Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Walter Benjamin’s “Unpacking My Library” focuses on acquisition; it dares not speak of the dispersal of books, which must have accompanied Benjamin’s initial packing. Benjamin, an exile and a suicide, knew intimately of things left behind. For a book collector, such decisions, such discussions are much too painful to contemplate. Yet in the world of books, these decisions are made every day. “Deaccessioning, the deliberate culling, disposing, or selling of book from a collection is one of the most controversial aspects of the collection development function of the library.” This statement comes from Gary P. Radford’s article, “Alternative Libraries As Discursive Formations: Reclaiming the Voice of the Deaccessioned Book,” which got me thinking about how deaccessioning played a pivotal role in one of the great Burroughs collections of the last 25 years.

As the Radford article demonstrates with its account of The Reanimation Library and The Public Library of American Public Library Deaccession, one institution’s trash can get recycled into another’s treasure trove. This was precisely the case in the most important Burroughs auction I ever personally experienced: The Nelson Lyon Collection of William Burroughs auction at PBA Galleries on November 18, 1999. Library trash became cold hard cash in Lyon’s (and PBA’s) pocket in a historically significant fashion. Sprinkled throughout the 168 lots of the Lyon Sale were a few deaccessioned books from the University of New Mexico Library: eight issues of Mayfair that accompanied a copy of the Mayfair Acadamy More or Less ($450), Between Worlds #1 ($75), Rhinozeros #7 ($50), Film #37 ($25), Insect Trust Gazette #2 ($50), Grist #10 ($35), and Glebe #2 ($25). The Lyon Collection also offered The Spero #1, formerly of the University of California, Berkeley ($140) and the Calder Ah Pook Is Here formerly of the Intercontinental Literary Agency in London ($75). The prices realized, which looking back were modest, was not the big story. The finances that matter here are the libraries’ bottom line that forced such deaccessions to be made in the first place.

Given a library’s responsibility to preserve, such decisions cannot be made lightly. According to Radford, to deaccession is a “profound decision.” I am sure once placed in these “to be or not to be” situations, librarians waver and waffle in their institutional Denmarks. UNM, Berkeley and the ILA, all thought deeply about whether these books and magazines deserved a place in their collections. Yet these publications did not make the cut, or should I say, they were cut. There must be a reason for such decisions, a rational explanation, because deaccession calls into question a library’s entire reason for being. In most cases, the motive for this crime is pragmatic. The libraries needed money. Maybe they needed space. Perhaps these publications were duplicates or had condition issues. Yet such decisions can also be more theoretical and conceptual. Deaccession implies that the books and magazines were no longer important or worthy of discussion. They served no use for society. They no longer had a place in our cultural memory. And here we get into Foucault’s wheelhouse of discourse analysis and formation. Radford: “The institution of the library has a key role to play in the maintenance and legitimation of particular discourses at the expense of others . . . and deaccession is one particular material process which enables the library to do this.”

To be more precise about it, the deaccession of Rhinozeros, Grist, or Insect Trust Gazette by UNM library highlights not so much that they had no place in our cultural discourse, but the fact that such a discourse had not yet fully developed beyond a small group of visionary obsessives. Given the current robust market in the Mimeo Revolution as a material object and as a conceptual framework, the fact that libraries in the 1980s could consider such publications disposable may seem hard to believe. Yet it must be remembered that Lyon acquired almost all of these publications in the pre-Secret Location era. The New York Public Library exhibition on the Mimeo Revolution happened in 1998, which remains the Big Bang that generated the present explosion of discussion around all things mimeo. Although the publications of the Mimeo Revolution had been collectible for decades — hell, as the Ed Sanders Catalogues prove, they were instantaneously collectible — it can be argued that Clay and Phillips’ Secret Location initiated the discourse on the Mimeo Revolution. This one book correctly or incorrectly defined the field, created a language and grammar for discussion, and provided the historical and cultural context. Before Secret Location, the Mimeo Revolution was not considered worthy of discussion or exhibition in the academic and art market. Secret Location taught these markets how to talk the talk.

