Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Rhinozeros #5
Front cover

Rhinozeros #5
“Song” by David Meltzer

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“Song of the Tusk” by Anselm Hollo

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“Attention!” by Gregory Corso

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Poem by Michael McClure

Rhinozeros #5
“An Africa Ode” by Edward Dorn

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“Spel 1” by Robert Kelly

Rhinozeros #5
“Song” by David Meltzer

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Poem by Larry Eigner

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“Oil” by Gary Snyder

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Poems by Gael Turnbull and Michael Horovitz

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“The End” by Allen Ginsberg

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Poem by Peter Orlovsky, “Apples” by Gregory Corso

Rhinozeros #5
“Wind Hand Caught in the Door” by William S. Burroughs

Rhinozeros #5
“To Fidel Castro Somewhere in the Sierra Maestre” by Marc D. Schleifer

Rhinozeros #5
Poem by David Ball

Rhinozeros #5
Poems by Theodore Enslin

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Poem by Anselm Hollo

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Poem by Dell Hymes

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“Pome (for Rhinozeros)” by Jack Kerouac

Rhinozeros #5
Poem by Piero Heliczer

Rhinozeros #5
Poem by Philip Whalen

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

When I was briefly in graduate school in 1995, I was fascinated by the fate of the letter in the digital age. While studying abroad at King’s College in 1992, I wrote letters weekly and eagerly checked my mailbox daily. Just three years later, all my written communication was done over the University’s email system. This shift got my brain churning. What effect would this electronic revolution have on future scholarship? How would the letter and the manuscript change? What would libraries and collectors archive and preserve? Would future scholars have to learn HTML and computer languages as much as they had to learn French and French literary theory? My fellow students and professors were more concerned with the French and Derrida. With their indifference they told me to leave the email alone.

Little did I know that the repercussions the digital age was having on information was obsessing Derrida as well. Lectures and collections such as Paper Machine (a 2005 collection of Derrida’s later writings) and Archive Fever (in large part a 1994 lecture and essay published in 1998) demonstrate that late in his life Derrida delved into the questions that kept me up at night. More than ten years later, scholars, philosophers, librarians, and archivists are still struggling to come up with answers to the question: Are paper and the book doomed to the dustbin of history?

Besides my own experiences with letter writing, my obsession with letters grew because my favorite writer (Burroughs) and poet (Charles Olson) depended on the letter as a tool of communication, memory, and creation. It could be argued that the form of the letter was the most crucial element in the creative process of both men. The publication of Burroughs’ first volume of collected letters in 1994 was a bombshell. I read the letters at graduate school and with a nudge from Oliver Harris’ introduction quickly realized their importance in Burroughs’ life and work. In addition, it became clear to me that the Beat Generation was the last literary grouping that was held together by the process of letter writing. My obsession with letters grew stronger at that point and continues to this day.

So I eagerly awaited the publication of the Letters of Allen Ginsberg and the Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, both edited by Ginsberg bibliographer and archivist, Bill Morgan. I have to be upfront and state that I have yet to read the collection of Ginsberg / Snyder letters. Despite this, in my opinion, it is fruitful to consider these two books of letters together. I am basing my thoughts on the Ginsberg / Snyder letters on my reading of similar collections such as the Ginsberg father / son collection (Family Business), the Ginsberg / Cassady volume (As Ever), and the Orlovsky / Ginsberg collection (Straight Hearts’ Delight).

Make no mistake a general collection of Ginsberg letters is a big deal, but it is obviously a greatest hits album rather than a concept album. More Beatles Anthology than Sgt. Pepper. For reasons I’ll get into later, I prefer Sgt. Pepper, but this overview of Ginsberg’s letters definitely has its value and importance. Reviewers have singled out certain letters where Ginsberg expresses his awareness that his archives would be combed over for years after his death. Not surprisingly, Ginsberg advised Burroughs to get his archives together in 1973 when Burroughs needed cash for his move from London. Despite being labeled anti-intellectual and oblivious to tradition, the Beats were hyper-aware of their own importance and the need to archive their history. I have always felt that Kerouac provided the example in this regard. The fact that Kerouac in 1944 had preserved his one million word output in meticulous notebooks and that at the same time he obsessively kept statistics and records clearly rubbed off on Burroughs and Ginsberg. In his recollection of Kerouac (“Remembering Kerouac” in The Adding Machine), Burroughs refers to Kerouac’s compulsive nature as a writer and the effect such practices had on him. Ginsberg had the bug too. From his childhood, Ginsberg kept everything and documented his every waking (and subconscious) moment. For those prepared to go to the source and get to the raw material that researchers like Morgan, Barry Miles and Michael Schumacher mined so fruitfully in their biographies, the collected letters is a godsend. Going to the archives is impossible for all but a select few, and Morgan does a great job of sorting and selecting the pure gold from the seemingly endless vein of written material.

What a pleasure to have the letters to Richard Eberhart and John Hollander coupled with selections to all the major Beat figures like Kerouac, Corso, Orlovsky, and Ferlinghetti. It is true that some of this material was available elsewhere in bits and pieces. Take the letter to Richard Eberhart, a major document of Ginsberg’s poetics. For example the letter was published by Penamen Press in 1976, but that publication is now over $100 on the rare book market. The letter appears again in the facsimile of Howl from 1986. Before this edition was reprinted, that book was fetching $75-100 as a first edition. In addition although Family Business is easily available, Straight Heart’s Delight and As Ever are not at your local Borders. So it is a major event that a wide swath of Ginsberg’s letters is readily available in one collection. Ginsberg now follows Kerouac, Burroughs, Neal Cassady and Gregory Corso in having a selected letters on the market.

