Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

One of the perks about working on RealityStudio is the opportunity to get in contact with some very interesting people. Johnny Strike, Gary-Lee Nova, Jim and Roy Pennington. All have amazing stories and fantastic tales to tell. And then there is Graham Rae — a polarizing figure for some as a look back at old forum posts proves. Yet all polarizing figures have one thing in common: energy. Graham has chutzpah in spades. I am firmly in Graham’s camp because I recognize and admire a follow obsessive. He wears his passions on his sleeve and his enthusiasm is contagious. In addition, he consistently brings interesting items to the Big Table, or RealityStudio, as the case may be.

As just one recent example, Graham posted on the forum about Xerox Ferox, a collection of interviews with publishers of and contributors to horror fanzines. This is an intimate, close-knit world full of larger-than-life figures and an ecosystem that Graham was a part of in the late 1980s and early 1990s, while writing for legendary horror zines like Deep Red. As Graham mentioned on the forum, he is interviewed in the book. Well, I finally got around to getting a copy and let me assure you it is full of hellraising tales. The book exceeded my wildest expectations and I highly recommend it. (BTW, buy this book directly from Headpress. The price of this book on Amazon and other online retailers is truly horrific. Last time I checked the only available copies were over $120. Granted, the book is over 800 pages but $100+ for a paperback with black and white photos is a form of exploitation itself, which is nothing new for online book resellers. While you are on the Headpress website check out the press’s other offerings as well. Some really interesting stuff.).

Before reading Xerox Ferox, I was totally unaware of almost all of the zines described therein, such as Gore Gazette, Deep Red, Sleazoid Express, and Trashola. To say nothing of the related world of grindhouses, drive-ins, independent bookstores, distributors, and mail-order businesses that inspired and supported horror zine culture. But unknowingly, I had trespassed into this all-hallowed underground. Merely as a tourist mind you. I just casually dipped my toes into the chilling waters of the Black Lagoon. I was never baptized. I was not as Chas. Balun, a horror zine legend, labelled horror fanatics, a true believer. I was never born again, or, should I say, was never undead.  

Yet around the time Bill Landis and Will McDonough documented the exotica of 42nd Street in the early 1980s within the pages of Sleazoid Express, I was doing my own walk on the wild side on a smaller and safer scale. See, my brother and I visited my father in Connecticut several times a year and we would get on the Bieber bus in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, and meet up with him at Port Authority in New York City. In the days before the internet, cell phones and text messaging, it was something of an act of faith that when we got off the bus that my father would be there to greet us and whisk us away from the dangers of the bus station. If my father was late, we had to fend for ourselves, which meant fending off the local wildlife. As we got older, let’s say when I turned thirteen, my brother and I made the transfer at Port Authority ourselves and got on to another bus to take us up to Connecticut or back to Pennsylvania. That meant a layover.  

Now, I know nothing of the Deuce as Landis and McDonough as experienced it, but I can assure you that for a young teenager Port Authority in the mid-1980s was a horror show. Scary yet utterly fascinating. Zombies and vampires roamed wild throughout the dark passages of the station. My brother and I would cram together for safety in a bathroom stall and take turns doing our business. And to be sure, business was being conducted in the stall next door. I remember a young hustler with pinpricks for eyes frantically running up to a bored policeman screaming “He’s gonna kill me!” and then scurrying off terrified. Just minutes later, a hulking man shuffled by in pursuit, much like Frankenstein’s monster, mumbling curses to himself. The policeman merely laughed and directed the zombie toward his prey.  

Without a doubt, Port Authority made an impression on me. I have never forgotten the handful of hours I spent there. Do not get me wrong, there was no saison en enfer such as Landis describes; but it was a little taste (and smell) of what was cooking in Hell’s Kitchen. Years later in the post-Giuliani Era, I toured the bars around Port Authority with my future wife and brother-in-law. The glory days of the Deuce and its walking dead was fading into twilight but there were still flashes of local color. Siberia, Howard Johnson’s, Rudy’s, Holland Bar. At some point during the hours we spent in the Holland Bar, I realized I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this woman. Amongst all that loneliness and despair a relationship dawned.

As a teenager back home in suburban Pennsylvania in the safe confines of the shopping mall and my parents’ furnished basement, I again edged the abyss described within the pages of Xerox Ferox. I spent hours browsing within Waldenbooks, looking, but never buying. I was incredibly tight with a dollar and a good portion of my money was pumped into the slots of Rampage and Xenophobe in the arcade on the second floor. But I was a dedicated flâneur of the mall bookstore and I camped out in the photography section hoping to catch a glimpse of some soft-focus softcore in the how-to photography books. In the magazine section, I loitered with the mainstream porno mags, hoping to get my hands on an issue of Penthouse with Vanessa Williams (as well as an underage Traci Lords). I also flipped through the mainstream gore mags, like Fangoria and Cinefantastique, and related periodicals, like Femme Fatale.  

From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, I watched scores of horror movies. Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing were, and still are, favorites, but I also rummaged through the local video stores and got my hands on more ghastly and underground delicacies, like Bad Taste, Peter Jackson’s Meet the Feebles and Dead Alive, Blood Feast, Blood Sucking Freaks, I Spit on Your Grave, Susperia, Demons, Zombie, and Cannibal Holocaust. Surrounded by wood paneling, I scoured the pay channels for anything left of the remote control. I watched all the Emmanuelle films and the occasional Mitchell Brothers film, like Insatiable; I saw quite a few Troma movies; I dug Spaghetti Westerns; I would thrill to B-movies, like Gator Bait, and was always on the lookout for femme fatales, like Playboy Playmate of the Year Claudia Jennings, who died in a car crash in 1979 on Highway One before reaching age 30. Nobody rocked a blue jean vest and daisy dukes like Claudia. God rest her soul. I loved Hollywood Shuffle and I’m Gonna Get You Sucka, which led to Shaft, Blacula and other Blaxploitation flix.  

Without a conscious plan of attack or goal in mind, I was rapidly immersing myself and getting an education in exploitation film. But I never really schooled myself on the subject. This was with one exception a largely solitary pursuit. It never occurred to me that there was a community of likeminded individuals out there sharing their discoveries and obsessions. The curiosity that ran wild with William Burroughs, and found room to roam at RealityStudio, had yet to fully develop. I was an intellectual loner, not because I was a rebel or outsider, but because I was too self-conscious to bring any attention to myself or my ideas. I was worried about looking stupid or making a mistake. It took years to realize that the only way you learn anything is by sharing your ideas with others and having those ideas put under scrutiny and challenge. Making mistakes is a crucial part of learning anything. This post is an attempt to learn more about horror zines so I hope all interested and knowledgeable parties hit the comment section hard with additions and corrections.  

Anyway, long story short, I never flipped through the back pages of Fangoria and ordered what was on offer there. Reading through Xerox Ferox two decades later, I realize this was clearly my loss. Horror fanzines were not something I grew out of, like many people, but something that I matured into much too late. In my forties, I now document and pursue my obsessions through self-publication in a way I never even considered in my youth. Like Burroughs and Bukowski, I was a late bloomer.

Even if it is in some ways too late to participate in any meaningful fashion in the world of horror fanzines, I am still ready for Xerox Ferox now. This is par for the course with me. I never fully appreciate anything in the heat of the moment. A happening does not happen until it has happened. I never take the opportunity to experience anything directly but choose to immerse myself in an experience after the fact. I feel comfortable as a historian but awkward as a participant or eyewitness. It is only after the passage of time and the application of a patina of history that I can appreciate anything. I hate this about myself but that is the way it is.

As such, Xerox Ferox is one of the most exciting books I have read in some time. As an obsessive compulsive with a touch of paranoia, Xerox Ferox plugs into what everything in my life relates to: William Burroughs and little magazines. Just as little mags provided an outlet for non-academic and, in some cases, outlaw writing, horror fanzines provided an outlet for commentary on outlaw cinema beyond the considerations of accepted taste and, in fact, glorying in bad taste. 

Underlying Xerox Ferox is a theme of community and technology. The book wonderfully documents the changes in film technology from 8mm, 16mm and 35mm film to VHS and beta to DVD to mpeg and how these technology shifts altered the nature of the horror fanzine community. Moving from the Video Revolution to the Mimeo Revolution, the various interviews also thoroughly cover how alternative communities were built through changing print and digital technologies: hectograph, mimeograph, offset, xerox, laser printers, desktop publishing. Xerox Ferox is a must-read for anybody seeking to learn more about the printing technologies that got the Mimeo Revolution spinning.  

