Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

A-well-a don’t you know about the bird
Well, everybody knows that the bird is a word

— “Surfin’ Bird,” The Trashmen (1963)

Albatross. Dublin, December 1963
Eds. M.L. Lowes & Iain Sinclair 

Well, it turns out that not everybody, including the world’s most esteemed ornithologist, knows about the most elusive bird in the Burroughs bibliography. A cockatrice à la Sanders? A siren (with the head of a woman that lures men to their deaths)? An alicanto of the luminescent feathers that feeds on gold and silver? Yes, this bird costs a pretty penny but it is no mythic creature although due to its rarity it may seem like one. A rare bird, but it is not an Amsterdam Albatross, with its wingspan of over three meters, its identifying leg band, and an isolated breeding ground, not in Continental Europe, but on a small speck of an island in the remote South Indian Ocean; no, this is the Dublin Albatross, which is just as rare and rarely seen as the Amsterdam. It merits a mere sidebar in Maynard & Miles. A bibliographic curiosity. Iain Sinclair, editor, commenting on the bird: “Albatross never saw the light of day. A small number of the proof version, maybe fifty copies, appeared. Then disappeared.” Rare as hen’s teeth, as Sinclair described a complete run of My Own Mag elsewhere. Almost all specimens are housed in the bibliographic zoos of “copyright libraries” with only a few in private hands. But friends, your dedicated birder at the Bunker has not just caught sight of and taken a picture of the Dublin Albatross, I captured one for my own birdcage.  

Pa pa ooh mau mau. So if you haven’t heard Iain Sinclair drop the word in The Face on the Fork: A William Burroughs Triptych (No. 33 in the Beat Scene Press Pocket Book Series) or in his highly informative and all-around good time American Smoke: Journeys to the End of the Light (look for me on pg. 59), let me tell you about the bird.

Breeding Ground: “Dublin. Winter. 1962.” Students at the University of Dublin – Trinity College, including Iain Sinclair, Tony Lowes, and Christopher Bamford, besotted with Beckett and Kerouac, and reading Olympia Press titles that crossed the channel hidden in carry-on luggage, decided like those before them — think Chicago Review / Big Table, New Departures, Jabberwock / Sidewalk — to “float a magazine. And its name, glorying in failure, elective obscurity, would be Albatross.” In their enthusiasm. In their naivety. In their drunkenness sucking on the goatskin of Hemingway. They sent flyers from Winton House, 53 Strand Road, Dublin 4, Eire, “to everybody: TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, Paul Bowles, Djuna Barnes, Jean Genet, Groucho Marx.” The list sounds vaguely familiar. Perhaps an echo of the list compiled by Allen Ginsberg for the distribution of Howl. The Beats were no doubt an inspiration. William Burroughs was on Albatross‘ hit list and as was often the case — as documented by Dan Lauffer of Brown Paper and others — Burroughs was the only one who responded to their call for manuscripts a/k/a their call to arms. 1957-1965. This is the stuff. The sweet spot for Burroughs. There he was alone in hotel rooms and cheap apartments writing for writing’s sake. A pure poet. A true romantic looking not for love, but for new lines of communication, collaboration, and distribution. Or maybe it is me who is the romantic, dreaming up this Burroughs, but this is the Burroughs I love. The Burroughs of the little mags. The Burroughs who responded to love letters in the post with “three thin sheets” of text sent in an “blue airmail envelope.” Oh, to have started a magazine in 1962 and to have published a text by this Burroughs. My Burroughs. Fantastic and a fantasy.