That said I am going to read with more interest the Snyder / Ginsberg volume. Letter collections featuring both sides of a correspondence provide a level of detail that I revel in. Give me the ten volumes of Robert Creeley and Charles Olson letters. Give me the collection of letters between Frances Boldereff or Edward Dahlberg and Olson over editor Ralph Maud’s Selected Olson Letters. Bukowski’s Screams from the Balcony is incredible, but Beerspit Night and Cursing (or the harder to find and more expensive Bukowski / Purdy letters) interests me far more.

But let’s take the discussion back to Ginsberg. What a treat to read a few scattered letters to Louis Ginsberg, but what an experience to read an entire volume dedicated to their correspondence. A general collected provides a sense of time but it does not allow enough depth and detail. Reading Family Matters one gets a fuller, more complex understanding of Louis and Allen Ginsberg’s relationship. Clearly such a volume has its dull patches but the increase in comprehensiveness more accurately reflects the passion and boredom, the ebb and flow of a complex human relationship. Collected letters are too one-sided for me. I love the call and response of a complete correspondence. Letters go two ways and reading a general collected is like a game of telephone. You have an incomplete idea of what is being discussed.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in Burroughs’ Letters to Allen Ginsberg 1953-1957 collection published by Full Court Press (and republished in large part in Oliver Harris’ edition of Burroughs letters). Burroughs either lost or destroyed all of Ginsberg’s letters. I have always been surprised, given his obsessive archiving, that Ginsberg never kept carbons, but the fact remains that the conversation during this period remains one-sided. The silencing of Ginsberg is deafening. A full understanding of their relationship at this time will never be known to say nothing of the history of the composition of Naked Lunch. Given the importance of letters for the Beat Generation (think Cassady’s Joan Anderson letter which spawned Kerouac’s spontaneous prose), the letters of Ginsberg to Burroughs are of tremendous significance. Just how involved was Ginsberg in the creation of Naked Lunch? Like so much surrounding Burroughs’ masterpiece this, too, will remain a mystery.

To get back to where I started, what will be the digital revolution’s effect on letters? If the internet has made obsolete the act of letter-writing, it provides the means to preserve and distribute the letters of the past. Will the Burroughs archive at the New York Public Library ever be online? I can get a hold of the collected letters edited by Oliver Harris. No reason to digitize that, but what about the thousands (???) of letters sitting at the Berg or Ohio State? This is the stuff that is impossible to get a hold of.

For example, the Burroughs book I am most looking forward to is the correspondence between Burroughs and Brion Gysin (said to be forthcoming from Ohio State University Press). Burroughs fans have never experienced Burroughs in conversation, in true collaboration. Remember Ginsberg has been erased. Next to Ginsberg, Gysin is Burroughs’ most important collaborator. Maybe the most important. Will this collection ever see publication? Given the struggles of the print industry would it be easier to provide this correspondence online? Take the Google project. It is all well and good to digitize the New York Times bestseller list of the past 50 years but when are we going to digitize the literary and historical archives? Is this a personal obsession or is this the stuff that really matters? To me, the Google digitization project is really tied to selling Kindles, not distributing information. Similarly general collections of letters get published because the reading public wants and buys greatest hits albums, but what really matters to me are the Sgt. Peppers. This is because while history is disseminated with the help of greatest hits albums, history is made and written with the help of the Sgt. Peppers. Correspondences, like that between Snyder and Ginsberg, are definitely not easy listening, but like a particularly challenging piece of experimental music, they stick in your head, become a part of you, and change the way you experience the world around. They do this by taking you out of your everyday reality and placing you right in the middle of an intimate conversation. To my mind, such a reading experience is sweet music indeed.

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 folks, I am going to beat a dead horse in this column: the Olympia Press titles of William Burroughs and Fuck You, a magazine of the arts.

There was a fascinating sale that closed on eBay on April 9, 2008. (pdf) The lot was all three Olympia Press titles of William Burroughs in dust jacket stored in clamshell boxes. The Ticket That Exploded was signed and in very good plus condition (a very tight signature by the way). The Soft Machine had some slight rubbing but was also very good plus. But the Naked Lunch. Well, brace yourself; it was described as follows: “As NEW FINE PLUS! There is no better example in the world. The DJ is immaculate. Colors are not only unfaded but pristine. Not a blemish.” The copy was unsigned.

Over at the Bookride blog, they have a field day with internet descriptions like this. In over 15 years of collecting I have seen in person, in catalogs, or on the web about 5-10 “one of a kind copies” of the Olympia Naked Lunch. Check out ABE to get a sense of this. Why the hyperbole? Because truth be told, the book is not that rare, but supposedly fine/fine copies are going the way of the dodo. This is debatable given the number of “impeccable” copies I have seen over the years. In any case you can’t tell anything from scans on eBay, so buyer beware. That said, this “pristine” copy did look quite nice from the scans. Then again, Nicole Kidman looks good on screen but without the squadron of make-up people — look out. I would definitely not pay almost five-figure money for these books unless I handled them myself. Thus the need for book fairs, brick-and-mortar bookstores, and dealers you can trust. Even in the internet age the truly big book sales do not happen on the internet. Or so I thought. Bidding reached $9000 on the Burroughs books, but the seller wanted more and set an astronomical reserve. Therefore the books did not sell.

