I bought my first copy of the Olympia Press edition of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch from eBay. I had no idea what I was doing. I had never seen a copy in person. I knew little about the principles of collecting. But I had the money and the itch so I overpaid for a copy…
Tag: Naked Lunch
Michael Goodman Interview
A Conversation with the Author of Contemporary Literary Censorship: The Case History of Burroughs’ Naked Lunch I tend not to read academic work on William S. Burroughs, though there are exceptions. Oliver Harris never fails to be as insightful as he is eloquent. Recently I also enjoyed Véronique Lane’s book on the relationship between French…
1963
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting This may not be exactly true, but permit me to float it out there anyway. I have a firm belief that anybody who owned a copy of the Olympia Press Naked Lunch from 1959 to 1962 was interesting. A person to sit down…
Edward Dorn, “Notes More or Less Relevant to Burroughs and Trocchi” (1962)
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Edward Dorn’s “Notes More or Less Relevant to Burroughs and Trocchi” from Kulchur #7 (Autumn 1962). Explanation: these notes are from an accumulation of about a year — they occurred at random mostly as a result of having read The Naked Lunch and…
William S. Burroughs, Jacques Stern, and The Fluke
An Archive of Materials by and about Jacques Stern Including the Complete Text of The Fluke William S. Burroughs had known Jacques Loup Stern for little more than a year when he declared the man a “great writer.” Writing from the Beat Hotel in Paris on June 8, 1959, Burroughs reported to Allen Ginsberg that…
The Mouth Inside: The Voices of Naked Lunch
By Ian MacFadyen Paintings by Phil Wood Merging The live reading of Naked Lunch at St Mark’s Poetry Project in New York this October (2009) focused attention on the book as profoundly oral both in its origins and effects. Readers have long been inspired to spontaneously read the text aloud, and Naked Lunch contains a…
The Frisco Kid He Never Returns: Naked Lunch and San Francisco
Presentation by Oliver Harris during Naked Lunch @ 50 San Francisco Art Institute, 20 November 2009 Professor Harris did not give this talk in person but sent a PowerPoint and mp3 audio file. You can listen to the talk by downloading the mp3 (13.8 MB). I’d like to begin by thanking Peter Maravelis and Jonah…
From Dr Mabuse to Doc Benway: The Myths and Manuscripts of Naked Lunch
Keynote Address given by Oliver Harris during Naked Lunch @ 50 Columbia University, 9 October 2009 Ladies and gentlemen, boys, girls, and fence-straddlers…. I’d like to start with a series of thanks: to Gerald Cloud, Librarian for Reference and Research, for organising today’s talks here at Columbia, and for curating, together with colleagues at the…
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…
John Ciardi: From Doodle Soup to Naked Lunch and Back Again
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Read a lot of William Burroughs and soon enough you’ll find evidence of him everywhere. A sense of paranoia develops where everything becomes touched with the Burroughsian. Couple this fascination with a case of bibliomania and it can seem that Burroughs lurks on…
1962 International Writers’ Conference
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting The Third Mind images from Paris are not the only goodies we have received from our readers. Chris Hughes, a reader from Scotland, forwarded me some scans from a program for the Edinburgh Festival of 1962. 2007 marked the 45th anniversary of the…
Simon Finch and a High-Priced Naked Lunch
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting A few weeks ago, I wrote about Brian Cassidy, a bookseller just beginning his journey in the book world, and about his offering of a high-end Burroughs letter. At the other end of the spectrum is British bookseller Simon Finch who stands at…
The Heroin Drug Cure
County Clair, Ireland: High Five Press [n.d. 2004?], small undated pamphlet prints an excerpt from Naked Lunch, bound in wraps. None had ever appeared before this date, thus conjecture. This bibliography of A-List publications by William S. Burroughs derives from Eric C. Shoaf’s Collecting William S. Burroughs in Print: A Checklist and is published online…
Pantopon Rose
Charleston WV: Parchment Gallery Graphics 1995, holograph broadside with separate colophon page, issued in folding wrapper in printed envelope, limited to 60 copies signed and numbered by Burroughs. This bibliography of A-List publications by William S. Burroughs derives from Eric C. Shoaf’s Collecting William S. Burroughs in Print: A Checklist and is published online courtesy…
Junky, Queer, Naked Lunch
New York: Quality Paperbook Book Club 1995, three novels in one volume available only to book club members, bound in pictorial wraps. This bibliography of A-List publications by William S. Burroughs derives from Eric C. Shoaf’s Collecting William S. Burroughs in Print: A Checklist and is published online courtesy of the author, who retains all…