The text Burroughs sent the editors of Albatross, “A Short Piece”, came with a note: “This is an experiment — one of many possible — in altering the conventional page format and drawing lines of narrative off the page.” I do not want step on the wonderful Beat Scene No. 33, now out of print, I believe, which reprinted “A Short Piece” in full along with Sinclair’s memories of his points of entry and intersection with Burroughs, but here is a taste of the opening section:

“He took some room with another gentleman. It was a long time ago. My brother he went crazy.” “The medics will look after your brother. We are interested in the other gentleman. Could you describe him?” “Well, Inspector, remember a young cop whistling ‘Annie Laurie’ down cobblestone streets eating an apple twirling his club? One very calm October. Then he sat down on a bench which he shouldn’t have done really being on duty. You look across the playground with a telescope you can watch. It was a long time ago but not too far to walk Mrs. Murphy’s rooming house remember? There it is on a corner just ahead red brick house and from the attic window you look across the playground of the orphanage with a telescope you can watch the boys at tall black windows of the dormitory. Ah yes here we are. Rooms

For lovers of Burroughs the poet, this piece is as familiar as “Annie Laurie.” This is just one experiment of the period. Burroughs seemingly wrote thousands. Sinclair describes “A Short Piece” as “Spinal theatre anticipating David Lynch, recalling Edgar Allan Poe. Bottled yellow smoke. Cobbles. Irish migrants in dockside New York. Morphine sick. Spasms of French Romantic poetry. Another sea town imported into this one, into Dublin. Secondhand bookshops near the cemetery, boarding house run by albinos. A black overcoat on a butcher’s hook. Language made from fading pictures.” There would never be enough magazines to handle them all. Burroughs wanted the text read across and down. Read every which way. Albatross was too primitive a laboratory in which to conduct such experiments. Nuttall’s My Own Mag would come closest in terms of the mimeo mag. But try as he might (read MOM Issue 12 for the best mimeo had to offer Burroughs) Nuttall could not answer the call. APO-33, My Own Mag 13 (The Dutch Schultz Special), The Dead Star and Time are noble efforts. The best examples we have of Burroughs at his most experimental. Burroughs would never really find the proper space to fully realize his work of this period. Maybe they were always meant to be thought experiments. Not of and for this world. Or maybe the time is now to dig into the archive and experiment with page, typography, and format anew. The magazine is dead. Long live the magazine.

If Albatross is remembered at all today it is because of the presence of Burroughs and Sinclair. But there were others. “What happened to him, to them?”

Expanded Table of Contents to Albatross

Announcements

Mullus (Christopher Bamford)

Gasman for me (John Arden)

Three Sonnets (D.R. Geraint Jones) 

“The Light of Day is Cold and Grey”
“Where once you laughing Loveliness”
“Let Me Not See Old Age”

Derelicts (Arnold Saland)

Six Short Poems

laydown (Brian Patten)
on first pulling a drey down Cabra Road (Ivan Pawle)
ILLAUNSLEA (J.W. Purser)
On the occasion of the marriage an uncle to his sister (Sartit Kridakara)
Dream Drug (Annabel Hadman)
hello hello all delight (Israel Kaplan)

A Short Piece (William Burroughs)

From the author bio: “William Burroughs. Controversial author of Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded and several compilation works including Dead Fingers Talk. Wrote and appeared in the film Towers Open Fire.”

Three Poems (Iain Sinclair)

man & acrobat
Stasis of Moon
The Edge of the Cup

Bi-Centennial (Russell Mead)

Bi-Centennial Anniversary Poem (for the State of Vermont)

Autobiography of a Peacetime Private (M.L. Lowes)

Things are not what they seem to be on the blue guitar: An Autobiography of a Peacetime Private

Sinclair nipping at the heels of Burroughs. Following in the master’s footsteps. That is why you become an editor in the first place, right? To rub shoulders with giants. Maybe some of that old magic will rub off on a young poet and aspiring novelist. I do not think Sinclair turned out too badly. No Albatross around his neck. He took wings and flew the nest.  

For Burroughs collectors, there is also M&M C125. Icarus 46 includes Burroughs’ “A Short Piece”. Icarus was the literary magazine for the University of Dublin – Trinity College, which Iain Sinclair, took over in May 1965. The contents of Icarus 46 consisted largely of the contents of Albatross, which due to University regulations was never mentioned in the pages of Icarus. This mag is quite rare in itself. I have seen only a couple copies over the years and I always seem to arrive as the mag has come crashing down into the hands of another collector.