For example, here are the thoughts of Steve Bissette on mimeography from the opening interview:

Now, I don’t know how many of the terms I’m about to use will make sense to your readers, but most of [the EC comic fanzines] were either done as carbon copies or with mimeographs. That was an early form of printing were you’d actually have to type onto these stencils. And if you wanted to draw on the stencils, you’d have to use cutting tools that were specifically designed for them. I used those in grade school and a little bit in high school. At the time, schools were still using mimeo for papers.

I did get to play with trying to do a comic on a mimeo. It was hard. You couldn’t draw the way you’d normally draw; you couldn’t use a pencil or paper. You had to draw on this opaque blue-black surface that was sort of like a messy sheet of carbon paper. You’d have to carve into that to leave an impression on the mimeo master. And that’s what you’d run your copies from. It had this specific smell to it – I can smell it right now, as we’re talking.

That kind of thing, seen today, is beyond archaic. You just can’t picture the process of what mimeography was about. But that’s how most of the early fanzines were done. The cost of printing was expensive. You didn’t have photocopiers; they didn’t exist yet. That kind of technology didn’t emerge until the late sixties. You certainly didn’t have the equivalent of a photocopy shop in every town the way you do today. And typesetting was still done the old way where you actually set the type in these large flatbeds. The type was metal slugs. All of that was beyond the reach of any kid. You’d have to be a really devoted adult fan to do something like that. So the first fanzines that I actually saw printed were in the late to mid-sixties.

Other interviews provide similar details about offset, xerox, and desktop publishing. Xerox Ferox tells the history of the changing landscape of printing technology and provides case studies of how that technology affected zine production and distribution as well as how it shaped the philosophy of horror zine culture.

The challenges facing horror zine and Mimeo Revolution publishers are in many cases eerily similar. Reading Xerox Ferox the general consensus is “If it is easy to do it is not worth doing.” Or more importantly, not as much fun. The horror zine scene reached its creative apex with limited financial means and technical materials at their disposal. The cut-and-paste aesthetic, a hallmark of the zines, came out of necessity as much as any attempt to make a design statement. Lack of cash and lack of access to high-end printing equipment required zine publishers to do more, and do more interesting things, with less. It was also a challenge in terms of time and effort. If you wanted to make a zine, you really had to want it. Michael Gingold of Scareaphanalia states:

Well, I always say that the great thing about the internet is that it gives everybody a voice, and the bad thing about the internet is that it gives everybody a voice. Back when we were doing fanzines, you really had to have the enthusiasm to make the effort to type them up and lay them out, copy them and send them. You really had to have a commitment to the genre and an interest in communicating. Nowadays, anyone can go on a message board and throw their comments up.

Furthermore, horror zines were labors of love, not money. They were never thought of as an investment towards some future pot of gold down the road. The zines were made because the publishers felt compelled to scream into the void and see if there was an echo.  

In my opinion this definitely holds true with best mimeo mags as well. One of the primary reasons little mags of the 1960s are superior to the 1970s is because self-publishing was more difficult to do a decade earlier. There was little to no organized support or distribution system. Little mag editors were on their own to find an audience and pay printing and distribution costs. This was before government grants and the development of a literary bureaucracy. Only after the perseverance and eventual success of the mimeo pioneers did such a structured environment develop.  

Surely the early days were difficult and frustrating but such barriers required the first responders to be supremely motivated, i.e. obsessed, and the limitations of the medium paradoxically allowed more freedom and ultimately more creativity in production and distribution. It is no surprise that when money, however minimal, seeped into the mimeo ecosystem, the publishers left the mimeograph behind for offset, which was easier and “more professional.” This is also to say that things became more routine (and boring), not just in terms of regular publishing schedules (such as printing monthly or quarterly), but also in terms of content.  

Xerox Ferox makes clear that the golden age of zine production was pre-Internet. Eventually the print zine declined with the ease of publishing online. Yet most zinesters agree that blogs lack the energy and attitude of the hardcopy originators. Zines exploded precisely because information was so difficult to come by. The ability to find any factoid on the internet made the creation and distribution of print zines unnecessary. But again ease came at the expense of fun and passion. Dennis Daniel states of zines like Deep Red:

It’s an era that’s gone, but that’s OK. Things are supposed to go. Things are supposed to evolve and change. And now, everything you’d ever want to know (right up to when Rick Baker’s taking a shit) can be found on the internet. . . . But that’s what makes those magazines so coveted today. That’s what makes them mean so much. And if you live long enough, you have the opportunity to look back and say, “Oh my God . . . it’s not like that anymore. But, boy am I glad to have been a part of it.”

If something is easy to do, lazy people, and thus, lazy minds, will be drawn to it. Pre-internet, to create a filmography or to document the history of a particular underground film took real skill and effort in terms of research. This difficulty meant that only the most persistent, dedicated and obsessed individuals would take the time and effort to attempt it. The result was a better, more spirited, more individualized publication.  

Similarly in the world of book collecting, there is much talk about the decline of the hobby in the information age. One primary reason for this is that the internet made book collecting easier to do. The search engines do all the legwork. Currently the driving force in book collecting is not the search or the quest, which can be accomplished in seconds, but economics. Can you afford the book? Unfortunately, the internet has also standardized prices so there is little to no difference in pricing on a particular book. The days of walking onto a bookstore and finding a rare, unusual, undervalued book are over. The internet has democratized knowledge and standardized pricing to the detriment of book collecting as a hobby.  

What is the extent of the crossover between little mags and horror zines in general? Xerox Ferox makes clear that punk culture was a major influence on horror zines, but what about the spirit of the Mimeo Revolution? For example, Stephen King early in his career published a poem entitled “Brooklyn August” in the Baseball Issue of Io Magazine, alongside Mimeo Revolution stalwarts such as Jack Spicer, Stan Persky, Paul Blackburn, Robert Duncan, Ed Dorn, and Charles Olson: “below, the old men and off duty taxi drivers/drinking big cups of Schlitz in the 75¢ seats,/this Flatbush as real as velvet Harlem streets.” A skeleton in King’s closet later exposed to the light of day in the odds and sods collection, Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Not surprisingly, horror zine publishers and contributors list Beat writers as major influences on their worldview if not their writing. In what other ways were the literary counterculture and the horror zinesters blood brothers?  

Tom Veitch jumps to mind. Veitch is a poet who got his start with Ted Berrigan’s C Press, which published Veitch’s Literary Days in 1964. C Press was also involved in issuing C Comics #1 & 2, which featured comic illustrations by Joe Brainard accompanying text supplied by various poets. Brainard took his cue from Pop artists, such as Warhol and Lichtenstein, who appropriated comic strip characters in their artwork. Brainard made a name for himself by co-opting Nancy. Siglio Press celebrated Brainard’s work in this regard in its popular The Nancy Book. Brainard merged comics, pornographic innuendo, and camp creating a more literary form of Tijuana Bible but Tom Veitch, post-C Press, drew on the rich tradition of horror comics. Tom’s brother, Rick, is a well-known and well-regarded illustrator with credits including the legendary Swamp Thing, which he illustrated along with Steve Bissette, the mentor figure of Xerox Ferox. In the early 1970s, Tom and Rick collaborated on an EC Comic parody entitled Two-Fisted Zombies. In addition Tom and comic illustrator Greg Irons collaborated on horror inspired comics such as Deviant Slice #1, The Legion of Charlies, and Skull #6. The Veitch/Irons team also appeared in little mags, notably Bill Berkson’s Big Sky #1, which featured their eco-minded and horror inspired comic The Creature from the Bolinas Lagoon. Irons provided covers for various Big Sky publications including a cover for Big Sky #1 that enters the realm of the fantastic.  

As I have written before, Tom Veitch was obsessed with William Burroughs. El Hombre Invisible is a ghostly presence in Veitch’s horror comics, if not an overt one, as proven by The Legion of Charlies. The comic opens with a mock newspaper, The San Francisco Chiclet, which is identical in format to Veitch’s The Naked Express that appeared in Aram Saroyan’s Lines and as a standalone piece of ephemera. I have written about The Naked Express and its link to Burroughs. The San Francisco Chiclet slyly references Hassan I Sabbah and the back pages of Charlies contains an advertisement for a comic rendition of The Nova Formula, a “theory which shows that history will spiral into disaster” that also grapples with the “evolutionary goal [to] travel to the stars.” Veitch relies the Burroughsian routine in developing the Charlies storyline, which involves power hungry President Nixon and Vice President Agnew joining forces and eventually being consumed by zombie Manson family members along with convert Lt. William Calley of My Lai infamy. “The Conversion of President Nixnerk” that ends Charlies is pure routine in form and content. “Roosevelt After Inauguration” comes to mind. A routine that could be spun as a great horror comic by the way. Purple-assed baboons run amok craving the flesh of Supreme Court Justices!!