Doctor Benway
Santa Barbara: Bradford Morrow 1979, an edition of 26 lettered copies hardbound in dust jacket which were hors commerce, each signed Burroughs. This passage from Naked Lunch was issued on the 20th Anniversary of its original publication. _____ an edition of 150 copies numbered and signed by Burroughs, hardbound in dust jacket. _____ an edition…
The Naked Lunch Report
by Gary Indiana (Originally appeared in the Village Voice, December 31 1991) This behind-the-scenes report, which includes interviews with William S. Burroughs and David Cronenberg, on the making of the Naked Lunch film has never been reprinted until now. A few points from the report had stuck in RealityStudio’s mind all these years, and fortunately…
Naked Lunch
[M&M A2] Paris: Olympia Press 1959, the first printing with the decorative border around the title page, one of 5,000 copies. Maynard & Miles A2a. Dust jacket with a design by Burroughs. The first printing showed the price of 1,500 Francs printed on the back cover. However, according to the Chronique de la France et…
Kulchur and “The Conspiracy”
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Yugen, Floating Bear, Kulchur. I always think of these three magazines together. One reason for this is the editorial and creative presence of the then Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka). The other impetus behind these magazines is Donald Allen’s New American Poetry Anthology or,…
Burroughs Ephemera 3: Naked Lunch Prospectus Letter
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting See also Ephemera 1: Olympia Press Catalog and Ephemera 2: Naked Lunch Prospectus.” The recent columns on Burroughs ephemera generated a bit of interest in the Burroughs community. Forum member BigTable was kind enough to send RealityStudio scans of his copy of the…
Burroughs Ephemera 1: Olympia Press Catalog
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. It seems everything I come across of late ties into the saga I’ve been documenting in the Bunker. The terminology involved in book collecting can be quite slippery. Even terms as basic as first edition…
Burroughs Ephemera 2: Naked Lunch Prospectus
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting See also Ephemera 1: Olympia Press Catalog and the transcription of Terry Southern’s oft-quoted essay, “A Devastating Ridicule of All That Is False.” Just how high-minded Girodias’s attack on censorship and obscenity laws was is up for debate. Although he was far from…
Collecting the Olympia Edition of Naked Lunch
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Also see Jed Birmingham’s “Top 23 Burroughs Collectibles #13: The Olympia Naked Lunch” and RealityStudio’s “Secrets of the Olympia Press Naked Lunch.” I received an email asking about advice in purchasing an Olympia Press Naked Lunch. It is pretty safe to say that…
Bebop Burroughs
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Burroughs appeared twice in the jazz magazine Metronome. In May 1961, Metronome published “No Bueno” from Soft Machine. In August 1961, “This is the Time of the Assassins” appeared. These appearances are quite unusual as this is quite early for a mainstream magazine…
Terry Southern on Naked Lunch
“…A Devastating Ridicule of All That Is False…” In life there is that which is funny, and there is that which is politely supposed to be funny. Literature, out of a misguided appeal to an imaginary popular taste and the caution of self-distrust, generally follows the latter course, so that the humor found in books…
Which Is the Fly and Which Is the Human?
(Interview with William Burroughs and David Cronenberg, reprinted from Esquire, February 1992, pp 112-116.) by Lynn Snowden Deep in Kansas, darkly dressed, William S. Burroughs, a man who shot his wife in the head and waged war against a lifetime of guilt, who has sucked up every drug imaginable and survived, and who has made…
The Man Who Taught His Asshole to Talk
(aka “The Talking Asshole Routine” from Naked Lunch) William S. Burroughs Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard. This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency….
Dr. Benway Operates
(Excerpt from Naked Lunch) William S. Burroughs The lavatory has been locked for three hours solid…. I think they are using it for an operating room…. NURSE: “I can’t find her pulse, doctor.” DR. BENWAY: “Maybe she got it up her snatch in a finger stall.” NURSE: “Adrenalin, doctor?” DR. BENWAY: “The night porter shot…
The Boston Trial of Naked Lunch
Boston, Mass., once the scene of such famous censorship trials as those involving Forever Amber, God’s Little Acre, and, more recently, Tropic of Cancer, again attracted a distinguished gathering of literary luminaries on January 12, 1965, when “A Book Named Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs” found itself the defendant in Boston Superior Court before…