As for Albatross, I know of only one other in the wild and strangely it was also sighted in the last year. Have you been following the catalogues of Test Centre Books? If not you should. The catalogues have been getting stronger and stronger and the one on Iain Sinclair was a classic. The bibliographic descriptions are detailed and nerd-heaven. So it was no big deal (??!!) that the catalog had Sinclair’s copy of Albatross. To be expected of a book dealer on the come, right? Albeit with wings a bit clipped. A little worse for the wear. “About Very Good, all things considered, the front cover with historical creasing (faint now), the blank back cover with three paint marks and a few scuffs, and only the middle of the three staples still penetrating throughout (the whole secure nonetheless). Toning to the first page and final few pages, without much impact, and trivially to some edges, but contents generally clean. Notoriously rare.” A cool thousand pounds. As well as a small run of Icarus from Sinclair’s years at Trinity College (Issues 40-42, 44-50, roughly September 1962 to May 1966). Issue 46 was signed by Sinclair as well as by twice, once on the front cover and once on the first page), Tim Booth (on the front cover), Ivan Pawle, and Christopher Bamford. Double the Albatross: 2000 pounds for the lot. Per usual, I missed out. They were the first items to fly the coop from the catalogue.  

So how did I get my copy of Albatross if copies were only test-run for “copyright libraries?” Well, copies were also run off for contributors and I got a hold Arnold Saland’s copy, writer of “Derelicts”. Here is the story of how his copy got stateside. From Dan Lauffer of Brown Paper:

Re: the history, CCNY may not have been Harvard, but there were a number of bright and talented writers-to-be and teachers who were useful influences. In my time I took classes from Paul Blackburn and Denise Levertov. The connections helped get contributions to Brown Paper. WSB reportedly taught during his time in NY. Equally as important was the comradeship of the group who met in the South Campus Cafeteria. While not as well known as the Cedars or the White Horse it kept a foment of gossip, comradeship, information, and envy — all without access to alcohol. (There were excursions into recreational drugs.) 

Much of the activity revolved around the school literary magazine, The Promethean. I only have the Fall 1966 issue. Contributors included novelist and poet Ross Feld, George DiCaprio, Robert David Cohen, who went on to El Corno Emplumado, and Charles Kutcher, who was president of the ABA. Other writers around included Lewis Warsh, who was active in the New York School of poets and had Mulch Press with Harry Lewis and Bradford Stark. We briefly collaborated on a one shot called Andruil. (I got George Macunias to help with the typesetting and design.) Arnold Saland was among the writers and was in another issue of Promethean.

Arnold got a scholarship for a year in Dublin, I believe at Trinity. When he returned he brought Albatross and chose to give me a copy. He corrected typos which had snuck in and signed his contribution. I read Burroughs’ contribution and saw that some of the materials that he had sent me as cut-ups of Samuel Beckett were included. (I will look for a contemporary interview with Burroughs from the New York Post. The cut-up method is antithetical to Beckett’s finely crafted language. ) 

Arnie spoke of the hard-drinking pub culture of the other Irish students. He also brought back a brogue which eventually faded. I lost track of him when I went on to grad school for psychology. When I tried to locate him on the internet the only reference that came up was from another then student named Malcom Redfern. He had a blog in which he said, “and Arnold Saland educated us all in the right view of American politics.” Knowing Arnie, this was actually a leftist orientation. 

So I bought Lauffer’s copy of Saland’s copy. Saland inscribed to Lauffer: “To my dearly beloved brother in Xrist + MarX.” Saland’s author bio reads: “Arnold Saland. American. Published in several small magazines. Now in Dublin working on a doct[o]rate.” “Derelicts” is a long story, dedicated to “Serge Ravich, poet, socialist, genius, madman, and by rumour junkie” and opens:

I met a man once, a philosopher
Who told me, loneliness must be realized
I have realized loneliness,
Now I must begin to understand it

Which as Saland annotates in thick black felt pen should be in all caps; the misspelling of doctorate corrected as well. Like Lauffer, Sinclair wonders what happened to Saland. Saland, like Albatross, has become an “[i]nky ghost[] in soft rain.” Maybe he will reach out and share his experiences of “[n]ew people exploring an old town.” In any case, his copy of Albatross has survived over the years. In fact, the copy is as near mint as can be expected (although those staples are still an issue; they barely hold the thick issue). Lovingly preserved by collectors, the trashmen of the book world. Let’s close with Burroughs on Albatross: Rub out the bird.

