Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

#12 Roosevelt After Inauguration (Fuck You Press 1964). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles.

As a Burroughs collector, I am envious of those who collect Bukowski. Back when I was working at Second Story Books, a beautiful copy of the Loujon Press It Catches My Heart in Its Hands came into the shop. The minute I saw it I felt jealousy rushing over me, like a shot of rotgut burning down my throat. Here is a fine press effort from one of the giants of the Mimeo Revolution. Jon Edgar Webb’s Loujon Press was and is famous for its over-the-top publications and for the arduous and meticulous manual labor that went into producing them. Facts which Webb made sure his patrons and readers were well aware of. It Catches features a beautifully illustrated cork cover, colored paper with deckled edges, and exquisite letterpress work. As a bonus each copy was signed by Bukowski in silver ink. This is persistence, dedication, and obsession in publishing. It also does not hurt that these poems represent some of the finest Bukowski ever wrote. Why is there nothing like this in the Burroughs bibliography? You can see where my envy comes from.

Sure, Burroughs was in The Outsider, which make no mistake is a beautifully constructed mag, but It Catches, along with Crucifix in a Deathhand, are on another level. Few people know that Burroughs almost got there himself. The first issue of The Outsider included an excerpt from The Soft Machine. In conjunction with his submission for issue one, Burroughs also sent Webb a packet of cut-up material from himself and other authors experimenting with the technique, namely Sinclair Beiles and Harold Norse. There was correspondence back and forth about a cut-up issue of the magazine, which never occurred although Burroughs appeared in later issues. Again we come to What Ifs? What if Webb published a cut-up anthology with all the pomp and circumstance of Bukowski’s It Catches or Crucifix? Such an effort would put later fine press publications involving Burroughs, like The Cat Inside, to shame.

Of course, that What If never was, but at Second Story Books, It Catches was within my grasp and I reached deep into my wallet in order to grab it. Even with a substantial discount, the book was about the same as one of my paychecks if not part of a second. My marriage was falling apart at the time and there was a mortgage to pay, but I could not resist getting in on the Bukowski action. There are a lot of proverbial camels, straws and backs around this period and it is difficult if not impossible to focus on just one but hanging out with Buk did not help things. Bros not hos will not get you anywhere. For some perspective, this was also a time in which I was forced to put my run of Fuck You, a magazine of the arts up on ebay to make some quick cash. This was the equivalent of selling an internal organ. I sabotaged it by pricing the set rather high and luckily nobody bid on it. A few weeks after the posting, I received an anonymous email expressing how happy he/she was for my sake that the magazine went unclaimed. My financial prospects were somewhat dire and buying Buk threatened to put me, not on skid row, but in default on my mortgage. In buying It Catches, I literally did not get paid, which was not an uncommon situation at the time. I spent more on books than I earned in selling them. Everything went back into the coffers of Second Story Books. Completely irresponsible, I know, but Bukowski’s bibliography from the 1960s will do that to you. It encourages you to make bad decisions. Looking at It Catches now and reading the poems in that context, I can honestly say I have few regrets.

If you are a collector of the Mimeo Revolution like I am, please forget about focusing on the A items and the C items. It is all about the B-list: Burroughs, Bukowski, Berrigan, Blazek and Brainard. That is everything you need to know and everyone you need to buy. Out of that list Bukowski stands out until Black Sparrow took over his bibliography. I have stated my case on that matter in the Bunker and it does not need repeating in detail here, but for me all those mimeo and little mags before John Martin took over the show are so seductive. The book that stands out is The Genius of the Crowd published by 7 Flowers Press in 1966 on a letterpress by d.a. levy and Jim Lowell of Asphodel Bookshop, with prints by Paula Marie Savarino, in small run of 103 copies. It is crude to say the least and some of the pages are actually trimmed envelopes. A form of mail art perhaps. This type of DIY publishing is as fine an example of printing as anything Arion Press churns out. It is quite simply sublime. In the raid on Lowell’s bookshop, many of the copies were seized for obscenity and it is thought that around 40 copies have survived, many of those in institutional holdings. It has become a true stopper for Bukowski collectors. In Al Fogel’s list of Bukowski rarities, The Genius may well stand along as the Holy Grail. Ken Lopez recently had a dampstained copy for $8500.

Despite my love for Jeff Nuttall, I have to grudgingly admit that levy, a suicide at age 24, was the greatest mimeographer of all-time. He was not a draftsman, but an experimental artist, a master of the medium, much like Johnny Thunders is the god of punk guitar. Sloppy, uneven, a manipulation of slurs and blurs, levy’s Scarab Poems and “AGAIn? Yur primer cord is showing” with its blobs, its acknowledgement of the physical nature of ink, its superimpositions, and its fading are as radical as the artwork of the Abstract Expressionists. Karl Young argues levy’s case best:

Taking a cue from blurs and set-off, levy began overprinting texts, sometimes for visual effects alone, sometimes as a technique to obscure some words while leaving others visible, creating a new text out of an old. A number of other mimeographers had reversed stencils, printing texts backwards. This was invariably done to produce results that were merely cute. levy worked reversed stencils in conjunction with other print runs to produce meaningful interactions of directions. His most resourceful use of mimeography came from over-inking stencils. Slight overinks were one of the perennial annoyances for veteran mimeographers. In a number of late works levy achieved a surprising range of text alteration and abstract graphics through various degrees of over-inking and cylinder impression. The initial results of these prints were often single sheets which he then had reprinted offset so as not to disturb the imbalance he had set up. In this process, he had completely jumped over the standard limitations of mimeo, turning it from one of the most tediously restricted forms of letter reproduction into the tool for one of the most dramatic forms of visual poetry of the era.

Another What If — a dream work for me, and one that would have have been at the top of my list of Burroughs collectibles — would have been a combination of levy’s most experimental mimeography and Burroughs’ most radical cut-ups with juxtapositions of text and image, as distributed by levy and Lowell. As I wrote about on the Bunker, Burroughs was on levy’s radar, but it was not mutual. Burroughs mingled in more established circles within the anti-establishment.

The most levy-ish publication, think Marrahwannah Quarterly, of Burroughs’ bibliography is the Fuck You Roosevelt After Inauguration. Although printed mimeo not letterpress, it has the look and feel of The Genius of the Crowd. Or more accurately, it is the closest Burroughs ever got to being published in such a manner. If levy was the greatest mimeographer, Ed Sanders ranks as one of the finest, most successful, and most influential mimeo publishers. I am less impressed with his glyph work than his ideal merging of context and content in his publications. Sanders was as much a revolutionary printer as Benjamin Franklin. In Sanders’ hands, the mimeograph serves as a weapon in the total assault on the culture along with underground bookshops, rock music, marijuana, fucking in the streets, and experimental film. All of which Sanders had his hand in. The Marijuana Newsletter deserves a mention here and could easily have made my list as it combines the best elements of Fuck You Press with Burroughs’ interest and involvement in alternative news outlets. I could be argued that by picking Roosevelt instead, I went with the more traditional and easy choice. Yet there is a lot going on in that seemingly simple publication; as I wrote on the Bunker, Roosevelt was a fuck you to mainstream publishing, City Lights, and the United States government.

I received my copy of Roosevelt as a Christmas gift from my mother years ago. She had no idea what it was and bought it on James Musser’s (Skyline Books) suggestion. When I opened it on a bright sunny day in Florida, my mother was horrified. She held it between her fingers like a used condom (which reminds me of levy’s Cleveland Prints, one of his highspots). “I paid for this? What the hell is this; this is what you wanted?” Oh, hell yeah! And I still do. In the realm of mimeo, where the down and dirty is heavenly, this is as angelic a publication as you are going to find. I find it quite simply beautiful and beautifully simple. “Glories stream from the underground below/Heavenly hosts sing Hallelujah.”

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

I. Editing Bukowski and Burroughs

Side-by-side comparison of Bukowski manuscript and published poem by Michael Philips. For complete comparison see “The Senseless, Tragic Rape of Charles Bukowski’s Ghost by John Martin’s Black Sparrow Press.

I heard whispers that something was rotten in the state of California, rumblings from oppressed subjects that the Houses of Black Sparrow and HarperCollins/Ecco were somehow unclean, rumors that the line of the late King Bukowski had been tainted. Had I not experienced this same unease myself while reading the seemingly endless proclamations the King was not truly dead, that his words lived on? Yet the voice sounded off; it did not ring true. I could not put my finger on what was wrong exactly. There had to be a valid reason why I decided not to purchase any of these books; why I checked them out of the library, a library that did not carry The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame, or Love Is A Dog From Hell, but dutifully ordered The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain or Slouching Towards Nirvana as soon as they came out (why this sudden acceptance of Bukowski?, I wondered); why Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way would be the end of the line for me, as far as the recent Bukowski collections went. The Madness seemed sifted away; the Word sounded false; the Line was crooked; the Way had been lost. So I took the easy road in my break-up with Bukowski. Buk, it is not you; it’s me. I have changed; I have outgrown you.

Then there was a flash of lightning behind the mountain and things became clear. Graham Rae sent me a link to a blog piece by Michael Phillips entitled “The senseless, tragic rape of Charles Bukowski’s ghost by John Martin’s Black Sparrow Press,” which led me to further posts and to the forum on Bukowski.net. Phillips felt the same unease that I felt. “But as I would read each of the posthumous books I couldn’t help feeling that they were a little off. Reading them could give you the distinct and uneasy feeling that maybe Bukowski had lost it when he had written this stuff.” Unlike me, Phillips was not content with placing the blame on himself or with Bukowski. He felt compelled to get to the bottom of his unease by researching the manuscript poems available on Bukowski.net and came to a horrifying conclusion. Phillips writes, “In the posthumous collections, Black Sparrow publisher John Martin has made changes to the majority of Bukowski’s poems. Damaging changes that run counter to just about everything Bukowski represented. Wholesale removal of references to drinking, drugs, sex and madness. Changes that completely alter the meaning of the manuscripts. Changes that don’t even begin to make sense. It feels like nothing short of gleeful, unrepentant vandalism and destruction.” Phillips and Bukowski.net provide quite a few of these smoking guns, detailing what appears to be Martin’s extensive editorial meddling. The Houses of Black Sparrow and HarperCollins/Ecco were not unclean at all; instead they were agents of sanitation, replacing the musk of Bukowski with “the stink of John Martin’s hand.”