Let’s break that $9000 down. Fine signed copies of The Ticket That Exploded are at the high end: $1250. Fine unsigned Soft Machines are pricey around $750. So that leaves $7000 for this exemplary copy of Naked Lunch. This is a remarkable price for this title; I don’t care if it looked and smelled like it just came off the printing press and was signed by Burroughs with a blood-tipped syringe. Well, that would be quite a copy, but even superlative signed copies without associations list for around the $10,000 mark (Question to ponder: do they really fetch that price? Or are they always discounted like a new car?), but beautiful unsigned copies top out around $5000-$6000. (The Joseph the Provider copy at $10,000 is an exception as it is basically an unsigned copy. In my opinion, tipped-in signatures do not count as signed.) I saw a wonderful unsigned copy at the New York show behind glass at Peter Stern’s booth for $6000. Will they get this price? The $9000 was bid at auction. Unless the sale was voided in some way or this was a case of people bidding with no intention of paying like the Velvet Underground acetate, this is as good as an auction house price. Personally I don’t think the seller really wanted to sell. He was testing the waters more or less. What was he hoping to get?

Compare this eBay auction to the recent PBA Galleries sale of April 3, 2008. Naturally, the sale featured an Olympia Naked Lunch. All Beat auctions do. Remember that even so-called fine copies are not that rare. This auction featured a nice copy with the description: “Two miniscule tears to jacket head, still fine in fine jacket, very rare thus, in custom silk-covered folding box.” I have learned to be wary of PBA’s descriptions (their concept of fine does not jive with mine), but the high and low estimate were $2000-3000. Perfectly reasonable for a fine copy. The book slightly underperformed at $1920. Is this fine copy really $5000 less fine than the eBay copy? In rare-book collecting, condition means value. In this case $5000. As a seller, I would have jumped at the $9000 offered on eBay. If… if I wanted to sell.

The PBA sale was advertised in part as a Beat sale, but it was more accurately a San Francisco sale, like the George Fox sale of years gone by. Case in point, the rock posters, Digger material, examples of SF printing like Four Seasons, Cadmus Editions, and White Rabbit. The general lack of Burroughs / Corso material among the Beat items highlights the West Coast nature of the sale. Kerouac, Snyder, Whalen, and Ferlinghetti are all closely tied to the San Francisco Scene. I also might have marketed the sale as artifacts from the Doss collection. Some of the material came from the library of John and Margot Doss. The Dosses ran a literary salon in San Francisco (admittedly with a Beat focus), and Margot worked for 30 years at the SF Chronicle. I guess the Dosses do not have enough name recognition to carry a sale. But clearly, San Francisco and regulars of the Dosses’ salon were the focus of the counter-culture portion of this sale.

This portion was small: 95 lots total. Roughly 15% of the items did not sell. 43% of the items were under the low estimate. 22% were within the estimates, and 20% outperformed the high estimate. Dovetailing with the small, intimate nature of the sale (in a sense a reflection of the Doss’s literary circle), the best (and most intriguing) performers at the auction benefitted from a personal touch. It does not get much more personal than a letter. The lead dog was an archive of letters from Bukowski to Loss Pequeno Glazier. Glazier edited the 1985 Bukowski Primer. The 16 letters fetched $10,800, slightly over low estimate. A smaller collection of letters, art and typescript involving Philip Whalen and Margot Doss exceeded the high estimate at $720. Gregory Corso’s 1963 “Dream Sketch Journal” with 150 pages of entries, probably all unpublished, nearly doubled the high estimate at $4800. Thirty-two Ferlinghetti books from his personal library (signed) found a new home at $1320.

One of the big surprises of the Beat portion of the sale was a roughly 9″X6″ flyer for the Trips Festival designed by Wes Wilson. The January 1966 Trips Festival had it all: the Pranksters, Kesey, Cassady, the Dead, Stewart Brand (of Whole Earth Catalog), Big Brother and Holding Company, and LSD by Bear himself, Augustus Owsley Stanley III. The Woodstock of 1960’s SF. The flyer quadrupled the high estimate soaring to $1200. Other psychedelic ephemera, like rock posters, postcards, and underground newspapers struggled to reach the low estimate or sell at all.

The biggest disappointment also garnered one of the highest bids. The Don Klein copy (as named in Krumhansl’s bibliography of Bukowski) of the gutter poet’s first chapbook, Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail, failed to reach the low estimate of $8000. It sold for $7800. The high estimate was $12000. This had all the elements of the personal but failed to ignite frenzied bidding. This was Frances Smith’s copy with the covers personally designed by Bukowski. Smith was the mother of Buk’s daughter, Marina Louise. The covers depict a pen and ink drawing of a man lounging in a chair “looking off into space” as the inscription on the cover states. The $7800 is quite surprising given that Ed Blair’s Presentation copy involving Buk and the Webb’s of Loujon Press sold for over $9000. Maybe too many copies of this chapbook have come to market recently, transforming the bestial wail into a stifled yawn. In my opinion, some bidder (hopefully a collector) got a very special item slightly under the estimate.