It is no mistake that the Nelson Lyon Sale occurred shortly after the NYPL exhibition. The Lyon Collection aptly demonstrated that a comprehensive Burroughs collection was also inherently quite a remarkable little magazine collection. If Burroughs’ output from the 1950s can only be understood by analyzing his letters of the period, Burroughs of the 1960s must be approached in light of his little magazine appearances. Like Bukowski, Burroughs was a major figure of the Mimeo Revolution and even more so than Buk, Burroughs used the little magazine not merely as an outlet, but as a laboratory to experiment with writing technique, i.e. the cut-up method. The Lyon collection made this clear and suggested that a little magazine archive could be built using Burroughs as a foundation, which would have import for the study of Burroughs. Secret Location further suggested that this collection would also prove useful for studying alternative publishing. The Lyon Sale solidified little mags as a focus in Burroughs collecting, placing them on par with the A-titles. Secret Location and the accompanying exhibition placed these forgotten — and in some cases deaccessioned — magazines back into public consciousness and conversation. Secret Location and the Lyon Sale justified the Mimeo Revolution’s existence and made its publications collectible to a larger public.

If UNM, Berkeley and ILA no longer had a use for Burroughs’ Mimeo Revolution publications, Lyon should deserve credit not only for seeing their value but also adding to it. Lyon’s collection created an alternative library as described by Radford. As a collector, Lyon must have been less than thrilled about acquiring library stamped copies of these items, but this compromise is a testament to just how rare these items were before the Internet made everything instantly available. Finding a copy of Insect Trust Gazette #2 in the pre-Internet market was a considerable effort in terms of time. One had to actually dig through bookstores, contact book dealers directly through the postal system, subscribe for book catalogs, attend book fairs, issue want lists and ads in trade periodicals. One had to be dedicated and driven. Obsessed. Lyon found a shortcut through deaccession, but then he went the extra mile by getting all these tainted publications signed. Signed little mags are much rarer than signed books. For example, most fans and collectors approached Burroughs with a copy of Naked Lunch or Junkie, not Fuck You or Insect Trust Gazette. So a Burroughs signature washed away some of the stain and shame of the library stamp. Burroughs’ hand blessed and redeemed them, just as Secret Location was making these magazines legitimate.

I purchased Rhinozeros #7 from the Lyon Sale. At the time, the signature overshadowed the library stamp. I am sure that the UNM library would love to have this title back. With the publication of In Numbers and Gwen Allen’s book on artist magazines, publications like Rhinozeros are the center of conversation and have never been more collectible. Historically, one of the biggest reasons for deaccessioning little magazines and newspapers was their availability on microfiche. Nicholson Baker exposes the errors of this approach in his typically obsessive and fascinating detail in The Double Fold. Of all the publications the UNM library chose to discard, Rhinozeros stands out from the rest. It seems to me to highlight the limitations of microfiche and, today’s version of microfiche, digital reproduction. Make no mistake, the first thing I did when I gathered a complete run of Rhinozeros was to scan it and post the results on RealityStudio. But if anything that process convinced me of the importance and pleasure of Rhinozeros as a material object. Rhinozeros is not a crystal goblet. It is ornate and noisy. Although less than ideal from a condition standpoint, the wrinkled paper on my slightly damp stained Issue 5 possesses a distinct feel that is part of Rhinozeros‘ seduction. The signatures of Burroughs and Gregory Corso provide the caress of the author’s hand. Rhinozeros‘ genii, which is related to Benjamin’s aura and makes an appearance in “Unpacking My Library,” is only released as the magazines pass through my fingers in the scanning process. It was my wish to share Rhinozeros with others. Digital does makes that possible. Sharing is the seductive spell of the digital. Reading as group sex. The material object provides more solitary, tactile pleasures.  

The Library and Access

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the University of New Mexico library is the Poetry Collection at SUNY Buffalo. Operating in the Rust Belt and constrained by that region’s economic realities, UB invested in its future by aggressively mining the Mimeo Revolution as it was happening. While others considered deaccessioning their little magazine holdings, UB aggressively subscribed to any and every mag available. UB proudly and persistently maintained an open-door policy in this regard. If a little magazine publisher sent his/her publication to UB, it was automatically accepted. No matter how small, fringe or DIY, magazines were considered a crucial component of literary discourse. Given their massive holdings, over 9000 magazines alone, it is clear they struck gold. Scholars from around the globe come to UB’s Poetry Collection to conduct their research. The Poetry Collection has become one of UB’s most important and valuable assets.