William Burroughs’ “A Short Piece” in Icarus 46

Icarus 46
Front

Icarus 46
TOC

Icarus 46
Burroughs 1

Icarus 46
Burroughs 2

Icarus 46
Burroughs 3

Icarus 46
Burroughs 4

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, lived in Barnet, and worked as an art teacher in a secondary modern school in Finchley, north London. When I got to know him, I often used to babysit for his four children. Eventually, I spent quite a bit of time at his house and learned a great deal from him and his wife, Jane — who had been his teacher at art school.

Jeff’s house had the front room set aside as a studio, where he produced paintings and constructions that fell into no category known to me. He had exhibitions at a couple of local galleries and public libraries but sold little.

He also played the trumpet and led various bands in and around north London.

He spent a lot of time in central London at avant-garde galleries, poetry readings, and happenings of various sorts. He was associated with a venture called ‘The Arts Lab’ and led a troupe of actors called ‘The People Show.’ At some point during the early 60s he must have met Burroughs. I do not know who got them together.

Although Jeff was deeply immersed in the avant-garde, he had his roots deep in very particular aspects of English culture. First, he loved the English countryside and the English pastoral tradition in painting. I remember him turning me on to Samuel Palmer, for instance. This love persisted throughout his life, and it’s interesting that the last paintings he was doing, before his death a few years ago, were beautiful watercolours of the countryside along the Welsh / English border, where he was living. Secondly, he loved British popular culture as it manifested itself in things like the music hall and pre-rock popular music. He never really accommodated himself to rock, even though he was at his most active during the sixties. His first and last musical love was jazz of the 30s and 40s — although he would listen and enjoy almost anything. I think that he once collaborated with Mike Westbrook (pianist and bandleader of some superb, roaring, far-out bands) on a happening in St Pancras town hall that involved my brother making an entry down the aisle on a motorbike.

I can’t remember exactly when Jeff started My Own Mag. I’m pretty sure that it was a lone effort. He didn’t have a team of collators and staplers. I imagine that he worked on the material and then ran if off on the school duplicator after hours, on his own, or maybe with the help of some of the kids. (It was a fairly rough school, but Jeff was able to coax some remarkable bits of junk sculpture out of the kids.) The title of the magazine was a deliberate reference to the titles of the children’s comics and annuals that he’d grown up with. He relished the clash between the nostalgic, innocent resonances of the title and the scabrous material that the magazine contained.

I’d like to be able to say that I eagerly awaited every issue and that I read every word, but the fact is that much of what he was writing and publishing was completely beyond me. It was just one more of Jeff’s bizarre projects. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve kept none of the copies, although I must have received them all.

I went off to college in 1963, but stayed in touch with Jeff and his family. He sent me bundles of My Own Mag as they came off his machine and I distributed them to interested (and often uninterested) students. That’s how Peter Collier came to have some copies. I remember the cut-up and burnt issues. Jeff was then under the influence of Burroughs, and the strange appearance of MOM was a sort of homage.

There was a seminal poetry reading that filled the Albert Hall in, I think, 1964. Ginsberg was the star turn, but it assembled all the young British poets. Jeff was to make an appearance, with somebody else, in a happening of some sort that involved them appearing with their naked bodies completely painted, and stuck over with pages of books. They never made it to the stage, due to drunkenness and the effect of the paint on Jeff’s partner.

Everybody who knew Jeff fell under his spell. When he died, an enormously wide range of people, from all periods of his life, came out to his funeral — although I didn’t go. I imagine that someone somewhere will write a biography of him. And I believe that his daughter is writing something herself. There was a big wake for Jeff in London, and a CD of his fugitive poetry readings and jazz performances was produced.

