of ennui. What am I going to do with all these books? Why do I keep all this stuff? What was once a prized possession becomes clutter. An auction provides cash but it also provides a quiet, peaceful mind. You no longer have to worry about all those books. The book auction as Zoloft for book collectors.

Closely related to the depression and, maybe a more positive spin on it, is the urge to disseminate, the act of dispersal. For a collector who has spent years and years assembling a collection, the time comes when there is a feeling of satisfaction and contentment. Although it is impossible, there is the sense that the collection is complete and there is a need for closure. The auction provides that. For many collectors, the auction catalog and its bibliography is the summation of a life’s work. A eulogy, a retrospective, a tombstone. Despite the positive feelings surrounding a sense of closure, I can only think of death.

When the time for dispersal comes around for noted collectors like Robert Jackson, Nelson Lyon, Edwin Blair, or Joseph Zinnato (just to name Beat or Burroughs collectors), the decision has to be made about how to disperse your books. Should the books go to an institution or be sold at auction? Financial considerations aside, those who choose the auction feel a sense of connection to the book-collecting community that supported and sustained their efforts to build a meaningful collection. If everybody with a collection of any note placed their collection in an institution, the rare book market would slowly die. (Has anybody written about the ecology of the rare book market? There is definitely a relation. Conservation, extinction of bookstores, sustainable communities, limited resources.) I always applaud those who choose the auction route. Without the Nelson Lyon sale, my collection would never have gotten the push it needed to make little magazines its focus. Should my collection ever be worthy of institutionalization will I decide to share my books with a community of scholars or will I disperse them to the rare book community? It is a tough decision.

David Oakey chose the latter route and collectors of Gary Snyder are rejoicing. Since the 1970s Oakey gathered together a formidable collection of the works of Japhy Ryder as Kerouac immortalized Snyder in Dharma Bums. Oakey’s collection has won awards and been the subject of exhibitions over the years. He has close ties to the Arizona State University so the collection could easily have gone there, but Oakey decided to go with the auction. Oakey writes, “Finally, rather than institutionalize this collection, Sale 364 represents my wishes to replicate those thousands of moments of joy that I experienced.” Through an auction, Oakey gives back to the book collecting community. Let’s hope the decision to sell was from a sense of completion and an expression of joy as well.

Sale 364 at Pacific Book Auctions was entitled “Fine Literature of the 19th & 20th Centuries with the David Oakey Collection of Gary Snyder.” It was held on September 27, 2007. There was an entire Beat section that included the Snyder material. I suspect this is overflow, additions and remainders generated by or resulting from the various Beat auctions that have taken place over the past year. The Loujon Press and Bukowski material definitely fall in that category. For example, The “Mistah Leary He Dead” piece by Hunter S. Thompson published by X-Ray Press was also available at the Blair Sale.

There were only four Burroughs lots in the sale: Lots 319-322. The usual suspects were present. A copy of Cities of the Red Night inscribed by Burroughs to Larry Lee sold for $173 ($300 low reserve). This is about par for the course. Signed copies at rare bookstores can get over $250. Larry Lee was a friend of Jimi Hendrix and played rhythm guitar with the Gypsies. A copy of Yage Letters, The Dead Star and The Retreat Diaries sold for $460 (low estimate $500). At a rare bookstore a signed Yage Letters is about $200. The Dead Star can be had for $125-175. The Retreat Diaries sells for about $75. So no deals here. Another lot had a signed UK edition of Ticket That Exploded (around $200), a signed Last Words of Dutch Schultz (around $300) and a copy of Tornado Alley (around $30). The Dutch Schultz included a clipped article from the 1935 New York Times detailing Schultz’ deathbed transcript and confession. A wonderful piece of ephemera. They sold for $460 as well. The estimates were in line with rare bookstore prices but book collectors usually hope to gather these more common titles at a lower price at an auction. With lots 319 and 322, buyers just barely succeeded.

Lot 320 was the lot to watch for Burroughs collectors. It was a signed copy of the Grove edition of Naked Lunch (1962). The book was signed in 1988 at City Lights and has a penciled note to that effect. I don’t think the note is in Burroughs’ hand. The book is in less than stellar condition. There are small tears, some rubbing, and even slight staining. Calling it very good or better seems a stretch to me. In addition there is a bookplate from the library of Alvin M. Scher. I am unaware if this is considered an association in some way, and Google did not help me out. Clearly this is not a top-shelf example of this book, and PBA doesn’t want top-shelf rare bookstore money for it. The estimate was $1200-1800. Fine signed copies are now topping $3000 at high-end dealers. Lot 320 went unsold.

There is no doubt that signed copies of the Grove titles of the 1960s are becoming harder to come by but even at $600 (half the low estimate) collectors stayed away from this copy. As I have mentioned before with the Grove and Olympia titles, signatures, associations, and condition are extremely important. This edition of Naked Lunch had only the signature although the link to City Lights is nice and can establish provenance. At $600, there are unsigned copies available on the internet, but given the issues with this book I think buyers made the wise choice on passing and saving that money to invest in a better quality unsigned Naked Lunch as signed copies are getting priced out of reach of most collectors.

At Sale 364, there was a small selection of Ginsberg and Kerouac material including an unsigned first edition, first issue (with Lucien Carr in the dedication) copy of Howl that performed very well. It sold for $4025. PBA described it as “[r]arely seen in such clean and crisp condition; the finest copy PBA has ever offered.” Unlike the Grove Naked Lunch, buyers responded to this fine copy of Howl. Possibly more than other rare books, condition is huge with the Beats, particularly since so many copies of Naked Lunch, On the Road, and Howl survived in such horrible condition. Despite the feelings of those on the forum of RealityStudio, Howl looks like it has legs as a collectible over fifty years after its publication. Unsigned copies of Howl approach the $5000 range on the internet. It is in the same league as Naked Lunch and On the Road and deserves to be considered with any blue chip first edition of the post WWII era, like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, To Kill A Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye or Catch-22.

It can be argued that of Beat collectibles, Howl is the book that will appreciate the most in the future. I say this solely based on print runs. The Olympia Naked Lunch first edition was 5000 copies. In fact, the Grove edition (1962) has a smaller run of 3500 copies. Could the Grove Press Naked Lunch become more desirable than the Olympia Press title? I never thought it could be possible but prices are rising. But that is another column. The first edition of On the Road by Viking came out in 7500 copies. There were only 1000 copies comprising the first run of Howl. This is quite a difference and it is reflected in the availability of these titles on the internet. Over 40 copies of On the Road (not all in collectible condition mind you) are currently available on Abebooks. Around twenty copies of the Olympia Press Naked Lunch (again some are missing dust jackets) are out there awaiting a bookshelf. Yet only six copies of Howl (signed or unsigned and in any type of condition) are now available. Provided that the reputation of and fascination with Ginsberg and Howl hold over time (and according to the forum that is a big if), Howl should greatly appreciate compared to On the Road and Naked Lunch in the long run if you are able to find a copy at all, to say nothing of one in collectible condition.

Given the token presence of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs at Sale 364, this auction was really about the lesser known, lesser read, and lesser collected Beats, represented in this case by Gary Snyder. Why do people collect the “second-tier” Beats like Snyder, Lew Welch, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, or Gregory Corso. Let’s take David Oakey as an example. On one level, Gary Snyder’s work spoke to Oakey, particularly the environmental and political concerns. Oakey writes, “Another handwritten poem, ‘Strategic Air Command’ best reflected my political leanings: ‘these rocks and these stars belong to the same Universe; the air in between belongs to the Twentieth Century and its wars.'”

