Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting A couple weeks ago the Wizard behind the curtain at RealityStudio sent me an email alerting me to a proof copy of Dead Fingers Talk offered by Ken Lopez. As Lopez’s catalog description makes clear, this is a highly desirable book. Try finding…
Tag: Collecting
Buyer Beware
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Desperate times call for desperate measures. Of course, the troubled times refer to the current economy. Its effects are rippling throughout the rare book trade. Booksellers are putting on a brave face, but sometimes the mask slips. Joe McCann in the latest issue…
Megalisters
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Recently, I received an email attaching an article on megalisters from the Sunday New York Times. For those who do not know, megalisters are database managers masquerading as booksellers. They post thousands of books on internet sites like Amazon and Abebooks selling books…
New England Bookstores and the Hermitage Beacon
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Fourteen days, 2500 miles, 7 states, and a slew of bookstores. Vacation is over. The car is shot; the budget was blown; and the bookshelves cannot handle all the new books. In the last few years, it seems that everywhere I turn I…
Interview with Ted Dunn
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Ted Dunn collects strictly Beat Generation material, focusing primarily now on William Everson / Brother Antoninus though some may not consider him a member of that elite grouping that included Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso etc., though he should be regarded as a forerunner…
Interview with Peter Leeson
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Peter T. Leeson is BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at George Mason University. His current research explores the economics of pirates and has been covered by the New Yorker, Freakonomics.com, the Financial Times, and the Boston Globe. His book, The Invisible…
Interview with Brian Cassidy
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Brian Cassidy runs a rare and antiquarian bookshop in Monterey, California. He will be familiar to readers of RealityStudio for his input on Early Photos and Collages by Burroughs, a Rare Burroughs Letter, and other articles in the Bibliographic Bunker. These interviews on…
The Burroughs Market in a Down Economy
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting A handwritten Burroughs letter turned up on eBay a few weeks ago. If I remember correctly the letter was from the mid-1990s and in it, Burroughs expresses his thanks for a $5000 loan. I traded a few emails with Burroughs fans who were…
John Ciardi: From Doodle Soup to Naked Lunch and Back Again
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Read a lot of William Burroughs and soon enough you’ll find evidence of him everywhere. A sense of paranoia develops where everything becomes touched with the Burroughsian. Couple this fascination with a case of bibliomania and it can seem that Burroughs lurks on…
Brian Cassidy on Early Photos and Collages by Burroughs
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting To be blunt, the New York Antiquarian Book Fair is the shit. Prior to the fair, I went to the Morgan Library to see their Gutenberg Bible and soak in the atmosphere of J.P. Morgan’s study. The display at the New York show…
Beats at Auction, April 2008
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Looking over eBay results in the last few weeks and reviewing the prices realized for the latest PBA Galleries Beat sale, I thought of two important little mags from the post-WWII era: Judson Crews’ Suck Egg Mule and Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. Yes…
Washington DC Book Fair 2008
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Signs, signs, everywhere there are signs. On Friday March 7th, I saw a robin on the way to the train. The Orioles had a game against the Red Sox in Fort Lauderdale later that day. I can feel it coming in the air…
Beat Books Catalogue 48
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The network re-broadcast of Forrest Gump coincided with the arrival of the latest BeatBooks catalog. Gump hit the nail on the head when he said, “Rare book catalogues are like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.” Or something…
The Comstock Collection
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Call it a lost weekend (with a few great finds). For the past four years, Max’s of Broadway’s three day Belgian Beer festival has been held on President’s Day Weekend. This is must-see TV for beer lovers, and they come from all over…
The Laws of Internet Collecting
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The publication of Everything Lost and Oliver Harris’ essay on this notebook highlight the importance of journals, notebooks, diaries, letters and scrapbooks for Burroughs. I dimly recall hearing work of this kind described as writing with your left hand, implying that it is…
Interview with Book Dealer Dan Gregory (Part 2)
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Be sure to read part 1 of Jed Birmingham’s interview with Dan Gregory of Between the Covers. You say there is a dearth of originality and inspiration in the rare book trade. Who are the dealers and web sites whose work you admire…