Does a taste for Burroughs make one predisposed for a fascination with horror? Burroughs was clearly an influence on science fiction and thus sci-fi zines. For example there was a sci-fi zine named Nova Express. This further suggests that after Naked Lunch, Burroughs’ most influential novel is probably Nova Express, at least in terms of influencing other writers. There has always been a horror element to Burroughs, who was no doubt a writer of shock and special effects. The Burroughsian universe is a horrific underworld and Burroughs graphically revels in its blood, guts and seminal fluid.  

Xerox Ferox makes clear that there is a close affinity between the avant garde and the exploitation genre. Both are created with limited means by highly motivated individuals pursuing an extremely personal and highly original, often unusual and transgressive, vision. Greg Goodsell states:

Independent filmmakers don’t have any money; they use their friends as actors, etcetera. It’s like when I was working at small newspapers and large newspapers – if you’re small, you can do what you please. You can bring neuroses, likes and dislikes to a project. You can bring your own quirk and personality to it and no one is in the front office saying “You can’t do that.” So yeah, that’s the appeal about no-budget independent filmmaking.  

Q: The art film and the down-and-dirty exploitation film don’t differ much, in that respect.

Goodsell: The bigger a project is, the more people you have with vested interests in it. They say, “You can’t do that, you can’t step on these toes, and you have to use this actor.” It’s just artistic freedom. The art film offers artistic freedom, and the low budget exploitation movie (which is ostensibly made to make money) offers the same sort of freedom.

Let not forget, what is for me, the most important lines Burroughs ever wrote:  

That’s the sex that passes the censor, squeezes through between the bureaus, because there is always a space between, in popular songs and Grade B movies, giving away the basic American rottenness spurting out like breaking boils, throwing out gobs of that un-D.T. to fall anywhere and grow into some degenerate cancerous life-form, reproducing a hideous random image.

Not surprisingly, Antony Balch, who directed Burroughs’ cut-up films, was an exploitation director. When you think of it, Towers Open Fire is a sci-fi exploitation flick. Burroughs is likewise an exploitation writer. Junkie is after all pulp fiction as is Naked Lunch. The late trilogy is genre fiction. Burroughs, the cut-up writer, is a crazed, i.e., obsessed, slasher, like Jason Voorhees, wielding a scissors or Stanley blade instead of a machete. Burroughs sought to rip all rational thought to shreds, not nubile co-eds. And think of Burroughs as Benway in Brookner’s documentary standing over a corpse in an operating room splattered with blood. Balch’s Horror Hospital indeed. In addition, Burroughs narrated Haxan, a documentary on witchcraft as well as Poe’s horror classic The Masque of the Read Death. The cut-up might be Burroughs’ greatest affinity with the horror zine. The cut-and-paste aesthetic of horror zines comes from many sources, such as Dada and Punk, but Burroughs fits in there prominently as well. Perhaps nowhere are Burroughs’ ties to horror and fantasy more evident than in his collaborations with Malcolm Mc Neill in Ah Puch Is Here and in Cyclops magazine in the 1970s. I wonder to what extent the publishers of the horror zine boom of the 1980s were aware of Burroughs’ work with Mc Neill. It is possible. After all, Screw published a glimpse of the full project in 1977, the dawn of the horror zine boom.  

Thinking of Nova Express, Bill Landis’ Sleazoid Express, by all accounts one of the highspots of the horror zine in terms of writing style and worldview, comes to mind. Is the “Express” a nod to Burroughs as well as a nod to tabloid journalism? In Landis’ case, the connection would be to Junkie more than Nova Express or Ah Puch. Landis walked the walk and talked the talk. His writing is gonzo in nature and, like Burroughs and Thompson, he was an outlaw writer. Heroin played a large role in the Landis aesthetic. In Sleazoid Express, Landis documented the dying culture of Times Square sleaze, funk and grit before it was washed away by Giuliani and turned into a Big Apple Disneyland. In Junkie, Burroughs captures a dying Times Square subculture that came under assault by post-WWII moralists. Likewise Burroughs cherished the lost worlds of rural and pre-WWI sleaze as captured by Jack Black in You Can’t Win. To what extent was Landis intimately familiar with that book as well as the work of Burroughs?  

The real common ground between Landis and Burroughs — and what makes their visions so unique and personal — was less their personal experiences with junk and junk culture, but the fact that they were awash with nostalgia: a longing for a bygone or rapidly dying era of decadence. The entire horror zine world is one of nostalgia. Few writers document the power and allure of nostalgia as well as Burroughs. Nostalgia is the opiate of the artist.

If Bill Landis was not directly influenced by Burroughs, horror auteur David Cronenberg most definitely was and is. Rabid, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly. These films and others are clearly Burroughsian. Cronenberg’s fascination with Burroughs is well documented, whether it be in Jack Sargent’s Naked Lens, Beat Cinema or freely discussed by Cronenberg himself in Cronenberg on Cronenberg as well as in numerous interviews. Cronenberg got his start in the horror/exploitation genre, which he injected with a Burroughsian worldview of viruses, paranoia, addiction, and information overload. His movies were hotly discussed in horror zines, and Naked Lunch with its special effect creatures, like the Mugwump, was no exception.  

I was studying abroad in London in early 1992 as the hype for Cronenberg’s adaptation hit a fever pitch. I distinctly remember picking up a copy of Cinefantastique along with a copy of Viz, and an issue of Club and Penthouse International in an underground newsstand. I still have the Club and the Penthouse, but seem to have misplaced the others. Priorities!!! Cinefantastique featured the latest Star Trek retread on the cover; a movie I thought was incredibly stupid and unnecessary. Yet I did not feel the same about the latest Hellraiser opus, which was splattered all over the horror zines of that Spring. I was in a Clive Barker phase at the time and had eagerly looked forward to Nightbreed, which starred Cronenberg in a decidedly nasty turn as Dr. Decker. Cronenberg wrote the script to Naked Lunch during his acting gig. Perhaps he channeled Dr. Benway.  

Much of the press about Naked Lunch centered on how Cronenberg managed to capture what for years had been considered impossible to memorialize on film. Cronenberg made a point not to rely on computer generated effects to re-create the look and characters of Interzone. Flipping through the pages of Fangoria, it is clear that the tide was changing and that Naked Lunch was the end of an era in filmmaking. The film version of The Lawnmower Man represented the future in more ways than one. The adaption of King’s short story was dominated by blue screens and generated by programs crunching a series of ones and zeros. Terminator 2 was yet another example that computers were the future of the horror and action movie and the puppet-based effects of the past were facing their Judgment Day. In this changing FX landscape, the Mugwumps and mutant typewriters of Naked Lunch were physical objects created by hand by the masters at CWI. The actors could touch them, hear them speak. They could violate the actors’ space or even violate the actors physically. Peter Weller states, “Naked Lunch was very easy to do as far as special effects were concerned, because most of them were done live on the set. When I was doing Of Unknown Origin, for example, I never saw a rat for the entire shooting! I was obliged to try and imagine it. For Naked Lunch, everything was before me, and I could talk to it as if it were another actor.” Cronenberg strove to give his creatures a sense of depth as well as a degree of humanity. They were mobile, speaking characters in the film. The Clark Nova and the Mugwump become Lee’s buddies.

Looking back on some of those articles now, I see a relationship between the special effects of Naked Lunch and the printing technologies of the Mimeograph Revolution and horror zines. Both are old school and time-consuming and require a degree of physical interaction with the materials. Manipulating a mimeograph forced one to get intimate with the machine and get one’s hands dirty. The cutting and pasting of copy for xeroxing is another example. Hands sticky with rubber cement and newsprint. The images of Lee frigging off his mutant typewriter come to mind. In addition, receiving a constructed object in the mail creates a physical and intellectual intimacy, a bond, which the internet and email cannot match. E-zines and blogging permit greater speed of production and ease of distribution but sacrifice the depth and humanity that Cronenberg and Weller speak so passionately of.  