Yet there is more that appeals to Oakey about “Strategic Air Command” than the text. The breadth and beauty of the design of Snyder’s books also speak to the collector. Take the description of “Strategic Air Command”: “12 X 10, manuscript broadside, unique. Hand-Calligraphed poem on grey hand-made BFK Rives paper, red line under title is water proof calligraphy ink drawn with quill pen carved by author from vulture flight feather. Orange seal at end, Han, is medium-age Chinese characters saying Chofu — ‘listen to the wind,’ the author’s Zen name.” What a personal item that symbolizes many of Snyder’s central concerns as man and poet in one piece of ephemera! The handmade is foregrounded as is a sense of poetic creation coming from and coexisting with Nature. Throughout Snyder’s bibliography, you’ll find the words: hand-crafted, hand-painted, hand-engraved, hand-stitched, hand-bound. Many works are reprinted from Snyder’s own distinctive calligraphy on hand-made paper. From Snyder’s first book of poems, Riprap in 1959 to the present day, the merging of poetic form, book format, and content is a major concern for Snyder. I find this to be true of almost all of the Beats. In addition, the Beats expressed these concerns through the small and fine press not the mainstream publishing machine.

“Strategic Air Command” sold for $345, safely above the high estimate but well within many collectors’ budgets considering the personal, unique nature of the item. This is another reason to collect beyond the Burroughs / Kerouac / Ginsberg troika. What would a similar item by the Beat trio fetch at auction? Surely in the four figures. Not only does a collector of Whalen, Welch or Snyder get the opportunity to get a hold of incredible examples of post-WWII fine and small press publishing at lower prices, they also can obtain a more diverse universe of material beyond the A, B or C items of the bibliography. Correspondence, paintings, elaborately inscribed books, manuscripts, books or poems with holograph edits. Sale 364 had such items available for Snyder, Jack Micheline and Kenneth Patchen at a fraction of the cost of Burroughs / Kerouac / Ginsberg. An archive of Jack Micheline letters (lot 345) sold under the low estimate at $173. A letter from Snyder to David Meltzer (lot 366) sold for $138. As I wrote recently, a Burroughs letter to Ginsberg from 1969 is currently selling for $25,000. The slightest of Burroughs postcards from the 1980s sells in the hundreds, particularly if it has a full signature. I do not want to argue the relative importance of all these letters just show the vast disparities in price.

And this is not to say that items from those on the fringes of the Beat core cannot get expensive. Kenneth Patchen’s Fables and Other Little Tales published by Jargon in 1953 (lot 358) as 50 hand-painted covers and colophons by Patchen is an example. It sold for $1955, just shy of the low estimate. Pricey, yet look at what you are getting: “The rare Author’s Edition; no copies located for this edition in ABPC auction records for the past twenty-five years.” Compare this to a Bukowski title (another author who hand painted his books in limited editions) of a limited edition from Black Sparrow. The Patchen is far rarer and less expensive. As I will argue later, the fact the Fables is from a legendary alternative press like Jargon is nice as well.

But the desirability of the lesser Beat goes beyond affordability. Even decades since they first burst on the scene, their work is largely unexplored by scholars and relatively uncollected. Great material is still available on the market. As I mentioned in another column, substantial Burroughs letters from the 1950s and 1960s just do not exist outside institutions. The same is true of Kerouac and Ginsberg. That goes for manuscripts, paintings, and other items with a personal touch as well.

There were about 125 lots in the Beat section of Sale 364. Sixty-one items sold below the low estimate, roughly 50%. Only twenty items beat the high estimate and twenty-two lots were within the estimated range. An equal number (22) did not sell at all. With the Snyder items, several lots sold for half the low estimate. Why not take a glass half full attitude on this. The lesser Beats are undervalued and have tremendous opportunity for growth especially given the fact that a diverse range of items can be obtained beyond a simple first edition hard cover.

In lots 370-379, there were several beautifully constructed broadsides (usually signed) available for $115-200. Like with the expensive Patchen, some Snyder items fetched high prices. Take the first edition, first issue Riprap. Although PBA is incorrect in listing Snyder as a Nobel Prize winner (he won the Pulitzer in 1975 for Turtle Island), they are correct in describing Riprap as “one of the most important books of poetry published in America post-WWII.” This “exceptional” copy sold for $2070, just over the low reserve. When a Holy Grail item in fine condition is available for just over $2000, I would say that there is some degree of financial wiggle room to build a substantial collection. Yet a hand-bound copy of High Sierra of California proves that Snyder can command big money as a small group of material associated with that title blew by the $1500 and sold for $4025. The highlight of the sale may have been lot 416, an incredible copy of True Night, painstakingly produced by Bob Giorgio in 1980. The book was made in “the ancient oriental tradition. I carved each word and each image in wood and linoleum. Furthermore, I printed the entire edition with a press, using only a bamboo spoon baren. Lastly I bound each copy by hand. This slow, patient process has taken one year to complete…” This work, like “Strategic Air Command,” captures the spirit of Snyder’s life and work. It sold just over the high estimate at $1610.

Collectors of the lesser Beats can build a collection that really means something beyond the financial bottom line of making a profit. Gathering a large archive of material dealing with Herbert Huncke for example has value to scholars and institutions because not many people have done it before with any thoroughness. In addition collecting these authors also allows the collector to build a solid archive of post-WWII little magazine, small press, and fine printing material. Look over Gary Snyder’s bibliography or the Sale 364 catalog to get a sense of what I mean. As electronic publishing grows and the print industry slowly changes or dies, these examples of the book as art object and the alternative publishing industry are only going to grow in desirability and historical importance. Collecting blue chip authors, like John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Ernest Hemingway does not present similar opportunities at any price. To get more current, Thomas Pynchon, Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson, Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, Ian Fleming, Anthony Burgess, Joseph Heller or Truman Capote (to list only those authors with an extremely collectible title) also fail in the same way.

I guess that the bottom line is that with the lesser Beats much more interesting and intimate material is available at a fraction of the cost. A copy of the Olympia Press Naked Lunch is wonderful and very desirable. It is an absolute cornerstone of my collection and I look at it almost every day, but there is something incredibly attractive about Snyder’s “Strategic Air Command” that goes beyond the text. It is a printed object that gets to the core of Snyder as a person and poet. Is there something comparable for Burroughs? I would argue that there are: My Own Mag, Time, APO-33. It is in the little magazines and alternative press material that I most powerfully feel a merging of Burroughs’ creative philosophy with the published object. This goes beyond whether or not these texts speak to me personally since I think they speak for Burroughs on a multitude of levels as nothing else in his entire bibliography. And that makes them priceless for me.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

This piece may be old news as the Groff Auction of Bukowski and the Ronan Sale of Beat Literature took place roughly a month ago, but a look at the financial pages highlights that auctions and collectibles are very much a breaking story. A recent article in Worth magazine dealt with the role of collectibles in a financial portfolio. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal featured a piece on the rise of a new breed of collector who treat their treasures dispassionately as assets to be bought and sold like stocks. In good times or in bad, the wealthy are constantly on the lookout for ways to increase their net worth and protect the wealth they have. For many, collectibles are the perfect means to turn cash into a growing asset. With the Dow pushing over 13,000 and the strength of international spending power particularly in the Far East and Russia, more and more people possess cash on hand to spend on the rare and unusual. The art market is doing a brisk business. It seems that every month or so a new record is established for one artist or another. Case in point was a blockbuster sale at Christie’s that set the bar for Warhol, Rothko, Cindy Sherman and others. A piece from Warhol’s Death and Disaster series in 1963 sold for $71M. This absolutely obliterated the previous high for Warhol. The Journal article states that one investor is divesting a major stamp collection. Doorstops of all things were another high end sale. In the world of high-end collectibles, the auction is king and with all the action and intrigue they can have the energy of a rock and roll concert. (Coincidentally, rock and roll memorabilia is hot. A recent auction of items amassed by former road manager of The Grateful Dead, Lawrence “Ram Rod” Sturtliff, topped $1M with guitars going for six figure sums.)

Counterculture books are no exception. Last year featured the Edwin Blair Sale of Beat Literature. To my mind this was one of the great book auctions of any type in the last 10 years. On April 26th, Pacific Book Galleries presented a double bill: The Thomas Groff Bukowski collection and the Stephen Ronan Beat Literature collection. I am reminded of the turn of the millennium when it seemed that great counterculture book auctions happened on a regular basis. Swann’s consistently had a smattering of Beat books in its Modern Literature sales. Sotheby’s held the great Beat auction: selections from the Ginsberg Estate. Pacific Book Galleries offered sales of collections on Burroughs and the Beats complied by Nelson Lyon, George Fox and Robert Torgerson.