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 the bibliographically ridiculous. In an effort to frustrate and confuse collectors as well as parody the numbering of magazines, Sanders altered his bibliographic system at issue five and then continued sequentially from there for eight more issues. In a similar vein, Stan Persky, the editor of Open Space, a San Francisco magazine dedicated to the Jack Spicer circle, made issue nine impossible to obtain thereby making complete runs almost unheard of.

Complete runs of My Own Mag are rare, but not unheard of. In 1986, Nuttall decided he wanted out of Great Britain and planned an exile in Portugal. Nuttall returned to live in England within the year, but in preparation for his trip, he cleared out his papers in Todmorden and summoned Iain Sinclair to remove the archives. Many may know of Sinclair as the author of a slew of books, such as Downriver and London Orbital, detailing the arcane and underworld history of London. Early in his literary career, Sinclair was a poet influenced by the Beats. Sinclair associated with the British avant-garde scene including Jeff Nuttall. (On an interesting side note, Beat Scene Magazine, edited by Kevin Ring, just reissued the cult favorite Kodak Mantra Diaries in December 2006. The diaries are Sinclair’s account of Allen Ginsberg’s adventures in the British underground in the late 1960s). It is less known that he is also a legendary bookman, one of the pioneers in the rare book market for the Beat Generation. Sinclair’s books often deal with the shadowy world of book scouts, like in White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings. References to the rare book world permeate his novels.

In September 1986, Iain Sinclair Books issued a catalog entitled Jeff Nuttall and the Beats featuring “the bounty from that raid.” The first item in the catalog was a complete run of My Own Mag. Sinclair quotes the Maynard & Miles Burroughs bibliography section on My Own Mag.

Here is the Maynard & Miles explanation of the chronology of My Own Mag in full:

I have used the sequence suggested by Bob Cobbing (who mimeographed the early issues) with the exception of transposing his no. 1 for his no. 2, which order still disagrees with the sequence given to me by the editor in 1968. The sequence here established agrees, however, with the editor’s statements concerning the magazine in his biographical volume Bomb Culture (London, 1968) in which he says that he wrote to WSB only after the first issue was out. However, in the same book he says that issue 8 was the first to contain an issue of Moving Times. This does not agree with Cobbing’s sequence, which shows the first issue of Moving Times as appearing in issue 6. Cobbing’s sequence also shows issue 8 preceding by two issues of The Burrough, which is essentially the same thing as Moving Times (they appear in issues 5 and 7).

The seemingly most helpful entries in the Maynard & Miles bibliography are those dedicated to the haphazard My Own Mag. They are also incorrect as we shall see. The bibliography acknowledges the magazine’s confusing nature. “This magazine is notorious for its lack of numbering and pagination (as well as having pages burned, slashed and stained).” Maynard & Miles’ explanation of their chronology is not that clear either. Jeff Nuttall and Bob Cobbing could not agree on the sequencing of the first eight issues and even Nuttall contradicted himself in various places.

In his catalog, Sinclair provides further comment on the bizarre nature of Nuttall’s bibliographic system: “The note [from Maynard & Miles] produced above gives some idea of the bibliographical complexity of My Own Mag.” Sinclair provides his own chronology in his catalog that differs substantially from that of Maynard & Miles, Nuttall, and Cobbing. Sinclair writes of the rest of the Nuttall material in the catalog, “The rest has either passed through Charing Cross Road like a can of beans, or is locked away from human eyes in a lightless vault known as ‘the 60ies collection.'” Nuttall entrusted Robert Bank with “the 60ies collection” in 1986. Bank met Nuttall in 1980 through Eric Mottram. Mottram taught at King College in London and wrote The Algebra of Need, the first full-length study of Burroughs’ work. Bank writes, “It’s quite a fascinating lot of documents, in fact runs up to the 80s — includes stuff from the British Poetry Revival — but more importantly a manuscript — 3 page cut up, each page signed by Burroughs, together with correspondence from Claude Pelieu and Mary Beach and Carl Weissner…” Bank is scanning the archive, a monumental task, but you can see the fruits of his labor at the Life and Times of Jeff Nuttall web site as well as on RealityStudio.