On November 12-13, 2013, I was lucky enough to be able to do some prospecting of my own in the Poetry Collection’s stacks in connection with a presentation I gave on the Mimeo Revolution. I requested over 30 titles as visual aids for my discussion, and UB came through on all but one request. UB’s Modernist holdings, particularly for James Joyce, have been attracting scholarly attention for decades. I would expect the requests for their post-Modernist holdings to explode in the near future. These holdings include not just runs of magazines but full archives, such as for Jonathan Williams and Jargon Society, as well as author libraries, such as Robert Duncan’s. The Poetry Collection firmly believes a library’s archiving function is not restricted to printed matter and paper. Paintings, typewriters, desks, and even a piano are all collected, curated, and cared for. Anything connected or related to 20th-century poetry has a place in UB’s Poetry Collection.  

Here are a few items related to William Burroughs that I happened to come across in preparing for my presentation. Incredible to think what I would have found if I was actually looking.

A nearly full run of Wallace Berman’s Semina

I have seen Semina behind glass at the Grey Gallery for the Semina Culture exhibition; I have seen Semina in books and rare book catalogs, I have seen scores of digital reproductions but nothing prepares you for the pure pleasure of actually handling and reading it. Semina, like Berman’s iconic transistor radio, feels great in the hand. It is incredibly tactile. Reading Semina is a sensual experience. It is something you feel deeply. Not just in the hand, but in the head, in the heart. Not just a magazine but an archive or an exhibition, Semina has become the very definition of the magazine as art. Burroughs’ “Pantapon Rose” appears in Issue 4 on a single sheet of white paper, printed letterpress. Berman realized before Oliver Harris, maybe even before Ginsberg, that Burroughs was a poet. “Pantapon Rose” is pure nostalgia, and Berman’s delicate and ephemeral rendering of Burroughs’ prose poem suggests the whiff of opium smoke, the blush of blood in the dropper, the faint sound of train whistles in the distance that symbolize a fetishized past for Burroughs. Yet “Pantapon Rose” does not vanish before your eyes or slip through your fingers; it is decidedly there and remains so after you put it down. Like a ghost, it sticks in your memory, crawls under your skin. Semina is truly haunting.

Klactoveedsedsteen No. 0 and 1

I can honestly say that before encountering one at UB, I did not know Klactoveedsedsteen No. 0 existed. Yet beginning his magazine at ground zero is pure Weissner. Klactoveedsedsteen is hyper-aware of its own materiality and bibliography. The magazine shifts format and means of production throughout its run. Issue 2, which UB did not own, was a scroll. I believe Issue 3 was printed on a spirit duplicator not a mimeograph. The issue has the distinctive blue ink and a multicolored cover that suggest the rexograph, not to mention that Weissner makes reference on the title page to the magazine’s smell, a feature of spirit duplication not mimeo. I remember mentioning to Carl that I owned Issue 3, and he jokingly called it a failure, because he fully intended the magazine to fade away over time to a blank page due to the type of ink he used. Klactoveedsedsteen approaches art. Digital reproduction does not do these magazines justice. How can pixels capture the spirit of Klactoveedsedsteen #3, a magazine that was designed to smell and disappear? Like Rrose Sélavy’s perfume. Or her farts.

Issue 1 reveals the influence of Jeff Nuttall, who was co-editor, and reminds one that Klactoveedsedsteen developed in response to My Own Mag. I would argue that My Own Mag and Klactoveedsedsteen are two of the most important and innovative magazines of the entire Mimeo Revolution. Yet they are not part of the discourse in Secret Location, In Numbers or Allen’s Artists Magazines. Burroughs is the major influence and inspiration for both mags. There are few writers of the 1960s who had more of an impact on the little magazine than Burroughs. For example, the little magazine exploded into public awareness not only because of the hype surrounding the San Francisco Scene issue of Evergreen Review but also because of the controversy that erupted around Burroughs in Chicago Review and Big Table. Is it my personal bias or did Burroughs help inspire the creation of more magazines than any other writer? Sidewalk, Cleft, Big Table, and New Departures are a few that come to mind. Delusion or not, Burroughs was consistently a headliner in any magazine he appeared in. For example, Floating Bear did not exist to publish Burroughs but its two most infamous issues, Nos. 9 and 24, feature him. Kulchur Nos. 1 and 3 differ from all other the issues of that mag’s run. Similarly, My Own Mag and Klactoveedsedsteen are merely little mags without Burroughs; with him they loom large and pack a punch.  

