Interview – RealityStudio

Untitled Mayfair Interview

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting We spent an evening this month in a quiet top-floor apartment in St. James’s, chewing the fat with some of the world’s top writers. William Burroughs, the soft-spoken author of that incredible novel “The Naked LuncH’ was there. Sitting bearded and beaded on…

1984 Interview with William S. Burroughs

On the Occasion of the Publication of The Place of Dead Roads by William Weiss Abe Frajndlich, William Burroughs Close-Up, 1984 (© Abe Frajndlich 1984/2013) William Burroughs smokes Players and manipulates them with a hand that is thin and pale and missing the last terrible joint of the fifth digit. We’re drinking coffee and talking…

Timothy Leary on William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Bou Saada

Timothy Leary interview, Pataphysics, October 17, 1989 From INTO-GAL, 2006, Editors: Leo Edelstein, Judith Elliston We heard this tape of you with William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Robert Anton Wilson. Oh yeah, that was a recording from the Nova Convention. I’m a great admirer of William Burroughs, who’s one of my real heroes. When did…

Michael Moorcock on William S. Burroughs

“To Write For the Space Age” Interview with Michael Moorcock by Mark P. Williams Michael Moorcock (1939-) has always been a politically and culturally engaged writer who has been generous in his support of authors from several generations, from diverse backgrounds and with quite different interests including close associations with J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Iain…

Charles Plymell: The Benzedrine Highway Interview (Revised)

Interview by Paul Hawkins Writer Charles Plymell is a legendary figure. He was involved with a loose gang of experimental writers and outsider artists centered around Wichita, Kansas in post-war 1950s America. Plymell and the Wichita Punks had road-tested speed, dropped LSD, held peyote rituals and experimented with art and other creative forms. Were they…

Interview with Ted Dunn

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Ted Dunn collects strictly Beat Generation material, focusing primarily now on William Everson / Brother Antoninus though some may not consider him a member of that elite grouping that included Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso etc., though he should be regarded as a forerunner…

Interview with Peter Leeson

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Peter T. Leeson is BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at George Mason University. His current research explores the economics of pirates and has been covered by the New Yorker, Freakonomics.com, the Financial Times, and the Boston Globe. His book, The Invisible…

Interview with Brian Cassidy

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Brian Cassidy runs a rare and antiquarian bookshop in Monterey, California. He will be familiar to readers of RealityStudio for his input on Early Photos and Collages by Burroughs, a Rare Burroughs Letter, and other articles in the Bibliographic Bunker. These interviews on…

The Burroughs Market in a Down Economy

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting A handwritten Burroughs letter turned up on eBay a few weeks ago. If I remember correctly the letter was from the mid-1990s and in it, Burroughs expresses his thanks for a $5000 loan. I traded a few emails with Burroughs fans who were…

1979 Interview with William S. Burroughs (Translation)

Michel Duval En Attendant, November 1979 This interview with William S. Burroughs, which has never been reproduced since appearing in the November 1979 issue of En Attendant, was conducted on the occasion of the Plan K gig on 16 October 1979. It appears here in conjunction with RealityStudio’s dossier on William S. Burroughs and Joy…

1979 Interview with William S. Burroughs

1979 Interview with Joy Division (Translation)

Pascal Stevens, Michel Duval, Bert Bertrand En Attendant, November 1979 This interview with Joy Division, which has never been reproduced since appearing in the November 1979 issue of En Attendant, was conducted on the occasion of the Plan K gig on 16 October 1979. It appears here in conjunction with RealityStudio’s dossier on William S….

1979 Interview with Joy Division

David Britton and Michael Butterworth on William S. Burroughs

David Britton and Michael Butterworth are the founders of Savoy Books. To call Savoy a publishing house is rather like calling Charles Manson a criminal — it’s correct but it fails to account for so much more. A frequent contributor to New Worlds magazine, Butterworth established himself at a young age as an important figure…

Interview with Charles Talkoff

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting As Alfred Hitchcock has demonstrated, you never know who you might meet on a train, or what will result from the encounter. While reading the scroll version of On the Road on my morning commute, I struck up a conversation with Charles Talkoff….

Interview with Book Dealer Dan Gregory (Part 2)

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Be sure to read part 1 of Jed Birmingham’s interview with Dan Gregory of Between the Covers. You say there is a dearth of originality and inspiration in the rare book trade. Who are the dealers and web sites whose work you admire…

Interview with Artist Jim Dine

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Since the inception of the Bibliographic Bunker, I have been writing about artists’ books and the book as an object. The interview with Malcolm Mac Neill and his memoir Observed While Falling were revelations. Both reinforced my belief that the concept of the…

Interview with Book Dealer Dan Gregory

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In my recent piece on the Baltimore Bookfair and elsewhere, I sang the praises of the Between the Covers web site. It is one of the most innovative on the Web. With his presence at all the major book fairs, in several bookseller…

Interview with Malcolm Mc Neill

Artist Speaks about Collaborating with Burroughs on Ah Pook Is Here In 1970 Malcolm Mc Neill received a phone call from a man who asked to meet “the guy who knows how to draw me.” The caller was William S. Burroughs. Mc Neill had recently illustrated a Burroughs text called “The Unspeakable Mr. Hart” for the underground…

Interview with Photographer Charles Rotmil

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Since adding the comment feature to RealityStudio, we have gotten a small but very informed response to the Bunker and elsewhere. One of the more active comment threads deals with Kulchur, particularly Kulchur 2. While Kulchur made its name as a little magazine…

