Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting #22: Am Here Books Catalogue 5: In the Beginning Was the Word (1981-1982). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. In 1922 when James Joyce’s Ulysses sailed the ocean blue through U.S. customs, independent bookshops…
Tag: Bookstores
A Reply to “The Great Mimeograph Revolution”
by Tom Congalton Tom Congalton of Between the Covers replies to Jed Birmingham’s essay “The Great Mimeograph Revolution.” This article is very interesting and perhaps ironically, very helpful to me, particularly as regards the methods of viewing and marketing mimeos. I think you do recognize that if we adopt your approach to appreciating mimeos, as art, rather…
Megalisters
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Recently, I received an email attaching an article on megalisters from the Sunday New York Times. For those who do not know, megalisters are database managers masquerading as booksellers. They post thousands of books on internet sites like Amazon and Abebooks selling books…
New England Bookstores and the Hermitage Beacon
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Fourteen days, 2500 miles, 7 states, and a slew of bookstores. Vacation is over. The car is shot; the budget was blown; and the bookshelves cannot handle all the new books. In the last few years, it seems that everywhere I turn I…
Interview with Brian Cassidy
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Brian Cassidy runs a rare and antiquarian bookshop in Monterey, California. He will be familiar to readers of RealityStudio for his input on Early Photos and Collages by Burroughs, a Rare Burroughs Letter, and other articles in the Bibliographic Bunker. These interviews on…
Washington DC Book Fair 2008
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Signs, signs, everywhere there are signs. On Friday March 7th, I saw a robin on the way to the train. The Orioles had a game against the Red Sox in Fort Lauderdale later that day. I can feel it coming in the air…
Beat Books Catalogue 48
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The network re-broadcast of Forrest Gump coincided with the arrival of the latest BeatBooks catalog. Gump hit the nail on the head when he said, “Rare book catalogues are like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.” Or something…
The Comstock Collection
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Call it a lost weekend (with a few great finds). For the past four years, Max’s of Broadway’s three day Belgian Beer festival has been held on President’s Day Weekend. This is must-see TV for beer lovers, and they come from all over…
Interview with Book Dealer Dan Gregory (Part 2)
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Be sure to read part 1 of Jed Birmingham’s interview with Dan Gregory of Between the Covers. You say there is a dearth of originality and inspiration in the rare book trade. Who are the dealers and web sites whose work you admire…
Interview with Book Dealer Dan Gregory
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In my recent piece on the Baltimore Bookfair and elsewhere, I sang the praises of the Between the Covers web site. It is one of the most innovative on the Web. With his presence at all the major book fairs, in several bookseller…
The Baltimore Antique Show
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Labor Day Weekend in Baltimore. For those who decide to stay in town, and there are not many, this weekend is a time for sitting on a rooftop deck (the yuppie version of the good old stoop) and cracking Natty Bohs while deciding…
Rue Cottage Books
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting While in Blue Hill, Maine, I received a call from Alan at Own Guru Records. He had a promo copy of Allen Ginsberg’s Lion for Real. By the time I called back, he had sold it to a particularly attractive French tourist. Vous…
A Trip to Charles Olson’s Gloucester
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting It is said that a long journey begins with a single step. And sometimes one heads on the road in order to sit at the feet of a master. Seemingly, hundreds of Burroughs fans made the trek to Lawrence to catch a glimpse…
Simon Finch and a High-Priced Naked Lunch
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting A few weeks ago, I wrote about Brian Cassidy, a bookseller just beginning his journey in the book world, and about his offering of a high-end Burroughs letter. At the other end of the spectrum is British bookseller Simon Finch who stands at…
Burroughs and Bookstores
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting As Bill Reed’s memoir makes clear, independent bookstores are key locales in a creative community. Part employment office, soup kitchen, flophouse, café, and publishing house, the bookstore functions as a communal center like the American Express office in Paris, the barber shop in…
Positively Eighth Street
by Bill Reed This is an expanded version of a chapter from Bill Reed’s memoir, Early Plastic. It concerns the Eighth Street Bookshop, an independent Manhattan bookstore that served as a focal point for the 1960s and 1970s counterculture. For more on the bookshop, see Jed Birmingham’s essay Eighth Street Bookshop. For more on Mr….
Eighth Street Bookshop
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In the aftermath of my Floating Bear column, RealityStudio informed me that Jan Herman worked at the Eighth Street Bookshop and might have some facts about Corinth Press and the mysterious Bill Wilentz. According to Jan, Eli and Ted ran the bookstore and…
Book Catalogues Today
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Beat Books out of London just issued its latest rare book catalog. The catalogue has a rock and roll feel and features items by and relating to the MC5, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, the Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol, Ed Sanders and…