I am not going to spend much time on the Burroughs items. There were only three besides the above-mentioned Olympia Naked Lunch: a Grove Naked Lunch ($480), a Grove Naked Lunch with a later DJ ($180) and Early Routines ($1020). Almost all of them underperformed. The Early Routines was the exception. The Grove Naked Lunch again had way too high an estimate ($800-1000), and the book description was hyperbolic. The photo in the catalog did not in my opinion match up with the description. I think collectors scrutinized the photo, particularly around the edges of the dj, and stayed away. Barely reaching half the low estimate, it almost did not sell at all. The hope of a four figure unsigned Grove Naked Lunch appears to be something of a pipe dream.

The Early Routines is an interesting book. Published by Cadmus Editions out of Santa Barbara (a further tie to California) in 1981, the book features a portrait drawing of Burroughs by David Hockney. Both Burroughs and Hockney signed a limited run of lettered copies. This is one of those lettered copies. The lot also contained some ephemera from publisher Jeffrey Miller. On one level, this is a very cool title. The book links several generations of SF small press publishers. Graham Mackintosh designed the book. Mackintosh took over White Rabbit Press from Joe Dunn. Macintosh developed into one of the major (if troubled) figures in the SF small press scene. He worked with, taught, and influenced seemingly everybody in West Coast printing after 1960. Cadmus Press is an independent press that developed after Macintosh’s generation (maybe two generations). The publishing figure that lurks in the shadows is Alastair Johnston of Poltroon Press. Johnston was initially approached with the Early Routines project, but he passed not wanting to print what he saw as essentially a glorified reprint.

On another level, this title bores me. To some extent it is, as Johnston believed, a dressed-up reprint, a placing of old wine in fine crystal bottles. Graham Macintosh called such book art projects: “Artifical Rarities.” Arion Press is the king of this jungle. Rightly or wrongly, I see the fine press market dominated by projects like Early Routines that take stale, artistically conservative material and try to spice it up with Japanese paper, cork covers, and fancy bindings. The text generally does not challenge the established literary tradition, and the book object does not complicate the concept of the book in an innovative fashion. They are essentially coffee table books. Copies of Fuck You, a magazine of the arts, My Own Mag, or C strike me as far more pleasing on the level of form and content. These mimeos hold more claim to the status of Art than some of the more celebrated work by the lions of the fine press.

That said a Fuck You generally does not have the price tag of a book like Early Routines. It is my personal belief that in time it will, but it does not now. This brings me back to eBay. Recently a copy of Fuck You 3 (God thru Orgasm) turned up on eBay. The first time around the mag had a reserve and a buy it now of $750. At around the same time, somebody suggested to me that early issues of Fuck You were in the $1400 range, because he saw it listed on a database site at that price. The fate of this particular copy of Fuck You 3 is a corrective to such faulty logic. Initially the bidding stalled at $202.50, not making the reserve. It relisted and sold at $200. This is about right. This is the historically correct amount based on years of auction and catalog results. The early issues (one thru four) are in the $200-400 range rising as you backtrack to the first issue. Starting with the 5th Issue, prices can fall to around $100. Issue 5/7 is maybe $100-$150 higher. The Mad Motherfucker issue with the Warhol cover is the only Fuck You title (from the entire Fuck You bibliography) in the four-figure range without signatures and extras. Somebody correct me on that if I am wrong. Over time the Warhol issue has consistently sold at that price in any condition. Roughly a decade ago a complete run sold at Ken Lopez for $2000. What is the price now? $3000? $4000? At four grand, half that amount is the Warhol issue. That leaves about $2000 for twelve issues. You do the math to see that single issues are not $500-$1400 as seen online. All Fuck You prices are sure to rise. Exhibits like the one on the Fugs at Printed Matter, the added attention to the mimeo revolution, and the death of print will make sure of that. But, the value will not immediately shoot up to the four figure range overnight just because of these events. A long-term healthy rare book market depends on just such a steady rising tide, not a tsunami. The current real estate market and the general economy show the wisdom of markets mimicking the pace of the tortoise and the folly of investors chasing hyperactive White Rabbits.

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 that run through my head are bleak. If “Condition, Condition, Condition” is a primary law of book collecting, another maxim is “the rare book business revolves around death, divorce and debt.” Not a rosy picture, but when you think of it, selling a collection is often an act of desperation. Why else would someone separate himself from a source of great joy and passion? For the most part, I acquire rare books. I generally do not trade. I probably should as there are books in my collection that I could trade for more desired Burroughs items. My copy of Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa or a signed copy of Bukowski’s It Catches My Heart In Its Hands come to mind. Yet I can never get myself to do it. The Hemingway has associations with my grandparents and the Bukowski actually fills out my collection as it is a prime example of the beautiful work of Loujon Press. In the paranoia of book collecting, everything is tied together and everything fits in.

Yet at some point desperation might set in. In the 1990s, I sold books in my collection for a brief point in time. It was a particularly difficult time for me. For example, I got rid of an Olympia Press first of Beckett’s Watt. I wish I had it now as it would be a nice link to Olympia Press, Alexander Trocchi, Baird Bryant and the Merlin Group to say nothing of its importance as a Beckett publication. Rock bottom must have been when I put my complete set of Fuck You Magazines on eBay. I really did not want to sell them which was reflected in the high initial bid I placed on them. Luckily nobody bid on them, but to this day I get very upset when I think how close I came to losing those mimeos.