With the 50th Anniversary of Howl, On the Road and Naked Lunch just in the rearview mirror or on the horizon, we can expect a flood of interest in the Beats. It would make sense that some collectors will determine that the market is ripe for selling the fruits of their collecting pursuits. The results of the Blair Sale would seem to support such thinking. Sales topped $200,000 and the auction received news coverage in San Francisco and elsewhere. Unfortunately, the disappointing showing of the Groff and Ronan sales may scare away collectors looking to make a buck on their word hoards.

How disappointing was it? (See chart.) Over 50% (roughly 57%) of Groff’s 228 items failed to sell for the low estimate. This number is not completely out of line with previous counterculture sales at Pacific Book Auctions, but a full 15% failed to sell at all. Unfortunately, only twelve items (or roughly 5%) went over the high estimate. The Ronan Sale did not fare any better. Again 57% of Ronan’s 221 items missed the low estimate. Forty items (or 18%) went unsold. Twelve percent of the items surpassed the high estimate, but only thirteen percent fell in the estimate window. It was a depressing scene. The high number of unsold items is the most shocking to me. One would think that somebody would take a flyer on some of these items, but that was not the case. Only two of the 168 items available at the Lyon Sale were passed over.

If I am any indication, these were highly anticipated sales. When the sale was announced on the PBA Galleries web site, I definitely marked my calendar and started socking money away with the intention of spending big. The Ronan Sale was what interested me most with the potential for Burroughs items. In the end, I stayed away for a host of reasons that I will address in this piece.

Let’s look at the Groff Bukowski Sale first. From what I could tell snooping around Bukowski chat rooms, this sale generated quite a bit of interest. Groff’s collection is extensive covering the entire range of Bukowski’s career. Some highlights included the legendary first edition of At Terror Street and Agony Way with the word “Street” misspelled on the cover ($1265) as well as James Lowell of Asphodel Bookshop’s copy of Terror Street ($4313); Bukowski’s unpublished love letters to Linda King (60 in all with poems) ($69,000); tons of limited edition Black Sparrow titles with original drawings and artwork by Bukowski including a limited edition presentation copy of Women ($9200); early chapbook appearances like Steve Richmond’s copy of A Man Insane Enough to Live With Beasts ($2875); and a sprinkling of Black Sparrow broadsides. These were some of the top performers at the auction. Groff did not just skim the cream in his collecting. He gathered a solid selection of more pedestrian titles by Bukowski as well as LPs, critical work, and later little magazine appearances. The sale would seem to have something for the hardcore Bukowski collector and plenty for the low-level buyer just starting to make his mark.

So what happened? Maybe it was too much Bukowski at one time. I am referring to the 228 items at the sale but also the fact that it had been scarcely one year since the Blair Sale. Maybe the market was flooded. To my mind at the high end of the collection, the Groff sale did not match up well with the Blair Sale. Blair only offered 50 Bukowski items but it seemed that each item leaped off the catalog page. Take Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail for example. Groff’s copy was inscribed by Bukowski to bibliographer Al Fogel. This is a remarkable association. There were condition issues and this would be an underlying theme of the Groff and Ronan Sales. But Blair’s copy was inscribed by Bukowski to Jon Webb. This association is monumental to Bukowski as a writer and a person. A more important copy of this book would be hard to fathom. Importantly, Blair’s copy does not have the rusty staples as is usually found (for example in the Groff copy). Groff possessed numerous Loujon Press titles including a stellar copy of It Catches My Heart in Its Hands with a lengthy inscription ($1495), but can even this splendid example of the Webbs’ work compare to Blair’s copies of the same titles. Blair had the Loujon printing plates for God’s sake.

The Blair Sale benefited from focus and a personal touch. The Bukowski section of the collection focused on the New Orleans years and a more intimate link to the period could not be found. The collection covered that period exhaustively with beautiful items. I think the decision to sell the Bukowski collection in related pieces was a smart move. From what I understand, Blair possessed a comprehensive pamphlet and chapbook collection of Bukowski as well that was sold in its entirety in a separate transaction with an institution. Possibly, Groff should have pared down the sale to the Black Sparrow items and the limited editions in particular, but this is part of the problem with the Groff collection, it lacked a solid focus. The collection was about Bukowski but not dialed in on any particular format, period, or aspect. The collection sprawled.

Blair’s collection had personality in spades. Blair was right in the thick of it in New Orleans and his fingerprints are all over the pieces of this collection. Looking over Blair’s Bukowski items, I felt that I got a glimpse into the mind and soul of Blair as a collector and a person as well as the Webbs and Buk. The collection was sold to help support Gypsy Lou Webb who was wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. The sale had a feel-good element to it that highlighted the personal relationships and literary communities around which the collection was built. These two elements along with an intense interest in the small, independent press held the Blair collection together as a cohesive whole and made it special.

A collection benefits from this cohesiveness and focus. A gathering of highspots is always nice but it lacks that mysterious it that Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarity crisscrossed the country searching for. The core of the Lyon show that made it special was not the signed Olympia Press and Grove titles, but the gathering of rare little magazines and small press titles made even more unusual by the presence of signatures. The complete run of My Own Mag, the highpoint of the sale in terms of price realized and maybe importance, epitomized this fact. A complete run might not be unique but the signatures of Burroughs, Corso and others truly make the item one of a kind. The signed copies of little magazines gave the Lyon Sale a unique flavor. As a whole these may not have been the highest prices items of the sale, but they were the items that were the most unusual and the best investments. The center of the Fox Sale was the San Francisco Scene. The Fox collection failed to perform as well as the Blair and Lyon Sales, but the in estimate and over estimate totals were better than Ronan and Groff. The San Francisco flavor probably helped the collection along. This focus is what inspired the collection and it definitely held it together as a whole. The Ronan collection while gathered in San Francisco lacked a similar sense of place.

Do the Linda King letters trump the letters in the Blair collection? This is a tough call. If so why did the Blair letters outperform King letters so drastically in relation to the estimate. The prices realized by the Blair letters vs the King / Groff letters reveal a truth about Pacific Book Auction’s practices. In both cases, we are dealing with some of the most important documents in Bukowski’s life and one-of-a-kind objects. Like the copy of Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail, these letters form the cornerstone of Buk as a writer and a man. It should be noted that Linda King’s letters were not a part of Groff’s collection but were offered as part of the sale. I assume King saw the prices fetched by Blair’s letters and felt it was time to cash in. The King / Bukowski letters barely missed the low estimate of $70,000 selling for $69,000. Blair’s letters blasted the high reserve in many cases (See lots 9-14). This tells us that the estimates for the Groff sale were too ambitious. The general consensus among people I talked to regarding the estimates at the Groff Sale was “Good Luck.” Most felt the prices were too ambitious. Looking over the counterculture sales of the last seven to eight years at PBA Galleries, the estimates of basic items that appear on the internet sites or in booksellers’ catalogs are consistently over-hyped. I have generally found that the truly unique items like the letters or manuscripts are more reigned in. This was definitely true with the Blair sale as the letters and manuscripts soared over the estimate. I also felt that the signed copies of the rarer little magazines in the Lyon Sale were not over-priced. While several items did not reach the low estimate only two item in the entire sale did not sell at all indicating that the prices were low enough to take a shot on. It would be interesting to see what items like the inscribed Marijuana Newsletters or the Gnaoua signed by Michael McClure and Burroughs, even with its condition issues, would be estimated at now.

Why do auction houses set such high estimates? Is this really in the best interest of the client let alone the prospective buyer? I have talked this over with a handful of dealers and collectors and it seems clear that the estimates scare away potential bidders. In my case, I would have taken a flyer on several items with a lower estimate including items that did not sell at all. Are the auction houses trying to keep out the riff raff? If so they would not post the auction on eBay. The fiasco surrounding the Velvet Underground acetate shows that high-ticket collectibles are a chancy proposition on the internet auction sites. Maybe that is the reason but the high estimates keep away serious bidders as well. A low estimate would get more bidders in the game and that can only result in positive results for the auction house and the seller.