Phillips’ act of whistleblowing left me with a slight sense of déjà vu. Dead writer kept in contact with his obsessive fan base through table-tapping — it is, in some respects, the story of William Burroughs. Since his death in 1997, Junky, Queer, Naked Lunch, The Yage Letters and (soon) the cut-up trilogy have all been reworked. I do not think these new Burroughs editions are necessarily a bad thing — as I note below, they are very much in the Burroughsian spirit — but it has become increasingly difficult to, if not get everybody on the same page, at least have some clarity about what page they are reading. For example, nobody reads the Olympia Press editions of Naked Lunch or the cut-up novels, and I suspect they will no longer read the early Groves either, as is becoming standard operating procedure regarding Naked Lunch. Consider this interview conducted by Oliver Harris with French translator Théophile Aries, as posted on the European Beat Studies Network. Regarding Naked Lunch, Harris asks Aries about “the problems in the 40-year old edition,” and Aries answers in part:

Reading the original text over and over and coming back to the French one, I realised many elements were missing. Take for instance the chapter entitled “Benway”; 570 words are missing in the translation, while the chapter entitled “A.J’s Annual Party” has about 700 words omitted. Some paragraphs are not at the same place in both books, Kahane’s translation ends with a nota bene while the original text does not. On top of that, the “Atrophied Preface” became an “Atrophied Postface” in French. And sometimes sentences or words that are not in Burroughs’ original text appear out of nowhere.

Aries refers repeatedly to an “original text”. The term “original” is used 16 times in the interview. What exactly are we talking about here? Specifically, Aries points out that “Kahane’s translation ends with a nota bene while the original text does not.” The Olympia Press edition of Naked Lunch DOES end with a note regarding “C’lom Fliday.” The Grove edition DOES NOT. The Restored Text DOES NOT. Is Aries suggesting that the Grove or the Restored is the “original text?” I would suspect that Kahane’s translation is not missing words at all, but that they were never in the Olympia Press edition in the first place and were added to the Grove edition and largely preserved in The Restored Text. Clearly, Kahane translated from the Olympia edition, which makes all the sense in the world. Eric Kahane, the translator, was the son of Jack Kahane, publisher of Obelisk Press, and brother of Maurice Girodias, who ran Olympia Press.

Needless to say, the state of Burroughs’ texts is fluid, and this takes some getting used to. Even hardcore Burroughs readers are not always comfortable with it (clearly, I am uneasy with it), but the status of Burroughs’ legacy after his death is really not that surprising, given the confusion that surrounded its very conception. As the Bard says, “Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.” Or was it, “Confusion hath fuck his masterpiece?” Bukowski fans, confident in Buk’s mastery over his material, might be left scratching their heads.

Naturally confusion reigns regarding the translation of The Yage Letters as well. Aries’ foundation seems to be Oliver Harris’ The Yage Letter Redux. The 1963 City Lights edition (the first edition and the first printing) is no longer the “original text.” Aries states, 

So, when I translated The Yage Letters Redux, I wanted to make sure that I used unusual constructions only when they were present in the original text, and not to add more of them. Whenever Burroughs wrote in a straight linear style, I would translate it exactly the same way.

The Redux now means the “original text”. As Harris’ detailed footnotes and informative introduction suggest, this is a legitimate course of action, but Aries is also an accomplished musician, and hearing Underwires perform in Paris, I just do not understand why he is so against hearing noise when he translates his Burroughs. For me, that noise (Burroughs’ mistakes and missteps, and even the slips of the translator’s tongue or typographer) is what makes the Olympia Press editions the most interesting (and fun) to read of all. I would suggest that what makes the Harris’ editions and The Restored Text interesting and fun to read is their paratexts, particularly the footnotes, introductions, and other commentaries. The “original text” plays second chair. But why does so much Burroughs scholarship cast the stink eye on the Olympia editions? Why this repudiation of, if not the “original text,” the first edition?

Take that nota bene. Aries experiences it as a false note, but to me it is a funky groove. Page 225 of the Olympia Press Naked Lunch, the last page that is numbered, ends: 

“C’lom Fliday” Note
Tanger, 1959.

The phrase “C’lom Fliday” appears earlier on page 139, so Burroughs wanted a note in this precise location. The note is strategically and, oddly, placed between time (Fliday) and space (Tanger), as it transports the reader outside of them both. The reader experiences the physical act of moving through textual space, since to read the C’lom Fliday note, one must turn the page to an unpaginated verso, which contains the footnote and closing “THE END.” In this case, the movement through textual space is particularly pronounced since the unpaginated verso places the reader simultaneously outside, yet still technically inside, the text of Naked Lunch. This is the famous space between about which Burroughs writes in the Talking Asshole routine — a zone of possibility and freedom.  

Burroughs came to view silence as the ultimate goal in his writing, but what makes the Olympia novels speak to me are the farts and belches from that space between. The voice of Burroughs is not the sound of purity or perfection, like the music of the spheres. It is noisy, like the pops and crackles emanating from the Paris Bookshop’s Call Me Burroughs LP. For Bukowski fans, this noise may be frightful. Their conception of Bukowski, like Buk’s preference in music, is classical. For example, they champion and cherish the integrity of Bukowski’s strong, hard line. Phillips can speak with a righteous indignation of taint, castration, and rape in connection with Bukowski’s “mostly unmolested and beautiful” poems. Burroughs’ work embraces these fears. Burroughs fans can almost “blame the victim.” Burroughs was asking for it. He would gleefully cut and castrate Bukowski’s line, and Burroughs openly encouraged readers to cut-up his own words. This act of editing, this “molestation,” was precisely the point of the cut-up. Such violence freed Burroughs from the yoke of authorial control.  

Burroughs’ books were always “queer” in their construction, even during his lifetime. Throughout his career, Burroughs indulged in literary couplings and ménages-à-trois, used other’s texts, and extensively rewrote his work. As Harris suggests, Burroughs’ oeuvre was always already molested. If Bukowski is classical, Burroughs is postmodern. To speak of intention, originality and authenticity in connection with Burroughs is downright queer. That is why it bothers me to see today’s translators and editors of Burroughs forced to speak, like ventriloquists’ dummies, of original texts, definitive editions, and restored texts. Such claims are antithetical to the Burroughsian spirit. These “definitive” editions will surely undergo their own revision down the road. Like the now muzzled Olympia edition, they will be found to be just as noisy.

Perhaps Bukowski scholars can learn a thing or two from the example of Burroughs. One commenter to Phillips’ post expresses gratitude that she no longer has to deal with the late Bukowski books for her thesis. In my opinion, the role of editing in relation to Bukowski IS the thesis. There is a persistent myth that Bukowski poems, like Kerouac’s, sprung fully formed from his scruffy brow. This is simply not true. For example, a reading of the early letters highlights that Bukowski was a meticulous craftsman and extensively reworked and culled his output.  

In addition, it is often forgotten that Bukowski was himself in an editorial position on occasion. How do we respond to Bukowski’s editorial practices at Harlequin and Laugh Literary, for example? According to all his biographers (and Neeli Cherkovski experienced this intimately), Bukowski played rough as an editor. He defaced manuscripts, he berated those submitting poems, and he used his editorial position as a means to power. Could these acts of violence be viewed as a form of revenge stemming from years of submitting manuscripts to hundreds of little magazines? Most definitely. Bukowski, more than anyone, realized that submitting to a little magazine was a masochistic act and the act of editing one of rape. Given Bukowski’s rap sheet as an editor, maybe payback is a bitch.

It would also be interesting to see just how Bukowski was edited by his early mimeo publishers, such as Douglas Blazek. It is taken as gospel that Mimeo Revolution publishers followed a laissez-faire approach to their writers and abstained from using the red pencil. Is that, in fact, true? I know for a fact that Jon Edgar Webb, a figure much beloved on Bukowski.net, was not above allowing the frustrated writer in him to take possession of other’s work. About a decade ago, I corresponded with Dave Moore, a Kerouac scholar, on some Kerouac poems in The Outsider that differed from manuscripts in his possession. Webb apparently needed to re-set the type for a Kerouac poem and decided to make changes in the stick. As a result, variations of the same poem appeared from copy to copy within the run of the same issue. Some commenters to Phillips’ post have pointed out that Webb was merely a less organized and effective Martin. Clearly, Webb’s “typesetting,” if he learned of it, would have infuriated the father of spontaneous prose and “first thought best thought,” but it brings up the vexing question of editing in connection with a host of Mimeo Revolution writers generally, such as the Beats, who prided themselves on a lack of editorial intervention. The question of editing takes on major importance in the study of Burroughs and Bukowski, and such research may shed light on editorial practices during the Mimeo Revolution at large. The comment threads to Phillips’ post and its prequel suggest that this research is looming on the horizon.

II. Collecting Black Sparrow

Phillips’ post also generated a related déjà vu involving the collecting market. I could not help thinking of the Andy Warhol Authentication Board Trial. To make an incredibly convoluted and complex situation simple, a lawsuit was filed challenging the legitimacy of the Andy Warhol Authentication Board, after it denied the authenticity of what all parties agree is a signed and dated Red Self-Portrait from the mid-1960s. Besides asking for a reversal of the Board’s decision, the lawsuit sought to achieve some level of transparency regarding the Board’s policies and operations, which have been kept in strictest confidence and secrecy. Nobody in the art world truly understands how the Board makes its decisions. In fact, there are questions whether the Board can provide valid, “scientific” explanations for its mandates. It seems that the Board knows a Warhol when it sees one, but often this translates to a Warhol being whatever the Board feels should be a Warhol or whatever is in the best interests of the Board. Thus the Board/Foundation sought to devalue Warhol’s Estate after his death for tax purposes (for example one appraiser valued the Estate at around $1 billion; the Board/Foundation posited a tenth of that), while arguing for record-setting prices in the auction house. This creates a Kafkaesque or Orwellian situation for dealers and collectors of Warhol and casts a shadow over the entire art market.  

