Floating Bear – RealityStudio

Barely Afloat in New York: Burroughs, di Prima and Floating Bear 31

RealityStudio — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 01:07:27 +0000

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg at Grove Press book launch party, 22 December 1964 (photograph by Fred McDarrah)

When William Burroughs arrived in New York Harbor on the Independence on December 8, 1964, with seven suitcases full of books and manuscripts, customs officials made a big production about treating him like a “gentleman.” After all, the captain of the Independence honored Burroughs with a seat at his table as a celebrated writer. Yet after detaining him for over three hours, customs merely made a fuss about Burroughs’ porn mags and notebooks and treated him like a dirty old man. As the officers said to the waiting Brion Gysin, “Are you a friend of that man in there? He sure writes some filthy stuff.”

That filthy stuff also made Burroughs a wanted man in the Lower East Side. Burroughs in all probability met with Ted Berrigan on December 11, just days after his arrival. Burroughs inscribed a copy of The Ticket That Exploded to Berrigan, which documented Burroughs’ arrival in New York more than any visa stamp by a customs official. Burroughs was treated by Berrigan and others as a returning hero. I envision the ursine Berrigan giving Burroughs a bear hug as he instructed Burroughs in all the secret handshakes of the New York City underground. With a presence in mimeo mags like C: A Journal of Poetry, Fuck You, a magazine of the arts, Lines, and Mother; publication by mimeo presses, like C Press and Fuck You Press; parties galore rubbing shoulders with the likes of Andy Warhol; and public appearances at Off-Off Broadway theatres, New York scene warmly embraced Burroughs throughout 1965.

Yet nothing announced not just Burroughs’ arrival in New York City but the possibility that maybe, just maybe this writer of exile finally had found a home in his homeland more than the fact that a copy of Floating Bear #31 found its way into his mailbox at his loft residence at 210 Centre Street. This issue features the work of John Wieners and Robert Duncan. I can think of few writers Burroughs had less in common with and less of a taste for than Robert Duncan. Clearly Burroughs received an issue as a member of the literary community not because of the magazine’s contents. It was a gesture of inclusion on Diane di Prima‘s part. A housewarming gift of sorts. Yet Burroughs was not laying roots. New York City served as merely one more stop in a long line of cultural layovers. Little did underground New York know that by June 1965 Burroughs was already planning his escape not just from the city but also from the mimeo culture based out of the Secret Location on the Lower East Side.

Burroughs is a tough man to categorize and define. A tough man to pin down. One way to do so is to track all his movements. Biographers, like Ted Morgan and Barry Miles, traced Burroughs’ geographic location as a means to provide structure to his sprawling biography. So the trajectory of the biographical narrative arc starts in St. Louis and proceeds to touch down in New York, Mexico, Tangier, Paris, London and New York before ending in Lawrence, Kansas. Another means to ground Burroughs’ biography is to dig into his bibliography. Morgan and Miles incorporate this method as well reading Burroughs’ life by reading “Autobiography of a Wolf” on through to “Twilight’s Last Gleaming,” Junkie, Naked Lunch, the cut-up trilogy, and ending with Burroughs’ arrival at The Western Lands.

Floating Bear with its mailing labels joins the geographic and bibliographic in a real material way. What does Issue #31, as sent to Burroughs at 210 Centre Street, tell us about where Burroughs was at not just in New York City, but in terms of his biography and bibliography? Centre Street is not far from New York’s financial district and in 1965 finances were much on Burroughs’ mind. The Beatles’ “Money” provides a soundtrack for Burroughs’ time in New York: “Now give me money (that’s what I want).” In January 1965, Burroughs’ father passed away. The time had come for Burroughs to finally grow up and depend on himself for his livelihood. Earlier the previous year, Burroughs received his first substantial check for the Olympia edition of Naked Lunch. Yet in the Winter and Spring of 1965 more money meant more problems as he attempted to get further royalties for Naked Lunch from Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press. The amount was sizable: $5000. For the first time in Burroughs’ life, financial security seemed within reach as a result of his writing. Burroughs could hear the ringing of the cash register but had difficulty getting his hands in the till.