Case in point, Lots 41 and 42 of the Groff Sale, limited editions of the Bukowski / Purdy letters benefitted from the fact that multiple bidders got in the game. Letter Z of 26 lettered copies was available at the Simon Finch Bukowski catalog (along with everything else imaginable) with a Bukowski pastel for roughly $650. The copies at the Groff sale included an inked Purdy poem and some extras. It could be argued that the $1200 low estimate was reasonable. In any case it was low enough to interest multiple bidders. It only takes two to tango. These two lots are a clear case of auction fever as they sold for far more than there value ($2875 and $5463 respectively).

In the handful of auctions that I have taken part in, the urge to overbid once you are engaged is very strong. The high estimates keep this from happening by encouraging bidders not to participate. This includes those leaving bids online. The impulse is that there is no way you have a chance or that the price is too high so why bother. You can’t win if you aren’t in the game. The goal should be to create action and let the action create the higher prices. So auction houses lower your estimates. It is to your benefit. I understand that the auction house has to protect against items from selling too low but the large number of unsold items may offset the benefits of inflated “low” estimates designed to start the bidding at a higher level. The Groff sale presented many common items essential for filling out a Bukowski collection or providing a solid foundation for starting one. Unfortunately the estimates may have kept the lower level collector away from the sale. These buyers were probably the best audience for much of this material.

The Ronan Sale suffered from a lack of focus and high estimates as well. The Grove Press Naked Lunch was estimated at $1000 to $1500. I understand that this is one item in over two hundred but it highlights the outlandish side of the auction houses estimates on common collectibles compared to one of a kind items. I honestly thought it was a misprint and I hope it was.

Yet the word on the street and the auction preview revealed a more serious problem. Condition. The Ronan collection was first and foremost the working library of a Beat enthusiast. It is a blue-collar collection gathered together through the persistent search of San Francisco bookstores and the diligent pursuit of authors for signatures. Ronan used his books and gathered them for use. As a result the blue collar is faded and a little frayed. Condition was not at the top of his list of concerns in gathering the collection together and there is a sense that he bought rather indiscriminately and lacked the patience to pass over problematic copies.

I understand the tendency to waver on condition. I have been known to compromise condition on occasion but I try to do it under certain parameters. My copy of the Olympia Press Soft Machine is a case in point. I bought a truly beat copy of this book. In this condition, it would struggle to reach the $100 mark. Yet the book is signed by Maurice Girodias and inscribed by Burroughs. I decided to roll the dice and take a chance that the link between Girodias and Burroughs (which parallels the focus of my collection) would outweigh the condition. The book gives my collection some personality and I have never seen Girodias’ and Burroughs’ signatures together. I made a similar play on Floating Bear #9. Being that condition is king, these gambles might not pay off financially but they do pay off in the associative meaning and in the value of my collection as literary history.

In a collection of Beat highspots like On the Road and the Olympia Naked Lunch (basically items that are available on the open market) skimping on condition is a drastic mistake. When amassing an unsigned highspot collection, impeccable condition should be the hook that sets your collection apart. The prices realized at auction and offered in catalogs for fine signed and unsigned copies of Olympia Press Naked Lunch over the years demonstrates the wisdom of this approach. I would hesitate to take a similar chance on condition on an unsigned Olympia Press or Grove title. These books are rather common and have to be as close to fine as possible. I stretched on an unsigned Ace Junkie early in my collecting career not being aware of how common they truly are. If I could do it all over again I would hold out for a signed or truly fine copy. I did not make the same mistake with my copy of Naked Lunch.

The Ronan collection possessed less-than-stellar copies of major collectibles like On the Road, Dr. Sax and Naked Lunch. These items suffered and fell below the low estimate. In some cases, a signature saved an item in questionable condition. This was clearly the case with some of the Lyon little magazines. Given their condition, several items in the Lyon Sale would have gone unsold. But the magazines in his collection just are not available signed very often. As a result, collectors will take a shot on a suspect item even with major trouble spots like a dampstain or a library bookstamp. Or so I like to tell myself. In some isolated cases, the Ronan sale managed to have a signature and condition. In those cases, the books sold solidly. The signed copy of Gary Snyder’s Rip Rap ($2070) is a case in point. This book is notoriously fragile and tough to find in collectible condition let alone signed. Ronan hit the mark here and he was rewarded with one of the best performers at his sale

The question remains were the poor sales at the recent auction the result of a perfect storm of circumstances like condition, focus, saturation, and high estimates or is there something larger to worry about in the collecting of Beat Literature. Let’s look at Burroughs in the last five major sales at Pacific Book Auctions. (See chart.) This chart highlights that collecting “A” Burroughs items is something of a losing proposition unless you have a hook of some sort. This is true to some extent about all authors but seems especially on point with Burroughs and other Beats. Kerouac is the exception that proves the rule. Kerouac’s A items can command solid prices unsigned across the board. Kerouac items will generally sell at auction but many Burroughs titles need a little push like a signature. That is why you usually see the Burroughs items at Pacific Book Auctions signed. That extra touch makes them worth the auction houses’ while. I would advise against being a completist in collecting Burroughs and thinking that inclusion will set you over the top. Signatures and condition are a must. The prices for Gnaoua, Ace Junkies, any Olympia title, Grove titles and Roosevelt after Inauguration over the last decade at auction and at rare book dealers fuel this argument.

The fate of Grove titles at auction and in bookstores suggests several points about the Burroughs market. In his comments on the internet, Ken Lopez states that the mid-level rarities are drying up on the eBay and other electronic sources. We could be heading for a new scarcity of mid-level rarities. Granted I need tougher items in my collection now, but around the turn-of-the-century high quality Burroughs items seemed to be everywhere. Just look at some of the stuff I reported on my old website: the William Burroughs Cyber Library. The increasing prices for signed Grove titles particularly Soft Machine highlight this trend. Signed copies of these titles are just not turning up on a regular basis. Picking up these items at auction over the last five or ten years might not have been a bad bet. They were undervalued. Yet the key is signatures and condition. Given the larger print runs of some of the Grove titles these factors are a must. They, like most Burroughs titles, need a hook.

In fact the Burroughs collector needs a hook in the actual formation of a collection. Being a generalist or plucking highspots are not enough. As I have mentioned on the Bunker before, letters and manuscripts are gold. These items have proven again and again at auction, on eBay and at rare bookstores to perform incredibly well. Unfortunately, the well has run dry on these items. Burroughs manuscripts and letters will continue to trickle to the market over the years but with the Jackson Sale to NYPL the hope of getting a substantial piece of the Word Hoard is over. But those who were lucky enough to get ahold of these pieces have a valuable asset. Building around those isolated manuscripts and letters is essential. For example if you have a letter or group of letters that mention a certain aspect of Burroughs’ career, exploit that asset. The Blair sale offered a manuscript of Burroughs’ Oui article from 1973. That letter could be the centerpiece of a Burroughs or Beat men’s magazine collection. A letter discussing the rejection of Naked Lunch by Olympia Press from 1957 is still in private hands. In addition the Blair Sale offered a section of Soft Machine. These letters could form the basis along with catalogs, magazines, contracts, and Beat Hotel items like photographs of Burroughs in Paris or Olympia Press collection.

The focus on letters need not be so expensive. Letters and memorabilia from the Kansas years are still available. This would include artwork. As time goes on, the time at Lawrence will get the study and treatment that it deserves. Currently it is a largely unexplored period in Burroughs’ creative output. A solid collection encompassing ephemera, memorabilia, books, and artwork could be gathered together. The key is focus and specialization. On a the highest level, it worked for Nelson Lyon and Edwin Blair. On a lower level, such specialization will makes your Burroughs collection stand out by amassing undervalued and underappreciated items. Being a completist in these less publicized areas is more fun and more affordable than battling the crowds bidding on the highspots.