The state of affairs regarding Warhol parallels the current situation involving Bukowski. The Andy Warhol Board/Foundation maintains a stranglehold upon the legacy of Warhol in a manner similar to Black Sparrow’s (now HarperCollins/Ecco) hold on Bukowski. Nobody has any understanding of just how Bukowski’s line and legacy are being dealt with. For example, one commenter to Phillips’ post wonders what Linda Lee is doing in response to Martin’s alleged molestation of Bukowski? What is her role? Is the captain out to lunch? For all intents and purposes, John Martin is the literary equivalent of a 19th Century robber baron, which makes sense since, for better or worse, he perfected and capitalized on the Bukowski market. And make no mistake, the Bukowski market, like the Warhol market, is built on the trust, faith, and investment of collectors.  

(A question could be raised here whether the majority of this investment is coming from individual or institutional collectors. If institutional then Martin is merely sticking it to the Man. Yet one of the many Bukowski myths goes that Bukowski stands outside the academy and remains an outlaw writer who has eluded institutionalization. Under close examination this myth like many will not hold up, but for my purposes I prefer to be deluded. The benefits associated with delusion keep many a myth alive.)  

In 1966, the first four publications of Black Sparrow Press were broadsides of Bukowski poems: “True Story,” “On Going Out to Get the Mail,” “To Kiss the Worms Goodnight,” and “The Girls.” From these seemingly humble beginnings, John Martin built one of the most important presses publishing modern poetry in the world. In fact, these beginnings were not really humble, but a rather impressive and savvy example of fine printing and art marketing. Martin produced these broadsides specifically for the rare book market. Nobody but nobody buys a broadside, except a book or art collector. Broadsides, unlike flyers or handbills, serve absolutely no useful function. They are not read or researched, but are all about art for art’s sake and an exercise in design. They belong on the wall or under glass, not stapled to a telephone pole. Working the pole, the handbill solicits communication. The broadside is a merely a conversation starter at a dinner party.  

The first four broadsides were handset poems on expensive, deckle-edged paper signed by Bukowski in a limited edition of 30. The layout was simple, yet elegant. This minimalism was an early Black Sparrow hallmark. This type of care in presentation continued the fine press tradition of more ornate Bukowski publications like It Catches My Heart in Its Hands and Crucifix in a Deathhand by Loujon Press. Increasingly at Black Sparrow, the house design became more pronounced and overshadowed the poems. These initial broadsides were pricy at $10. Yet they became a very good investment as these pieces now fetch four figures on the rare book market, if you happen to find one.

This is not a surprise. Martin knew the rare book market inside and out from personal experience. Martin might be best known as an editor and a publisher, but he is first and foremost a book collector. (It could be argued that his experience as an office manager was the most important element of Black Sparrow’s success. Martin was one of the few small press publisher to run his press as a business.) Martin financed Black Sparrow (and Bukowski personally) by selling his D.H. Lawrence collection to the UCSB library for $50,000. I find it strange that Martin is often viewed simply as a prude, given that Lady Chatterley’s Lover helped pave the way for pornography and obscenity in much of the Western world. Considering his Lawrence collection (which continued after the sale, prompting a further sale), Martin is clearly fascinated with that which is dark and repressed. His fascination with Bukowski comes as no surprise. As Burroughs demonstrates, there is no either/or; all opposites contain elements of each other and define them, such as the police and the pusher. I think Bukowski lovers simplify Martin and his relationship with Bukowski when they label Martin “a straight-laced uptight square” and feel confident they understand who he is. Being a Puritan is more complex than merely turning down a beer. Reading Hawthorne will tell you that, and both Martin and Bukowski read their Hawthorne. Linda King: “[Bukowski] had a puritan streak on him this wide, like a skunk. A puritan streak right down his back.” Bukowski: “I’m just not a dirty guy. There is a lot of Puritan in me.” Bukowski and Martin should not be viewed as alien to each other, but as brothers, like Cain and Abel. Bukowski fans would do themselves a service by reading into Martin (and Bukowski) a little more deeply. Real people are not as flat as characters out of a Bukowski novel. 

It is a book-collecting axiom that collectors ultimately want personal contact with their favorite writers. The value of a book increases the closer it approaches the writer’s hand. First editions, signatures, proofs, annotations, letters, and manuscripts are all about getting in physical touch with the writer, actually shaking his hand in brotherhood. Black Sparrow was, on one level, Martin’s mechanism to collect the writers themselves. Martin knew the mentality of the book collector like few other publishers. A friend of mine told me that he asked Martin why he issued Black Sparrow books with acetates and Martin responded that as a collector it was frustrating and time consuming for him to find collectable dust jackets, so he simplified things for Black Sparrow collectors. Black Sparrow books had no messy dust jacket to maintain, and the acetate further protected the condition of the book. In addition, a damaged acetate could be replaced without anybody being any the wiser. How do you pin down a first-state acetate?  

Black Sparrow is full of these types of book-collecting shortcuts. Its entire business model is based on the concept of the manufactured collectible: the tipped-in Bukowski artwork, the lettered, numbered and signed editions. Martin took Kenneth Patchen’s (and Jargon’s) protest against the emerging conglomerate publishing market and re-packaged it into cookie cutter formats, like Happy Meals. As the press continued beyond its early years, the Barbara Martin designed covers increasingly came to have the same basic look and the books the same format, just as every Big Mac generally tastes and looks the same. Black Sparrow encouraged book collecting in its most digestible and packaged form. This is book collecting returned to the mass market and reunited with the mass consumer. Martin used the same bag of tricks as the marketeers of Pop Art, Andy Warhol in particular, or to take Pop to its lowest common denominator (i.e., straight cash), Peter Max.

(Let take a time out from beating up on the Black Sparrow model and consider the value of the Press’ trade paperbacks. These are great titles by often underappreciated and out-of-print authors in an affordable and widely available format. Do not the paperbacks redeem the entire Black Sparrow enterprise? If you backed me into a corner I would probably say that they do, but Ferlinghetti and City Lights did the same thing without the limited edition bullshit. As a collector, Black Sparrow offends me; as a general reader, the Black Sparrow trades are a godsend. Let’s not forget that Ferlinghetti had/has his detractors too, like Jack Spicer and Charlie Plymell, who rate him a poser and opportunist. When you are the most important and influential small press publishers of the post-WWII era, as Martin and Ferlinghetti clearly are, you cannot please everybody. They are publishing icons. Lots of people think the Beatles were a studio fabrication and that Marilyn Monroe should have gone on diet.) 

Yet the Bukowski collector is not just an idle consumer; he is the menial labor that makes the Black Sparrow Bukowski industry run. Martin preys on his consumers’ bibliographic madness with endless editions and variations portraying Bukowski’s madness. Phillips calls for the boycott of any of the later Bukowski collections, but this challenge to Martin’s dominance, if followed to its logical conclusion, calls for nothing more than a strike against purchasing Black Sparrow Bukowski limited editions. These collectibles, like the late collections, are similarly manipulated and manufactured by Martin.  

For example, collectors are finding that the Black Sparrow limited editions are really not that limited. For the 1968 At Terror Street and Agony Way, the first hardbound edition by Black Sparrow, there were 15 presentation copies issued and a further 75 numbered and signed copies. All without a dust jacket; all with Bukowski watercolors tipped in. These levels of limitation are the type of thing that Ed Sanders and Ted Berrigan poked fun at in Fuck You and C. They were already a joke in 1965. By 1974, Black Sparrow issued a “limited edition” of 300 signed copies of Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame. Can an edition of 300 be considered limited? Every serious Bukowski collector (and book dealer) with the means already has these “rare” books in mint condition. Rare does not mean expensive. For example, the Olympia Press Naked Lunch, with a first edition of 5000 copies, is not rare at all; it just costs a shitload of money. For a Burroughs collector, you are forced to buy the book, but you nearly always lose out in the deal. It is in some respect the most important book in my collection, but increasingly I have a love/hate relationship with it. Like an addict with his drug or obsession of choice.

As time went on, the Black Sparrow limited became like an Olympia Naked Lunch. There was nothing to distinguish an individual collector’s copy to make it truly unique or unusual, except slight refinements or additions. In the world of Black Sparrow that is a Bukowski painting, drawing or signature. Not surprisingly, the market for Bukowski artwork or signatures is also flooded. Not only did Bukowski write too much; he painted too much. And like a Barbara Martin designed book cover, the Bukowski paintings generally look the same. The image of Buk with a bottle is the Nike swoosh of Black Sparrow.  

Yet let’s blame the victim here. Martin, like a drug dealer, is not forcing collectors to buy his wares, and they can just say no. If the knock on Bukowski fans is that they are poetry readers who dislike and cannot appreciate poetry, then it follows that Black Sparrow collectors do not really like or understand book collecting. The Black Sparrow collectible is manufactured and processed, like collecting Franklin Library or Easton Press. Or crack. Such collecting does not take much imagination and serves little to no archival or research purpose. It is a simply a cash transaction granting possession, which might be why Bukowski collectors are either notorious spendthrifts or tightwads. There is no middle ground, because in recent years sound investors would not get involved with Black Sparrow Bukowski collectibles.

Recent auction results have not been kind. In 2007, 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. If we focus on Black Sparrow titles specifically at more recent Runfola Auction from 2011, roughly 37 items failed to reach the low estimate, and a further 23 did not sell at all. Considering that the price realized includes a 20% buyer’s premium, these titles grossly under-performed. Roughly 26 Black Sparrow items made their estimates and only four exceeded the high estimate. In a piece I wrote on the Groff sale, I placed much of the blame on PBA Galleries’ high estimates, and the Runfola Auction was no exception in that regard, but maybe the problem lies with the Black Sparrow business model.  

It is a book-collecting law that manuscripts are a safe bet. Phillips’ post makes clear their research value. Yet when you get down to it, Bukowski manuscripts are just not that rare, particularly if they are associated with a Black Sparrow publication. If collecting a Black Sparrow title, associations and annotations are crucial. Anything in the margins, away from the title page or colophon, which narrates a supplemental history to the novel, story or poem residing between Barbara’s covers, seems a good bet. Correspondence with Carl Weissner was the single most consistent over-achiever in the Rufalo auction. This highlights the importance of stepping outside of the kingdom of Black Sparrow into foreign territory.  