On the rarity of Nuttall’s magazine, Sinclair writes, “The chances of coming on a complete run of My Own Mag are pretty good: as good as the chances of coming on a piece of the true cross in Brick Lane Market.” But included on the Jeff Nuttall website is yet another complete run of My Own Mag. Bank borrowed this set from Islwyn Watkins, an old friend of Nuttall from the 1960s. Nuttall writes about Watkins in Bomb Culture and immortalized him in the Burroughs-inspired cut-up “Mr. Watkins got drunk and had to be carried home.” Bank scanned the entire contents of My Own Mag. Thank you, Robert!! Bank’s chronology of My Own Mag for the most part recreates Sinclair’s list from the 1986 catalog.

At the 1999 Nelson Lyon auction, a complete run of My Own Mag was lot 155. The Pacific Book Auction catalog describes the lot as “the only complete collection of My Own Mag known to exist.” Clearly, this is an exaggeration, but the fact that each issue is signed and inscribed (in some cases multiple times) by Burroughs with additional signatures by Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg makes Lyon’s set truly unique. The set fetched $3000. Pacific Book Auction relied on the Maynard & Miles entries for its catalog. Interestingly, Lyon purchased this set from a rare book dealer (not Sinclair) and solicited Burroughs, Ginsberg and Corso for the signatures later. BeatBooks’s most recent catalog offered a yet another complete set for sale for under $1500. Andrew Sclanders cobbled together the set himself. A rare feat indeed, but not unique. Even so, complete runs of My Own Mag, like the Digit Junkie, are close to the “true cross” for Burroughs collectors.

While a handful of sets of My Own Mag exist, all parties associated with the magazine agree on the confusion surrounding the order of issues. Thankfully, there is a consensus on the numbering of Issues 9 through 17. These issues provide a high degree of bibliographic sanity compared to the earlier issues. As Robert Bank notes in his essay, Burroughs insisted on this change. These magazines are in some cases dated with a month and year making it possible to create a chronology. For example Issue 9 is dated November 1964. Issues 11 and 12 are dated as well. Just so things would not get too simple, Issue 10, the British Special, is not dated or numbered. The Dutch Schultz Special Issue is dated August 1965 and numbered 13. After Issue 13 every magazine is so marked.

On the other hand, issues one through eight give little useful bibliographic information. They are unnumbered and undated. In order to determine their chronology, it is necessary to delve into the history of the magazine’s creation and tell the story of its relationship with Burroughs. What follows are my confusing explorations into Jeff Nuttall’s correspondence, the history of My Own Mag, and published historical accounts. Robert Bank cuts through all the bullshit and lays it out straight.

In my opinion the first issue of My Own Mag corresponds to the published bibliographies of Sinclair and Maynard & Miles. This is contrary to Maynard & Miles’ interview with Nuttall in 1968 and Cobbing’s suggestions but it jives with the events surrounding the beginnings of the magazine. In Bomb Culture, a sociological history of the development of the international Underground, Nuttall blends his personal story with the history of the counterculture. My Own Mag grew out of a stew of the Committee for Nuclear Disarmarment, the scene around Bob Cobbing at Better Books, the work of Cobbing’s Writer’s Forum, and the development of the British Poetry Revival. Allen Fisher described the scene surrounding My Own Mag as follows: Nuttall’s “understanding of Kaprow’s happenings and Burroughs’ fiction, already evident to him in the early 1960s, linked to some aspects of Romanesque sculpture, Ken Colyer jazz and Dylan Thomas, made a unique recipe for My Own Mag and his subsequent poetry and fiction.”

In Bomb Culture, Nuttall writes, “I had just duplicated a book of poems with Keith Musgrove. The possibilities of duplicating (mimeographing) yawned invitingly. I turned out My Own Mag: A Super Absorbent Periodical in November 1963, as an example of the sort of thing we might do.” He continued, “The French teacher at the school where I worked duplicated the first mag for me. He liked it. He said, ‘Do it again.’ His name was Bob Cobbing.”

