Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Several months ago I received an email from an editor at Black Dog Publishing which operates out of London. Black Dog prints books on a variety of topics such as photography, architecture, film and design. They did a book on Independent record shops…
Tag: European Avant Garde
Yay!: A Moving Times Supplement (An In-Depth Examination of My Own Mag)
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In 1963, the Times Literary Supplement announced the arrival of Dead Fingers Talk with a cry of Ugh! Later that year, Burroughs received the first issue of My Own Mag and responded with a resounding, Yes! In Jeff Nuttall, Burroughs found a fellow…
Jonathan Williams, William Burroughs, and England
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting One of my mantras in book collecting is focus, focus, focus. The problem with living by this credo is that it leaves so many great books out of your collection. There are two books that have obsessed me like the white whale haunted…
1962 International Writers’ Conference
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The Third Mind images from Paris are not the only goodies we have received from our readers. Chris Hughes, a reader from Scotland, forwarded me some scans from a program for the Edinburgh Festival of 1962. 2007 marked the 45th anniversary of the…
New Departures
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Like many bookish teenagers, I was an editor of my high school literary magazine. It was called Des Pensees and as the name suggests it was a formal, rather stuffy affair. A poem had to look and to act like a poem. Established…
Eric Mottram and The Algebra of Need
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In 1992, I attended King’s College in London for two terms as part of a study abroad program. I knew next to nothing about the school, and if I remember correctly, I chose it, because it was located on the Strand and seemed…
Islwyn Watkins Interviewed by David Moore
Recollections of Jeff Nuttall, Bob Cobbing, My Own Mag, Writers’ Forum, Group H & STigma in early 1960s London by David Moore DM: Please would you tell us a little about yourself and how you came to meet Jeff Nuttall? IW: I was born and educated in south Wales and, in September 1959, moved to…
Recollections of Jeff Nuttall and the Production of My Own Mag
by Michael Bartholomew I met Jeff Nuttall round about 1960, when I was 18 years old. I lived in north London and was a member of the Barnet branch of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Jeff was also a member. He was maybe 10 years older than I was. He had a wife and family,…
The My Own Mag Community
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Little magazines are expressions of and monuments to a thriving creative community. Looking through the pages of My Own Mag brings this fact home. The magazine expanded in size and scope from its first four-page issue into a newsletter for an international avant-garde….
John Calder and William S. Burroughs
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Much has been made of the imperiled state of the print publishing industry. Just this weekend I read a review of a large format art book entitled The Last Magazine. Everywhere you look there is an article on the future of the ebook…
The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In late 1963, Jeff Nuttall sent William Burroughs the first issue of My Own Mag. In an editorial note on the cover, Nuttall writes tongue firmly in cheek, My Own Mag “will appear every now and then… will be devoted to creations of…
My Own Mag: A Bibliographic Nightmare
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting My Own Mag is a bibliographic nightmare. There is no general consensus on the correct order of the first eight issues of the seventeen issue run. This might be by design. Nuttall, like Ed Sanders, possessed a devilish air and a flair for…
My Own Mag
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In the introduction to the bibliography of his work prepared by Joe Maynard and Barry Miles, William Burroughs spoke about how the “little mags” were a lifeline for him at a time when he had very few hopes for publishing his work. One…
Locus Solus
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The history and contents of the magazine Locus Solus provide insight into the type of progressive poetry circles and ideas Burroughs started tapping into with his small scale, textual cut-up works of the early 1960s. A testament to refined taste, Locus Solus was…
Burroughs in Germany and Belgium
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Living in the Beat Hotel in Paris and traveling around Europe in the 1960s, William Burroughs possessed the opportunity to rub elbows with several avant-garde circles active at the time. Previously, I wrote about Burroughs and his relationship with Scottish literary magazines. In…
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…