Clearly according to periodicals like the Wall Street Journal, collecting is as popular as ever and a great way to diversify one’s investments, but we have to look at who these new collectors are. According to the Journal, they are young Wall Street types. One of the hottest new collectibles is toy banks. Are these the type of guys that are going to be interested in the Beats and particularly Burroughs? The anti-establishment, counterculture stance of the Beats will probably not appeal to these new collectors. Yet historically the Beats have appealed to several generations of high-end collectors like the rock and roll market of the 1960s, the baby boomer generation, the Young Hollywood set, and the internet millionaires. Anytime money or power merges with anti-establishment sentiment the Beats and Burroughs will be a good bet. Is it any wonder the Clinton and Tech Boom years were such glory days for Beat collectibles? The pendulum is always swinging. I would guess that a new generation of collector will develop that will look not to toy banks, but to Beat memorabilia as a passion and an investment. Given the current political and financial climate that is generating new, young collectors, we are in a bit of a lull.

Of course, this focuses on the United States as the source of the boom in collectibles. Clearly the former Soviet Union and the Far East are the new hotspots for collectors. I am unaware whether the Beat Generation has made a huge splash in these new centers of wealth. I don’t see why not. Japan has proven to be infatuated with all things American for years including counterculture items like rock and roll and jazz. The Beats and the counteculture provided a major source of inspiration for the fight for freedom of speech, print and human rights in the Cold War countries, China and Vietnam. Writers such as Allen Ginsberg were published clandestinely, passed around, and read in whispers. Beat writers traveled to these areas as they thawed out and reached westward. The question remains if the newly wealthy will collect writers that challenged consumerism, mass market proliferation, and unfettered global capitalism.

But as one dealer stated to me, how is the next generation of collector going to find out about and appreciate the small press items that make up much of Burroughs’ and the Beat’s publications? In a digital age, how are the new generation of collectors going to be drawn to the world of mimeo and letterpress, surrounded as they are by the typographical wizardry of glossy magazines and the internet? It is an interesting question and for resale value I would like to think that the retro quality of these publications will capture the imaginations of those interested in design and the book as object. Everything comes back into fashion. This much seems certain: libraries were, are, and will be interested in such early Beat works as important documents in the history of 20th Century print. Yet as Nicholson Baker makes clear in The Double Fold, the question remains whether they will want or need hard copies in an age of electronic reproduction. Quite possibly, if these books and magazines are not relegated to the dustbin of history, they will be relegated to the dustbin behind the library as one lucky reader of RealityStudio found out. If so I hope I am there to find them and place them on my shelf.

The Groff and Ronan sales raise many questions about the future of Beat collectibles, but like the current real estate crisis the astute collector is in this game for the long haul despite the wheeling and dealing of the new breed of collector. As the Wall Street Journal states, a Burroughs collection should be treated like a stock deal. Buy undervalued properties like the Kansas Years or develop unique and comprehensive portfolios. If you are going to build around an Olympia Press Naked Lunch buy wisely and complement it with a different focus than a highspot or “A” list collection. Hopefully I will never have to depend on my collection to reward me financially. The thrill of the search and the use of the fruits of my labor are repayment enough. Yet this is small consolation when an object close to your heart slips out of your hands for less than you hoped.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Onward, as Robert Creeley would say. Let’s move to Kulchur 4. What strikes me about this issue is Burroughs and Kerouac’s picture on the cover. Gilbert Sorrentino guest-edited this issue. In his essay in The Little Magazine in America collection, Sorrentino writes, “Marian Zazeela, Marc Schleifer’s wife, gave me a snapshot of Kerouac and Burroughs taken in Paris about 1955, and that became the cover; the title page identifies it as a photograph of Inspector Maigret and Sam Spade.” Steve Clay and Rodney Phillips quoted a longer version of this passage in A Secret Location on the Lower East Side. So Sorrentino’s statement has been accepted as fact. This has always puzzled me, as a little knowledge of the Beats throws into question the date and the location of the photograph.

Neither Burroughs nor Kerouac was in Paris in 1955. I don’t think the two writers met at the Beat Hotel or anywhere else in France. Kerouac traveled to France in 1957 and in the late 1960s (recounted in Satori in Paris). In both cases, Burroughs was not present. Looking at the photograph Burroughs looks like a proper Viennese doctor. As for Kerouac where are the Levis, the lumberjack shirts. What is with the hat? This is not Kerouac in the 1950s. Clearly, this is an early photograph.

This picture captures the very beginnings of the Beat Generation in New York in the mid-1940s. In fact, it was taken in 1945 at Columbia University along with another iconic shot. At the Edwin Blair Auction in March 2006, one of these pictures came up for sale. Lot 295, a snapshot of Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac and Hal Chase, was one of the highspots of the sale. The picture graces the cover of the auction catalog. The catalog description reads in part, “Rare, and one of the most important Beat Generation images, if not the most defining image, taken from where it all started, Columbia University.” The image sold for over $7000, one of the top three items of the auction. John Tyell placed the image on the cover of his landmark study Naked Angels.

The photo on the cover of Kulchur 4 must have been taken the same day. The background of the two photos is identical. Note the buildings in the upper left corner. Clearly, Burroughs wears the same overcoat, tie, and gloves. He has glasses in one shot and not in the other, but the dress is the same.

This photograph of Kerouac and Burroughs tells an interesting story discussed in Oliver Harris’ The Secret of Fascination. Harris writes of the relationship between Kerouac and Burroughs, and the influence as a writer Kerouac had on Burroughs. The impact of Kerouac writing Burroughs as Will Dennison in The Town and the City is huge. The influence ran both ways. Harris, of course, discusses the fascinating aspect of Burroughs as well.

The role of Burroughs as intellectual pied piper is told in great detail by John Lardas in The Bop Apocalypse: The Religious Visions of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs. I don’t think there is a fuller examination of the early years of the Beat Generation trio than Lardas’ book. Lardas treats the early Beats as intellectual and religious questors. Time and sober scholarship has proven that this was the case, despite early depictions of them as “know-nothing Bohemians.” In these early years, Burroughs was a major influence on Kerouac and Ginsberg, introducing them to Spengler, linguistics, and French thought. Sammy Sampas and Lucien Carr are the other lightening rods of this time. The photograph in Kulchur 4 highlights the close relationship between Kerouac and Burroughs as well as suggesting the role of Burroughs as teacher and dispenser of knowledge (reading the newspaper). In any case, get a hold of Lardas’ book. It is worthwhile reading.

What is the reason for the confusion of Sorrentino? The caption that goes with the photo in Kulchur suggests that the editors were aware of the proper chronology. The reference to Inspector Maigret and Sam Spade comments, not just on Burroughs and Kerouac’s appearance, but also on their literary collaboration undertaken at the time of the photograph. As discussed recently in the Burroughs forum, And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is a legendary lost classic of the Beat canon. One of the earliest instances of creative writing from Burroughs and Kerouac, bits and pieces have surfaced over the years. The novel documents the murder of David Kammerer by Lucien Carr that occurred in 1944. The style of the novel mimics the manner of Hammett, Raymond Chandler and other hardboiled detective writers. Possibly, Kerouac and Burroughs were playing on their hardboiled personas in this photograph. The caption suggests the editors of Kulchur possessed an intimate knowledge of the image’s history.

Yet Sorrentino takes Burroughs and Kerouac out of their proper context. I like that Burroughs can seemingly move freely through time and space. The inability to pin Burroughs down accurately comments on and adds to his mystique as el hombre invisible. Yet as Harris shows in his study of Burroughs’ first trilogy, Burroughs is frequently misread by readers, writers and critics in this manner. These misreadings can provide quite an interesting narrative in themselves

Sorrentino’s slip of memory provides some insight into the state of mind of some of the editors of Kulchur and the state of the magazine. The picture of Burroughs and Kerouac highlights the origin or birth of the Beat Generation. By issue 4, Kulchur was experiencing growing pains and concerns about its origins. Marc Schleifer abandoned the revolution of the Word for the revolution in Cuba. While Hornick is on record as stating that Kulchur 4 was more to her taste than the first three issues, she had yet to fully mold the magazine to her vision of the New York art world. Sorrentino is a dominant figure, but Kulchur in this middle period strikes me as a heavy dose of Leroi Jones as he was questioning his past and transforming into a black nationalist.