All this reminds me that an interesting archive could be gathered by focusing on Burroughs and film. Just thinking off the top of my head, it could include Burroughs books, such as The Last Words of Dutch Schultz, or his script for Towers Open Fire in Film #35. Digging deeper and spending a bit more money would lead to the aborted scripts for Naked Lunch and Junkie from the 1970s. Also included would be reviews or advertisements dealing with the cut-up films, the Burroughs documentaries, or films such as Beat, Kill My Darlings, or On the Road. To say nothing of the movies Twister, Wax or Drugstore Cowboy in which Burroughs starred as an actor. Movie ephemera, like posters and press kits for all these films, fit in nicely as well. The coverage of Naked Lunch in horror fanzines would form a secret torture chamber within this larger, possibly limitless, library. For example in the spring of 1992, the Naked Lunch movie was featured at least four times in Fangoria and Cinefantastique. There are no doubt others. For example Wet Paint #34 presented an article on Naked Lunch along with an image of a Mugwump on its cover. I have been unable to locate a copy quickly. All this begs the question to what extent was Burroughs featured in horror zines both before and after Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch? Anybody out there know of any horror zines that mention William Burroughs? What horror zines can be called Burroughsian? Raw Virus? What else can be dug up from the grave? What Famous Monsters lurk in your attic, closet or basement? Let me hear you scream.

Horror Zine Reviews of David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch

Cinefantastique
April 1992

Download the Review

Fangoria
May 1992

Download the Review

Fangoria Horror Spectacular
1992

Download the Review

Fangoria
March 1993

Download the Review

Tom Veitch Horror Zines

Big Sky #1
Download “Creature from the Bolinas Lagoon”

Big Sky 2045

Legion of Charlies
Download “The Conversion of President Nixnerk”

Legion of Charlies

Legion of Charlies

Legion of Charlies

Legion of Charlies

Legion of Charlies

Legion of Charlies

Legion of Charlies

Tom Veitch Magazine

Tom Veitch Magazine

Tom Veitch Magazine

Tom Veitch Magazine

Two-Fisted Zombies

Two-Fisted Zombies

Two-Fisted Zombies

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Lines Press

Aram Saroyan
Aram Saroyan

Aram Saroyan
Works

Gertrude Stein

Richard Komar
Games

John Perreault
Camouflage

Lines

Lines 1
September 1964

Lines 2
December 1964

Lines 3
February 1965

William Burroughs and Tom Veitch
“Naked Express“
Lines 3

William Burroughs and Tom Veitch
“Naked Express“
Lines 3

Lines 4
March 1965

Lines 5
May 1965

William Burroughs
“Rex Morgan MD”
Lines 5
May 1965

Lines 6
November 1965

Table of Contents

Lines #1 — September 1964 

Cover:  Drawing by Aram Saroyan

Louis Zukofsky — “Can a mote of sunlight defeat its purpose”

John Perreault — Each Day; Disguised

Ronald Bayes — Passus 25 — Branch Line

Ted Berrigan — A Life in Trough (A Dream)

Jenni Caldwell — 8 Poems (“with the elaborate framework”; Day; “sometimes I think about”; “that chair your chair”; Admission; “If her name offended”; “i see you like a dissected”; “there are not many times”; 

Fielding Dawson — Different People (II)

Joel Sloman — The Casino; Folk Song

Ronald Caplan — 4/64 (“that he could walk straight”)

Richard Kolmar — Apples

John Keys — Key’s Cantos; “returning to some sources via”

James Brodey — jacket for years; The Buffalo Report

Robert Grenier — Old Blue Sneakers; Tune for Beanie; Dusk Road Game; A Sort of Plea

Leith Heagy — Vanguard in Babylon

Ken Irby — Visit

Lorenzo Thomas — The Color Section; The Unnatural Life

Allen Katzman — The Act of

Archie Minasian — Beyond the Gage

Ted Greenwald — “I hear a step.  A Step.”; Capsule; Breakout; “A taste of salt on my lips bothers me”; Privets come into season at high tide”

Tony Towle — World War II; The Life of the Emotions Has an Attractive Scheme

Aram Saroyan — The Paradox; After Waking at Six P.M.; Bus Ride

Lines #2 — December 1964

Cover:  Joe Brainard

Ron Padgett — Policeman Dan

Aram Saroyan — N.Y.C.

Jonathan Greene — dancing all the while  (to William Kemp)

Some Feathers — Dick Gallup

Jack Anderson — Snorksnot

John Keys — Chisllers Verse (to George Washington Wakoski)

Joe Brainard — Story

Aram Saroyan — “My arms are warm”

Fielding Dawson — The Moving Men

Rich Klein — The Moon; “the fourth world/will”

Joe Brainard — Colgate Dental Cream

Kenneth Irby — Slow Dance

Ted Berrigan — Rusty Nails:  A collected Prose for Tom Veitch

William Dodd — The Assertion

Robert Grenier — The Light

Philip Whalen — Delusions of Reference

Jenni Caldwell — poem dream

Ronald Bayes — Passus 30:  Portrait

Aram Saroyan — Placitas to L.Z.

Joseph Ceravolo — Monsters; Skies; Drunken Winter

Ron Padgett & Ted Berrigan — Noh

John Perrault — Boomerang

David Shapiro — Other Friends

David M. Cull — vine maple

Ron Padgett — Poem after Reverdy; Light in the Nineteeth Century

Fielding Dawson — The Goddess (for Gabe Kohn)

Lapstrake — Ted Greenwald

Richard Kolmar — Fragments of a Diary

Aram Saroyan — IS

Joel Sloman — Jet to New York

Richard Kolmar — The Song

Lines #3 — February 1965

Philip Whalen — The Best of It

Dick Gallup — After Alcman

Joe Brainard — Polly

Aram Saroyan — Work Poem; Old Poem; Aces; Well; A & P; “Gray pants & the mail”; “Go!” 

Dick Gallup — Eskimos Again

Ted Berrigan — Dick Gallup at 30 (A Play); Corridors of Blood

Larry Swingle — The Cheese #1

Ted Greenwald — Face Lifting; And, Hinges

Ted Berrigan — An Interview with Ron Padgett

Aram Saroyan & Richard Kolmar — Stand Up

Richard Kolmar — Denial; Aristophanes’; Amore :Traditore

Ron Padgett — Milkman Bill

Kenward Elmslie — Song; The Verandas

Tony Towle — Cable and the Telephone; Song (“Here are the wheels of the new kingdom, and here”)

Lorenzo Thomas — The Judgment of Paris; The Fall of Paris

Tom Veitch — The Naked Express

Ted Berrigan — The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford (Then I’d Cry; Stop Stop Six; Reeling Midnight; Fauna Time; Destination Moon; On His Own; Some Troubles; The Dance of the Broken Bomb; Putting Away; Owe; We Are Jungles)

Joe Brainard — Sunday July the 30th 1964

Lines # 4 — March 1965

Cover — Richard Kolmar

Ian Hamilton Finlay — “A . . . blue boat”; “ring of waves”; Catch 23; “wind”; tug at bay; “Green waters”; landsman’s tea; fisherman’s tea; the ABC of tea; funnel geography

Fielding Dawson — West Side Story

Aram Saroyan — “Had West followed up her fine opening lead by dropping”

E. San Juan, Jr. — Ballad of the Honeysuckle Rose

Aram Saroyan — Lean

John Perreault — Nothing

Tom Veitch — Moon Device

Richard Kolmar — Letters (to L. H.); This Should Pull Us

Joe Brainard — Poem (“Dance with me I said”)

Ron Padgett — An Idea that Clara Related to Wallace

Aram Saroyan — Poem (“Does it ring?”)

Gerard Malanga — Gateway to the Palace of Sargon

Richard Kolmar — Sleep; Marion; Games; 1234567890; Sentences; Live and Learn

Aram Saroyan — Sentences; From the Village Voice (to Ted Berrigan); Nice Ron Thinking; “My feet are tied to a pebble”; “Andre Breton is” Two Poems; “Picture, if you can, these beautiful paintings in their”; “WABC”; “Lovely”; “O . O . O .”

Lines #5 — May 1965

Cover — Fielding Dawson

Aram Saroyan — 17 from Works

Jack Anderson — Paper Clip

John Perreault — Hatbox

Ron Padgett & Joe Brainard — Nancy

William Burroughs — Chlorhydrate d’Apomorpine Chabre

Charles Olson — “A Maximus — As of why thinking”

Philip Whalen — “Hum  Scandal!  Abdication.