Bob Cobbing deserves special attention as his influence on My Own Mag cannot be overstated. Cobbing was a sound, concrete and performance poet central to the British Poetry Revival of the 1960s. This page of recollections highlights the power of his talent and personality. In 1963 as an outgrowth of his poetry and performances, he started the Writer’s Forum, a do-it-yourself publishing machine. Cobbing’s output and energy were legendary. In the early 1960s, Cobbing left his teaching position and took a job at Better Books. Better Books on Charing Cross Road became a hotspot for the British Underground. Cobbing began experimenting with the cut-up technique in the 1950s and his interest in concrete poetry and sound experiments paralleled Burroughs’ explorations in the 1960s. Cobbing, as well as Nuttall, is an under-appreciated figure in the history of modern literature and publishing. An essay on Cobbing and the Writer’s Forum appears in A Book of the Book: Some Works and Projections about the Book and Writing. Granary Books, the publisher of the collection, recognizes the importance of Cobbing in the history of the book and publishing as well as the history yet to be written in the years to come. Granary Books should know.

Nuttall distributed the first magazine to roughly twenty people and gave the rest to Better Books to sell for a penny each. Ray Gosling, Anselm Hollo and William Burroughs all responded to the first issue. Given Cobbing and Nuttall’s artistic concerns, not to mention Burroughs’ close ties to and legendary status within the little magazine community, it is not very surprising that the first issue of My Own Mag would land in Burroughs’ hands, and that he would in turn reach out to Nuttall. Clearly, Burroughs received but was not in the first issue despite Cobbing’s claims. Burroughs and Hollo appear in what the bibliography and Sinclair designate as issue two: The Odour Fill Periodical. Sinclair suggested that this issue was published in December 1963 and Maynard & Miles date the issue in January / February 1964. Gosling and Hollo appear in issue three: “newspapers velvet to the touch in super-absorbencies” in February 1964.

This chronology corresponds with Burroughs’ own recollection of My Own Mag. Burroughs inscribed the “Super Absorbency Issue” of My Own Mag from the Lyon set, “this rare item My Own Mag cheered me when I was under siege in Tangier.” In the Odour Fill Periodical, Burroughs added: “My first appearance in this periodical.” In his foreword to his bibliography, Burroughs writes, “1964… No. 4 Calle Larachi, Tangier. My Own Mag… smell of kerosene heaters, hostile neighbors, stones thudding against the door. Jeff Nuttall sent me a copy of My Own Mag and asked me to contribute. I recall the delivery of the first copies to which I had contributed was heralded by a wooden top crashing through the skylight.” These facts support the idea that Burroughs’ first appearance was in the second issue.

Burroughs’s first appearance probably occurred in very late December 1963 or early January 1964. In January 1964, Burroughs sent his son, Billy, back to the United States after a failed attempt to play a more active role in his life. Shortly thereafter, Nuttall and Burroughs met each other. Nuttall writes, “Burroughs sent his first testing letters from Tangier. In the bitter winter of 1964, he came to London.” At their meeting, Nuttall got drunk in a local pub and stumbled home. The Burroughs-inspired Mr. Watkins followed soon after. I would suggest that by the time of their meeting Burroughs already appeared in My Own Mag and that the meeting was something of a planning and / or feeling out session for further collaborations.

After Issue 4, Burroughs took a much more active role in the magazine, editing his own section: alternately entitled The Burrough or The Moving Times. Sinclair and Maynard & Miles disagree on the chronology of Issues 5 through 8. Sinclair follows Nuttall’s recollections in Bomb Culture. Nuttall remembers that the first copy of The Moving Times arrived from Burroughs in May 1964 and was included in the Special Tangier Issue. According to Nuttall, the Tangier Issue was number five. Maynard & Miles place the Tangiers Issue as number Eight after two issues of The Burrough and an issue of The Moving Times. In this case, they misquote Nuttall in Bomb Culture. (See quote from Maynard & Miles above.) In addition, Maynard & Miles side with Bob Cobbing’s memory of events. Cobbing suggested that the first issue of Moving Times was in issue 6 and that two issues of The Burrough preceded the Tangier Issue.