Klactoveedsedsteen 0

Klactoveedsedsteen 1

Klactoveedsedsteen 2

Subscription Cards to Chicago Review and Big Table

Flipping through the Autumn 1958 issue of Chicago Review and Big Table No. 1, I came across some subscription cards for these magazines. It is a well-known story how the University of Chicago censored the editorial board of the Review for its decision to publish Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. The suppressed Winter issue became Big Table #1, which had its own problems with censorship at the hands of the United States Post Office.  

For most people, these subscription cards are a nuisance and quickly tossed in the garbage. In this case, the cards ask some interesting questions and tell an equally interesting story. The question revolves around subscription rates for Chicago Review and Big Table. It is easy to assume, given the controversy swirling around Burroughs in Chicago Review, that many people cancelled their subscriptions, but it would be interesting to find out how many people actually bought a subscription in support of the editorial board’s daring new direction. Subscription cards become a means to assess public opinion. Jack Mabley in his article “Filthy Writing on the Midway,” seems to feel he has his finger on the pulse of Chicagoans, but is that really the case? Did readers subscribe to Mabley’s opinion by canceling the Review? Similarly, it would be interesting to see subscription numbers for Big Table. There were 10,000 copies in the initial print run of Issue #1, which is massive. How many of those copies were for pre-subscribers? Did Big Table sell over the counter to the merely curious or was its readership comprised of more serious and invested readers who bought into the Big Table revolution?

The presence of subscription cards also separate Chicago Review and Big Table from consideration as Mimeo Revolution publications. First of all, subscription cards suggest a level of financial backing that mimeo magazines just did not have. Mimeographers struggled to afford postage for mailing the magazines themselves, let alone hundreds or thousands of subscription cards. In addition, many mimeos, like Floating Bear, could not be subscribed to at all. They were not for sale, but provided on a need-to-know basis. Per post office rules and regulations, mimeo publications did not get the types of mailing privileges necessary for subscription cards. Mimeos were not considered magazines by the Post Office bureaucracy due the simple fact they were mimeographed. They were not legitimate enterprises or forms of discourse in the eyes of postal authorities. The larger question becomes did Chicago Review and Big Table more profoundly alter poetic discourse by working within the confines of the system (postal, academic or literary)? Or did a mimeo, like Floating Bear or Fuck You, have a more powerful effect working outside the system? Tallying subscription cards, if possible, would be one way to approach this question.

Chicago Review Subscription Card Front

Chicago Review Subscription Card Back

Big Table Subscription Card Front

Big Table Subscription Card Back

My Own Mag #5, inscribed to Jonathan Williams of Jargon Society

Sometimes a library leads you to something completely new; sometimes it supports what you already suspected. As I mentioned before, UB has an impressive archive of material relating to Jonathan Williams and Jargon Society. For the most part, this resource remains unexplored by researchers, with the exception of Rich Owens, who edited a Jonathan Williams issue of the online magazine Jacket. I contributed a piece on William Burroughs and Jonathan Williams for that issue, which detailed a dinner between Williams and Burroughs. UB happens to have an issue of My Own Mag #5, inscribed from Burroughs to Williams:  

Tangier Morocco
c/o American Consulate 1964 April 20

Dear Jonathan

This issue showing the newspaper format in operation. Will you be visiting England this summer?

Best,

William Burroughs

Williams and Burroughs would not meet until the summer of 1965 in London. This issue of My Own Mag would have been a nice detail to throw into my Jacket piece.

It also would have bolstered a piece I wrote on My Own Mag #5, for Rote Fabrik, a free newspaper in Zurich. Just a couple of weeks ago, they published a Tangier Issue. My Own Mag #5, itself a Special Tangier Issue, fit right in. In that article, I suggested that My Own Mag #5 was pivotal in Burroughs’ development of the newspaper format, which the inscription to Williams supports. I also argued that the magazine was instrumental in introducing this work to interested parties in Europe and the United States and, in essence, served as Burroughs’ green card for establishing himself as a writer-in-residence in New York City in 1965. It was gratifying to see Burroughs using the Tangier Issue in just this manner, yet not only as a green card, but also as a business card and a dinner invitation. I would have loved to include an image of this inscription in my article.