Jonathan Greene — “Chillingsworth”

Dan Saxon — fall colors

Clark Coolidge — The Death of Floyd Collins

Ron Padgett — Comics

William Burroughs — Rex Morgan M.D.

Ted Berrigan — On the Road Again

Tom Clark — Are Victors

Clark Coolidge — Everley Formation 

Aram Saroyan — Sentences II

Dick Gallup — Hygiene Sonnet

Bob Brovar — “Fleen pleen”; “Guush-shee”; Flaanczongdoogy”

Ted Greenwald — Landscape

Fielding Dawson — From The Dream

Lorine Niedecker — “Lights lifts”; “The obliteration”

Mike Silverton — I Am A Silent One; Seeing the Road

Aram Saroyan — Sentences III

Mike Silverton — The Sniper’s Song

Lines #6 — November 1965

Aram Saroyan — 11 Works (“in the room”; July; Poem (“later”); “a window to walk away in”; A Poem to K.Q.; “In the corner of my room an American!”; 2 Sentences; “incomprehensible birds”; “The floor passing through the hole in the bag”; For Charles Olson; “crickets”; “I leaps”)

John Perreault — Here on the Edge of this Island

Ted Berrigan & Ron Padgett — Saturday Night at the Movies

Clark Coolidge — Flag Flutter & U.S. Electric

Bernadette Mayer — Pope John

Joseph Ceravolo — “How do you know when”; “Feast.  Turtle.  Wide arms.”

Al Fowler — “are you a root or a tendermint”

Vito Hannibal Acconci — Blowstalk

Robert Viscusi — An Edison on Messaien

David Sandberg — Mime Play ”

Robert Lax — “no one was better”

Mike Silveron — Cork

bp Nichol — cycle #21; Tribute to Vasarely

Tom Clark — “oooooooooo” 

Dom Sylvester Houédard — “sand    rock    tide”

Carl Fernbach — Flarsheim

John Furnival — The Fall of the Tower of Babel, 1964

William Burroughs — The Last Post — Danger Ahead

Ron Padgett & Joe Brainard — “All roses are bad ideas”

Domine Falcone — “The girl with the fat lips”

Aram Saroyan — “A”

Joseph Pinelli — Excerpts from Book I

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 1 (May 1963)

Cover Page: A title page and table of contents [i]

Endless Resoundings Fill the RCMM — Dick Gallup [1]

Ember Grease — Dick Gallup [2]

It’s Everywhere, Like So Much Glue — Dick Gallup [3]

Out West and Back East — Dick Gallup [4]

Persia is Falling Beneath the Blue Triremes — Dick Gallup [5]

Sonnet I (“Three thoughts about a bad boy. Chapped punk”) — Ron Padgett [6]

Sonnet II (“As the blue cup sits upon the table, postcards”) — Ron Padgett [7]

Sonnett III (“The stone house your father built by hand, thirty”) — Ron Padgett [8]

Untitled (“Most sensual of recluses, faint” — Ron Padgett [9]

A Play — Joe Brainard [10]

A Diary August 4th — 15th — Joe Brainard [11-13]

Poem in the Traditional Manner — Ted Berrigan [14]

Poem in the Modern Manner — Ted Berrigan [15]

Homage to Beaumont Bruestle — Ted Berrigan [16]

Two Scenes (after John Ashbery) — Ted Berrigan [17]

Homage to Mayakofsky — Ted Berrigan [18]

It is a Big Red House — Ted Berrigan [19]

In Place of Sunday Mass — Ted Berrigan [20]

From a Secret Journal — Ted Berrigan [21]

Sonnet I (“His piercing pince-nex. Some dim frieze”) — Ted Berrigan [22]

Sonnet II (Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.”) — Ted Berrigan [23]

Sonnet III (“Stronger than alcohol, more great than song,”) — Ted Berrigan [24]

Sonnet IV (Lord, it is time. Summer was very great.”) — Ted Berrigan [25]

Sonnet V (“Squawking a gala occasion, forgetting, and”) — Ted Berrigan [26]

Sonnet VI (The bulbs burn phosphorescent, white”) — Ted Berrigan [27]

Real Life — Ted Berrigan [28]

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 2 (June 1963)

Cover Page [i]

Title Page and table of contents [1]

The Birth of Lamantia — J. Richard White [2]

February in San Francisco — J.Richard White [3]

From The Lady — J. Richard White [4]

From a Letter from Joe Brainard to Ted Berrigan/20 May 63 — Joe Brainard [5]

Words for Love — Ted Berrigan [6]

Doubts (to Dave Bearden) — Ted Berrigan [7]

I Am Alone. You Are a Jungle. These Are the Ties That Bind — Ted Berrigan & Dick Gallup [8]

Untitled (“Dear Aunt Rose and Uncle Bert,”) — Sandra Alper [9]

Homage to Max Jacob — Ron Padgett [10]

Gamma Rays — Ron Padgett [11]

X (“I hope somebody else writes your story you zombie!”)– Ron Padgett [12]

Ash Tarzan — Ron Padgett [13]

Tristan Tarzan — Ron Padgett [14]

The Portable Life of Dr. Reverdy — Ron Padgett [15]

Sonnet XVIII (“Dear Marge, hello. It is 5:15 a. m.”) — Ted Berrigan [16]

Sonnet XXIII (“On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar”) — Ted Berrigan [17]

Sonnet XXXII (“The blue day! In the air winds dance”) — Ted Berrigan [18]

Sonnet XXXVI — Homage to Frank O’Hara (“It’s 8:54 a.m. in Brooklyn it’s the 28th of July [and]”) — Ted Berrigan [19]

Sonnet XXXVIII (“Sleep half sleep half silence and with reasons”) — Ted Berrigan [20]

Sonnet XL — (“Wan as pale thighs making apple belly strides”) — Ted Berrigan [21]

Sonnet XLI (“bangin around in a cigarette she isn’t ‘in love'”) — Ted Berrigan [22]

Sonnet XLII (“She murmurs of signs to her fingers”) — Ted Berrigan [23]

For Richard White Sonnet LII (“It is a human universe: & I”) — Ted Berrigan [24]

Sonnet LIII: “for all the history of grief” (“The poem upon the page is as massive as” — Ted Berrigan [25]

A Mother’s Love is a Blessing — Joe Brainard [26]

Sally — Joe Brainard [27]

Poem (“Last night was blue or maybe arabia”) — Joe Brainard [28]

Penn Station — Ted Berrigan [29]]

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 3 (July/August 1963)

Cover: Image by Joe Brainard [i]

The Waking — Theodore Roethke [1]

Title page and table of contents [2]

A Sonnet for Dick Gallup / July 1963 (LXXII) (“The logic of grammar is not genuine it shines forth”) — Ted Berrigan [3]

$$$$$ from Re-Establishing Raymond Roussel — John Ashbery [4]

Sonnet (In this house I feel sad”) — John Stanton [5]

Sonnet (“Is the effort of my poem worth Manhattan:”) — John Stanton [5]

Now in Another Way (for Andy Warhol) — Gerard Malanga [6]

Some Feathers — Richard Gallup [7]

Sonnet XXXI (“And then one morning to waken perfect-faced”) — Ted Berrigan [8]

Sonnet XXXIV (“Time flies by like a great whale”) — Ted Berrigan [9]

Sonnet XXXVII (“It is night. You are asleep. And beautiful tears”) — Ted Berrigan [10]

Sonnet XLIV (“The withered leaves fly higher than dolls can see”) — Ted Berrigan [11]

Sonnet XLV (“What thwarts this fear I love”) — Ted Berrigan [12]

Sonnet XLVII (“Frances Marion nudges himself gently in the big blue sky”) — Ted Berrigan [13]

Sonnet LVIII (“A glass of chocolate milk, head of lettuce, dark-“) — Ted Berrigan [14]

Sonnet LXXIV (“The Academy of the future is opening its doors”) — Ted Berrigan [15]

A Final Sonnet for Chris (LXXXVIII) (“How strange to be gone in a minute! A man”) — Ted Berrigan [16]

Two for Barbara Guest — James Brodey

(“Muscular, standing past the station’s rim”) [17]

(“Melancholy changes its constant vigorous heart”) [17]