Naturally, it makes sense to go back in time to before Bukowski sold his soul to the devil for $100 a month. This is the Bukowski of the Mimeo Revolution and what you are collecting is not a manufactured product, but a comrade-in-arms in a larger fight against corporate publishing and consumerism. Bukowski as writer of protest literature. Bukowski as part of a history and community greater than himself and not simply Bukowski as Horatio Alger performing a monologue. A collection of Bukowski chapbooks and magazines are truly worth something (above and beyond the mere financial) not because of the Bukowski appearance but because they are evidence of an era of publishing that is in danger of fading away. These publications are truly rare, original, and ephemeral and reflect a time when Bukowski was too.

Phillips calls for a Black Sparrow boycott beginning in 1994. For him, Bukowski jumped the shark only when he leapt into the Great Beyond. I am not so sure. I question whether Bukowski was truly “unmolested and beautiful” throughout his lifetime. I take a stand in 1970, and cite an incident involving Bukowski and Martin that reads like a morality play. Sounes deserves to be quoted in full here:

In April, a collection of Bukowski first editions came up for sale at a literary auction in New York, alongside collections of Faulkner and Hemingway. Although the Bukowski books raised only a fraction of the prices commanded by the more famous writers, they sold easily and it became apparent there was a lucrative market in collecting his books, magazine appearances, letters and manuscripts, even his child-like paintings. But Bukowski had only a limited understanding of the value of his artwork, as Martin discovered when he telephoned to arrange the collection of forty new paintings he had buyers for. When he asked what would be a good time to pick them up, Bukowski said he didn’t have the paintings anymore. He didn’t think they were any very good so he’d put them in the bath and pissed all over them. He wasn’t sure why, perhaps he was crazy. And he couldn’t get them back, because he’d dumped the whole mess in the garbage. Martin was aghast at this, and asked if he had any idea how much money they could have made.

For me, this is Bukowski’s last act of innocence, naivety, and insouciance. An act of bravado that highlights his self-destructive excess and excessive vitality. This is Bukowski in all his greatness. The New York auction validated the Black Sparrow business model, and Bukowski proceeded to gloriously piss all over the foundations of Martin’s fledgling empire. Here we have Bukowski’s finest act of defiance. This is the Bukowski that John Martin corrupted. The crux of Puritanism is not censorship or abstinence, but an abhorrence of waste. Promiscuity is despised for wasting seed. Drunkenness threatens to squander one’s talent and intelligence. Here Martin is horrified by Bukowski’s profligacy. Those paintings should have been put to use. It is crucial that this Dionysian act occurred against the backdrop of book collecting. Book collecting as practiced by Martin is an act of Puritanism. He is not a hoarder or archivist, like Walter Benjamin. Martin collects not out of compulsion or obsession, but as an investment. It is not an act of useless expenditure but one of saving for later. As practiced by Martin, book collecting draws its value not from excess, such as Bataille’s potlatch à la Bataille, but as a financial consideration à la Max Weber. As such it is an expression of the Protestant Work Ethic. At his core, Bukowski possessed this same drive and his relationship with Martin brought it to the surface. Bukowski’s deal with Martin did not free him from a job at all; instead it made him a professional writer. Writing became an occupation, not a reckless extravagance, and the source of Bukowski’s greatness was lost. He became not an alcoholic but a workaholic. Falstaff became Prince Hal. From 1970 onward, Bukowski through Martin willingly exploited his excessive gifts. Martin’s eventual betrayal seems an act of sacrifice: the acolyte ripping the Wine God to pieces.

Burroughs in German (flyer from Kosmik Blues)

1969

Translation work started proper after Carl’s return to Germany. More or less in the function of Editor for Joseph Melzer Verlag in Darmstadt (between Frankfurt and Heidelberg / Mannheim further south), Carl edited and translated:

Cut up. Der sezierte Bildschirm der Worte (Joseph Melzer Verlag, Darmstadt 1969) with several entries by William S. Burroughs, Mary Beach, Harold Norse, Jeff Nuttall, Claude Pélieu, Brion Gysin, one by himself and one by Jürgen Ploog.

ACID. Neue amerikanische Szene, more groundbreaking and with many more texts, also by Zappa etc, edited by the late Rolf Dieter Brinkmann with Ralf-Rainer Rygulla, published, after some kind of mini-revolution downstairs in the same building, also featured Weissner’s translation of Mary Beach, an extract from The Electric Banana; and Harry Mathews: Das Drehbuch.

1970

James Graham Ballard: Liebe + Napalm (Joseph Melzer Verlag, Darmstadt 1970). Re-released a couple of times, most recently as Liebe und Napalm: The Atrocity Exhibition (Milena Verlag, Vienna 2008), an association that led to Weissner’s German writing being published there ever since.

Charles Bukowski: Aufzeichnungen eines Außenseiters (Joseph Melzer Verlag, Darmstadt 1970)

1971

Andy Warhol: A (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1971)

1972

William S. Burroughs: Die elektronische Revolution (expanded media editions, Göttingen 1972) The publisher in charge here was Udo Breger, friend of Weissner and together with Ploog editor of the avant-garde magazine UFO, which was for some time also co-edited by Jörg Fauser. Weissner, Ploog, and Fauser would continue, with Walter Hartmann, the less cutting-edge but more legendary lit-mag Gasolin 23.

Allen Ginsberg: Indische Tagebücher (Hanser Verlag, München)

Allen Ginsberg: Iron Horse (expanded media editions, Göttingen 1973)

1973

William S. Burroughs: Ali’s Smile (bilingual, expanded media editions, Göttingen 1973)

1974

Charles Bukowski: Gedichte, die einer schrieb, bevor er im 8. Stockwerk aus dem Fenster sprang, poems (Maro Verlag Gersthofen 1974) This is where Fauser’s first book came out, followed by his very first one published by Breger’s expanded media editions.

George Herriman: Krazy Kat, with others (Joseph Melzer Verlag, Darmstadt 1974)

1975

Bob Dylan: Texte und Zeichnungen (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1975)

Allen Ginsberg: Der Untergang Amerikas (Hanser Verlag, München 1975)

1976

Charles Bukowski: Kaputt in Hollywood, stories (Maro Verlag, Gersthofen 1976)

Leonard Cohen: Parasiten des Himmels — Gedichte aus 10 Jahren (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 1976)

Anthony Scaduto: Bob Dylan, Die Biographie (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1976)

Bob Dylan: Tarantula (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1976)

1977

Charles Bukowski: Schlechte Verlierer, stories (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1977. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1981)

Charles Bukowski: Faktotum, novel (1977. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1997, 20th print-run in 2009)

Charles Bukowski: Das ausbruchsichere Paradies. Stories vom verschütteten Leben, stories (1977). The first seven stories also published as Pittsburgh Phil & Co., the second lot as Ein Profi.

Charles Bukowski: Flinke Killer, poems, translated with Rolf Eckart John (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1977)

Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones Songbook. 155 Songs mit Noten, translated with Teja Schwaner, Jörg Fauser, Helmut Salzinger (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1977)

Frank Zappa: Plastic People Songbuch, republished after approval by Zappa as Plastic People Songbuch — Corrected Copy (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1977)

1978

Harold Norse: Beat Hotel (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1978

William S. Burroughs: Ali’s smile. Naked scientology (expanded media editions, Bonn 1978)

Allen Ginsberg: Gärten der Erinnerung, possibly translated with Heiner Bastian (HeyneVerlag, München 1978)

William S. Burroughs: Junkie (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1978)

William S. Burroughs: Auf der Suche nach Yage (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1978)

William S. Burroughs: Naked Lunch (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1978)

William S. Burroughs: Nova Express (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1978)

Charles Bukowski: Das Leben und Sterben im Uncle-Sam-Hotel, stories (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1978

Edited with Charles Bukowski: Terpentin on the rocks. Die besten Gedichte aus der amerikanischen Alternativpresse 1966-1977, story collection (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1978 & 1980. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1981 & 1984 $ 1985 & 1996)

1979

Charles Bukowski: Western Avenue. Gedichte aus über 20 Jahren, poems (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1979), extracts have been re-published as Der größte Verlierer der Welt — Gedichte 1968-1972 (1979), Charles Bukowski: Diesseits und jenseits vom Mittelstreifen — Gedichte 1972-1977 (Hanser Verlag, München 1984), and Eintritt frei — Gedichte 1955-1968 (Hanser Verlag, München 1984).

Charles Bukowski: Die Stripperinnen von Burbank & 16 andere Stories, stories (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1979)

William S. Burroughs: Die alten Filme (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1979 & 1995)

Allen Ginsberg: Das Geheul und andere Gedichte (Limes Verlag, Wiesbaden 1979)

Jack Micheline: Skinny Dynamite (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1979)

1980

William S. Burroughs: Die wilden Boys (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1980)

William S. Burroughs: Port of Saints (Arbeitsjournal zu Die wilden Boys) (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1980)

Charles Bukowski: Das Liebesleben der Hyäne, novel (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1980) Republished several times (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1980)

Will Eisner: Ein Vertrag mit Gott und andere Mietshaus — Stories aus New York (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1980)

1981

Nelson Algren: Calhoun. Roman eines Verbrechens (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1981 & 1982)

Charles Plymell: Panik in Dodge City (expanded media editions, Bonn 1981)

1982

Denton Welch: Freuden der Jugend (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1982), also republished many times, with a foreword by William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs: Die Städte der roten Nacht (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1982)

Hans Hillmann: Fliegenpapier nach Dashiell Hammett’s Kriminalgeschichte Flypaper (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1982 & 1983)

Charles Bukowski: Eine Kinoreklame in der Wüste. 102 neue Gedichte, poems (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1982)

Charles Bukowski: Pacific Telephone – 51 Gedichte, poems (1982)

Charles Bukowski: Die Girls im grünen Hotel, poems (1982)

1983

Nelson Algren: Der Mann mit dem goldenen Arm (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1983; Verlag Volk & Welt Berlin, GDR 1984 & 1987)

Howard Kohn: Wer tötete Karen Silkwood? (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1983)

Charles Bukowski: Das Schlimmste kommt noch oder Fast eine Jugend, novel (Hanser Verlag, München 1983)

1984

Charles Bukowski: Der lange Job, stories and poems with comics by Mathias Schultheiss (Heyne, 1984), a condensed version of this and Ein Reader have been published as Die schönste Frau in der ganzen Stadt (1991)

Charles Bukowski: Kaputt in der City, stories and poems with comics by Mathias Schultheiss (Heyne, München 1984)