The UB Poetry Collection is in a sense an alternative library as described by Radford. UB took in the authors deaccessioned by more conservative academies: the outlaws, the outsiders, and the obscene. From Joyce to Jess. As time passes and academic discourse catches up with these writers, who were not so much outside but ahead of the game, the UB Poetry Collection shifts from an alternative library to a definitive one. Can it be that in a time of extreme hardship for institutional libraries, the UB Poetry Collection’s most productive years are yet to come? Possibly. Its holdings are indeed rich. Go North, young scholar, and stake your claim.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Several months ago I received an email from an editor at Black Dog Publishing which operates out of London. Black Dog prints books on a variety of topics such as photography, architecture, film and design. They did a book on Independent record shops that I am dying to own. One of the publisher’s upcoming projects is a book on German rock, experimental and electronic music, and the 1960s counterculture. The editor contacted me for some images of Rhinozeros, a German little magazine published out of Hamburg, edited by brothers Rolf-Gunther and Klaus-Peter Dienst from 1960-1965. Klaus-Peter provided the iconic calligraphy. Burroughs appeared in four of the ten issues. I had Issues Five and Seven, which I purchased at the legendary Nelson Lyon Sale in 1999. I happily provided the images.

The request got me obsessed with Rhinozeros. I have touched on this remarkable little magazine in a piece I wrote about Burroughs’ early 1960s mag appearances in Germany and Belgium. There is not a lot of information on Rhinozeros in English, and I do not have much to add to what I wrote in that piece, but I did start digging around the internet looking to piece together a complete run of this visually stunning publication. A bookseller in Switzerland had several issues and a click to Powell’s website filled in the holes. Now I have all ten issues.

So here are the covers of all ten issues as well as scans of all the Burroughs appearances. The images make clear that some of the most exciting visuals in all of Burroughs’ oeuvre in any format, be it novel, broadside, magazine or painting, reside within the pages of Rhinozeros. The Dienst brothers were interested in the Beat Generation, concrete poetry, and the cut-up technique. Klaus-Peter knew Brion Gysin and would have been aware of the cut-up soon after its rediscovery. The Dienst brothers then discovered Burroughs through Gysin. In turn, Rhinozeros helped introduce the cut-up to a small German audience. Not surprisingly, Burroughs was a major presence in the magazine, but his influence spread throughout Germany during a renaissance in that country’s poetry and literature of the 1960s. German writers like Carl Weissner, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, and Jurgen Ploog took immediately to the work of Burroughs, particularly the cut-up.

Issue Five usually gets singled out for special attention by American collectors. This is the Beat Issue and features Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure and Peter Orlovsky in its pages. The issue is also the only one in color which makes for some remarkable visuals. Peter Ellis Booksellers, operating out of London, has a truly special copy of this issue for sale. Tipped in with the mag are four T.L.S. from Rolf-Dieter Dienst to Whalen and David Meltzer requesting material for his magazine and a projected anthology. Whalen has doodled on one of the letters and has written: “How far off is our history” and “How far off our history is.” The letters makes this special issue of Rhinozeros even more so.

My copy is signed by Burroughs and Gregory Corso. Interested parties might be aware of Burroughs’ importance in German literature of the 1960s, but Corso’s equally important role might be less well known. After a trip to Venice in the Summer of 1960, Corso arrived in Berlin in July of that year and stayed there for several months. In that time, Corso performed readings, wrote poetry, and met with poets and academics. Two years earlier, Corso began work on a German anthology of Beat writers with Walter Hollerer, a professor out of Berlin. In letters from late summer / early fall 1960, Corso writes on the topic of Beat anthologies and he hoped his anthology would be published within the year. Junge Amerikanische Lyrik was eventually published in 1961, introducing the poets of Donald Allen’s New American Poetry anthology to Germany. So it could be argued that Corso was the face of the Beats for German poets at this time. Not coincidentally, Rhinozeros was started in 1960, possibly around the time of Corso’s sojourn in Germany. Without a doubt, Corso’s presence raised awareness of the Beats in Germany and helped spread the word about New America Poetry throughout the country.

Rhinozeros Archive

Rhinozeros 1
1960

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Rhinozeros 2
1960

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Rhinozeros 3
1961

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Rhinozeros 4
1961

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Rhinozeros 5
1961

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Rhinozeros 6
1962

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Rhinozeros 7
1962

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Rhinozeros 8
1963

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Rhinozeros 9
1964

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Rhinozeros 10
1965 (?)