On the heels of Naked Lunch‘s notoriety, if there was not exactly solid financial success, then instead hopes remained high for the Grove edition of Nova Express paying out in the immediate future. Burroughs envisioned it as a bestseller and Grove issued a 10,000 copy first printing in hardcover on November 9, 1964, followed by a further 15,000 copies a year later in softcover. Besides editions of Junkie, these were some of the largest print runs in Burroughs’ bibliography up until that point. Simultaneously, Burroughs felt he could capitalize on his cachet in the art world by issuing a deluxe edition of The Third Mind and a limited edition of Time, his scrapbook publication that detourned the Time-Life empire and was published in an edition of 1,000 for the collectors’ market by Berrigan’s C Press. In addition, the Call Me Burroughs LP provided the opportunity to expand the reach of Burroughs’ voice.

Yet despite Burroughs’ seeming immersion in the New York scene, he remained a loner in the Big Apple, spending time in his loft with his suitcases of books and writing. “As for myself life here is mostly work and very little else. However the work is productive from all points of view” (Letter to Alan Ansen, August 12, 1965). Burroughs missed Ian Sommerville, who was unable to obtain a visa to accompany Burroughs to New York. By July, Burroughs wrote Sommerville about his imminent return (“I have missed you a great deal. Nothing here really, just stay in my loft and work.”) and by early September Burroughs flew the coop. Burroughs’ stay in New York lasted a brief nine months. In that time, Burroughs was definitely “productive from all points of view,” including a flurry of underground publications, which in the case of Time, remain some of his most experimental work in print. Ultimately they would not be financially rewarding. Like 210 Centre Street, Burroughs was close to the money but remained firmly in the Bowery. He was on the borderline of the commercial and the counterculture. Burroughs’ other New York City residences suggest the same. The Chelsea Hotel served as the mainstream culture’s image of the primary address for the commercialization of the counterculture. The temporary home of rock stars like Dylan and Janis Joplin, the tourist trap nature of the Chelsea became even more apparent after Warhol’s Chelsea Girls in 1966 made the hotel a household name. Burroughs also received mail at 80 University Place, the location of Grove Press. Grove was ground zero for the business of the counterculture and at no time was Grove and publisher Barney Rosset more revolutionary and more financially successful than in the mid-1960s.

As 1965 wound to a close, a full-blown financial windfall failed to materialize for Burroughs. The Third Mind project collapsed due to lack of financing. In addition, Nova Express became mired in a series of poor reviews:

Reviews of Nova Express almost all bad and stupid beyond anything. I just skimmed through In Cold Blood, my God what a bore! I who can read science fiction just couldn’t make it, the dull victims with their church supper and 4H clubs and the even duller killers, my God who can it be a best seller? I tell you someone presses a button somewhere and people buy any tripe at all. I’d sooner read the Foxes of Harrows or Gone With The Wind.

As a result, Burroughs became interested in pressing the public’s buttons. Throughout 1966, Burroughs re-worked The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded in an attempt to make them more reader friendly. After years of experimenting in the mimeo press for his own enjoyment and the pleasure of a select group of writers and artists, Burroughs returned to narrative and attempted to reach the general reader.

“You’re lovin’ gives me a thrill / But your lovin’ don’t pay my bills.” The mimeo press paid Burroughs respect, but not in the paper that mattered with creditors. Where was Burroughs to turn? The underground newspaper provided one viable outlet as did the adult men’s magazine. Burroughs arrived in New York with a spec assignment for Playboy, which eventually fell through, but starting in 1966, a shift began in earnest whereby Burroughs would become ubiquitous in both all the while distancing himself from full-scale participation in the Mimeo Revolution. By 1968, Burroughs would appear in Esquire, Mayfair, Cavalier, Georgia Straight, Rat, and The Village Voice at the same time the revisions of The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded appeared in bookstores.

By summer 1965, when he received Floating Bear #31, Burroughs’ love affair with mimeo publications, so hot and heavy up until that point, was cooling. It was not just a question of money. Mimeo’s technological limitations — which made the complex interaction of text and image, such as reproduction of scrapbooks, impossible — forced Burroughs to look elsewhere for publication. Burroughs’ relationship with Jeff Nuttall and My Own Mag in late 1965 highlights this transition. Paradoxically the most famous, most collectible issue of My Own Mag, “The Dutch Schultz Special,” published in August 1965, signaled the beginning of the end of the Nuttall / Burroughs partnership. In September 1965 Burroughs arrived at Gatwick Airport for what would prove to be an extended stay in London. The close proximity to Nuttall did not increase their collaboration. Instead the magazine began to appear less frequently and the cohesiveness of the magazine began to unravel. The interplay between Burroughs and Nuttall that made the magazine so special felt played out. Burroughs did not appear in the last two issues and only briefly in issues 14 and 15.