Charles Bukowski: Gedichte vom südlichen Ende der Couch, poems (1984)

Marvin Israel and Diane Arbus: .diane arbus. (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1984)

1985

Denton Welch: Jungfernfahrt (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1985; Steidl, Göttingen 1996)

Charles Bukowski: Hot Water Music, stories (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1985)

Ken Kesey: Einer flog über das Kuckucksnest (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1985)

1986

Charles Bukowski: Nicht mit sechzig, Honey, poems (Hanser Verlag, München 1986)

Gerald Locklin: Die Jagd nach dem verschwundenen blauen Volkswagen (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1986)

1987

William S. Burroughs: Exterminator (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1987)

William S. Burroughs: Die letzten Worte des Dutch Schultz (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1987)

Denton Welch: Schicksal (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1987)

Mohammed Mrabet with Paul Bowles: M’Hashish. Kiffgeschichten aus Marokko (Goldmann, München 1987)

Bob Dylan: Liedtexte; translated with Walter Hartmann (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1987)

Nan Goldin: Die Ballade von der sexuellen Abhängigkeit (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1987)

1988

William S. Burroughs: Western Lands (Limes im Ullstein Verlag, Frankfurt/Berlin 1988)

Robert Del Tredici: Unsere Bombe (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1988)

Charles Bukowski: Die letzte Generation, poems (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1988)

1989

William S. Burroughs: Homo (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1989)

William S. Burroughs: Briefe an Allen Ginsberg 1953-1957 (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1989)

Charles Bukowski: Roter Mercedes (Gedichte 1984-1986), poems (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1989)

1990

Nelson Algren: Nacht ohne Morgen (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1990)

Diane Arbus: Zeitschriftenarbeit (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1990)

Charles Bukowski: Einmal New Orleans und zurück, story (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1990)

Charles Bukowski: Hollywood, novel (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1990

1991

Nelson Algren: Das letzte Karussell (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1991)

LaLoca: Rote Sonne über Echo Park. Gedichte von Liebe & Hass, translated with Pociao de Hollanda (Maro, Augsburg 1991)

Nicholas Shakespeare: Die Vision der Elena Silves (Kellner, Hamburg 1991)

1992

Harold Norse: Bastard. Die Memoiren eines gefallenen Engels, translated with Walter Harmann (Rogner & Bernhard, Juni 1992)

1993

William Bedford: Fish & Chips & Elvis (dtv, München 1993)

Armistead Maupin: Tollivers Reisen (Rogner & Bernhard, Frankfurt/M. 1993)

Charles Bukowski: Jeder zahlt drauf, stories (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1993)

1994

Charles Bukowski: Kamikaze-Träume, poems (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1994)

Armistead Maupin: Die Kleine (Rogner & Bernhard, Frankfurt/M. 1994)

1995

Richard Bausch: Eine unmögliche Liebe (Steidl, Göttingen 1995)

Charles Bukowski: Der Andere, story (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1995)

Charles Bukowski: Ausgeträumt, novel (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1995), re-released as Pulp. Ausgeträumt

1996

Charles Bukowski: Auf dem Stahlroß ins Nirwana, poems (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1996)

Frank Zappa: Zonx (Texte 1977 – 1994) (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 1996)

Robert Lowry: Die falsche Sanftmut des Schnees (Rogner & Bernhard, Frankfurt/M. 1996)

Robert Lowry: Tag, Fremder (Rogner & Bernhard, Frankfurt/M. 1996)

1997

Robert Lowry: Lebendig begraben (Rogner & Bernhard, Frankfurt/M. 1997)

Robert Lowry: Aufenthalt in El Paso translated with Antje Landshoff (Rogner & Bernhard, Frankfurt/M. 1997)

1999

Charles Bukowski: Umsonst ist der Tod, poems (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1999)

2000

Richard Bausch: Eine aussterbende Art (Steidl, Göttingen 2000)

Charles Bukowski: Irgendwo in Texas — Gedichte aus dem Nachlaß, poems (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 2000)

2003

Charles Bukowski: 439 Gedichte, poems (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 2003)

2005

Charles Bukowski: Schreie vom Balkon — Briefe 1958-1994, letters (Ginko Press, Hamburg 2005)

Charles Bukowski: Nackt bei 33 Grad, poems (dtv, München 2005)

2006

Charles Bukowski: Den Göttern kommt das große Kotzen, diary (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 2006)

William Cody Maher: Geisterstadt translated with Walter Hartmann (Verlag Peter Engstler, Ostheim/Rhön 2006)

2007

Charles Bukowski: Letzte Meldungen, poems (Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt/M. 2007)

Charles Bukowski: Ein Ablehnungsbescheid und seine Folgen, story (Büchergilde Gutenberg/Tolles Heft, Frankfurt/M./Wien/Zürich 2007)

2008

Leonard Cohen: Buch der Sehnsüchte translated with others (Blumenbar, München 2008)

2009

Charles Bukowski : Opfer der Telefonitis, stories (dtv, München 2009)

William Cody Maher: Spielsachen translated with Walter Hartmann and others (Verlag Peter Engstler, Ostheim/Rhön 2009)

2010

Charles Bukowski: Ein schlampiger Essay über das Schreiben und das verfluchte Leben; und ausgewählte Gedichte, leftovers (Maro Verlag, Augsburg 2010)

2011

Bill Callahan: Briefe an Emma Bowlcut translated with Evelyn Steinthaler and Vanessa Wieser (Milena Verlag, Wien 2011)

2012

Charles Bukowski: Ende der Durchsage (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 2012)

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

The Last Times was an underground newspaper published in San Francisco in 1967 by poet and printer Charles Plymell. It contained works by William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Robert Crumb, Carl Weissner, Claude Pélieu, Mary Beach, Antonin Artaud, and others. Issue one has become collectible for the contribution by Crumb, printed just a few months before Zap Comix #1. At least two variants of the second issue were published.

Charles Plymell Holding The Last Times
Photograph by Guy B. Taken at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA on 26 May 2011.

The Last Times I

The Last Times I
Collage by Charles Plymell

The Last Times I
“Day the Records Went Up” by William S. Burroughs, photograph of Herbert Huncke

The Last Times I
“Do It Yourself & Dig It” by Claude Pélieu, interview with Buckminster Fuller, photo and text by Charles Plymell

The Last Times I
“The Orion Dream Stuff” by Carl Weissner, “Introduction” by D.A. Levy, texts by Carl Solomon and Bob Kaufman

The Last Times I
Text by Dennis Williams, drawing by Jeff Nuttall, poem by Roxie Powell, “Notes of a Dirty Old Man” by Charles Bukowski

The Last Times I
“Television Baby Crawling toward that Death Chamber” by Allen Ginsberg

The Last Times I
Conclusion of poem by Allen Ginsberg, text by Dave Harris

The Last Times I
“Head Comix” by R. Crumb, collage by Jean-Jacques Lebel

The Last Times I
Found photo

The Last Times II (variant a)

The Last Times II

The Last Times II

The Last Times II
“National Prestige” by Jeff Nuttall

The Last Times II
Poems by Charles Plymell and Philip Whalen

The Last Times II

The Last Times II
Poems by Yvonne Bond and Alan Russo

The Last Times II
Drawing by Erin Matson (friend of Herbert Huncke)

The Last Times II

The Last Times II

The Last Times II
Mini-poster

The Last Times II (variant b)

The Last Times II

The Last Times II
Drawing by Erin Matson (friend of Herbert Huncke)

The Last Times II
“National Prestige” by Jeff Nuttall, “Dominion” by Alan Russo

The Last Times II
Poem by Philip Whalen

The Last Times II
Centerfold by Bob Branaman

The Last Times II
Poem by Yvonne Bond

The Last Times II
Poem by Charles Plymell

The Last Times II

The Last Times II

Letter from William Burroughs to Carl Weissner
30 April 1965

Correspondence with Charles Bukowski

Letter from Charles Bukowski to Carl Weissner
16 October 1976
This letter appeared at auction on ebay in August 2009.

Letter from Charles Bukowski to Carl Weissner
15 Jan 1979
This letter appeared at auction on ebay.

Letter from Charles Bukowski to Carl Weissner
15 Jan 1979
This letter appeared at auction on ebay.

Letter from Charles Bukowski to Carl Weissner
6 Feb 1979
This letter appeared at auction on ebay.

Letter from Charles Bukowski to Carl Weissner
6 Feb 1979
This letter appeared at auction on ebay.

Letter from Charles Bukowski to Carl Weissner
6 July 1988
This letter appeared at auction on ebay in July 2009.

Letter from Carl Weissner to Charles Bukowski
16 August 1988
This letter appeared at auction on ebay in July 2009.

Carl Weissner-Jeff Nuttall Corresondence

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
19 October 1965

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
19 October 1965

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
26 January 1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
14 February 1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
20 March 1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
1 July 1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
3 October 1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
3 October 1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
14 October 1966

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
2 January 1967

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
15 March 1967

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
28 March 1967

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
9 April 1967

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
19 May 1967

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
27 September 1967

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
19 June 1969

Letter from Carl Weissner to Jeff Nuttall
19 June 1969

Miscellaneous Correspondence

Postcard from Carl Weissner to Jackson Maclow
14 February 1968

Postcard from Carl Weissner to Jackson Maclow
14 February 1968

Letter from Carl Weissner to Roy Pennington
26 February 1973

by Roger Holden

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jed Birmingham for his courteous offer to submit this correction to his essay “Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, and the Computer.” The premise of his essay was that, to his knowledge, Burroughs seems to have avoided using the computer for any of his creative work. “What would Burroughs have done,” Birmingham writes, “with an Ian Sommerville-type collaborator who knew the nuts and bolts of computers and the Internet, was aware of their philosophical and cultural implications, and also possessed a desire to expand the medium creatively? Like many on the forum at RealityStudio, I wonder what if? It was not to be.”

Happily, I can say that it was to be. I am privileged in this life to have been a friend of William Burroughs and also a collaborator on his visual art — using the medium of the computer. In 1995 I worked with Burroughs on a series of three-dimensional computer-generated stereograms (similar to the Magic Eye images of the 90s) based upon sampling his paintings. William guided me in the process of what to select for input into the computer so as to obtain results that he thought would be appropriate for this visual holographic cut-up collaborative experiment.