I would side with Sinclair’s suggested list given that he relies on Nuttall’s Bomb Culture written in 1968 near the time of My Own Mag. Cobbing’s recollections seem unreliable. It should be remembered that Cobbing believed that Burroughs appeared in the premier issue. Sinclair’s list also dovetails with the datelines of newpaper articles used by Burroughs in his cut-ups. Given the rapid, timely nature of Burroughs’ three-column works of the period it makes sense that he would incorporate current articles in The Moving Times pieces and then rush them to Nuttall for publication. For example, the dateline in the Tangier issue is February 10, 1964 which is the earliest of the dates mentioned in the disputed issues 5 through 8. This supports Nuttall’s recollection in Bomb Culture and Sinclair’s list.

Correspondence in the possession of Robert Bank seconds Sinclair’s placement of the Tangier Issue and supports Nuttall’s recollection in Bomb Culture. An undated postcard mentions sending material for the Tangier Issue and states that an earlier issue has sold out, probably issue 3 or 4. I suggest that this postcard was from late April / early May 1964. In Bomb Culture, Nuttall remembers that he received his first Moving Times piece in May. The mimeograph was churning out issue 4 by April 1964 (“Glad to hear that the presses are turning” April 6, 1964). Sinclair suggests that issue 4 was printed in March. It would have to be late March or possibly April. On June 18, 1964, Burroughs gave a progress report on the latest My Own Mag in the local bookstores. This was either the Warning Warning Issue (No. 4) or the Tangier Issue (No. 5). Given the mail system, there would be some delay before Burroughs received his copies. I would guess it is the Tangier Issue as Burroughs states he will write in more detail. That would be a letter dated July 8, 1964. In this letter, Burroughs apologizes for the delay in writing and states that the newest issue is selling well (Tangier Issue), and he requests additional copies of a sold-out issue with the burnt edges (issue 4). The date of July dovetails with Sinclair’s chronology for the Tangier issue as does Burroughs’ brief mention of the “newspaper format.” This refers to The Moving Times piece, his first sustained exploration of the three-column format, which appeared in the Tangier Issue. There is no mention of the multicolored cut-up issue at all suggesting it is in the process of publication, has yet to be published, or has yet to be delivered by early July. Who really knows? Not even Nuttall and Cobbing can remember exactly.

Let me throw my hat in the ring and extend this further to suggest my own chronology based on the datelines used in the cut-ups. According to this method, the Edinburgh Festival Issue (featuring a cut-up article from April 1964) would come before the “Over the Last Skyscraper a Silent Kite,” burnt-hole issue (featuring a cut-up article from May 1964). Naturally, this differs from all previous chronologies. It also does not quite fit the available evidence. Sinclair lists the Edinburgh Festival issue as being published in August 1964. This makes perfect sense since the Festival ran from August 16-September 5 that year. (For more on the Edinburgh Festival see its web site.) Focusing on Burroughs’ work in My Own Mag distorts a proper view of the chronology. So much for my listing.

RealityStudio provides links to the Maynard & Miles (with my notes) and Sinclair. As this column proves, the order of My Own Mag seems as clear as mud which may be as Nuttall intended, or as Robert Bank suggests the result of a hectic life. To this day, the magazine has an aura about it, and it is a unique experience to flip through its pages. As book object and as content, My Own Mag captures the spirit of its time, yet remains fresh for today, and eerily relevant for the future.

Robert Bank cuts through the bibliographic nightmare quite nicely in his essay on Perfume Jack, a comic strip by Nuttall that runs throughout the 17 issues of My Own Mag. Bank’s accounting of the chronology is the simplest that I have seen, the most logical, and the most in line with the magazine itself. In addition, Bank places the focus back on Nuttall proving that a detail study of Nuttall and his work is not only necessary but also fruitful. I would argue that it is also a really good time and time well spent.