Issue 13, often viewed as the highpoint of My Own Mag, draws attention to the limitations of mimeo. One of the most noticeable aspects of the issue is its size. It is the only one of 17 issues not foolscap. Why is this so? Nuttall was a very scrupulous editor, but he was confined by the foolscap size of the duplicator. He re-typed every article with the most scrupulous care, but it had to fit within the format. So if you compare what’s in Issue 17 — the last — with the Claude Pélieu and Carl Weissner manuscripts this becomes clear. The manuscripts were extended out to foolscap by attaching extra paper to the bottom. In Issue 13, the pages besides The Dead Star are probably cut-down foolscap paper. This means that Nuttall designed the whole issue to Burroughs’ size. The reason The Dead Star is a different size was because Nuttall did not create it himself using the mimeograph. The piece was probably published professionally using offset lithography.

Why offset? The answer is simple. Mimeo could not fully capture the visual complexity of Burroughs’ scrapbooks. Small touches like the grid of the balance sheets on which Burroughs composed The Dead Star were difficult to reproduce on mimeo. Nuttall used every technique at his disposal to comment on and reproduce the scrapbook and the ideology behind it. The meticulous reproduction of a scrapbook page in issue 11 is but one example of this. But in the introductory note to that cut-up, Burroughs demanded that Nuttall date his issues. Clearly, Burroughs was bothered with the lack of order in Nuttall’s editing even though Nuttall stressed clarity in his use of mimeo.

The Fuck You Press edition of APO-33, also printed in 1965, had the same technical problems. From the Maynard & Miles bibliography:

According to Miles a print run of 5,000 copies was projected for this edition. Since mimeo would not print the full width of WSB’s columns before it faded, the columns were typed down the page and a new column was started at the top again, which resulted in the columns changing a bit from WSB’s manuscript. Also the illustrations, done on electrostencil, did not turn out too well and were glued to the finished text at places different from where they were in the original manuscript (one was glued over some text). A copy was sent to WSB and he thought it was a “pasteup dummy,” which disappointed Sanders. Burroughs expressed his nervousness about the column changes, which further disappointed Sanders, making him so embarrassed that he abandoned the project; but the ones he had already collated (Sanders said “maybe as many as ten or twenty”) had been distributed beforehand.

What is crucial and important about the Fuck You APO-33 is that Burroughs rejected it. Miles writes in Call Me Burroughs, “Ed had also failed to instruct Elaine [Solow, a volunteer typist,] to keep the columns exactly as Burroughs had composed them, and they got changed during her typing because she was using a different typewriter with a different face.” Even in mimeo productions, Burroughs carefully considered typography, layout, and design. The rejection proves that Burroughs had very specific ideas about how his work should be presented. Burroughs deeply cared about his public appearance, in dress as well as in publishing. Quite simply, mimeography made Burroughs and his cut-up experiments look bad.

Burroughs realized that his scrapbook experiments needed the resources of a larger, more connected publisher. Throughout his stay in NYC in 1965, Burroughs with Brion Gysin worked on the manuscript for The Third Mind. As Burroughs and Gysin envisioned it this treatise / art book on the cut-up method would test the boundaries of traditional publishing in much the same way Nuttall challenged and extended mimeo. Publication stalled as the book proved too expensive. In addition the book proved too difficult for Grove even in a high-end format. The Third Mind was finally published in 1978, but it was a shadow of the project envisioned in the 1960s. By the end of 1965, Burroughs was at a dead end with the mimeo press.