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Burroughs Texts in Rhinozeros

Wind Hand Caught in the Door
Rhinozeros 5
1961

Novia Express
Rhinozeros 6
1962

Be Cheerful, Sir (Cut-Up)
Rhinozeros 7
1962

Der Doktor auf der Bühne (Cut-Up)
Rhinozeros 9
1964

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Living in the Beat Hotel in Paris and traveling around Europe in the 1960s, William Burroughs possessed the opportunity to rub elbows with several avant-garde circles active at the time. Previously, I wrote about Burroughs and his relationship with Scottish literary magazines. In 1961-1964, he also appeared in a handful of magazines in Germany and Belgium. I have always been curious about Burroughs’ appearance in three of these magazines: Rhinozeros, Nul and Phantomas. A little research shows Burroughs’ work tenuously linked to a few art movements that peaked in the 1960s. I have precious little information on these movements and magazines but I hope some readers, particularly European readers, might have some more information on these rarely discussed publications.

One of the more interesting magazines that featured Burroughs in the 1960s was Rhinozeros. Burroughs appeared in several issues of the magazine (Issues 5, 6, 7, 9) from 1961-1964. Burroughs submitted “Wind Hand Caught in the Door,” “Novia Express,” “Be Cheerful, Sir Our Revels Touching Circumstance,” and “Text.” Pieces from the then-titled Novia Express trickled into various magazines at the time, like Second Coming Magazine and Evergreen Review. “Wind Hand Caught in the Door” came from the end of Soft Machine which was published by Olympia Press in 1961. The other pieces are cut-ups that I do not think appeared elsewhere. “Text” contains a fragment from the Edinburgh Conference along with a fold in of Burroughs’ writing with Finnegan’s Wake. Rhinozeros featured concrete poetry and is a typographic marvel. Several of the texts appear in the authors’ own handwriting in colored ink. Text appears in both English and German. These magazines really have to be seen to be believed. The presentation of the pieces is extraordinary and in fact is difficult to read even in English. I have written previously on the similarities between Burroughs’ cut-up texts and concrete poetry. Like Cleft in Scotland, the editors of Rhinozeros were interested in Burroughs’ work of the period. Port of Entry: William Burroughs and the Arts provides a picture of Burroughs’ piece in Rhinozeros 5 as an example of visual poetry in the long tradition of Mallarme, Apollinaire, and the Dadaists up to the concrete poetry of the 1960s.

Burroughs was also included in Rhinozeros for another reason. Edited by Klaus Peter and Rolf Gunter Dienst in Hamburg and Berlin, Rhinozeros 5 (1961) was a Beat issue heralding the arrival of the Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Creeley, Michael McClure and other Beats in Germany. In November 1962, a Beat anthology, Beat: Eine Anthologie, hit bookstores in Germany with a print run of 6000 copies. Karl Paetal edited the anthology. I believe this anthology along with the publication of Naked Lunch in 1962 formally introduced Burroughs to the German general public, but Rhinozeros was there first. Burroughs appeared briefly in an issue of Akzente in 1963 and that was the extent of Burroughs in German magazines until Carl Weissner published Burroughs’ tape recorder experiments in several issues of Klactoveedsedsteen beginning in 1966. The Beats would have considerable influence on West German poetry by the early 1970s. (See this dissertation on Beat influence on West German poetics.)

The seeds of Burroughs’ magazine appearances in a Belgian magazine were also sown in Germany. Founded in Düsseldorf, Group Zero (1958-66) helped create an experimental art scene in the postwar era. Members Otto Piene and Heinz Mack (later joined by Gunther Uecker) held one-night exhibitions in their studios and published a journal. They created monochrome paintings and works utilizing light and movement. (See this slide show for examples of Group Zero works.) They chose the name Zero because it had no nationalist associations and evoked a blank slate, the potential for a new beginning.

In Belgium, Burroughs appeared in several issues of Nul Magazine. My initial impression was that this magazine served as the sounding board for the Nul Movement. Henk Peeters was a charter member of Nul which was the Dutch version of the German Zero movement of the 1960s. Most Nul artists rejected expressionism, and they often focused on systematic variation in works that could look like “hand wrought Minimalism.” In 1958, Peeters founded the Dutch “Informal Group.” “The Informal Art essentially was a result of the Post War abstract expressionism and the Informal artists strived for the dissolution of recognizable form in matter. ‘In-formal’ literally meant: without form.” Around 1960 everywhere in Europe young artists longed for impersonal, ‘objective’ art and the key figures in this movement were Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni. Peeters had seen the exhibitions of monochrome paintings by Klein in Paris and through Klein he came to know the Zeroists. They chose the name Nul after the German Zero group.