One of these images was selected for display in the landmark Ports of Entry exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1996 and was documented in the accompanying book Ports of Entry: William S. Burroughs and the Arts on page 149:

… in 1995, Burroughs joined with computer animator Roger Holden in producing a series of computer-generated stereograms created by digitally scanning a detail of one of Burroughs’ paintings into a computer, color-enhancing it, and printing it with a laser printer. When viewed with relaxed and slightly crossed eyes, the three dimensional effects of these “cybernetic cut-ups” form imaginary landscapes of extreme intricacy and depth not unlike those imagined works described by Burroughs in 1981 [in Cities of the Red Night] as made by “some lost color process… used to transfer three dimensional holograms onto the… pages. You ache to look at these colors.”

Also on page 149, note 333 says: “The title ‘cybernetic cut-ups’ was coined by Holden in a letter to the author June 15, 1995.”

This particular image is now in the permanent collection of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. This image may be viewed online at the following presentation created by the Spencer Museum of Art. It is the 6th image of 8 shown in the presentation.

Quoting from an article from the University Daily Kansan October 28, 1996: “Steve Goddard, curator of prints and drawings at the Spencer Museum of Art, said that Holden’s collaboration with Burroughs was a good example of how Burroughs has continued to stay involved with contemporary trends in art. ‘It’s a very interesting piece that shows Burroughs’ relevance in the Cyberpunk world of computer art,’ Goddard said. ‘His openness in collaborating with other artists demonstrates how he accepts what is unfolding at the moment.'”

I am an inventor who has been aware of the philosophical, cultural, and audiovisual implications of the computer since 1976. I have always desired to expand this medium creatively. In 1982, for example, I designed the animation computer system used by PBS’s Emmy-winning children’s series Reading Rainbow to film their feature books for the first 5 seasons. Rogerreadingrainbow.com is my Reading Rainbow site.

I also co-invented a holographic-like computer image projection system which was featured in 2005 on the Discovery Channel Science of Star Wars series. It was shown as an example of futuristic R2-D2 holographic-like technology being realized in the present. I am presently developing a different and superior holographic-like display technology. A short video of the Discovery Channel segment is at YouTube.

I first met Burroughs formally in 1986 through his best friend and business manager James Grauerholz. In 1988 I produced a music video tribute to Burroughs which aired the same year on the USA Network series Nightflight and also on MTV in 1990 on their first internationally broadcast series, Buzz. It should also be mentioned that throughout the years I was given two wonderful cats by William. One was the White Cat mentioned in Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs and in the text on inter-zone.org.

One day when I was visiting Burroughs in the early 90s, he said “Roger, I want to show you the painting I finished today. It’s called Jack the Ripper.” Looking, I discerned that it consisted of reddish paint splotches and twirls on a white canvas. William then said, “Do you see Jack?” I looked carefully and replied, “William, I might sense the ambience of Jack in an abstract sort of way.” Immediately he said, “No! No! No! Do you see Jack?” I said I didn’t, but please show me. He then pointed to a specific area, a small area toward the bottom right side of the painting. Sure enough, I did see it, a leering evil face with a derby hat on top of his head. It was cartoon-like, somewhat warped in appearance but immediately recognizable. Burroughs then turned the painting upside down. In the same exact area where I had previously seen Jack the Ripper he pointed and said assuredly, “There’s his victim.” He was right. There was an equally vivid warped caricature of a woman’s face grimacing in an expression of horror! It was absolutely amazing to witness this, as it was a prime example of what he would call a “Port of Entry” into an image. William painted with a faith that his process of painting could serve as a vessel for evocative magic. These emerging images were searched for and discovered only after he painted the entire canvas. Naturally, after that experience, I wished for the day that we could collaborate using the medium of the computer in a likewise visual and shamanistic manner.

I would discuss my computer audiovisual interests frequently with William. One day he called and asked to visit my animation studio, Magic Visions. During the studio visit, I demonstrated a stereoscopic 3D image of a cat sticking its head outside of a computer monitor. On other occasions we might discuss such things as a computer-assisted visual prosthesis project I had received a grant to pursue or my computer-assisted holographic projection efforts. This type of discussion about computers (i.e. 3d stereoscopic imagery, sensory substitution) clearly engaged his interest because we were talking of a direct melding of the mind and computer through altered perceptual states. For example, discussions such as how would blind people perceive such a computer-generated tactile image vibrated onto the skin or how they might perceive a three-dimensional computer-generated audio environment. The studio visit, audiovisual computer discussions and demonstrations eventually led to the following 1994 inscription written for me on the inside cover of his Kurt Cobain CD collaboration, The “Priest” They Called Him, “for Roger Holden, who always has tomorrow’s ideas today.”

As 1994 wound up, I noticed his great interest and enjoyment of computer-generated stereograms. I had previous experience creating some of these myself so I asked him if we could collaborate together by incorporating some of his paintings into computer-generated 3D stereograms. His immediate reply was, “By all means, yes! Lets see what happens.” I first started on the project by using the entire painting as a source. Not much seemed to be happening with that approach. The output was thin and difficult to discern in 3D. Burroughs then directed me to incorporate small samples of his paintings into the computer rather than just simply inputting the whole thing. This was when we struck our pay dirt, as exciting bold 3D shapes began to emerge.

Our collaboration was a true “all into cyberspace” experience for both of us. These images allow for a direct altered state of visual perception just as the Magic Eye images do. However, rather than simply entice you with just a dolphin or 3-D heart, the cybernetic cut-up images can be used to experience directly certain information processes of the mind — specifically, those processes that can form our visual sense of the 3D outside world from the input of even the simplest of sampled information.

William was extremely enthusiastic about this collaboration and equally enthusiastic about the results. In essence, samples of his paintings were input as viral info elements into a 3D computer stereoscopic process. The 3D Cybernetic cut-up output resulted in complex holographic-like landscapes and objects. Our collaboration, including studies, involved more than a dozen images. Like all such attempts in art, some worked out better than others. A special few seemed to demonstrate some intriguing synchronicities. I hope to publish someday a compendium of these studies and completed images.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

16-bit Intel 8088 chip

with an Apple Macintosh
you can’t run Radio Shack programs
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file
you have created on an
IBM Personal Computer.
both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
the CP/M operating system
but can’t read each other’s
handwriting
for they format (write
on) discs in different
ways.
the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can’t use most programs produced for
the IBM Personal Computer
unless certain
bits and bytes are
altered
but the wind still blows over
Savannah
and in the Spring
the turkey buzzard struts and
flounces before his
hens.

— Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski and the Computer

On Christmas Day, 1990, Charles Bukowski received a Macintosh IIsi computer and a laser printer from his wife, Linda. The computer utilized the 6.0.7 operating system and was installed with the MacWrite II word processing program. By January 18 of the next year, the computer was up and running and so, after a brief period of fumbling and stumbling, was Bukowski. His output of poems doubled in 1991. In letters he remarked that he had more poems than outlets to send them to. The fact that several books of new poems appeared in the years following Bukowski’s death in 1994 can partially be attributed to this amazing burst of creative energy late in life. The Macintosh IIsi helped to enable this creative explosion.

Flying in the face of the adage “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” Bukowski kept an open mind about new technologies. Although he wondered if Dostoevsky would have ever used a computer or if he would lose his soul as a writer, Bukowski quickly realized the substantial benefits of the Macintosh and wondered how he ever wrote without one, considering the typewriter archaic. In correspondence, Bukowski championed his computer to friends, stating that they would never regret getting one for themselves. Linda signed Bukowski up for a computer class, and he went willingly, demonstrating his eagerness to master the new technology. A short time later, Bukowski characteristically claimed that he had a secret, foolproof system for dealing with his computer’s many shutdowns and malfunctions, much like he had a system at the racetrack.

In general Bukowski kept abreast of new innovations that would further his writing. In a letter to John Martin, his Black Sparrow publisher, Bukowski mentioned the availability of a technology (the Internet) that would allow him to send poems instantly. The speed and ease of new technologies amazed, excited, and inspired him. When he first got a fax machine, Bukowski immediately wrote Martin a fax poem. In late 1992, Bruce Kijewski approached Bukowski with the idea of electronic books. Bukowski was intrigued. He wrote back, “Yes, you have a strange project: electronic books. It might be the future as more and more people find that the computer is such a magic thing: time-saver, charmer, energizer.” Bukowski’s open-mindedness in old age is refreshing, when you consider all the aging writers who fall back and rely on the familiar, be it in technologies of writing or actual writing style. But there are still reservations and a sense of nostalgia. The same letter to Kijewski continues, “But, still, when [the electronic book] comes I will still miss the old fashioned book.” Despite such statements, it is clear that Bukowski was a writer not afraid of, or pessimistic about, the future.

Bukowski’s embrace of new technology should not surprise me, but it always does. Putting aside the transgressive nature of Bukowski’s subject matter, part of me considers him a conservative poet. On the level of poetics, he rarely impresses me as particularly innovative. For example he never experimented with the page as a field, a technique that I have a weakness for. In addition, his use of poetic form and the line seems rather simple and direct. Yet this was not always so. The poems from the 1960s used a much longer and freer line that incorporated elements of surrealism. There is a playfulness of language in these poems. Bukowski gets drunk on words and the joys of putting them together. This excess gets stripped down later in his career. I tend to see this as a lack of innovation, but it is not; it is an adaptation and, in fact, addresses Bukowski’s intense concern with the line. Bukowski as he got older sought a simpler, more direct poem and used a shorter line. I should think of William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky, or HD when I see Bukowski’s later poems with their four to five word lines. As with new technology, Bukowski possessed an open mind with all manner of writing styles and techniques. He would try anything once. For a brief period in the later 1960s, Bukowski, at the urging of Carl Weissner, addressed the cut-up and flirted with the idea in a few poems. A great letter from the period parodies the cut-up, even though the cut-ups probably came from Bukowski’s imagination rather than the scissors.