The David Oakey Collection of Gary Snyder
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Whenever I see a notice for an auction of an individual’s collection, my first thoughts are not so much about the books in the collection, but about the motivation for the sale. Why is he/she selling their books? I must admit the scenarios…
Interview with Book Dealer Dan Gregory
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In my recent piece on the Baltimore Bookfair and elsewhere, I sang the praises of the Between the Covers web site. It is one of the most innovative on the Web. With his presence at all the major book fairs, in several bookseller…
The Baltimore Antique Show
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Labor Day Weekend in Baltimore. For those who decide to stay in town, and there are not many, this weekend is a time for sitting on a rooftop deck (the yuppie version of the good old stoop) and cracking Natty Bohs while deciding…
Rue Cottage Books
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting While in Blue Hill, Maine, I received a call from Alan at Own Guru Records. He had a promo copy of Allen Ginsberg’s Lion for Real. By the time I called back, he had sold it to a particularly attractive French tourist. Vous…
A Trip to Charles Olson’s Gloucester
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting It is said that a long journey begins with a single step. And sometimes one heads on the road in order to sit at the feet of a master. Seemingly, hundreds of Burroughs fans made the trek to Lawrence to catch a glimpse…
Simon Finch and a High-Priced Naked Lunch
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting A few weeks ago, I wrote about Brian Cassidy, a bookseller just beginning his journey in the book world, and about his offering of a high-end Burroughs letter. At the other end of the spectrum is British bookseller Simon Finch who stands at…
The Groff Auction of Bukowski and the Ronan Sale of Beat Literature
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting This piece may be old news as the Groff Auction of Bukowski and the Ronan Sale of Beat Literature took place roughly a month ago, but a look at the financial pages highlights that auctions and collectibles are very much a breaking story….
Brian Cassidy Bookseller and a Rare Burroughs Letter
You know it is a good day when you get your mail and there are no bills or letters from the IRS, but there is a rare book catalog to leaf through that night. Brian Cassidy, a rare bookseller based in Monterey, issued his first catalog this month. Monterey and the Big Sur area have…
New York Book Fair (2007)
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The April / May issue of Rare Book Review features an article assessing the role of the internet in rare book dealing. Rare Book Review along with Fine Books and Collections is a fantastic resource for bibliophiles and a fun read. Five years…
Interview with Gary Lee-Nova
Reading Burroughs Since the Beginning Gary Lee-Nova is a Vancouver-based artist known especially as an important figure in the “West Coast Scene” of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Sometimes working under the pseudonym Art Rat, Lee-Nova has produced a sizable body of work ranging from film to painting, from cut-ups to mail art. Alongside…
Printing Techniques: Offset
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Before the internet and web publishing, offset printing was the major innovation of 20th Century printing. I view offset printing as commercial printing, i.e. large volume printing. (See Wikipedia.) I think of glossy, large distribution magazines, like Life or Time, or novels with…
Printing Techniques: Mimeo
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting If the letterpress represents the magazine or book as high art, the mimeograph machine epitomizes lo-fi production. The master of the mimeograph machine must first of all be a master of the stencil. The stencil is a floppy wax sheet backed by carbon…
Printing Techniques: Letterpress
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I have said it before, but I must once again recommend Steven Clay and Rodney Phillips’ A Secret Location on the Lower East Side. I reread it and it is as informative and fascinating as ever. This book, more than any other, shaped…
Burroughs Ephemera 1: Olympia Press Catalog
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. It seems everything I come across of late ties into the saga I’ve been documenting in the Bunker. The terminology involved in book collecting can be quite slippery. Even terms as basic as first edition…
Yugen
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Several years ago, I wrote on the potential joys of collecting Charles Olson. Olson loomed as a literal giant over the small press and little magazine scene from 1950 until his death in 1970. As a result, his work appeared in some of…
Velvet Underground Acetate
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting On the first Saturday in December, I rang the buzzer at Own Guru Records in Fells Point hoping to find some Beat vinyl. Alan, the owner, directed me to a copy of Listening to Richard Brautigan issued on the Harvest label in 1970….