Three Sonnets After Frank O’Hara — Ron Padgett [18]

Poem Play (A Beautiful Day) — Ruth Krauss [19]

A Play (In a Bull’s Eye) — Ruth Krauss [20]

A Play (untitled) — Ruth Krauss [21]

A Play (There’s a Little Ambiguity Over There Among the Bluebells) — Ruth Krauss [22]

Homage to Pierre Reverdy — Ron Padgett & Ted Berrigan [23]

Egg Plants Are Not Green — Ron Padgett [24]

Lettuce — Unattributed (Ron Padgett & Ted Berrigan) [25]

Instead of a Man in Black the Men in Blue — Ron Padgett [26]

Choctaw — Ron Padgett — [27]

Sonnet Written in the Time it Took Lauren Owen to Walk 100 Feet — Ron Padgett [28]

Building a house — Richard Gallup [29-30]

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 4 (September 1963)

Cover: Andy Warhol [1]

Title page and table of contents [2]

The Poetry of Edwin Denby — Frank O’Hara [2-4]

An Introduction — John Wieners [5]

Grace After a Meal — Ted Berrigan [6]

Edwin’s Hand — Frank O’Hara [7]

Poems from In Public, In Private — Edwin Denby

The Climate [8]

The Shoulder [8]

Standing on a Street Corner [9]

Summer [10]

The Silence at Night [10]

City Without Smoke [11]

Elegy — The Streets [11-12]

From a Sonnet Sequence 

13 (“Suppose there’s a cranky woman inside me who”) [13]

21 (“The street is where people meet according to law”) [13]

Aaron [14]

The Friend [14]

Long Island City [14]

A Domestic Cat [15]

Poems from Mediterranean Cities — Edwin Denby

Ravenna [16]

Florence [16]

Siena [17]

Rome [17]

Via appia [18]

Villa Adriana [18]

Naples [19]

Amalfi [19]

Paestum [20]

Syracuse [20]

Segesta [21]

Taormina [21]

Forza d’agro [22]

Brindisi [22]

Athens [23]

The Parthenon [23]

Attica [24]

Mycenae [24]

Thebes [25]

Delphi [25]

Snoring in New York, an elegy — Edwin Denby [26-27]

Some Notes — Ted Berrigan [28]

Back Cover: Andy Warhol

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 NR 5 (October/November 1963)

Cover: Joe Brainard (i)

Title page and table of contents [1]

The New Realism — John Ashbery [2-3]

A Game of Chess — Ron Padgett [4-7]

Passivation — Joseph Ceravolo [8-9]

Kerygma — Sotero Torregian [10]

Prose Poem (“The soul clings with its tenacity to the broken edge”) — John Wieners [11]

Sickness — John Wieners [11]

Untitled (“Do not let the silent, secret reaches of the night”) — John Wieners [12]

Happiness Is Just a Thing — John Wieners [13]

The Frightened City — Ted Berrigan [14]

Cathedral Towns — Ted Berrigan [15]

New Junket (for Harry Fainlight) — Ted Berrigan [16]

Wind — Ron Padgett [16]

What Price Salvation? — J. Richard White [17]

Spelunca (for A.R.) — J. Richard White [17]

Late December — John Ashbery [18]

Copy of a Copy — John Ashbery [19]

Undated — John Ashbery [20-22]

Political Science — Lorenzo Thomas [22]

The Infant Jesus of Prague — James Schuyler [23-28]

Poem II (“Muezzins, buzzards, newspapers — like”) — Harry Fainlight [28]

Olivetti Ode — Barbara Guest [29]

Hands — Barbara Guest [30-31]

Florida Hillocks — Kenward Elmslie [31]

Piazza of the Bananas — Kenward Elmslie [32]

Another Island Groupage — Kenward Elmslie [33]

The New World — Leroi Jones [34]

*The Success — Leroi Jones [35]

*Predicates/Categories (after M.H.) — Leroi Jones [36]

*Cant — Leroi Jones — [36]

*Poem (“There were more dirty”) — Joseph Ceravolo [37]

*Grass — Joseph Ceravolo [37]

*Poem (“Come and go see over there”) — Joseph Ceravolo [38]

*Poem (“Lapping water”) — Joseph Ceravolo [38]

*Funny Day — Joseph Ceravolo [39]

*Happiness in the Trees — Joseph Ceravolo [39]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 NR 6 (December 1963/January 1964)

Cover: Joe Brainard

Dedication Page: Trista Tzara (4 April 1896 — 24 December 1963) [1]

Title page and table of contents [2]

Canzone — Ted Berrigan [3]

Presence — Ted Berrigan [4]

Destination Moom — Ted Berrigan [5-6]

Prose Keys to American Poetry — Ted Berrigan [6]

Andy Warhol: Andy Do It — Joe Brainard [7]

Nancy — Joe Brainard [8-9]

Inside the Park — Dick Gallup [10]

Stillness — Joe Ceravolo [11]

I Am Lonely in My Crib — Joe Ceravolo [11]

Five Poems — Joe Ceravolo [12-13]

The Night Passes Through April Wind, No One Wants to Sleep — Joe Ceravolo [13]

Non-Sonnet IV — Gerard Malanga [14]

Non-Sonnet XII — Gerard Malanga [14]

Across the Table — Robert Dash [15]

C’est Toi Qui Dors Dans L’Ombre — Harlan Dangerfield [16-17]

Johnny — Joe Brainard [17]

From the Beaumont Series — Dick Gallup [18]

Duet — Ruth Krauss [19]

Poem in Honor of Some Bombs — Ted Berrigan [19]

The Pastor — Harlan Dangerfield [20-21]

Orange Jews — Harlan Dangerfield [21]

Enureseis — Lorenzo Toumes [22]

The Blind Dog of Venice (To Pat) — Ron Padgett [23]

The EMS Dispatch (To Ted)– Ron Padgett [23]

Blimps — Kenward Elmslie [24]

Poem (“the wooden junk flood closed the city”) — Kenward Elmslie [24]

Television Scenario: The Users — Kenward Elmslie [25]

Your Fun is a Snob — Kenneth Koch [26]

Sweethearts From Abroad — kenneth Koch [26]

Rapping Along — Kenneth Koch [27]

The Cat’s Breakfast — Kenneth Koch [27]

Sun Out — Kenneth Koch [28]

The Dead Body — Kenneth Koch [28]

In Every Victim Awaits the Guest of Honor — Ted Berrigan [29]

It Makes You Think, — Ted Berrigan [29]

The Complete Works: A Story-Poem (To Joe) –Ron Padgett [30-32]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 NR 7 (February 1964)

Covers: Joe Brainard [i-vi]

Title page and table of contents [1]

Some Troubles — Ted Berrigan [2]

Cremations — Tom Veitch [3-4]

A Story from the Bushmen — Joe Ceravolo [4]

Warmth — Joe Ceravolo [5]

Ending — Joe Ceravolo [5]

The More You Take It — Joe Ceravolo [5]

From A Sonnet Sequence — Ted Berrigan

Sonnet LXXIII [6]

Sonnet LXXVI [6]

Sonnet LXXVIII [6]

Sonnet LXXX [7]

Sonnet LXXXI [7]

Sonnet LXXXII [7]

Sonnet LXXXIV [8]

Sonnet LXXXVII [8]

After the Broken Arm — Ron Padgett [9]

I’d Give You My Seat If I Were Here — Ron Padgett [9]

Sonnet / To Andy Warhol — Ron Padgett [10]

Rome — Ron Padgett [10]

Nothing in That Drawer — Ron Padgett [10]

The Windows — John Wieners [11]

Les fenetres – Guillaume Apollinaire [11]

Prologue — Tony Towle [12]

Apology — Tony Towle [12]

Thoughts Near the George Washington Bridge — Tony Towle [13]

Somebody Else, Black Poems, Brown Poems — Tony Towle [13]

Gilbert and Sullivan — Lorenzo Thomas [14]

Another Abstract etc — Lorenzo Thomas [14]

The Conscience of Cole Porter — Lorenzo Thomas [14]

Abuela’s Wake — Frank Lima [15]

In Memory of Eugene Perez (drowned may 25, ’62) — Frank Lima [16]

John Perreault — John Perreault [16]

Yesterday Down at the Canal — Frank O’Hara [17]

Poeme en Forme de Saw — Frank O’Hara [17]

To jane: And in Imitation of Coleridge — Frank O’Hara [18]

