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.

_____ Uncorrected Galley Proof in yellow wraps.

London: Picador 1993, first British edition, small first printing of only 1,000 copies, hardbound in dust jacket.

_____ 1994, first British printing in wraps.

New York: Penguin 1994, first printing in illustrated wraps.

_____ the trade edition limited to 400 numbered copies. Hardbound with clear acetate dust jacket as issued.

New York: Full Court Press 1982, a limited edition of 12 lettered copies signed by Burroughs.

_____ a limited edition of 100 numbered copies signed by Burroughs.

_____ first trade edition, hardbound in dust jacket, unusually scarce in trade hardcover, although the publisher estimates some 750-900 copies were printed.

_____ simultaneous printing in wraps. One of approximately 2,500 copies. This wraps edition was also reprinted at least once.

Letters to Allen Ginsberg / Lettres à Allen Ginsberg

Geneva: Claude Givaudan/Am Here Books 1978, the bilingual (English/French) edition printed in an edition of 100 numbered copies signed by Burroughs. Hardbound in a clear acetate dust jacket with facsimile signatures printed in blue.

_____ the trade edition limited to 400 numbered copies. Hardbound with clear acetate dust jacket as issued.

San Francisco: City Lights 1963, one of 3,000 copies in wraps. Maynard & Miles A8a. Consisting mostly of letters written to Allen Ginsberg by Burroughs on his trip to South America in 1953, but including letters by Ginsberg as well.

_____ 1975, second edition in wraps, adds a new letter dated 10 July 1953.

_____ 1988, third edition in wraps, this edition has a shorter Introduction by Ginsberg.

_____ 2006, new “redux” edition edited and with an introduction by Oliver Harris, bound in wraps.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

By the late 1950s, literary magazines were much on Burroughs’ mind. He was no longer satisfied with publishing his numerous routines in letters to Allen Ginsberg. Naked Lunch began to take shape as a novel and Burroughs sought a larger audience. Mainstream publishing houses were out of the question. Even Olympia Press rejected the initial manuscript. The literary magazine remained Burroughs’ only outlet. In fact, they carried his hopes and dreams as an author. Black Mountain Review and Yugen saw Burroughs through a period of almost complete despair. The controversy surrounding Naked Lunch‘s appearance in Chicago Review and Big Table finally caught the attention of Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press who agreed to print Naked Lunch as a paperback. After more than five years shouting in the literary wilderness, Burroughs was once again a published writer. In the foreword to his bibliography, he wrote, “So it was publication in a little magazine that led to the publication of Naked Lunch at a time when I had almost given up. For many years I sent out pieces to all little magazines that asked me for a contribution, as this bibliography attests.”

Just how important was the literary magazine to Burroughs in the late 1950s? So important that he considered, no matter how briefly and how jokingly, of starting his own outlet. While living at the Beat Hotel in Paris with Gregory Corso, Burroughs toyed with the idea of starting Interpol: “the poet is becoming a policeman.” Corso and Burroughs fleshed out the scheme in a letter sent to Allen Ginsberg on September 28, 1958. Burroughs wrote, “When the Human Image is threatened, The Poet dictates forms of survival. Dream police of poetry protect us from The Human Virus. The human virus can now be isolated and treated. This is the work of The POLICE-POET.” Allen Ginsberg was to serve as the magazine’s coeditor. What would the magazine include? “[O]ur content will be of the most sordid, vile, vulgar, oozing, seeping slime imaginable. We only want the most disgusting far-outness,” wrote Corso. This provides interesting insight into how Naked Lunch was viewed at the time even by Burroughs’ peers. Clearly, Burroughs believed he had written an unpublishable novel. Contributions to Interpol would include “Bowles (his most disgusting); Tennessee Williams (his most); and your [Ginsberg] bubbling, gooey cocaine writing; and [Jacques] Stern’s most humiliating, and Kerouac’s most maudlin, etc.” Corso continued, “I will tell you what we plan for our format: first an editorial, by either Bill or me or both. In it we will inform our readers that the thing this week is Palfium, or that one needs a prescription now for Diosan in Spain — kind of junk news, etc. Also we will review books, books written by junkies, fiends, cross-eyed imbeciles, huge-footed oafs, etc. We will praise and hail and laud all kinds of bile, and put down, pan, condemn all kinds of respectability and whiteness.”

It all sounds very tongue-in-cheek, but it was crazy enough to work. In The Beat Hotel, Barry Miles describes Interpol as a “forerunner of the underground press.” The time and, possibly, the drug were just not right. By 1965, just such a magazine was demanded by the counterculture. Fuck You Press published two issues of The Marijuana Newsletter. The Newsletter was “published by New York City LEMAR as a public service, to disseminate information toward the legalization of marijuana. The Marijuana Newsletter will print position papers, medical testimonies, and general information about the campaign to legalize marijuana. We shall agitate! We shall print the data. We have the facts about marijuana, the gentle benevolent herb.” The Newsletter contained editorials including two pieces by William Burroughs: “William Burroughs Speaks!” and “William Burroughs answers Jim Bishop.” Bishop wrote an article on the Newsletter entitled “Dope on Marijuana — By Mail.” In the editorial, he supported the enforcement of drug laws. “Cassidy’s Corner: pot market report” provided up-to-the-minute news on drug prices. “The Connoiseur’s Corner” was a “continuing column on grass grades of special interest.” Possibly, the editors (Randolfe Wicker, Ed Sanders, Peter Orlovsky, and C.T. Smith) heard of Burroughs and Corso’s Parisian pipe dream. Probably not, but Burroughs lived in New York City in 1965. He involved himself in the underground located on the Lower East Side.

Interpol reminds me of another cult writer operating on the literary margins who made a foray into editing a literary magazine: Charles Bukowski. Many think of Bukowski as anti-literary, but throughout the 1960s he was quite the literary scenester. He was a fixture in the little magazine world and even active in the Los Angeles counterculture. His regular column, “Notes of a Dirty Old Man,” appeared in the underground paper Open City in the late 1960s. In February or March of 1969, Bukowski and Neeli Cherry (Cherkovski), later one of Bukowski’s biographers, edited Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. It ran for three issues. In his biography, Barry Miles wrote, “It was his chance to rail against Creeley, Olson, and the Black Mountain School and sound off about anything he damn well pleased: he wrote rude remarks on people’s manuscripts before returning them, sometimes mutilating them in the process by smearing jam or wine on them.” Cherkovski’s biography contains quite a bit of information on the magazine for those interested. Laugh Literary proved irreverent and funny as well as publishing some quality writing by Bukowski and others. Copies turn up from time to time on the rare book market and they are worth a look for anybody interested in exploring a relatively unknown side of Buk. One can only imagine what the editorials of Burroughs would have been for Interpol. That is one magazine that I would love to own.