I do not want to suggest that Bukowski was pioneer or a radical in his use of the computer. He is no Michael Joyce, to mention a pioneer in the field, and his work never did incorporate the possibilities of, nor test the boundaries of, digital technology, like the more innovative literature of this nature. In fact, Bukowski readily admitted that he used the computer as a typewriter. He marveled at basic capabilities such as formatting, fonts, and spell check. Yet there is more to Bukowski’s relationship with computer than that. In a letter to Ivan Suvanjieff on February 20,, 1992, Bukowski set out in some detail his thoughts on the computer and writing. He writes, “One editor writes me an almost snarling letter. ‘All a computer does is allow you to correct the composition of your work!’ This man understands nothing.” Pound, Olson, and Zukofsky demonstrated the value of the typewriter in composition so this ability on the computer is no small matter, as are fonts and the like, but for Bukowski, the computer actually altered how he felt about and approached his writing. In the same letter he writes, “There is something about seeing your words on a screen before you that makes you send the word with a better bite, sighted in closer to the target. I know a computer can’t make a writer but I think it makes a writer better. Simplicity in writing and simplicity in getting it down, hot and real.” He continues, “When this computer is in the shop and I go back to the electric, it’s like trying to break rock with a hammer. Of course, the essence of writing is there but you have to wait on it, it doesn’t leap from the gut as quickly, you begin to trail your thoughts — your thoughts are ahead of your fingers which are trying to catch up. It causes a block of sorts indeed.” Bukowski directly links the ease of writing on the computer with his later, simpler style. One might think that a computer would lead to a longer line, an increased verbiage, not with Bukowski. The ease of the delete / edit functions was as important as the ability to get one’s thoughts down quickly. In addition, the visual aspect of the screen and the feel of writing on a computer influenced the form of Bukowski’s later poetry.

Bukowski also incorporated the computer as a metaphor in his later writing. From early 1991 to his death in 1994, computers and the act of writing on one appeared repeatedly. In The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship, R. Crumb provided an illustration of Bukowski sitting in front of his Macintosh. The caption reads, “Old writer puts on sweater, sits down, leers into the computer screen and writes about life. How holy can we get?” Clearly, the computer re-energized Bukowski and gave him new life as a writer. Yet much of Bukowski’s late writing was about old age and death. The computer fit into this. In poems, letters, and in The Captain, Bukowski chronicled his struggles with the computer. The shutdowns, the lost poems, the time at the shop for repairs. This mirrored Bukowski’s own health problems and trips to the hospital. The computer represented the writer in old age. The computer and the digital revolution also suggest the end of the book and of print. As a result, the computer spelled the death of the traditional author, a fact that must have struck Bukowski as he faced death himself. Yet all was not doom and gloom as the computer (old age and death) also provides the material and means for new poems. So the computer also represents the old writer’s creative impulse. In the four letters collected in Reach for the Sun for 1994, two mention the computer. In Bukowski’s late writing, the computer simultaneously symbolized the persistent creativity and eventual death of the aging writer.

Considering the importance of the computer to Bukowski’s later work and creative process, I wonder if his computer, hard drives, and disks were sent to the Huntington Library with the rest of his archive. Again the level of study directed at Bukowski’s computer would not be on the same level as, say, a Michael Joyce, but a familiarity with a Macintosh IIsi, the 6.0.7 operating system, and MacWrite II would provide insight into Bukowski’s working habits and the resulting output. Given the creative charge Bukowski felt facing the black computer screen, a scholar would be well served experiencing the same working environment. Did Bukowski tailor his poems to the screen? Was the journal / diary aspect of The Captain derived from the computer in any way? How did Bukowski edit on the computer? Did his writing process differ from his use of the typewriter or his writing by hand? Bukowski mentioned experimenting with fonts and formatting. Did he keep any of these efforts and what was the extent of this practice? How did he format his blank “page” on the screen?

As Bukowski’s letters and other writing of the early 1990s show, he was aware of the importance of these questions. Take the poem “16 Bit Intel 8088 Chip.” Here, the incompatibility of computers is contrasted with the harmony of nature. The themes of rebirth, death and the poet in old age are all present as with much of Bukowski’s writing addressing the computer. Yet the poem also touches on a central dilemma for the contemporary librarian and archivist. How do you store and make sense of all the different computer technologies that proliferate in the digital age? The poem also hints at the transitory nature of computer technology. Like microfiche, tape cassettes and CDs, computer operating systems change rapidly and deteriorate. Unlike paper, unlike the traditional, soon to be “obsolete” book. Despite the changing technology, writers and artists will still create, but how is a librarian to keep track of this output and keep it available ten, fifty, a hundred years from now?

As a generation of baby-boom writers approach the completion of their creative careers, these are becoming central questions for today’s librarians. Currently, the University of Texas Library has 37 author archives that contain computer technology. This number is going to explode in the next decade. Famously, the computers of Ralph Ellison proved a major obstacle in piecing together the thousands of pages of draft of his never-completed follow-up to Invisible Man. Ellison used several different computers with different operating systems to store his drafts.

When I was briefly in graduate school, I was required to be fluent in a foreign language. This was a major roadblock for me. Today, a mastery of computers, their operating systems, their languages, and how they work is becoming mandatory for scholars and librarians. They need to be computer programmers and designers as well as experts on bibliographic matters. The questions this technology raises are numerous. How do you create electronic versions of texts? What are the standards and critical approaches to these texts? How are various electronic drafts to be approached and prioritized? What are the ethics of digging into a writer’s personal computer? What is a writer’s obligation to save drafts and email? Such questions are just the tip of the iceberg.

Kyle Schlesinger, my co-editor on Mimeo Mimeo, sent me a link to the work of Matthew G. Kirchenbaum, an Associate Professor of English at the University of Maryland. He and other forward-looking academics are addressing these questions. Jerome McGann, as I have mentioned before, is one of the pioneers in this respect. His work on the Rossetti Project and with IVANHOE shows what is possible as well as the endless possibilities. I also mentioned in my Beat Critics article about the desire to create an electronic version of On the Road complete with Kerouac’s revisions and scholarly commentary. As Beat criticism moves away from definitions and canon formation, it will have to address many technological questions. Kirchenbaum and others are mapping this field. The white paper, Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use, is a case in point.

William Burroughs and the Computer

This takes me to the William Burroughs archive at the Berg. The index of the archive was just posted on the Berg’s website. It makes for fascinating reading. The breadth of the archive is immense and intimidating. Quite possibly, the traditional book may not be the best manner to present the contents of this archive to the public. For example, maybe an electronic Naked Lunch along the lines of the electronic Melville described in John Bryant’s paper on On the Road is what is needed. Thus, making sense of the Burroughs archive may require a solid knowledge of computers and computer design.

That said, none of the items in the Burroughs archive are born digital, i.e., they were not initially created on a computer or by other digital means. Burroughs used a typewriter or wrote by hand. Everything Lost highlights the incredible set of challenges that results from holograph manuscripts while also showing how modern technology can suggest solutions to these problems. While I have heard mention that Burroughs possessed a computer in Lawrence, I have never seen evidence that he utilized it in his creative process. The Berg shows no computers, disks, hard drives or print outs. This makes sense given that the collection dated from 1951 to 1972, but I am unaware of such items elsewhere, such as Ohio State University. I have never seen an original Burroughs manuscript, such as a laser printout, that shows his work was ever born digital. I believe Last Words was handwritten in a journal. Somebody correct me if I am wrong here.

As far back as the mid-1960s, Burroughs was aware of the possibilities of the computer and computer-generated poetry. In Insect Trust Gazette, Burroughs’ work appears alongside an early computer poem. In his interview with Conrad Knickerbocker in Paris Review, he stated that he had yet to experiment with the computer, but thought that such literature was valid and interesting, if it stood on its own merit. Yet as time passed — again, as far as I know — Burroughs never experimented with the computer. On one level this makes sense given the fact that Burroughs was well advanced in age and set in his ways by the time the personal computer was generally available. You might say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but Bukowski proves that you, in fact, can.

Part of me has always found it weird that Burroughs was not more involved in the Internet and computers. It seems right up his alley. His work has often been connected to cyberpunk fiction as an early influence. His writing is routinely described as a form of hypertext (“You can cut into Naked Lunch at any intersection point”). One might think Burroughs would be curious to explore this aspect of his work further, given the hype surrounding hypertext in the early 1990s. Burroughs readily embraced the technologies of film, tape, and painting into his creative process, so he was open to new media and mediums. The idea of the Composite City and Interzone seem, as critics have noted, to have a particular affinity to hypertext and the Internet. The free-flowing and interconnected nature of the City draws many comparisons to the Web. I tend to link Interzone and the Composite City with Borges’ concept of the Tower of Babel and the all-inclusive library. The idea of an endless novel and a digital archive seem Burroughsian to me. Burroughs, computers, and the Internet seem a match made in, if not heaven, cyberspace.

In 1994, Wired announced the imminent launch of an official Burroughs website in conjunction with Timothy Leary. It never came off. The venture proved to be largely an example of financial speculation, rather than a creative enterprise. The presence of Leary cements this fact for me. From psychedelics to cyberspace, Leary was more P.T. Barnum than anything else. He was a promoter and a popularizer rather than a true astronaut of inner- or cyberspace. Leary was not a creator. Yet this idea of a website with Burroughs’ input continues to fascinate. What would Burroughs have done with an Ian Sommerville-type collaborator who knew the nuts and bolts of computers and the Internet, was aware of their philosophical and cultural implications, and also possessed a desire to expand the medium creatively? Like many on the forum at RealityStudio, I wonder what if? It was not to be.

Maybe the lack of born-digital material in Burroughs’ archives can be simply explained by the fact that the digital age had passed him by in his old age. An interview from 1987 suggests as much. On the question of Burroughs’ involvement with word processors, he answers, “No, I’m very poor with any mechanical contrivances. I don’t know how a typewriter works, for example. I can use it, but I don’t know how it works. Right now, word processors seem just too complicated to get into. I guess they would be helpful, save a great deal of time, undoubtedly, but at this point the effort involved in learning how to use them just doesn’t seem worthwhile.”

But there might be more to Burroughs’ less than enthusiastic attitude toward computers than that. By the 1990s, Burroughs had largely left writing behind and was exploring painting more fully. He clearly still burned with the desire to create. The process of painting excited Burroughs, particularly the use of the hand and gesture. In an interview with Klaus Maek in 1990, Burroughs states, “When I started painting, I said, I will have to see with my hands and I just let my hands do it. And my hands, sometimes they know.” The cut-up was a similar physical process. Burroughs needed that direct confrontation with his materials in order to create. He wrote in Naked Lunch: “There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing.” Painting provided a slightly different intimacy and immediacy. Burroughs states, “For one thing when you are writing you can’t help but know what you’re writing about because it’s right there in front of you, but I never know what I’m painting until I am finished. I sometimes paint with my eyes closed because I see with my hands when I paint. In a sense, painting is easier than writing because you just let your hands do it…” Possibly, the blank computer screen provided too much distance to interest and to inspire Burroughs. As I mentioned Bukowski felt the opposite: the computer got him directly into the writing.