Time
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Recently, I received an email asking me about a copy of Time, a limited edition collage piece published by C Press. According to its copyright page, Time was published in 1965 in 1000 copies. 886 copies comprised the trade edition. These copies were…
Collecting the Olympia Edition of Naked Lunch
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Also see Jed Birmingham’s “Top 23 Burroughs Collectibles #13: The Olympia Naked Lunch” and RealityStudio’s “Secrets of the Olympia Press Naked Lunch.” I received an email asking about advice in purchasing an Olympia Press Naked Lunch. It is pretty safe to say that…
Regrets
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Regrets. Every book collector has a few. Sometimes it is buyer’s remorse: a drop in the stomach when you realize you paid too much for an item. Often, the collector feels the persistent burn of desire when a highly prized book is passed…
Nothing Here Now But the Recordings
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting A true Burroughs vinyl rarity just sold on eBay: a signed copy of Nothing Here Now But the Recordings issued by Industrial Records ($330/9 bids). This gets into territory I know little about, but it seems to me that signed Burroughs LPs are…
Burroughs Manuscripts at Auction
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The sale of Robert and Donna Jackson’s extensive William Burroughs collection to the New York Public Library made national headlines. The Edwin Blair Beat Literature Sale at Pacific Book Auction features some incredible items, including William Burroughs manuscript material. A recent catalog from…
Fuck You Press Archive
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting It was a good day when I finally got my hands on Fuck You Vol. 5/No. 7. Quite possibly the coolest, hippest magazine of the mimeo revolution (Fuck You epitomized the revolution as demonstrated by naming the Steve Clay book “A Secret Location…
Floating Bear 24
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Book collecting is full of regrets and missed opportunities as much as exciting acquisitions. Previously, I wrote about some of my regrets: the biggest involving a complete set of Black Mountain Review. I have also had my share of books and magazines slip…
The Edwin Blair Auction of Beat Literature
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The Edwin Blair sale is over and the results highlight issues raised in posts to RealityStudio. Manuscripts, the Olympia Press Naked Lunch, vinyl and even the Olympia Ticket That Exploded are all headline stories in the Burroughs items up for sale. Without a…
Double Fold
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Thank goodness!!! I just finished Nicholson Baker’s book Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper and guess what: paper, even the most acidified paper, is much more durable than I was led to imagine. Some of the jewels of a William Burroughs…
The Digit Junkie
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The Burroughs collector finds himself faced with several stoppers in his quest for a complete collection. Some items while not particularly rare are prohibitively expensive such as the Ace Junkie, Olympia Press Naked Lunch or the many beautifully constructed limited editions of Burroughs’…
Dead Fingers Talk
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting There were a couple of interesting signed books for sale on eBay last week that gets to the heart of what makes a particular book collectible. A 1963 John Calder Dead Fingers Talk sold for about $160 (ebay, PDF) and a Grove Ticket…
William Burroughs on Cassette
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting For the past several months, pieces from the estate of Allen DeLoach have been auctioned on eBay. These items, including photographs, small press chapbooks, little magazines, and manuscripts, chronicle the counterculture literary scene of the 1960s and 1970s. In my opinion, they rank…
William S. Burroughs’ Cabin
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting As mentioned in the forum, a cabin owned by William Burroughs ten minutes outside of Lawrence Kansas is on eBay for $159,950. (PDF) The property is on Lone Star Lake and includes 4500 square feet of land. Apparently Burroughs mentioned the cabin in…
Burroughs in 1981
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The year 1981 was a watershed period for William Burroughs. In his personal life, he experienced much heartbreak and turmoil. In March, his long-suffering son (William Jr.) died of liver failure, after years of drug and alcohol abuse. Burroughs felt tremendous guilt about…
Broadsides
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Recently, I got into a conversation with a book collector friend of mine about collectible broadsides. This discussion forced me to realize that I did not really know what a broadside technically was. I knew one when I saw one. In bibliographic terms,…
Book Catalogues Today
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Beat Books out of London just issued its latest rare book catalog. The catalogue has a rock and roll feel and features items by and relating to the MC5, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, the Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol, Ed Sanders and…
Burroughs Bibliographies
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting With all the discussion concerning bibliographies, I should mention a few other print bibliographies besides Maynard & Miles and Shoaf’s Checklist. In 1975, Michael B. Goodman published William S. Burroughs: An Annotated Bibliography of his Works and Criticism. This guide usually gets lost…
Beatnik Vinyl at Auction
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting EBay is a fantastic place isn’t it, if place is the right word for it. For example, the vinyl fanatic or budding fanatic can supplement or create an entire collection of some note in just a click of the mouse. Just Kids Nostalgia…
Beat Vinyl
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Did you know that Neil Young and Rick James were in a band together? I had no idea. I stopped in a local record store to take a look at a beautiful copy of Timothy Leary’s first LP, The Psychedelic Experience, on Broadside,…