The art work of the Zero Movement shows little similarity with the art of Burroughs in the 1960s cut-ups and scrapbooks or even the later art of the 1980s and 1990s. Burroughs’ work of the 1960s remains rooted in collage and fixated on the written word. The later fully abstract art work, like some of Kerouac’s painting from 1959-1960, contains elements of abstract expressionism in its De Kooning-like brushstroke. The paintings are gestural in the application of paint to the surface with individual strokes very defined. In many works, Burroughs concentrates on the representation of a figure. This is at odds with the Zero Movement’s attempts to rid paintings of “recognizable form.” Paintings in the work pictured above seem like minimalist art with roots in abstract expressionism although in this case the work of Barrett Newman or Ad Reinhardt.

Burroughs’ affinity with Zero/Nul is less in a comparison of artwork but in a similarity in goals and maybe theoretical underpinnings. Zero/Nul sought a detached, anonymous art, with which they turned away from the extreme individualism of other Continental art movements. They wanted to get rid of the idea of the painting as a representation of three-dimensional reality on a flat surface. The objective of ZERO/Nul was to reduce the figurative; they wanted to show the essence of reality by means of the reality of matter. The color white was one of the most important tools for this, together with the elements light, air and water and modern technologies. The artist accepted things “as they were” and avoided all personal feelings. Zero/Nul strove to take painting back to its essence.

These efforts parallel Burroughs’s work with the novel and the cut-up. Zero/Nul sought silence in art as Burroughs searched for it with the written word. To some extent in Naked Lunch and more radically in The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded and Nova Express, Burroughs abandoned the traditional form of the novel, such as plot, character development, and linear narrative. Burroughs would experiment more radically with these features in the cut-up texts that appeared in magazines throughout the 1960s. Features such as the death of the authorial intention (as exemplified by Burroughs’ distancing himself as author by not remembering writing Naked Lunch) and the use of objective tone in Burroughs’ novels, like Junkie, correspond with Zero/Nul’s desire for an impersonal art. Literary theories, such as deconstruction and structuralism, come into play dovetailing with Burroughsian theories of the word as image, the word’s relationship to speech, and the word’s link to the referred object. These similarities seem stretched.

Surprisingly, Nul published, not cut-up-based material, but the less textually radical routine based pieces, like “Roosevelt after Inauguration.” Nul also featured a piece entitled “Take That Business to Walgreens.” This has me wondering if Nul Magazine was associated with the Nul Movement. The magazine was published in Belgium by Paradox Press. I can find next to nothing on Nul Magazine. Why exactly was Burroughs published in two separate issues of this Belgian/Dutch magazine that may or may not be associated with an avant-garde art movement? Any help would be appreciated.

Burroughs also appeared briefly with Brion Gysin in an issue of the Belgian magazine Phantomas. Burroughs provided a quote to a larger Gysin piece. I believe Phantomas was the vehicle of the Phantomas Group. Progressing from the work of Belgian surrealists like Rene Magritte, groups like Phantomas challenged and broadened the scope and meaning of Surrealism. The ultimate Surrealist act is no longer the gratuitous act, but the act of fragmentation and deconstruction. The goal is to negate oneself. This dovetails nicely with Burroughs’ theories of the controlling nature of the Word and the need to combat its tyranny with silence. The cut-up also parallels Phantomas’s interests in fragmentation of self and thought. Gysin’s early ties with the Surrealists in the 1940s are probably more relevant here as are his permutation poems in The Exterminator and Minutes to Go.

Upon closer examination Burroughs’ ties to the avant-garde in German and Belgian magazines seems to be less strong and substantial than in Scotland. Yet Burroughs’ work with the cut-up dovetailed with the theories championed by the Zero, Nul and Phantomas Movements. Possibly a reader with more knowledge of those movements can clarify exactly what Burroughs was doing in these rarely discussed magazines from 1961-1964. In addition, more information on Burroughs’ publication history in Germany and Rhinozeros’ role, if any, in introducing Germany to the work of the Beats would be appreciated.