Let me add to “Death, Divorce and Debt”: depression. After years of book collecting, for some people, there comes a time when the collection no longer excites or moves. In fact, the presence of all those books becomes oppressive. You feel overwhelmed, buried. Maybe bored. The passion is gone and replaced with a sense of ennui. What am I going to do with all these books? Why do I keep all this stuff? What was once a prized possession becomes clutter. An auction provides cash but it also provides a quiet, peaceful mind. You no longer have to worry about all those books. The book auction as Zoloft for book collectors.

Closely related to the depression and, maybe a more positive spin on it, is the urge to disseminate, the act of dispersal. For a collector who has spent years and years assembling a collection, the time comes when there is a feeling of satisfaction and contentment. Although it is impossible, there is the sense that the collection is complete and there is a need for closure. The auction provides that. For many collectors, the auction catalog and its bibliography is the summation of a life’s work. A eulogy, a retrospective, a tombstone. Despite the positive feelings surrounding a sense of closure, I can only think of death.

When the time for dispersal comes around for noted collectors like Robert Jackson, Nelson Lyon, Edwin Blair, or Joseph Zinnato (just to name Beat or Burroughs collectors), the decision has to be made about how to disperse your books. Should the books go to an institution or be sold at auction? Financial considerations aside, those who choose the auction feel a sense of connection to the book-collecting community that supported and sustained their efforts to build a meaningful collection. If everybody with a collection of any note placed their collection in an institution, the rare book market would slowly die. (Has anybody written about the ecology of the rare book market? There is definitely a relation. Conservation, extinction of bookstores, sustainable communities, limited resources.) I always applaud those who choose the auction route. Without the Nelson Lyon sale, my collection would never have gotten the push it needed to make little magazines its focus. Should my collection ever be worthy of institutionalization will I decide to share my books with a community of scholars or will I disperse them to the rare book community? It is a tough decision.

David Oakey chose the latter route and collectors of Gary Snyder are rejoicing. Since the 1970s Oakey gathered together a formidable collection of the works of Japhy Ryder as Kerouac immortalized Snyder in Dharma Bums. Oakey’s collection has won awards and been the subject of exhibitions over the years. He has close ties to the Arizona State University so the collection could easily have gone there, but Oakey decided to go with the auction. Oakey writes, “Finally, rather than institutionalize this collection, Sale 364 represents my wishes to replicate those thousands of moments of joy that I experienced.” Through an auction, Oakey gives back to the book collecting community. Let’s hope the decision to sell was from a sense of completion and an expression of joy as well.

Sale 364 at Pacific Book Auctions was entitled “Fine Literature of the 19th & 20th Centuries with the David Oakey Collection of Gary Snyder.” It was held on September 27, 2007. There was an entire Beat section that included the Snyder material. I suspect this is overflow, additions and remainders generated by or resulting from the various Beat auctions that have taken place over the past year. The Loujon Press and Bukowski material definitely fall in that category. For example, The “Mistah Leary He Dead” piece by Hunter S. Thompson published by X-Ray Press was also available at the Blair Sale.

There were only four Burroughs lots in the sale: Lots 319-322. The usual suspects were present. A copy of Cities of the Red Night inscribed by Burroughs to Larry Lee sold for $173 ($300 low reserve). This is about par for the course. Signed copies at rare bookstores can get over $250. Larry Lee was a friend of Jimi Hendrix and played rhythm guitar with the Gypsies. A copy of Yage Letters, The Dead Star and The Retreat Diaries sold for $460 (low estimate $500). At a rare bookstore a signed Yage Letters is about $200. The Dead Star can be had for $125-175. The Retreat Diaries sells for about $75. So no deals here. Another lot had a signed UK edition of Ticket That Exploded (around $200), a signed Last Words of Dutch Schultz (around $300) and a copy of Tornado Alley (around $30). The Dutch Schultz included a clipped article from the 1935 New York Times detailing Schultz’ deathbed transcript and confession. A wonderful piece of ephemera. They sold for $460 as well. The estimates were in line with rare bookstore prices but book collectors usually hope to gather these more common titles at a lower price at an auction. With lots 319 and 322, buyers just barely succeeded.

Lot 320 was the lot to watch for Burroughs collectors. It was a signed copy of the Grove edition of Naked Lunch (1962). The book was signed in 1988 at City Lights and has a penciled note to that effect. I don’t think the note is in Burroughs’ hand. The book is in less than stellar condition. There are small tears, some rubbing, and even slight staining. Calling it very good or better seems a stretch to me. In addition there is a bookplate from the library of Alvin M. Scher. I am unaware if this is considered an association in some way, and Google did not help me out. Clearly this is not a top-shelf example of this book, and PBA doesn’t want top-shelf rare bookstore money for it. The estimate was $1200-1800. Fine signed copies are now topping $3000 at high-end dealers. Lot 320 went unsold.