After Kulchur 4, the magazine stabilized to some extent (Jones’ intellectual crises aside). Sorrentino expresses a fondness for the issues of this period onward for the next year or so. The magazine possessed a core of editors and contributors, like Frank O’Hara and Leroi Jones. In my opinion, the early and late issues of Kulchur are the most enjoyable. The presence of the Beats in the early issues and the Second Generation New Yorkers, like Ted Berrigan or Ron Padgett, in the later issues captures my interest most.

What is clear is that Kulchur 4 represents a pivot point in the magazine. Kulchur was about to change its editorial leader and its direction. The picture and the confusion regarding its date express an anxiety about origins and a desire to get away from one’s past. In this case, the editors were deeply concerned with Kulchur‘s Beat origins. Hornick aspired for something more refined and self-consciously avant-garde than the rough and tumble Beats. In addition, Jones was experiencing conflicting feelings about his relationship to his Beat past that was essential to his birth as a poet. Possibly providing Sorrentino with this image, Schleifer or his wife slyly reminded the editors of Kulchur to remember where they came from as they stretched out in new directions. As Kulchur 1 and 3 show, Schleifer published, at its heart, a Beat magazine.

The cover is a troubled look back on its past. The cover image also signals the fact that the Beats, like a private detective, were about to go largely undercover and out of sight in the pages of Kulchur. The Beats would never disappear completely. They dominated Kulchur‘s origins and haunted its future in the figures of the Beat-influenced Second Generation New York School. Kulchur 4 has always interested me for what is says about the early Beat years, the relationship between Burroughs and Kerouac, and the state of Kulchur magazine and its editors.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

I have not read all twenty issues of Kulchur cover to cover, but of the issues I have sampled, I enjoy Kulchur 3 the most. Issue 3 presents Kulchur at its most Beat. William Burroughs (“In Search of Yage”), Jack Kerouac (“Dave”), Gary Snyder (“The Ship in Yokohama”), Herbert Huncke (“Elsie,” possibly his first published work), Gregory Corso (reviewing Kerouac’s Doctor Sax), Allen Ginsberg (“Breughal — Triumph of Death”). The issue is heavy on fiction and poetry. The focus on criticism is less apparent here. Yet John Fles’s review of the first seven issues of Yugen provides a bit of cold water on the Beat party with its ambivalent look at Leroi and Hettie Jones’s magazine.

Kulchur 3 also functions as a drug issue. Paul Bowles writes on Kif. Burroughs’ “In Search of Yage” is one of the foundations of the psychedelic era. Kerouac’s piece “transcribes” the monologue of a junkie in Mexico City. Writing of this nature supports the theory that the spirit of the 1960s began in the supposedly silent 1950s. Arthur Marwick in his book The Sixties presents the idea of a long decade from 1958-1974. These pieces, like Burroughs’ “Letter from a Master Addict,” provide a multifaceted view of the drug culture depicting a cornucopia of drugs from opiates to hallucinogens in a variety of exotic settings. By the 1960s, these locales would be swarmed by drug tourists.

Oliver Harris’ writing on The Yage Letters makes this issue even more interesting to me. I have written on how his introductions and critical essays forced me to return and re-read the literary magazines I associated with Naked Lunch. As Harris shows, Kulchur 3 and “In Search of Yage” play a crucial role in the development of the final form and publication of that work by City Lights in 1963 and beyond.

Returning yet again to this favorite issue, I was struck by what was missing from its pages. Harris makes brief mention of a footnote in Kulchur regarding “In Search of Yage.” The Kulchur footnote reads, “‘The Routine’ appears in Floating Bear (#9) distributed solely by mailing list. 25c to The Floating Bear, 309 E. Houston St., New York 2, NY.” Not mentioned by Harris, the publication by Floating Bear came about after a rejection by Kulchur. The story of the publication of “Roosevelt After Inauguration” in the Floating Bear and its subsequent seizure for obscenity has been written about at the Bibliographic Bunker and elsewhere. Fuck You Press published “The Routine” as well, and the piece finally appeared in the third edition of the City Lights edition of The Yage Letters.

This is only part of the story as I found out reading Lita Hornick’s memoir The Green Fuse. Hornick became associated with Kulchur after reading Issue 1. She became president of Kulchur Press, Inc after Issue 2. She had no input in the magazine until that point. It was Marc Schleifer and the contributing editors’ project. Schleifer gathered the material for issue 3. Given the new arrangement, this material needed approval from Hornick. Hornick writes, “Little did I know that [Schleifer] only wanted backing for #3, which was to be an inflammatory issue, before disappearing into the Cuban Revolution.”

What was so controversial about this issue? I quote Hornick in full:

When I finally saw the galleys of Kulchur 3, I was worried about going to jail, because it was on me, as publisher, that the legal responsibility rested. One would not raise an eyebrow at this material today, but it was a different story in 1961. I told my husband about it, and he was not worried at all. He could not believe that little wifey could get into trouble with the law. He didn’t bother to read the galleys himself, but he told me if I was really worried I should take them down to our lawyers. And so I took the galleys to Eugene Klein…. As Eugene leafed through them, he turned pale. He said, “I’ll show them to our pornography expert. Come back tomorrow.” The next day he told me, “Our pornography expert says, if you publish these galleys, you will definitely be arrested by the New York Vice Squad. You will have to spend at least one night in the Women’s House of Detention until we can bail you out. You will lose in the lower court, but we will win in the Supreme Court!” I was agaga; but I took the galleys from Eugene and, after eliminating the two items that were really dangerous for that time, I went ahead with publication. Eugene notwithstanding, nothing ever happened to me. The two things I eliminated were Burroughs’ now famous routine about Roosevelt, for which Leroi Jones was arrested at gun point when he published it in The Floating Bear, and a story by Paul Goodman drooling over a sailor.

Kulchur 3 with its depiction of homosexuality, drug use, and pornographic political satire was to be a bombshell statement on obscenity, pornography and censorship. Donald Phelps’ essay, “A Second Look at Pornography,” that appeared in the issue provides the critical thrust for an enlightened look at these issues. Phelps’ essay does not address the work included in Kulchur 3 directly. In addition, his treatment of pornography tends more to the high art traditions of erotica like Asian art and the art film, but in a footnote, he mentions an essay of Goodman’s on pornography in a favorable light. Clearly, Kulchur 3 was an issue with a purpose and a message.

The issue was meant to deal a blow in the fight against censorship. The legal battles surrounding Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Tropic of Cancer and Lenny Bruce are all in the mix. Of course, so are Naked Lunch and William Burroughs. Burroughs’ work is not mentioned directly in Phelps’ essay, but some of Phelps’ comments on an expanded role and definition for pornography are relevant. Phelps writes,

The best medium of pornography is probably the hard, metallic daylight of satire, allegory, the lyric poem or the critical essay. Before American criticism began to take on the aspect of an extended slumber party, writers… availed themselves of pornography’s intensity, raffishness and occasionally, sexuality… Like the pyrotechnic blasts of these critics, the pornography of Balzac’s Contes Drolatiques, or the Decameron, specializes in flare-lighting the incongruities of any and all pretensions, or relationships. The methods of such pornography are the methods of comedy: undercutting relationships with the common denominator of sexual desire, and deploying the chief weapons of comedy, action and time, to show absurdity in motion.

These comments could apply specifically to “Roosevelt After Inauguration,” a brilliant mix of the obscene, comic and satiric. The Talking Asshole Routine and many of the extended pieces in Naked Lunch provide other “pyrotechnic blasts.” The criticism surrounding Naked Lunch and Burroughs in the late 1950s and 1960s draws from the same pool of thought expressed here by Phelps.

Hornick mentioned in her memoir that issue 3 was not to her taste. The selections in the next issue and thereafter were more to her liking. Without a doubt, the editorial vision expressed in the first three issues differed from all that follow. Schleifer possessed a political bent as evidenced by his decision to go to Cuba shortly after Issue 3. The material gathered by Schleifer in Issue 3 was “inflammatory” ammunition for his revolutionary ideals. Censorship and obscenity laws were on one level about protecting children from sexual images or four-letter words. In addition, they calmed adults’ base sexual desires. Yet as Phelps’ essay makes clear such laws protect the capitalist system and mass consumerism by discouraging masturbation, symbolic of self-sufficient and wasteful activity. Therefore, a blow against censorship of pornogrpahy was a blow against an oppressive capitalist, materialist system. These obscenity laws also condemn alternative lifestyles and political opposition. It could be argued that Hornick’s editing of Goodman and Burroughs’ pieces from the pages of Kulchur played into the hands of the dominant culture that sought to excise these oppositional elements from view.