Di Prima was undergoing a shift as well. Around the time Issue #31 was published, she purchased an offset press and concentrated her energies on Poets’ Press. Poets’ Press in all probability published the program for Burroughs’ St. Valentine’s Day Reading in 1965. The silver specks on that publication are like a fingerprint for that press. Despite the fact that the program was mimeo’d, di Prima was moving away from the simple style of Floating Bear. From her memoir: “Owning a press and printing books seemed a natural next step after mimeographing The Floating Bear for so many years, and most recently turning out programs and flyers for the theatre on the Gestetner. It became a kind of obsession. I began to read the ads in the newspapers, and after a while I found myself going out and looking at actual presses.” Her husband, Alan Marlowe, edited Issue #31, and increasingly di Prima relied on guest editors to produce the content for the Bear. Di Prima purchased a Fairchild-Davidson and began publishing chapbooks. Around this time di Prima left Manhattan for upstate New York and a stay with Timothy Leary. By Issue #31, a chapter was closing in di Prima’s life. Her memoir on the New York years ends shortly after the purchase of the offset press and the visit to Leary’s compound. For both her and Burroughs, it was time to move on.

Ted Morgan describes the years from 1962-1965 in his biography as “Burroughs at Large.” Given the frenetic travelling Burroughs did during these years, it would seem impossible to pin him to one single location but Burroughs as his bibliography attests was residing at the Secret Location on the Lower East Side, i.e., within the publications of the Mimeo Revolution. Issue 31 of Floating Bear captures a moment in time when Burroughs was paradoxically most at home within mimeo’s pages and most eager to move on. Hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye. Hello, goodbye. Hello, goodbye. / Why, why, why, why, why, why, do you/Say “Goodbye, goodbye, bye, bye” / Oh no.

Written by Jed Birmingham and published by RealityStudio on 20 November 2016.

Gilbert Sorrentino on William S. Burroughs

RealityStudio — Sat, 12 May 2012 20:57:23 +0000

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Issue 30 of Floating Bear (November 1964) contains a text by Gilbert Sorrentino which gives his impressions of the prose writers of the day. Here are a transcription of his comments on William Burroughs and a scan of his entire article.

Sorrentino on Burroughs

Burroughs: Clue here is that he is not a writer, he merely writes. Doesn’t care about the overall pattern, if he enjoys writing it, in it goes, Naked Lunch the most dazzling prose of this decade (and last), but not great writing. Thinking shallow and amoral, magnificent construction of comic characters, greatest “funny names” since Rabelais. Style is reminiscent of Nashe, though not consistent, I mean, he can bore the hell out of you. Power is often misdirected, because his greatest hatred, his full venom falls usually into scenes in which the characters are not people. Irritates because he has the arrogance of the addict, viz, “you poor dopes”. Best things in Lunch are Clem and Jody, episode about Bradley the Buyer, the fantasy land near the and of book. If he could cut out and edit, in terms of the work, and not what he likes, he’d be a good writer. Latest “cutup” method merely amusing, old stuff from the transition days, a bore and a fake. In the current Futurism show in town, we find the same sort of thing done as collage, ca. 1915. It didn’t work then, either.

Gilbert Sorrentino, “Prose of Our Times”

Gilbert Sorrentino
Prose of Our Times
Article from Floating Bear 30

Written by Jed Birmingham and published by RealityStudio on 12 May 2012.

Two Drive Suites

RealityStudio — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 14:07:18 +0000

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

“Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favorite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in color. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain.

Bear with me in this long-winded and fragrant metaphor; for you will find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wine-glass have a parallel in typography.”

— Beatrice Warde, “The Crystal Goblet, or Printing Should Be Invisible”

In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy and his father court death and disaster in pursuit of the Holy Grail. At the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, with his father’s life hanging in the balance, Jones stands before a collection of chalices and goblets, one of which is the Grail. The corrupt Dr. Elsa Schneider, blinded by the grandeur and glory of her vision of the Son of God, chooses the most ostentatious of cups. Walter Donovan drinks deeply and crumbles into dust. “He chose poorly.” Jones knows better. Remembering that our Lord and Savior was a mere carpenter, Professor Jones chooses the humblest of cups. This holy water heals the gaping gunshot wound of his father, saving his life. Sometimes the greatest treasure is the simplest of objects. The last Knight blesses Indy’s decision: “You have chosen . . . wisely.”

Thus was my dilemma upon receiving Andrew Sclanders’ latest BeatBooks catalog: Number 59. For Burroughs fans there was a copy of Black Mountain Review #7 or the English Bookshop pressing of Call Me Burroughs. Copy after copy of drug pulps flew from the catalog. Last time I checked the Ace Junkie remains available. In a sense, the Ace Junkie is yet another jeweled goblet, a false treasure. It is expensive at 425 pounds, and with over 100,000 copies printed, most treasure seekers have already snatched up their copies.