There is no doubt that signed copies of the Grove titles of the 1960s are becoming harder to come by but even at $600 (half the low estimate) collectors stayed away from this copy. As I have mentioned before with the Grove and Olympia titles, signatures, associations, and condition are extremely important. This edition of Naked Lunch had only the signature although the link to City Lights is nice and can establish provenance. At $600, there are unsigned copies available on the internet, but given the issues with this book I think buyers made the wise choice on passing and saving that money to invest in a better quality unsigned Naked Lunch as signed copies are getting priced out of reach of most collectors.

At Sale 364, there was a small selection of Ginsberg and Kerouac material including an unsigned first edition, first issue (with Lucien Carr in the dedication) copy of Howl that performed very well. It sold for $4025. PBA described it as “[r]arely seen in such clean and crisp condition; the finest copy PBA has ever offered.” Unlike the Grove Naked Lunch, buyers responded to this fine copy of Howl. Possibly more than other rare books, condition is huge with the Beats, particularly since so many copies of Naked Lunch, On the Road, and Howl survived in such horrible condition. Despite the feelings of those on the forum of RealityStudio, Howl looks like it has legs as a collectible over fifty years after its publication. Unsigned copies of Howl approach the $5000 range on the internet. It is in the same league as Naked Lunch and On the Road and deserves to be considered with any blue chip first edition of the post WWII era, like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, To Kill A Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye or Catch-22.

It can be argued that of Beat collectibles, Howl is the book that will appreciate the most in the future. I say this solely based on print runs. The Olympia Naked Lunch first edition was 5000 copies. In fact, the Grove edition (1962) has a smaller run of 3500 copies. Could the Grove Press Naked Lunch become more desirable than the Olympia Press title? I never thought it could be possible but prices are rising. But that is another column. The first edition of On the Road by Viking came out in 7500 copies. There were only 1000 copies comprising the first run of Howl. This is quite a difference and it is reflected in the availability of these titles on the internet. Over 40 copies of On the Road (not all in collectible condition mind you) are currently available on Abebooks. Around twenty copies of the Olympia Press Naked Lunch (again some are missing dust jackets) are out there awaiting a bookshelf. Yet only six copies of Howl (signed or unsigned and in any type of condition) are now available. Provided that the reputation of and fascination with Ginsberg and Howl hold over time (and according to the forum that is a big if), Howl should greatly appreciate compared to On the Road and Naked Lunch in the long run if you are able to find a copy at all, to say nothing of one in collectible condition.

Given the token presence of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs at Sale 364, this auction was really about the lesser known, lesser read, and lesser collected Beats, represented in this case by Gary Snyder. Why do people collect the “second-tier” Beats like Snyder, Lew Welch, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, or Gregory Corso. Let’s take David Oakey as an example. On one level, Gary Snyder’s work spoke to Oakey, particularly the environmental and political concerns. Oakey writes, “Another handwritten poem, ‘Strategic Air Command’ best reflected my political leanings: ‘these rocks and these stars belong to the same Universe; the air in between belongs to the Twentieth Century and its wars.'”

Yet there is more that appeals to Oakey about “Strategic Air Command” than the text. The breadth and beauty of the design of Snyder’s books also speak to the collector. Take the description of “Strategic Air Command”: “12 X 10, manuscript broadside, unique. Hand-Calligraphed poem on grey hand-made BFK Rives paper, red line under title is water proof calligraphy ink drawn with quill pen carved by author from vulture flight feather. Orange seal at end, Han, is medium-age Chinese characters saying Chofu — ‘listen to the wind,’ the author’s Zen name.” What a personal item that symbolizes many of Snyder’s central concerns as man and poet in one piece of ephemera! The handmade is foregrounded as is a sense of poetic creation coming from and coexisting with Nature. Throughout Snyder’s bibliography, you’ll find the words: hand-crafted, hand-painted, hand-engraved, hand-stitched, hand-bound. Many works are reprinted from Snyder’s own distinctive calligraphy on hand-made paper. From Snyder’s first book of poems, Riprap in 1959 to the present day, the merging of poetic form, book format, and content is a major concern for Snyder. I find this to be true of almost all of the Beats. In addition, the Beats expressed these concerns through the small and fine press not the mainstream publishing machine.

“Strategic Air Command” sold for $345, safely above the high estimate but well within many collectors’ budgets considering the personal, unique nature of the item. This is another reason to collect beyond the Burroughs / Kerouac / Ginsberg troika. What would a similar item by the Beat trio fetch at auction? Surely in the four figures. Not only does a collector of Whalen, Welch or Snyder get the opportunity to get a hold of incredible examples of post-WWII fine and small press publishing at lower prices, they also can obtain a more diverse universe of material beyond the A, B or C items of the bibliography. Correspondence, paintings, elaborately inscribed books, manuscripts, books or poems with holograph edits. Sale 364 had such items available for Snyder, Jack Micheline and Kenneth Patchen at a fraction of the cost of Burroughs / Kerouac / Ginsberg. An archive of Jack Micheline letters (lot 345) sold under the low estimate at $173. A letter from Snyder to David Meltzer (lot 366) sold for $138. As I wrote recently, a Burroughs letter to Ginsberg from 1969 is currently selling for $25,000. The slightest of Burroughs postcards from the 1980s sells in the hundreds, particularly if it has a full signature. I do not want to argue the relative importance of all these letters just show the vast disparities in price.

