Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg at Grove Press book launch party, 22 December 1964 (photograph by Fred McDarrah) When William Burroughs arrived in New York Harbor on the Independence on December 8, 1964, with seven suitcases full of books and manuscripts, customs officials…
Tag: Mimeo
Rochelle Owens and Splendid Examples
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The Fuck You Press Archive is one of the most popular posts on RealityStudio and in the dozens of comments there was one that jumped out at me and always made me pause for thought when I read it. Frances states: “Thank you…
Lines Archive
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Lines Press Aram SaroyanAram Saroyan Aram SaroyanWorks Gertrude Stein Richard KomarGames John PerreaultCamouflage Lines Lines 1September 1964 Lines 2December 1964 Lines 3February 1965 William Burroughs and Tom Veitch“Naked Express“Lines 3 William Burroughs and Tom Veitch“Naked Express“Lines 3 Lines 4March 1965 Lines 5May 1965…
A Reply to “The Great Mimeograph Revolution”
by Tom Congalton Tom Congalton of Between the Covers replies to Jed Birmingham’s essay “The Great Mimeograph Revolution.” This article is very interesting and perhaps ironically, very helpful to me, particularly as regards the methods of viewing and marketing mimeos. I think you do recognize that if we adopt your approach to appreciating mimeos, as art, rather…
The Great Mimeograph Revolution
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting A library is a living organism. I consider my book collection a beneficial and benevolent version of the Burroughsian virus. The books on my shelves are fluid, mutating, multiplying. After close to twenty years of intense collecting, it has become obvious as I…
Interview with Tom Veitch on William S. Burroughs
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Let’s start with Literary Days. Can you describe that book? Literary Days is a 25-page 8.5×11 pamphlet edited by Ted Berrigan from two longer works — a novel called WHATS that I wrote in 1963 and a novel called Malgmo’s End that Ted…
Yay!: A Moving Times Supplement (An In-Depth Examination of My Own Mag)
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In 1963, the Times Literary Supplement announced the arrival of Dead Fingers Talk with a cry of Ugh! Later that year, Burroughs received the first issue of My Own Mag and responded with a resounding, Yes! In Jeff Nuttall, Burroughs found a fellow…
Apomorphine and Naked Lunch
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I found this vaccine at the end of the junk line. I lived in one room in the Native Quarter of Tangier. I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes except to stick a needle every hour in…
Speed, Apomorphine, Mimeo, and the Cut-Up
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting There are times in your reading life when you dabble in a book, dip into it periodically, put it down, and come back to it. Your experience with the book is leisurely, casual. You are chipping. The book does not have a strong…
The Naked Express: William Burroughs and Tom Veitch
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting It is amazing how a single sheet of paper can capture a special moment in history. My first issue of NOW provides a snapshot into the literary history of San Francisco in the summer of 1963. Similarly my offprint of Tom Veitch’s The…
C Press Archive
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting For more information about C Press, see Jed Birmingham’s articles on Time, Ted Berrigan, and Don’t Ever Get Famous. Also see the C Press Index. Andy Warhol provided the cover for issue four of C: A Journal of the Arts. Edwin Denby and…
D.A. Levy and William S. Burroughs
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting A Secret Location on the Lower East Side is one of my bibles, but the failure to document the Cleveland mimeo scene in any detail seems a major hole. Granted Clay and Phillips’ book could not cover everything, and Cleveland was briefly mentioned…
D.A. Levy
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In my piece on Eric Mottram, I wrote that I first came into contact with d.a. levy while browsing through the stacks at the University of London Library. Looking back on it, it is weird that I had to go overseas in order…
Don’t Ever Get Famous
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In the 15 years since I began collecting William Burroughs seriously, I have read a ton of books on Burroughs, post-WWII literature, the book, book collecting, and related topics. I find that five books stand apart in that they completely revolutionized my thinking…
Eric Mottram and The Algebra of Need
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In 1992, I attended King’s College in London for two terms as part of a study abroad program. I knew next to nothing about the school, and if I remember correctly, I chose it, because it was located on the Strand and seemed…
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…
Recollections of Jeff Nuttall and the Production of My Own Mag
by Michael Bartholomew 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,…
The My Own Mag Community
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Little magazines are expressions of and monuments to a thriving creative community. Looking through the pages of My Own Mag brings this fact home. The magazine expanded in size and scope from its first four-page issue into a newsletter for an international avant-garde….
Time
[M&M A11] New York: “C” Press 1965, Maynard & Miles A11a. A signed hardcover issue lettered A-J each accompanied by a manuscript page from Burroughs and a drawing by Brion Gysin. Illustrated with four calligrams by Gysin. The top half of the cover appears to be an issue of Time magazine and features portraits of…
The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In late 1963, Jeff Nuttall sent William Burroughs the first issue of My Own Mag. In an editorial note on the cover, Nuttall writes tongue firmly in cheek, My Own Mag “will appear every now and then… will be devoted to creations of…
My Own Mag: A Bibliographic Nightmare
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker 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…
My Own Mag
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting In the introduction to the bibliography of his work prepared by Joe Maynard and Barry Miles, William Burroughs spoke about how the “little mags” were a lifeline for him at a time when he had very few hopes for publishing his work. One…
Printing Techniques: Mimeo
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting If the letterpress represents the magazine or book as high art, the mimeograph machine epitomizes lo-fi production. The master of the mimeograph machine must first of all be a master of the stencil. The stencil is a floppy wax sheet backed by carbon…
Time
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Recently, I received an email asking me about a copy of Time, a limited edition collage piece published by C Press. According to its copyright page, Time was published in 1965 in 1000 copies. 886 copies comprised the trade edition. These copies were…
At the Kerouac Fest
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The following powerpoint was presented on September 8, 2006 at the final Kerouac Fest in Windber, PA. For more on Kerouac Fest and the wonderful activities of host Blair Murphy see thecemetery.net. The presentation covers many of the topics that I have been…
Fuck You Press Archive
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting It was a good day when I finally got my hands on Fuck You Vol. 5/No. 7. Quite possibly the coolest, hippest magazine of the mimeo revolution (Fuck You epitomized the revolution as demonstrated by naming the Steve Clay book “A Secret Location…
Floating Bear
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Also see Jed Birmingham’s Floating Bear Archive and article on Floating Bear 24. After my deal to obtain Floating Bear #24 fell through a month or so ago, Floating Bears have been much on my mind. I broke down and bought a run…
Floating Bear Archive
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting For more information about Floating Bear, see Jed Birmingham’s articles on Floating Bear and Floating Bear 24. You can also download this spreadsheet mapping the recipients to whom copies of Floating Bear were mailed. Floating Bear 1February 1961 Download Floating Bear 2February 1961…
Floating Bear 24
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Book collecting is full of regrets and missed opportunities as much as exciting acquisitions. Previously, I wrote about some of my regrets: the biggest involving a complete set of Black Mountain Review. I have also had my share of books and magazines slip…
APO-33
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting I spent some more time on Dave Moore’s page of Burroughs covers the other night. An interesting piece could be written on the cover art and external packaging of Burroughs’ work over the past five decades similar to the essays that have been…