Interview with Brown Paper’s Daniel Lauffer

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The one-shot little magazine has always been an interest of mine. The average run of a mag is as short as the career of an NFL running back. Lack of time, lack of interest, lack of material but most of all lack of…

Anthony Linick on Nomad

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting For background, be sure to read Jed Birmingham’s overview of Nomad. What was the literary landscape at the time Nomad 1 came out in the Winter of 1959? Poetry was emerging from a period in which formal and academic values dominated the literary…

Bunker Interviews

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In the My Own Mag section of the Bunker, there is a long interview with Islwyn Watkins that allows readers to get a fuller picture of the community within which My Own Mag started and flourished. That interview inspired me to try and…

Islwyn Watkins Interviewed by David Moore

Recollections of Jeff Nuttall, Bob Cobbing, My Own Mag, Writers’ Forum, Group H & STigma in early 1960s London by David Moore DM: Please would you tell us a little about yourself and how you came to meet Jeff Nuttall? IW: I was born and educated in south Wales and, in September 1959, moved to…

The Job: Interviews with William Burroughs

[M&M A16] New York: Grove Press 1970, first printing and one of 5,000 copies, hardbound in dust jacket. Maynard & Miles A16a. First American edition (and the first edition in English), with a new Introduction by Burroughs. This collaboration with Daniel Odier is an excellent collection of interviews with Burroughs. First published as Entretiens Avec…

Interview with Gary Lee-Nova

Reading Burroughs Since the Beginning Gary Lee-Nova is a Vancouver-based artist known especially as an important figure in the “West Coast Scene” of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Sometimes working under the pseudonym Art Rat, Lee-Nova has produced a sizable body of work ranging from film to painting, from cut-ups to mail art. Alongside…

A Conversation With William S. Burroughs

By Simone Lazzeri Ellis (Originally Appeared in Contemporanea, 1990) To set the stage for this interview, which was originally published in 1990, Ms. Ellis kindly responded to some questions from RealityStudio. When I did this interview, I was the chief art critic for the Santa Fe New Mexican, which William knew because he’d been to…

Oliver Harris on Yage

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I received an email from Oliver Harris, author of William Burroughs: The Secret of Fascination and editor of The Letters of William Burroughs. According to his research and the research of others, much of the information on my web site concerning photographs of…

Dead Aim: The Unseen Art of William S. Burroughs

Major Exhibit of Burroughs’ Artwork to Open in London A major exhibit of William S. Burroughs’ artwork will open September 14th, 2005, in London at the Riflemaker gallery. “Dead Aim: The Unseen Art of William S. Burroughs” is the first installment of a three-part exhibition organized in collaboration with the Burroughs Estate. The exhibit is…

Interview with Lakefront Carol

Owner Selling Burroughs’ Former Cabin “Lakefront Carol” is the current owner of a lakefront bungalow formerly belonging to William S. Burroughs. She and her husband are selling the cabin on ebay (PDF) and are planning on passing it along to a friend if the cabin doesn’t sell by May, 2006. Jed Birmingham had some thoughts…

Interview with Rob Johnson

Author of The Lost Years of William S. Burroughs: Beats in South Texas Rob Johnson is a professor of English and American literature at the University of Texas Pan-American — which, it turns out, is just down the road a bit from Pharr, Texas, where William S. Burroughs lived in the late 1940s. (Google map)…

Interview with John Geiger

Author of Books on Brion Gysin and the Dream Machine John Geiger is the author of four books. His first two concerned Arctic exploration. His next two, Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and The Dream Machine and Nothing Is True – Everything Is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin, concerned…

Interview with Hank O’Neal

Photographer Speaks about Burroughs Hank O’Neal is a photographer well known for his jazz and portrait photography. He collaborated with Berenice Abbott for many years, and also befriended many of the writers of the Beat generation. His portraits of William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and others can be seen on his web site. Abrams/Image will…

Interview with Professor Oliver Harris

Burroughs Scholar Speaks of Past and Forthcoming Publications Aside from James Grauerholz, executor of the Burroughs Estate, Oliver Harris may well be the most eminent living scholar of William Burroughs and his works. Senior Lecturer in the Department of American Studies at Keele University in England, Harris first made himself known to admirers of Burroughs…

The Huncke Connection

Exclusive Interview with Beat Generation Icon Herbert Huncke By Johnny Strike I first traveled to Boulder, Colorado in 1979 to attend a summer course at the Naropa Institute called “Creative Reading.” The teacher was none other than William S. Burroughs. It was a small class of maybe 15 students. Needless to say it was a…

Fragment of an Interview with Allen Ginsberg

(Originally appeared in the Berkeley Barb, 1974) Interviewer: I’d like to return to Burroughs’ theory of evil. What would you say is its source? Ginsberg: Well, originally it was analyzed by William Lee the factualist (perhaps representative of a trust of giant insects from another galaxy) in Naked Lunch. But since then in Nova Express…

Interview with William S. Burroughs

(Originally appeared in Journal For the Protection of All Beings, 1961) By Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg Gregory Corso: What is your department? William Burroughs: Kunst und Wissenschaft. Gregory Corso: What say you about political conflicts? William Burroughs: Political conflicts are merely surface manifestations. If conflicts arise you may be sure that certain powers intend…