Yet Hornick was not against fighting these battles. Hornick embraced gay culture and Kulchur provides an insight into the gay New York avant garde. So I would bet she was not shocked by the homosexual content of Burroughs and Goodman’s pieces. Possibly, her fear was more about class and social standing. In issue 8, she published an essay by Michael McClure originally titled “Fuck.” In the Green Fuse, she writes,

It wasn’t really about fucking but about the importance of bringing the Anglo Saxon words back into the language. I was anxious to publish it but wrote to Michael that the postal inspectors would never read it but, when they saw the word FUCK in bold type, would simply impound the magazine. I expected him to write back, “Bourgeois dog! Censorship! Censorship! Censorship!” However, Michael, quite reasonably, suggested that we spell the title in Greek..

Schleifer was not so reasonable and objected to Hornick’s editing of issue three poisoning the relationship between them. It is interesting how the threat of jail, even a single night in Women’s Detention, deterred Hornick from pursuing publication of Burroughs and Goodman’s work. Hornick fears a sense of shock and embarrassment in the court of public opinion. At the same time, the “shock of the new” in the arts appeals very strongly to her. She is very aware and ambivalent about her class status as evidenced by the quote above. Hornick wrestles with these contradictory feelings in her memoir. Diane Di Prima possessed fewer qualms about jail when Floating Bear later published “The Routine.” Di Prima depicts her experience with the authorities in her memoir. Di Prima was pregnant at the time, a fact she used to her advantage.

A more detailed examination of the role of upper class (either by birth or wealth) women in the challenging of obscenity and censorship laws would be interesting reading. In Hornick’s case, her desire to provide a forum for the latest in the avant garde assisted and yet conflicted with her desire for social standing. As The Green Fuse makes clear, she, from an early age, sought to marry up the social ladder. On one level, acquiring a great contemporary art collection assists in that process. It is also a good investment. Yet championing “sick” and “obscene” literature of disputed value is not only socially embarrassing, but also extremely expensive. While Kulchur ran in the red, Hornick refused to let things run out of control financially. She was not about to jeopardize her lifestyle in the fight against censorship. Barney Rosset and Grove Press faced a similar dilemma in financing the legal battles for Lawrence, Miller, and Burroughs. All these conflicts must have faced women (and men) such as Margret Anderson, Jean Heap, and Harriet Monroe, in publishing Joyce and other Modernists. If anybody knows a book or article on the subject of the upper class role in the revolt against established manners as expressed in publishing (and the inner conflicts that created) I would be interested.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

In the last few weeks, eBay featured a couple of men’s magazines with William Burroughs appearances. A nice copy of Man’s Wildcat Adventures attracted several bidders and sold to a book dealer in California. Later, a copy of the little known British magazine King appeared on the market. On a whim, I picked up it for around $40 with shipping. Having never noticed the magazine before, I have no idea if this is a good price or not. But these two items reinforced an idea gestating for quite some time: men’s magazines with a Beat appearance would make an unusual and interesting collection.

By men’s magazines, I mean adult men’s magazines: the glossies fashioned in the style of Time / Life magazines featuring nude pictorials, lifestyle articles, essays, interviews, and fiction. Playboy remains the epitome of this genre; not GQ or Esquire. I will discuss adult periodicals all across the exploitative / explanatory spectrum. A handful of Beat and Beat-related authors graced the pages of these mags. The authors that immediately come to mind are Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, and William Burroughs.

After the publication of On the Road thrust Kerouac in the spotlight, he became a heavily sought after and well-paid writer for hire. Not surprisingly given the sex, drugs and jazz elements of On the Road, men’s magazines, like Playboy, asked Kerouac to define the Beat Generation within their pages. Kerouac’s good looks did not hurt either. It was like James Dean and Marlon Brando could write. For the most part, Kerouac wrote non-fiction presenting his world view. Kerouac’s most sustained work in this area was with Escapade. Escapade was a high circulation competitor of Playboy that featured major authors like Nelson Algren and Ray Bradbury as well as articles on Hemingway and Salinger. From June 1959 to April 1960, Kerouac wrote a monthly column called “The Last Word” on a variety of topics like jazz, baseball, Zen, and the literary scene. Readers might expect Kerouac to chronicle the hot, racy underground culture he depicted in On the Road. He writes on the underground but not the world of the sexually hip. Instead, Kerouac’s jazz articles show him to be knowledgeable about the avant garde music scene. In a column on the literary scene, he champions the yet unpublished Naked Lunch as well as Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. Kerouac ends that piece calling for a revamping of the publishing industry and urging the growth of independent publishing. His writings on Zen are groundbreaking in addressing Eastern religion before it swept across the American consciousness. Yet, his eleven pieces (thirteen if you count an earlier piece in April 1959 and a much later rewrite of his first “Last Word” column in January 1967) also reveal the rather nostalgic and conservative side of Kerouac that fully emerged in the late 1960s. This side becomes most clear in his columns on baseball, world history, and politics. The Escapade pieces have been published in their entirety in the Good Blonde collection. The material collected in Good Blonde, of which Escapade plays a major part, is essential reading for anybody wanting to get a fuller understanding of the real nature of Jack Kerouac and not just the mythic figure. Tom Clark, author of a biography on Kerouac, wrote an essay entitled: “Kerouac’s Last Word: Jack Kerouac in Escapade.” It was printed in a small run of 500 copies by Water Row Press in 1986. I have not read Clark’s piece, but clearly, Kerouac’s essays and articles merit such treatment.

Charles Bukowski also enjoyed a long relationship with the adult publishing industry. I do not think Bukowski ever wrote a column for a men’s magazine, like his cult classic “Notes of a Dirty Old Man” for Open City or his openly sexual column for The LA Free Press. Bukowski flourished in the underground papers in Los Angeles. In addition, I do not remember him often being interviewed or consulted on issues concerning the hip and oversexed, although he may have been interviewed by Hustler on the topic of sex. When I think of Bukowski and the men’s mags, I think of Buk’s short stories of the 1970s. Buk on the make both financially and sexually. Buk just about to make it big in the writing game. The Buk of Women, reading engagements, Love Is a Dog from Hell, and Linda King. As Bukowski’s cult fame grew, so did the line of women eager to get in between his dingy sheets. One product of this period was a steady stream of explicit short stories depicting his sexual fantasies and exploits. Buk had sex on the brain and the men’s magazines, like Adam, Fling, Hustler, and Screw, ate it up. For Bukowski, such writing was profitable (it helped supplement the checks from Black Sparrow Press), but generally it was not fun or easy. Like the porno writers for Olympia Press, this material was not Bukowski’s best work, and the work was in some cases poor and forced. Unlike Burroughs and Kerouac, Bukowski wrote for the harder porno mags of the time. And his material is of the type one would expect to see in a very explicit men’s mag. Howard Sounes in Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life writes of this period, “Bukowski commonly used extreme language to shock: women were ‘whores’ and intercourse was ‘rape’, pandering to his reader’s basest expectations.” In some cases, Bukowski’s work proved even too strange for the likes of Hustler. Like Kerouac, Bukowski’s writing for pornographic magazines has been overlooked. A closer look at these works provides interesting insights into role of sex, pornography and women in his fiction. If Women and Love Is a Dog from Hell are considered classics and enjoy critical scrutiny, then the underside of that coin deserves attention as well. Bukowski’s pornographic stories (both well and poorly written) bear re-reading by both critics and laymen.

William S. Burroughs in Men’s Magazines

• Burroughs and Beats in Men’s Magazines: Introduction
• Burroughs in Men’s Magazines
• William Burroughs Appearances in Adult Men’s Magazines
• William Burroughs’ Word in Swank

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

When it rains it pours. In the space of a week, several wonderful LPs fell into my lap. I found a beautiful copy of Jack Kerouac’s second record on Hanover, Blues and Haikus, at a bookstore in Washington DC. On eBay, I won a somewhat beat up copy of San Francisco Poets on the rare Evergreen Records label. Luckily, it sounds better than the sleeve looks. That same weekend at a record shop in Baltimore, I tracked down the Hanover Records reissue of the San Francisco Poets album.