Looking through Burroughs’ archive suggests another roadblock to the computer. The archive clearly demonstrates how intimately Burroughs dealt with the materials of print culture. Burroughs was particularly fascinated by that epitome of mass print culture: the newspaper as well as magazines and journals. Bukowski was interested in the little magazine and underground paper solely as outlets for his work. In contrast, Burroughs sought to detourn mass print culture and turn it back on itself. How mass print culture operated, disseminated, and influenced public opinion intrigued Burroughs. He was also intensely involved with the materiality of print. The printed word was an object to be manipulated. The cut-up and his use of collage in scrapbooks highlight this. Writing on a computer lacks this materiality. Of course this is not true as data recovery makes clear. Even a deleted document leaves a trace burned into the hard drive. Yet the immediacy of the typewriter biting into paper is not there, to say nothing of the pleasure of the act of handwriting. Cutting and pasting digitally lacks the obvious physical effort of scissors and glue. We come back to Burroughs’ pleasure in the tactile.

Nostalgia plays a large role in Burroughs’ work. For all of Burroughs’ claims of embracing the future, moving towards the space age (“We are here to go!”), he felt strongly the pull of the past. He looked back fondly at silent films of the 1920s and the same holds true for the print culture of bygone days like boy’s weeklies. The digital age supposedly spells the death of print. Clearly the newspaper as Burroughs knew it is, if not dying, in a profound period of change. Burroughs would have felt that loss keenly. The age of the electronic book and the Internet may have been a world that Burroughs predicted but it seems, looking at his archive and his interest in painting, to have been a world he chose not to get involved in and maybe, creatively, could not embrace. For the most part, Burroughs approached the digital age with what he ultimately sought and demanded in his writing, silence.

Introduction

After going to see the Villa Seurat, where Henry Miller lived when he wrote Tropic of Cancer, we stopped at the Café Zeyer for drinks. The Zeyer, which he described as “a gaudy place with red plush and mirrors and polished brass,” was where Miller often took a fine à l’eau and argued metaphysics with friends. It was a burning hot day in Paris. Carl Weissner ordered beer. His close friend Jan Herman, publisher of San Francisco Earthquake and the Nova Broadcast Press, ordered a kir, as did his wife Janet. “Tell Carl the story about Buk,” I urged.

The previous night Janet had told me about the time Jan took her to meet Charles Bukowski in Los Angeles. They brought a bottle, on Carl’s advice, and ended up finishing it. When they were taking their leave, Buk moved to kiss the young and fetching Janet — and promptly shoved his alcoholic old tongue down her throat. She was disgusted, but it made for a great story a few decades later. “You should have challenged him to a duel on the beach — with sabers,” Carl growled, rubbing his hands together with a glee suggesting that he was really visualizing this oceanside face-off.

Carl, born in Germany during World War II, once joked to me that his greatest ambition was to become an American writer. In a way, he has fulfilled that ambition vicariously. His definitive translations of Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Bob Dylan, Nelson Algren, and others have sold literally millions of copies in Germany. “It was Carl,” Jan once told me, “who really turned Bukowski into something. It was Carl who got him major notice in Der Spiegel. That set off the craze in Germany and boomeranged back here. Bukowski never became a mainstream success till that happened.”

Bukowski made no secret of his gratitude to Carl, not just for his translations but for something much more important — understanding, support, friendship. Buk told one interviewer:

[Weissner’s] letters were quite incisive, entertaining (lively as hell), and he bucked up my struggle in the darkness, no end. A letter from Carl always was and still is an infusion of life and hope and easy wisdom. I was in the post office at the time and living with a crazy and alcoholic woman and writing anyhow. All our money went for booze. We lived in rags and a rage of despair. I remember I didn’t even have money for shoes. The nails from my old shoes dug into my feet as I walked my routes hungover and mad. We drank all night and I had to get up at 5 a.m. When I wrote, the poems came out of this and the letters from Carl were the only good magic about.

Presumably William Burroughs must have felt the same. In 1966 Burroughs traveled from Paris to Heidelberg to meet Carl. They had been corresponding and publishing cut-ups in the same little mags. “I opened the door,” Carl wrote in a letter later published by Victor Bockris in With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker, “and for a fraction of a second before the hall light went out I caught a glimpse of a tall thin man, about 52 years of age, black suit black tie white shirt w/ black needle stripes black phosphorescent eyes black hat. He looked like Opium Jones.” If Carl thought Burroughs’ apparition was dreamlike, perhaps the feeling was mutual. Years later, after Carl had translated some dozen of his books, Burroughs recorded a dream in My Education that may have harked back to that first meeting: “With Carl Weissner in Germany. I ask him: ‘Just where are we? Germany? Belgium?'”

In the five years after their initial meeting, the writers would intersect in a number of book projects and little mags, including Weissner’s own Klacto. In 1967, Beach Books in San Francisco published So Who Owns Death TV?, a pamphlet containing cut-ups by Burroughs, Weissner, and Claude Pélieu. Herman’s Nova Broadcast Press would publish Burroughs’ The Dead Star in 1969; The Louis Project, containing texts by Weissner and Herman, in 1970; and Weissner’s book of cut-ups, The Braille Film, which contained a “counterscript” by Burroughs, in 1970. In 1972 Agentzia in Paris would publish Cut Up or Shut Up, a compilation of cut-ups by Weissner, Herman, and Jürgen Ploog, with a “tickertape” by Burroughs running across the top of the pages.

Braille Film is the most significant of these books. The title hinted at either a synesthesia (touch compounded with sight) or an absurdity (touch compounded with sight?) that has since become less inconceivable owing to the invention of touchscreens. Doubtless Weissner also intended an assault on every sense possible. The density of the imagery in Braille Film is a key component of the book’s impact. “Weissner,” Jed Birmingham has written, “is one of the foremost practitioners of the cut-up, and when Burroughs scaled back the technique Weissner pushed it forward.” Just as Burroughs was turning to more narrative texts such as The Wild Boys (1971), Weissner emitted this bombshell of relentless images and standout lines. “Dead tissue fades in the searchlights” … “The white labyrinth of silence has no emergency exits” … “I watched him masturbate in the halflight. (Looks like he’s counting money.).” … “The thoughtographs went up in silver dust.”

Though the cut-up technique gradually made its way into popular culture — most notably when David Bowie used the method to produce song lyrics — it was not for experimentation but for translation that Weissner won acclaim in the 1970s. He once explained to me that, of all the books he’d translated, Nova Express was the most difficult. Consider a random phrase, “so the Venusian Gook Rot flashed round the world.” Venusian gook rot? It takes a unique sensibility to translate that. In an essay included in Naked Lunch@50: Anniversary Essays, Ploog describes how Weissner achieved that sensibility. “Weissner,” Ploog writes, “had hung out in jazz joints in Heidelberg frequented by GIs, and he’d spent considerable time in the States. He was the man to get the rude and loose intonation across. Where the Behrens [previous translators of Naked Lunch] had to say ‘opiates,’ Weissner was able to go straight to ‘junk.'” In his Memoirs of a Bastard Angel, old friend Harold Norse pronounced Weissner “the best German translator of the Beats and raw-meat writers.”

Although the renown from his translations enabled Weissner to write for mainstream magazines such as Rolling Stone, literary experimentation never ceased to form an important part of his repertoire. From 1973 to 1986 he co-edited, with Ploog and Jörg Fauser, the little mag Gasolin 23, which published his own work alongside that of Burroughs, Bukowski, et al. In more recent times, Weissner has been working on two novels and further experiments. The latest of these is Death in Paris.

This new text clearly references its namesake, Death in Venice: Thomas Mann’s narrative moves from Munich to Venice, Weissner’s non-narrative from San Francisco to Paris; the cholera plague in Venice becomes a spree of random violence in Paris; Mann’s protagonist, a world-weary writer, becomes Weissner’s cynical but sharp-eyed littérateur; etc. Each text is the story of a man, a city, and a love interest — except that Mann’s hero obsesses over a young man, while Weissner’s anti-hero prefers death, particularly its homicidal forms.

Death in Paris, however, is no simple rewrite of Death in Venice. Weissner does not do the Hollywood remake, “updating the story for today” or some such. What he does to Death in Venice is what a terrorist does when tossing an improvised explosive device into a crowd. He sews chaos, inflicts violence, and, most important, makes a statement. In that sense, the m.o. is creation through destruction — except that to say as much of Death in Paris runs the risk of diminishing the text’s real creativity, its black humor, wisdom, and vitality. Is there a bad metaphor in the thing? I read it (for the sixth time now) and think to myself, “How can a foreigner write like this in English?” Or more simply: how can anyone write like this? Jesus.

RealityStudio is truly thrilled to be able to present this previously unpublished text by Carl Weissner. Death in Paris is available in its entirety to read online or to print. Doubtless it will help to put La Louisiane, the Paris hotel which figures so prominently in the text and where much of it may have been written, alongside the Villa Seurat and so many other places on the literary map of Paris.

Death in Paris

Death in Paris

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An Archive Celebrating Carl Weissner’s Publications in the Avant-Garde

• In Memory of Carl Weissner
• The Braille Film (34 mb pdf)
• Carl Weissner in Books and Pamphlets
• Klactoveedsedsteen
• Gasolin 23
• UFO
• Weissneriana
• Weissner in My Own Mag
• Correspondence
• Dripping Wet in Reykjavik: An Airmail Interview with Carl Weissner, by Victor Bockris
• Translations
• A Bibliography of Carl Weissner Translations by Matthias Penzel
• Nothing Here Now But the Lost Recordings by Ed Robinson
• Audio: The Poetry of Equal Time
• Jan Herman & Carl Weissner, Mayor Daley: “i press my lips / to my toetips” (1971)
• Jan Herman & Carl Weissner, President Nixon: “that is the way to make progress” (1971)