Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The good doctor has done it again. As a follow-up to Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment, Dr. Andrew J. Lees recently submitted an article entitled “William Burroughs: Sailor of the Soul” to the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs. The brief abstract…
Tag: Drugs
William Burroughs and David Solomon
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I have a theory that if you dig deep enough, take the time to ask the right questions, and do diligent research, everybody is interesting. It is my spin on Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes. I guess I see the silver lining in the…
William Burroughs and the History of Heroin
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I have had to learn the simplest things last. Which made for difficulties. — Charles Olson I stood estranged from that which was Most familiar — Charles Olson Olson’s Maximus, To Himself could very well be my favorite poem. I find myself returning…
Timothy Leary on William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Bou Saada
Timothy Leary interview, Pataphysics, October 17, 1989 From INTO-GAL, 2006, Editors: Leo Edelstein, Judith Elliston We heard this tape of you with William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Robert Anton Wilson. Oh yeah, that was a recording from the Nova Convention. I’m a great admirer of William Burroughs, who’s one of my real heroes. When did…
Apomorphine and Naked Lunch
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I found this vaccine at the end of the junk line. I lived in one room in the Native Quarter of Tangier. I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes except to stick a needle every hour in…
Speed, Apomorphine, Mimeo, and the Cut-Up
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting There are times in your reading life when you dabble in a book, dip into it periodically, put it down, and come back to it. Your experience with the book is leisurely, casual. You are chipping. The book does not have a strong…
Kulchur 3
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I have not read all twenty issues of Kulchur cover to cover, but of the issues I have sampled, I enjoy Kulchur 3 the most. Issue 3 presents Kulchur at its most Beat. William Burroughs (“In Search of Yage”), Jack Kerouac (“Dave”), Gary…
Yage Redux
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The first edition of Yage Letters published by City Lights in 1963 is a slim and seemingly unassuming book. The cover has become famous and the book sells well, but it remains largely undiscovered territory to scholars. Only 18,000 words long and struggling…
Published High and Low: Men’s Magazines, the Pulps and Academic Journals
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting According to Beat legend, the shooting death of Joan Vollmer gave birth to William Burroughs, the writer. Grief and guilt forced Burroughs to the typewriter. The work of recent Beat historians, like Oliver Harris’ William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination, separates the…
Interpol
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting By the late 1950s, literary magazines were much on Burroughs’ mind. He was no longer satisfied with publishing his numerous routines in letters to Allen Ginsberg. Naked Lunch began to take shape as a novel and Burroughs sought a larger audience. Mainstream publishing…
Oliver Harris on Yage
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I received an email from Oliver Harris, author of William Burroughs: The Secret of Fascination and editor of The Letters of William Burroughs. According to his research and the research of others, much of the information on my web site concerning photographs of…
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…
Burroughs and Scotland
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting A recent post mentioned the Edinburgh Beat scene. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, William Burroughs appeared in several Scottish literary magazines and made a memorable appearance at the International Writers Conference in Edinburgh. I have often wondered why Scotland was a…
APO-33
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I spent some more time on Dave Moore’s page of Burroughs covers the other night. An interesting piece could be written on the cover art and external packaging of Burroughs’ work over the past five decades similar to the essays that have been…
Yage Letters Redux
RealityStudio Reviews the New Edition Prepared by Oliver Harris It is an acknowledged paradox at the heart of William S. Burroughs’ work that his greatest books called into question how much they were even his. Whereas Samuel Beckett tried to eviscerate the novel from within — to “naughten” it, to borrow a term from Heidegger…