Unpacking the Black Trunk — James Schuyler & Kenward Elmslie [19-26]

*Poem (“I do not always understand what you say”) — James Schuyler [26]

Two poems — James Schuyler

(“In the café I sat and watched the rain”) [27]

(August, smelling of ripe grapes and afternoon sleep”) [27]

From a Sonnet Sequence: Sonnet 30 (“Roar drowns the reproach, facing him) — Edwin Denby [28]

Political Poem on a Last Line of Pasternak’s — Frank O’Hara [28]

The Lay of the Romance of the Associations (to Kenneth Koch) — Frank O’Hara [29]

Commercial Variations — Frank O’Hara [30-31]

34 mile wind — Frank O’Hara [31]

Rhapsody — Frank O’Hara [32]

Those Who Are Dreaming, A Play about St. Paul — Frank O’Hara [32-33]

Ah, London — Harry Fainlight [34]

Meeting – Harry Fainlight [35]

Lyric — Harry Fainlight [35]

Echo & co — Harry Fainlight [36]

28 — Harry Fainlight [36]

You Have Wasted Your Life — Harry Fainlight [36]

The Home Book — James Schuyler [37-44]

Recoting — Dick Gallup [44]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 NR 8 (April 1964)

Cover: Love Pictures by Ted Berrigan and Joe Brainard [i]

Title Page and Table of Contents [1]

From a Sonnet Sequence: Sonnet 20 (“the grand republic’s Poet is”) — Edwin Denby [2]

In His Distant Camp, Ted Awaits the Priests — Ron Padgett [2]

Mess Occupations (after Henri Michaux) — Ted Berrigan [3]

The voyage of the Argonauts (for Lionel Trilling) — Harlan Dangerfield [3]

From We Are Gentle Part I — David Shapiro [4]

Invention (to John Ashbery) — Ted Berrigan [4]

Literary Days — Tom Veitch [5-7]

Boils — Ted Berrigan, Gerard Malanga, Peter Orlovsky & Ron Padgett [8-11]

Theme and Variation — Harry Fainlight [12]

(“The chant, le chant, the song”) — Harry Fainlight [12]

Childhood — Harry Fainlight [13]

Poem (“what matter of luxury is this?”) — Al Fowler [13]

A letter from Tom Veitch/ April 5, 1962 — Tom Veitch [13]

Book III: The Concluding Book — Joseph Ceravolo [14-19 

Eskimos again — Dick Gallup [19]

From The Gobble Gang Poems — Ed Sanders [20-21]

Some Bombs (Mistranslations) (after Reverdy) — Ron Padgett [22-25]

Prick Song — J Richard White [25]

February in San Francisco] — J Richard White [26]

Poem for Things — J Richard White [26

San Francisco Ephemeris — J Richard White [26]

Early Sunday Afternoon — J Richard White [27]

Conversation — J Richard White [27]

Il penseroso — Ted Berrigan [27]

The Secret Life of Ford Maddox Ford (for carol clifford) — Ted Berrigan

Stop stop six [28]

Then I’d cry [28]

Fauna time [28-29]

The upper arm (for Andy Warhol) — Ted Berrigan [29] 

Sonnet XXVI (One sonnet for dick) — Ted Berrigan [29]

A Poem of the Forty-Eight States — Kenneth Koch [30-32]

Rain dunce (after Ted) — Ron Padgett [32]

Hygiene Sonnet — Dick Gallup [32]

Hatred — Frank O’Hara [33-35]

Reeling Midnight (to Pierre Reverdy) — Ted Berrigan [35]

The Jolly Abyss — Tom Veitch [36-40]

(“Spooky-wooky-wooky”) — Joe Brainard [40]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 Number 9 (Summer etc. 1964)

Cover: Joe Brainard

Title page and table of contents [1]

Y..R D..K — Ron Padgett [2]

Begun — Ron Padgett [3]

The Rodent — Ron Padgett [3]

Jimmy — Ron Padgett [4]

To Henry James — Ron Padgett [4]

Some Plays — Ted Berrigan & Ron Padgett

Looking For Chris [5]

Teresa (A Play) [5]

Seventeen (A Play for Kay Boyle) [5]

Seventeen (A Play)

Teresa [6]

Seventeen (A Play for Signor Melone of Venice) [6]

The Rest of the Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford — Ted Berrigan

On His Own [7]

The Dance of the Broken Bomb [7]

Putting Away [8]

Owe [8-9]

We Are Jungles [9]

What Is That Flying Away? — Joe Ceravolo [10-16]

Life in Darkness — Dick Gallup [17-21]

From Newstand Report — John Stanton [22-23]

Sally — Joe Brainard [24-26]

Intersection Shifts and Scanning from Literary Days by Tom Veitch — William Burroughs [27]

From The Jolly Abyss — Tom Veitch [28-31]

Two Poems — David Shapiro

(“Light became audible, that is, a child, and took the empty place”) [32]

(“The most terrible spasms”) [33]

Three Poems — Tony Towle

Attached Poem [34]

Poems (to Joe LeSueur) [34]

Skylarks [34]

Juvenglandia — Harry Fainlight [35-37]

To the Autumn Sunbeam God — Harry Fainlight [37]

White — John Ashbery [38]

Vocalise — John Ashbery [38-39]

Evening Quatrains — John Ashbery [39]

At the Railway Station — Kenneth Koch [40]

Dostoevski’s The Gambler — Kenneth Koch [40]

Triste E Una Donna — Kenneth Koch [41]

Morro Rock — Kenneth Koch [41]

Schweitzerreich — Kenneth Koch [41]

Mateeyanah — Kenneth Koch [41]

Wahego — Kenneth Koch [42]

In Harmonium — Kenneth Koch [42]

Chiaroscuro — Kenneth Koch [42]

Heanorupeatomos – — Kenneth Koch [43]

An X-Ray of Utah — Kenneth Koch [43] 

Religiously — Kenneth Koch [43]

Givers of Winds Is My Name — William Burroughs [44-48]

Strum Night — Barbara Guest [49]

Looking at Flowers Through Tears — Barbara Guest [49-50]

Dada Proverb — Tristan Tzara [50]

The Change: Kyoto-Tokyo Express July 18, 1963 — Allen Ginsberg [51-54]

The Return of Yellow May — Kenneth Koch [55-57]

The Revolt of the Giant Animals — Kenneth Koch [58]

The Building of Florence — Kenneth Koch [59-60]

The Beverly Boys Summer Vacation — Kenneth Koch [61-64]

For the Chinese New Year & For Bill Berkson — Frank O’Hara [65-67]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 No. 10 (February 14, 1965)

Cover: Joe Brainard

Title Page and table of contents [1]

Poop — Francis Picabia [2]

Fits of Candor (A Manifesto) — Dick Gallup [2]

The Return of Philista — Dick Gallup [3]

Washington, July 5 — John Giorno [3] 

Inside Speech — Harlan Dangerfield [4]

December — Giuseppe Ungaretti [4]

Brett — Ted Berrigan [5]

Brett (A Play) — Ron Padgett [5]

After Breakfast — Giuseppe Ungaretti [5]

Richard Cory — Ron Padgett [6]

Revised Poem — John Stanton [6]

Montana — Giuseppe Ungaretti [6]

Poem (“I stand last night near a lonely son-of-a-bitch.”) — Aram Saroyan [7]

From the Poetry Machine — Al Katzman [7]

Blandford, England, Sept. 23 — John Giorno [7]

December — Ron Padgett [7]

“Yes, I Am William Burroughs. . . .” — Tom Veitch [8-9]

To the Imperial Wizard — Jeff Giles [9]

A Grave — James Schuyler [10]

Moving — Aram Saroyan [10]

Georgia — Philippe Soupalt (trans. By Peter Schjeldahl) [10]

Dirge (South Africa) — David Shapiro [11]

From Five Songs — David Shapiro [11]

*From The Mutation of the Spirit — Gregory Corso [12-14]

*Precipice: A Story — Tom Veitch [15-17]

*The Day Before the Windowshade Fell — Les Gottesman [18]

*Apologies for the Angry Postcard — Les Gottesman [18]

*Principia Mathematica — Ron Padgett [18]

*Anecdote of Mumbly at Home — Louis Nasper [19]

*Homage to _______________ – John Perreault [19]

*Ragtime Cowboy Joe — Louis Nasper [19-20]