The San Francisco Poets albums are a great listen and an interesting story. The tale begins with one of the most influential and important literary magazines of the post World War II era: Evergreen Review No. 2, also known as the “San Francisco Scene” issue. As I have mentioned before, Evergreen Review was Grove Press’s literary magazine outlet. The first issue of the magazine had a decidedly European flavor with contributions by Jean Paul Sartre, Henri Michaux, and Samuel Beckett. By the mid 1950s, Beckett was the star performer in the Grove Press stable. Waiting for Godot proved a big seller and created interest in Beckett’s earlier work like Murphy and Watt.

It was not until Issue Two that Evergreen Review really distinguished itself and made a mark with the general public. By 1957, San Francisco was the center of the literary landscape in the United States. This was in large part because of the activities of the Beat Generation. The Six Gallery reading, City Lights Bookstore, the publication of Howl, and the Howl trial all placed San Francisco under the microscope. In mid-1957, Evergreen Review devoted an entire issue to this burgeoning scene.

Barney Rosset, the maverick publisher of Grove Press, hired Don Allen to edit the early issues of Evergreen Review. Allen, who was centered on the East Coast, enlisted the help of Kenneth Rexroth and Allen Ginsberg to shape the second issue. The editorial assistance of Rexroth and Ginsberg highlights the fact that what was presented as a single, unified San Francisco Renaissance was in fact a highly competitive and divided community. Rexroth represented the old school, San Francisco / Berkeley community that wrote and taught in the city immediately after World War II, and in Rexroth’s case, before. Writers such as Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, and Robin Blaser spearheaded the Berkeley Renaissance which began in the late 1940s. This group built the infrastructure of galleries, salons, college lectures and readings upon which the later Renaissance was built. The Berkeley poets were openly gay and highly learned. Much of their work harkened back to the mystical poetry of the Renaissance and Elizabethan eras. This poetic debt to the past was part of the reason the flourishing in Berkeley was called a Renaissance.

On the other hand, Ginsberg brought to the table the new San Francisco of Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Jack Kerouac, and Michael McClure. These poets and writers were hip and hot exploding old poetic forms and searching for new topics for poetic treatment. Many older poets felt this new breed stormed in and stole the spotlight taking advantage of the groundwork laid by an earlier community. The competition and bad feeling between the two groups were best exemplified by the adulterous affair carried on by Robert Creeley with Kenneth Rexroth’s wife. The incident symbolized the new turks’ invasion of the old guards’ turf.

Yet Evergreen Review presented these warring factions between the same covers. Kerouac, Ginsberg, and, strangely, Michael Rumaker were the centerpieces of the issue. Donald Allen included a lengthy piece of Howl (a very early appearance and a brave one as the Howl trial was underway) as well as Kerouac’s “October in the Railroad Earth.” Short selections by Michael McClure, Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen were the other salvos of the young guns. The Berkeley poets were equally represented with selections from Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and experimental film maker James Broughton. Henry Miller, Josephine Miles, Rexroth, and William Everson (Brother Antoninus) provided a nod to the early days of experimental writing in post-war San Francisco area. Don Allen’s experience in editing the early Evergreen Reviews provided the groundwork for his monumental undertaking of the late 1950s: the genre-defining New American Poetry anthology.

Evergreen Review No. 2 sent shockwaves throughout the San Francisco literary community. The failure to include Robin Blaser ruffled the feathers of the Berkeley poets while other writers like Kenneth Patchen refused to be included at all. Patchen wrote, “I refused to be interviewed or photographed by Life magazine in connection with their [San Francisco] story: I ignored all similar requests for material and the like from The Evergreen Review, The Cambridge Review, etc. Again, there is a simple, uncomplicated reason for this: I am not and never have been ‘a regional poet.'” Several writers agreed with Patchen and expressed dissatisfaction with their pigeonholing in the pages of Evergreen.

With the general public, the issue proved to be a major success encouraging many would-be poets and artists to come out to the Left Coast. Not surprisingly, Rosset sought to capitalize on the success of this single issue. He decided to recreate the magazine on vinyl and started Evergreen Records. In 1958, San Francisco Poets was pressed featuring Allen Ginsberg, William Everson, Jack Spicer, Kenneth Rexroth, Philip Whalen, Robert Duncan and others. The album was a nice mixture of old and new scenes. This recording effort reminds me of the East Village Other LP of the late 1960s. That underground newspaper attempted to recreate the feel and content of the periodical on wax. The resulting album is definitely a trip and captures the sometimes inspired and sometimes tedious lunacy of the times. Another similar undertaking was the Zapple label. Zapple was the Beatles spoken word outlet. Barry Miles in his memoirs details this story. Miles recorded Charles Bukowski, Charles Olson, Richard Brautigan and others, but none of these recordings were issued on Zapple.

The Evergreen LP is the model of simplicity. No jazz accompaniment with very simple (maybe even primitive) production values. The LP features Ginsberg reading Part I of Howl. This was Ginsberg’s first recording and, I believe, an early reading of Howl before the poem was finished. The text Ginsberg reads on the record differs from the text printed in Evergreen Review. The LP included a printed text to accompany the record. This piece of ephemera is highly prized by collectors since it rarely remained with the record. Sadly, my copy is missing the text. Ginsberg gives a very lively reading which is matched by the audience participation. The laughter and interplay of the audience adds considerably to the reading as does Ginsberg’s running commentary on the poem.

The rest of the poems sound as if they were recorded in a studio. Each poet states their name and begins reading a selection that was featured in Evergreen Review. I was much impressed by the spirited, powerful reading of Jack Spicer. Spicer was a notoriously reluctant performer, but he sounds confident and on top of his game here. This recording and his appearance in Evergreen Review would be the highpoint of his mainstream success. Spicer had a love-hate relationship with publication. Despite his distaste for print, he founded or helped found some legendary publications and presses. White Rabbit Press and J Magazine are beautiful examples of the small press and little magazine and important time capsules of the San Francisco Scene.

From what I can tell, Evergreen Records only issued this one record and the release must have been limited given its rarity today. Much more common is the Hanover Record reissue from 1959. Previously, I detailed the story surrounding the founding of Hanover Records. I believe this record was the second spoken word offering after Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen’s album. The Hanover San Francisco Poets features different sleeve art but it is the same recording. Both albums feature Harry Redl’s photographs of the poets on the back sleeve. These photos also appeared in the San Francisco Scene issue. Redl’s works, which include several shots of Allen Ginsberg around the publication of Howl, remain the iconic images of the San Francisco Renaissance.

So where does Burroughs fit in? Burroughs proves on one level just how arbitrary the creation of a single, unified San Francisco scene was. In Spring of 1958, the Chicago Review issued their Ten San Francisco Poets issue as a response to Evergreen Review and the San Francisco LP. Once again, Allen Ginsberg was a major force in the gathering of material. Ginsberg provided Irving Rosenthal, the lead editor of the Review, with most of the contributions for the issue. The Ten Poets issue is decidedly young in tone. Robert Duncan is represented but all of the other contributors were recent arrivals to San Francisco. Ferlinghetti, Whalen, Ginsberg and McClure appeared in Evergreen Review, but Kirby Doyle, Philip Lamantia, and John Wieners were new faces. Doyle and Wieners proved especially green and unknown in the literary world. Also included in the submissions were episodes of Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. Ginsberg, always seeking to promote the work of Burroughs, inserted Naked Lunch manuscript material along with the San Francisco portfolio. Burroughs had never been to San Francisco and clearly Naked Lunch possessed nothing of the San Francisco or Berkeley vibe. Interestingly, it was Burroughs’s work that won over Rosenthal and most of the editorial staff of the Chicago Review leading the Review to get behind Naked Lunch and to forge ahead with its continued publication. The rest (Big Table, the Post Office, censorship, Olympia Press, et al) is history.