And this is not to say that items from those on the fringes of the Beat core cannot get expensive. Kenneth Patchen’s Fables and Other Little Tales published by Jargon in 1953 (lot 358) as 50 hand-painted covers and colophons by Patchen is an example. It sold for $1955, just shy of the low estimate. Pricey, yet look at what you are getting: “The rare Author’s Edition; no copies located for this edition in ABPC auction records for the past twenty-five years.” Compare this to a Bukowski title (another author who hand painted his books in limited editions) of a limited edition from Black Sparrow. The Patchen is far rarer and less expensive. As I will argue later, the fact the Fables is from a legendary alternative press like Jargon is nice as well.

But the desirability of the lesser Beat goes beyond affordability. Even decades since they first burst on the scene, their work is largely unexplored by scholars and relatively uncollected. Great material is still available on the market. As I mentioned in another column, substantial Burroughs letters from the 1950s and 1960s just do not exist outside institutions. The same is true of Kerouac and Ginsberg. That goes for manuscripts, paintings, and other items with a personal touch as well.

There were about 125 lots in the Beat section of Sale 364. Sixty-one items sold below the low estimate, roughly 50%. Only twenty items beat the high estimate and twenty-two lots were within the estimated range. An equal number (22) did not sell at all. With the Snyder items, several lots sold for half the low estimate. Why not take a glass half full attitude on this. The lesser Beats are undervalued and have tremendous opportunity for growth especially given the fact that a diverse range of items can be obtained beyond a simple first edition hard cover.

In lots 370-379, there were several beautifully constructed broadsides (usually signed) available for $115-200. Like with the expensive Patchen, some Snyder items fetched high prices. Take the first edition, first issue Riprap. Although PBA is incorrect in listing Snyder as a Nobel Prize winner (he won the Pulitzer in 1975 for Turtle Island), they are correct in describing Riprap as “one of the most important books of poetry published in America post-WWII.” This “exceptional” copy sold for $2070, just over the low reserve. When a Holy Grail item in fine condition is available for just over $2000, I would say that there is some degree of financial wiggle room to build a substantial collection. Yet a hand-bound copy of High Sierra of California proves that Snyder can command big money as a small group of material associated with that title blew by the $1500 and sold for $4025. The highlight of the sale may have been lot 416, an incredible copy of True Night, painstakingly produced by Bob Giorgio in 1980. The book was made in “the ancient oriental tradition. I carved each word and each image in wood and linoleum. Furthermore, I printed the entire edition with a press, using only a bamboo spoon baren. Lastly I bound each copy by hand. This slow, patient process has taken one year to complete…” This work, like “Strategic Air Command,” captures the spirit of Snyder’s life and work. It sold just over the high estimate at $1610.

Collectors of the lesser Beats can build a collection that really means something beyond the financial bottom line of making a profit. Gathering a large archive of material dealing with Herbert Huncke for example has value to scholars and institutions because not many people have done it before with any thoroughness. In addition collecting these authors also allows the collector to build a solid archive of post-WWII little magazine, small press, and fine printing material. Look over Gary Snyder’s bibliography or the Sale 364 catalog to get a sense of what I mean. As electronic publishing grows and the print industry slowly changes or dies, these examples of the book as art object and the alternative publishing industry are only going to grow in desirability and historical importance. Collecting blue chip authors, like John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Ernest Hemingway does not present similar opportunities at any price. To get more current, Thomas Pynchon, Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson, Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, Ian Fleming, Anthony Burgess, Joseph Heller or Truman Capote (to list only those authors with an extremely collectible title) also fail in the same way.

I guess that the bottom line is that with the lesser Beats much more interesting and intimate material is available at a fraction of the cost. A copy of the Olympia Press Naked Lunch is wonderful and very desirable. It is an absolute cornerstone of my collection and I look at it almost every day, but there is something incredibly attractive about Snyder’s “Strategic Air Command” that goes beyond the text. It is a printed object that gets to the core of Snyder as a person and poet. Is there something comparable for Burroughs? I would argue that there are: My Own Mag, Time, APO-33. It is in the little magazines and alternative press material that I most powerfully feel a merging of Burroughs’ creative philosophy with the published object. This goes beyond whether or not these texts speak to me personally since I think they speak for Burroughs on a multitude of levels as nothing else in his entire bibliography. And that makes them priceless for me.

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 the most interesting chapbooks and magazines of the period. His books are beautiful and expansive (I am thinking of the Jargon Press Maximus Poems) as objects above and beyond the epic scope of their contents.

Leroi Jones (later Amiri Baraka, but Jones for the purposes of this column) appeals to me in a way similar to Olson and, of course, William Burroughs. My interest in Jones centers on his Beat phase lasting until the mid 1960s. This work would make an outstanding collection. In 2000, Brown University showcased its Jones holdings and the Beat pieces really spoke to me. I was especially struck by Jones’ work as an editor. It seems like he had his hands in every major magazine coming out of New York City in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Yugen, Floating Bear, Kulchur. This does not include his founding of Totem Press and that press’s publications with Cornith Books. Jones published Michael McClure, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Frank O’Hara, Charles Olson, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Ed Dorn, Diane Di Prima, and Paul Blackburn.