I found my Grail in the “Beats, Outsiders, and Other Adventures in Poetry” Section. It was the humblest of entries: “Carrington, Harold. Drive Suite. London: Paul Breman, 1972. First edition, 8vo. Wrps., 12pp. Wrappers slightly rubbed. Very Good. 15 Pounds.” Carrington was born in Atlantic City in 1938. From the age of 16, he served time in various jails and institutions. While in jail, he picked up the writer’s bug to go along with his drug and alcohol habit. On July 27, 1964, Carrington was released from prison. He died three days later in the city of his birth of a drug overdose.

Carrington may be familiar to Burroughs fans. There is a fragile link between the two writers. First, both are junkie-writers. Unfortunately, Carrington ended up in the credit column of the junkie-writer ledger. The other link is Floating Bear No. 9. Burroughs’ Roosevelt After Inauguration appears in this issue along with LeRoi Jones‘ The System of Dante’s Hell. The issue was mailed to Carrington in Rahway Prison in New Jersey in 1961. Carrington’s copy was seized by prison censors, who objected to Burroughs’ pornographic satire and Jones’ homosexual subject matter. The seizure led to obscenity charges against Jones and Diane DiPrima. Ultimately, the charges were dropped. DiPrima and Jones proclaimed their victory in Issue 20 of Floating Bear. I bought the book on the basis of the link to Floating Bear and Burroughs — an interesting piece of the Floating Bear puzzle that fills in the history of that magazine and, in particular, the controversial ninth issue.

Before seeing the book in the BeatBooks catalog, I was completely unaware that anything of Carrington’s was actually published. Yet upon receiving the slim volume, it was immediately familiar. This should have been obvious from the title. Drive Suite is also the title of a Ray Bremser poem, published as Nova Broadcast No. 1 by Jan Herman. A quick look at the two publications reveals that they are versions of the same poem. The first three sections are, with slight variations, identical. The Nova Broadcast edition contains a fourth section entitled “Luyah, the Glorious Step.”

What the hell is going on? A little digging reveals an interesting story. Turns out that Bremser, another poet who struggled with his addictions, served time with Carrington at Rahway Prison. Bremser introduced Carrington to literary connections in New York and elsewhere, such as Walter Lowenfels. Diane DiPrima became a correspondent of Carrington’s as well, which led no doubt to the mailing of Floating Bear. Lowenfels and DiPrima maintained their correspondence with Carrington, so some of his writing and work survived after his sudden and unexpected death. Carrington’s uncle also held on to a small archive. Going through Carrington’s papers, Breman found a draft of Drive Suite written largely in Carrington’s hand. Breman assumed the poem was Carrington’s, which it is not. The poem was chosen by Breman for publication due to its “sheer virtuosity” and for the connection to jazz musician Cecil Taylor, a member of the circle of poets, artists and musicians that gathered around Jones, Hettie Cohen, and Yugen. Drive Suite eventually became Number 14 in Breman’s important Heritage Series of African-American poets. Breman’s memoir on The Heritage Series has some useful information on Carrington and this publishing snafu.

Quite possibly, Carrington copied the poem in order to comment on it or simply to preserve a poem he admired. It could be that there is a T.S Eliot / Ezra Pound dynamic going on with Drive Suite, with Carrington hovering behind Bremser’s finished and published poem. Doubtful. Lowenfels and others have confirmed the authorship as Bremser’s and eventually Breman acknowledged his error and pulled the Heritage publication of Drive Suite. What is strange is that the Nova Broadcast edition of Bremser’s poem was in print from 1968. An earlier version of first section of the poem was published in Stanley Fisher’s Beat Coast East anthology as far back as 1960. The poem was clearly in circulation for years. Given the Bremser / Carrington friendship, it is doubly odd that nobody made the connection earlier.

So we are left with a situation in which the only published book of poems by Harold Carrington contains in its entirety a poem that is not by Carrington. Let me stress that this was unintentional and merely an editing mistake by Breman, yet it suggests another dimension of writing and criminality in relation to Carrington besides the obvious ones of junkie / prisoner / poet and obscenity trials. The serious crimes in terms of writing are that of plagiarism and copyright violation. Carrington the poet has been falsely incarcerated in Bremser’s text. Interestingly, Bremser could be accused of identity theft. Jones / Baraka wrote to Breman about the affair, “Why Bremser now wants to take on the personae [sic] of a dead black poet I can only guess at.” The reasons are obvious in that the “dead black” Carrington is perceived by Bremser as being more authentic, more real, and closer to the Truth (pure experience and pure speech). This is the theme of the White Negro yet again, with Bremser, along with the other white Beats, appropriating black culture and experience to enrich what they viewed as an impoverished, outmoded, and tired dominant tradition.

The back blurb on the Heritage Series volume mentions other poems and projects relating to Carrington, including a “novel which Walt Sheppard planned to publish as a supplement to his Nickel Review.” In addition, Eugene Redmond is mentioned as “establishing the corpus of Carrington’s scattered work.” I do not think anything came of these projects. From what I can tell, Aldon Lynn Nielsen has singlehandedly kept the memory of Carrington alive. Nielsen collected a handful of poems in Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone: An Anthology of Innovative Poetry by African Americans. In 2006, Nielsen posted three entries on his Heat String Theory blog relating to Carrington, which include some poems and letters. The letters, particularly a long one to Lowenfels, give wonderful insights into Carrington’s concerns as a poet. For those looking to drink deeply of the work of “Wine” Carrington, there looks to be precious little in print or online to satisfy your thirst. To a certain extent, Drive Suite, as published by The Heritage Series, is a false grail. Like Dr. Schneider, Paul Breman was blinded by “sheer virtuosity” and chose poorly. As evidenced by the work uncovered by Nielsen, Carrington’s output is of a humbler nature. Yet Drive Suite, false as it is, reveals a hidden truth about the crimes of writing and provides a fitting monument to a man and poet whose (to paraphrase Eric Burdon and the Animals) intentions were good but was destined to be misunderstood.

Drive Suite attributed to Harold Carrington

Harold Carrington (attributed)
Drive Suite (front)
Paul Breman Ltd, 1972

Harold Carrington (attributed)
Drive Suite
Paul Breman Ltd, 1972

Harold Carrington (attributed)
Drive Suite (back)
Paul Breman Ltd, 1972

Drive Suite by Ray Bremser

Ray Bremser
Drive Suite (front)
Nova Broadcast Press, 1968

Ray Bremser
Drive Suite
Nova Broadcast Press, 1968

Ray Bremser
Drive Suite (back)
Nova Broadcast Press, 1968

Written by Jed Birmingham and published by RealityStudio on 26 March 2012.

Floating Bear

RealityStudio — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 15:08:50 +0000

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Also see Jed Birmingham’s Floating Bear Archive and article on Floating Bear 24.

After my deal to obtain Floating Bear #24 fell through a month or so ago, Floating Bears have been much on my mind. I broke down and bought a run of 31 of these fragile mimeos from William Reese Company. This bookstore is proof positive of the value and importance of the true bookman. I received three catalogs along with my purchase including a two volume catalog of 20th Century periodicals. These are worth their weight in gold. (See my previous article on book catalogues.) These catalogs grew out of the Robert Wendler collection to which William Reese added over the years. Close to 2000 different periodicals were available for sale beginning in 2003. Yugen, Floating Bear, Fuck You, Kulchur, Insect Trust Gazette, Marijuana Newsletter. Even a few copies of the elusive Sinking Bear. Most of the magazines I have written about were available not to mention large runs of important and rare Modernist littles (Broom, Blast, Little Review, Others, The Dial, The Exile et al) as well as magazines of social protest from the 1930s and 1940s, such as The New Masses, that link the little magazine traditions of High Modernism with the little magazine revolution detailed in Secret Location on the Lower East Side. The catalogs serve as a valuable bibliography of the history and importance of the periodical in 20th Century literature. William Reese Company is well known as an expert on Americana (Reese’s performance at the Frank Siebert Sale in 1999 established him as the bookman of his generation), but you can be sure that he and his associates will treat with meticulous care and scrupulous detail all aspects of printing and literary history they come in contact with.