I am going to focus here on Yugen. Yugen ran for eight issues from 1958-1962. The magazine filled a void for newly emerging schools of poets that were denied publication in the academic and mainstream venues, like Poetry or The Kenyon Review. Jones stated, “It was started because I didn’t see publications coming out that carried poetry or writing that I was interested in. Therefore, I thought I should start one to try to gather that poetry that I thought was interesting… I just thought nothing was happening on the poetry scene as it should be so I started publishing.”

Yugen is often described as a Beat outlet. Work by Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen definitely appears frequently, but I think the content is much broader than that. Yugen billed itself as a “new consciousness in arts and letters.” The poetry dovetailed with the groundbreaking and monumental New American Poetry anthology of Don Allen published in 1959/1960. Jones included the New York School (Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch), Black Mountain (Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Joel Oppenheimer, Fielding Dawson), and San Francisco Renaissance (Robin Blaser) poets alongside a healthy helping of the Beats. The Black Mountain poets made a very strong showing. In the last issue, the table of contents reads like a who’s who of New American Poets. By 1962, Yugen‘s work was done. On ending the magazine, Jones stated, “Well, I think it just outlived its usefulness as far as I was concerned. By the time Yugen stopped publishing there were innumerable magazines that were publishing poets and writers that I had some respect for.”

Much of the work of constructing Yugen was done by Jones’ wife, Hettie Cohen. Cohen worked as an editor as Partisan Review which gave her invaluable experience in putting together a magazine. She performed many editorial tasks as well as designing the layout. Like with many magazines of the period, the construction process, such as collating, folding, mailing, and stapling, provided a center for the literary community. Collating parties became literary events. Hettie Cohen’s How I Became Hettie Jones is mandatory reading on the literary community in New York City in the late 1950s, early 1960s, as is Diane Di Prima’s Recollections of My Life as a Woman. Both books provide detailed accounts of the day-to-day process of running a literary magazine. I highly recommend them.

Yugen was printed by Troubador Press in New York City. All eight issues have a similar design and feel. They are simple yet handsome chapbooks, much like the small books published by Jones’ Totem Press, like O’Hara’s Second Avenue and Kerouac’s The Scripture of the Golden Eternity. The defining characteristic of a Jones chapbook was arresting cover art drawn by an artist closely affiliated with the literary scene. The artwork for Yugen possessed a strong Black Mountain feel with illustrations by Basil King and Norman Bluhm. The covers contained elements of Eastern calligraphy and the brushwork of the abstract expressionists like Franz Kline. Yugen shows how printing cheaply does not have to detract from richness of design. All Jones productions of this period appeal to me as objects saying nothing of the appeal of the writing within. Highpoints include Kerouac’s “Rimbaud” in Issue 6 as well as defining work by Charles Olson. While all the work is not of a high quality (it is uneven like most little magazines), the sense of a newly emerging literary community shines through. Yugen captures a snapshot of alternative poetics as the New American Poetry anthology broke things open.

William Burroughs appeared in two issues of Yugen: Issue 3 and Issue 8. These appearances highlight a change that occurred in Burroughs as a writer between the late 1950s and early 1960s. In issue three, Burroughs submitted “Have You Seen Pantapon Rose?,” an early piece of the still gestating Naked Lunch. Issue eight features an essay: “The Cut Up Method of Brion Gysin.” In 1958, Burroughs was still searching for himself as a writer and unsure of both his work and his method. As I have mentioned before, Yugen proved instrumental in giving Burroughs confidence as a writer, providing publication at a crucial time in Burroughs’ development. Burroughs’ collaborator at the time was Allen Ginsberg. Burroughs’ letters containing routines were addressed to him. Oliver Harris details letter writing as a key to Burroughs’ method in William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination.

By 1962, Burroughs was a completely different man and writer. Burroughs discovered the cut-up which replaced the routine as his major literary technique. Similarly, Gysin replaced Ginsberg as the major collaborator and confidante. The effects of the change can be seen in Burroughs’ essay on Gysin and the cut-up. Burroughs writes an authoritative essay featuring a cut up, not a routine. He has become a spokesman on writing technique and history. His belief in his style is absolute. Everything is a cut-up and all literature can be subjected to the cut-up. “ALL WRITING IS IN FACT CUT-UPS OF GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR OVERHEARD?” Burroughs’ voice is more confident and strident. Burroughs speaks from the mountain top; he has seen the light. You get the sense of a power shift between issues three and eight. In issue three, Burroughs benefits tremendously by appearing in Yugen. In issue eight, Yugen benefits tremendously by featuring Burroughs. Between the two issues, Burroughs went from literary unknown to an international cult figure.

To this day, Yugen remains fresh and vibrant, like the New American Poetry it featured. Putting together a complete run of Yugen is tough but not impossible. Issue four marks a turning point in the magazine’s availability on the collector’s market. Issues 1-4 are tough to find and are expensive, roughly $100-150 per issue. Issues 5-8 are much more common and cheaper. The later issues provide a good bang for the buck. Issue 6 includes Kerouac’s “Rimbaud” before it was published as a broadside by City Lights. Of course, issue 8 has the early Burroughs appearance. Visually and textually they are worth the $35-50 price tag. For anyone interested in the Beats and modern poetry in general, Yugen is a fun purchase. Truly, Yugen was a laboratory in which poets of the post-WWII era experimented before their work became accepted as mainstream.

Yugen Archive