I was very happy with the Floating Bears I received. As usual, the magazines had seen better days. In most cases, they were folded for mailing with stamps and address labels. Many copies were stained or poorly mimeo’d, but that is a large part of the charm of Floating Bear. You can see that these magazines were used. They were argued over, read aloud, passed around. As I mentioned before, Floating Bear could not be bought over the counter and was distributed through a mailing list. Receiving a copy meant you were part of a literary and artistic community. This is proven by the address labels on my copies. Many of my issues were sent to Eila Kokkinen, an art critic of the time. Kokkinen served on the editorial board of The Chicago Review when that publication introduced William Burroughs to the American public. Along with Irving Rosenthal and Paul Carroll, she resigned the board to protest the suppression of the Winter Issue. The Winter Issue evetually became Big Table 1. She was good friends with Rosenthal who helped edit Naked Lunch for Grove Press. Rosenthal wrote a now forgotten novel of the 1960s entitled Sheeper that I have yet to read.

A couple of my other issues were mailed to Dan Rice. Rice was a student at Black Mountain College. He studied there during Charles Olson’s tenure as Rector. Rice was a fixture in the New York Art scene and active in the Cedar Bar circle. That Rice received Floating Bear highlights the magazine’s merging of Black Mountain, New York art and dance circles, and the Beat Generation. It is a very nice association. Donald Allen’s New American Poetry anthology began the process of canonization for these schools in 1960.

I also have an issue that was sent to Frank Davey. Davey is a Canadian poet and writer who helped start the influential literary magazines Tish and Open Letter. Tish evolved out of the excitement and interest generated by the Vancouver Poetry Conferences of the early 1960s. Vancouver was one of many hotspots in North America tuned in to the birth and spread of the new poetry. Robert Duncan suggested the creation of a magazine called Shit and Tish was the compromised result. Tish and Open Letter present the British Columbia poetry scene that was galvanized by the new writing of Olson, Duncan, Jack Spicer and others.

Another issue was sent to Corinth Books. Yet another was sent to Bill Wilentz. This highlights the link between the little magazine, the small press, and the independent bookshop. Eli and Ted Wilentz ran Eighth Street Bookshop, a haven for writers and artists in New York City. I don’t know if Bill Wilentz is related in any way, but I can not help but think there is a connection to the Wilentz Brothers. The importance of the independent bookshop to the development of a literary community cannot be overstated. City Lights in San Francisco, Peace Eye Books in the Lower East Side, The English Bookshop in Paris, Better Books and Indica in London, Asphodel Bookshop in Cleveland. There must be countless others. These stores provided a meeting place for the literary community as well as an outlet for selling new writing. As my checks from the Phoenix Bookshop prove, these stores provided artists and writers with cash. In many cases, these bookstores acted as publishers themselves. The Wilentz Brothers founded Corinth Books in 1959. Corinth Books published Leroi Jones, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Olson, Diane Di Prima, and a host of others. Corinth teamed up with other small publishers like Totem (Leroi Jones’s press) and Jargon (Jonathan Williams). Jones and Di Prima were intimately involved with the Wilentz’s publishing efforts. Naturally, Corinth received a copy of the Bear.

In this cache of Floating Bears, I finally got a hold of issue 24. According to the William Reese catalog, the legend of its rarity may be anecdotal. Yet my experience suggests there is a lot of truth to the myth. Issue 24 definitely has a different feel to it. The paper is thinner; the mimeo job is as poor as Diane Di Prima states. Looking at all the issues together, it stands out.

This is also true of the issues beginning with Number 26. Leroi Jones left as editor with Issue 25, and Diane Di Prima took over full editorial duties. Issue 27 has a cover page like the title page of a book. By Issue 28, there are pictorial covers by a host of important artists like George Herms, Jess, and Wallace Berman. You can see the geographical shift from New York to California as well. Herms, Jess, and Berman were all active in the California art scene that moved between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Billy Linich otherwise known as Billy Name, the man who made Warhol’s Factory silver, assists with a few issues after Jones’s departure. This suggests Floating Bear‘s links to the speed culture of the New York art scene in the 1960s.

Floating Bear is very hard to scan or at least I find it so. I did the best I could. For the most part, the images give a sense of the feel and appearance of the magazine. In any case, they allow the curious viewer to track the changes to Floating Bear in close to 40 issues and over nearly a decade of publishing.

Written by Jed Birmingham and published by RealityStudio on 3 October 2006.

Floating Bear Archive

RealityStudio — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 15:06:13 +0000

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

For more information about Floating Bear, see Jed Birmingham’s articles on Floating Bear and Floating Bear 24. You can also download this spreadsheet mapping the recipients to whom copies of Floating Bear were mailed.

Floating Bear 1
February 1961