*From the Paris Sonnets — Peter Schjeldahl

Sonnet 16 (“Darkness rises from the sewers of Paris which I hear”) [20]

Sonnet 20 (“I cannot go on like this a mother hen”) [20]

*We Hardly — Richard Huelsenbeck [21]

*”My arms are warm” — Aram Saroyan [22]

*Falling in Love in Spain or Mexico — Ron Padgett [22]

*Prison of Souls — Jeff Giles [22]

*Pomp Ilk — Dick Gallup [23]

*Mother Cabrini (a play) — Ted Berrigan [23]

*Poem (“In the corner of my room an American!”) — Aram Saroyan [24]

*My First Story — Szabo [24]

*Poem (I don’t belong to you”) — Harlan Dangerfield [24]

*Preface to “The Champ” — Kenward Elmslie [25-27]

*The Champ — Kenward Elmslie [27-34]

*Craze Man Wiliiker — Pierre Reiter [35]

*Memoirs — Douglas MacArthur [35]

*Secret Wallpaper — Ted Greenwald [36]

*The Pirates — David Shapiro [36]

*A Memory Filled with White — Giuseppe Ungaretti [36]

*(“There was an old prude from St. Paul”) — Harlan Dangerfield [37]

*(“A young maid awalking alone”) — Harlan Dangerfield [37]

*The Groundhog — Ted Berrigan [37]

*Song — Richard Kolmar [38]

*To Modigliani, to Prove to Him That I’m a Poet — Max Jacob [38]

*The Fernandez — Ron Padgett [39]

*Miss America — Kenneth Koch [39]

*Did Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate Plan to Enter Medicine — Joe Brainard [40-41]

*The Custard Sellers — James Schuyler [42-43]

*Ghost Tantra #9 — Michael McClure [43]

*Excerpt from The Jolly Abyss — Tom Veitch [44-46]

*Recipe Department — Hasheesh Fudge — Brion Gysin [46]

*(When the mercenaries ran away . . . “) with image [47]

Ten When My Eyes Were Hurting — Larry Swingle [48-50]

A Man Saw a Ball of Gold — Ron Padgett [50]

John Button Birthday — Frank O’Hara [51]

Can’t Keep — Joseph Ceravolo [51-52]

Sestina with a Lost Line — Bruce Kawin [52]

Poem (“A new telephone on the table”) — Aram Saroyan [53]

The Bermudas — Richard Kolmar & Aram Saroyan [53]

Balance of Payments — John Ashbery [54]

Supplements — Tony Towle [55-57]

Ave Maria — Frank O’Hara [57]

Fits of Affection — John Dent [57]

The Ecclesiast — John Ashbery [58]

The Woman — Frank Lima [59]

In Three Parts — Ted Berrigan [59]

Fortune — John Ashbery [60-61]

Revolting (A one act play) — Dick Gallup [62]

The Courtier — Kenneth Koch [63]

En L’an Trentisme de Mon Eage — Kenneth Koch [63-65]

Leapfrog (for Jim Sears) — The Poem Machine [65]

Hoboken — John Ashbery [66-68]

(“From Aphrodite”) — Ed Sanders [68]

The Ode to Music (for Morton Subotnick) — Philip Whalen [69-72]

Fits of Nerves with a Fix — William Burroughs [72-73]

Street — Joe Ceravolo [74] 

Ed Sanders’ Language — Charles Olson [74]

Music — Joe Ceravolo [74]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 2 No. 11 (Summer 1965)

Cover: Joe Brainard [i]

Title page and table of contents [1]

On Frank O’Hara’s Birthday — Ron Padgett & Ted Berrigan [2]

Adios Lecture — Ken Weaver [3]

Police Lock — Aram Saroyan [4-5]

The Luis Armed Story — Tom Veitch [6-15]

From Looking For Chris — Ted Berrigan [16-23]

From The Bingo — Dick Gallup [24-26]

From Motor Maids Cross the Continent — Ron Padgett [27-32]

Two Stories — Barbara Guest

Another Daddy [32]

The “Adventures of Tin-Tin” Story [32]

Selections from a Novel — John Stanton [33-34]

Barbie and Ken — Kenward Elmslie [35-39]

From A Sonnet Sequence — Edwin Denby

(“New York, smog dim under August”) [40]

(Neighbor sneaks refuse to my roof”) [40]

(In tooth and claw red, not nature”) [40]

(“Disorder, mental, strikes me; I”) [41]

(“In a hotelroom a madman”) [41]

(“Nocturnal void lower Fifth, I”) [42]

“Drenched saw Doris home, midnight gale” [42]

Sonnet 18 (“Sunday on the Senator’s estate”) [42]

Sonnet 19 (“The size balls are sudden Lamarch”) [42]

Sonnet 20 (“The grand republic’s Poet is”) [43]

Sonnet 21 (“Blue grey ridge, green grey leafage”) [43]

Sonnet 23 (“Heavy bus slows, New York my ride”) [44]

Sonnet 24 (“New year’s near, glass autumn long gone”) [44]

Sonnet 30 (“Roar drowns the reproach, facing him”) [44]

Advertisement for an Ed Sanders Catalog [45]

From The Red Robins — Kenneth Koch [46-55]

Frost – Harlan Dangerfield [56]

Saturday Night at the Movies — Harlan Dangerfield [56]

A Fine Thing — Tom Veitch [56]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 2 No. 12 (NEVER ISSUED)

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 2 No. 13 (May 1966)

This issue has printed page numbers in the upper right corner beginning with page 2 after the cover and title page. As a result , the page numbers are not placed in brackets.

Cover page: Image of a stencil cutter by Joe Brainard

Table of contents and title page [1]

In Praise of the Postal System — Stéphane Mallarmé p. 2

From The Bingo — Dick Gallup pp. 3-7

Mortality — Théophile Gautier p. 8 

The Suitor – Théophile Gautier pp. 8-9

From Julius Caesar — tran. John J. Murphy p. 10

The Heavenly Skater — Pierre Reverdy p. 11

At Dawn — Pierre Reverdy p. 11

The Traveller and His Shadow — Pierre Reverdy p. 11

Fetish — Pierre Reverdy p. 11

Natural Greatness — Pierre Reverdy p. 12

The Hard Heart — Pierre Reverdy p. 12

From Clear the Range — Ted Berrigan pp. 13-15

The Great Melancholy of an Avenue — Phillipe Soupault p. 15

Fragment — William Saroyan p. 16

Saving Japan — Theresa Mitchell p. 17-18

Two Sad Birds — Harry Mathews pp. 19-20

Brunswick Stew — Joe Brainard p. 21

Alas! — Max Jacob p. 21

History of France — Kenward Elmslie pp. 22-23

Valiant Warrior on Foreign Soil — Max Jacob p. 23

Juile ou la rose — Guillaume Apollinaire pp. 24-29

Julie ou j’ai prete ma rose pp. 24-25

Corona di Cazzi p. 25

Epithalame p. 25

In Vase Proepostero p. 26

Petit Balai p. 26

Le teint p. 26

VIII (“Linda la noire aux paumes roses”) p. 26

CartesPostales pp. 27-28

Le Chat p. 28

Le Negre p. 28

Quelques Distiques Pour Plaire a Dupuy pp. 28-29

Bibilographie p. 29

Justification p. 29

Notes on this C Edition p. 29

The Julie or the Rose Newsletter — Ron Padgett ed. pp. 30-31

Introduction p. 30

Commentaries, blurbs p. 30

Two letters from Pascal Pia pp. 30-31

Letter from Leroy Breunig p. 31

Notes p. 31

Notices p. 31

Blank back cover [32]

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 14 (1967)

Behind the Wheel — Michael Brownstein

No Empty Hands [2]

Nations [3]]

Sunny Barn, Special Guests [4]

Behind the Wheel [5]

The Plains of Abraham [6]

Large Blue [7]

Fingertips [8]

Janice [9]

*Lily Flower [10] — Missing from Harter Index

*Waitress [11] — Missing from Harter Index

*News [12]

*Florence Was Fine in the Summertime [13]

*Clean & Clear [14]

*Poem (“Yours the taught climb borne security”) [15]

*Navel [16]

*Pond [17]

*A Final Storm [18]

*Coincidences [19]

*Moving You Along [20]

*Massachusetts [21]

*Against the Grain [22]

*Typhoon [23]

*A Modern Instance [24]

*Pounds and Ounces [25]

Colophon [26]

Author Bio [27]

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Tom Veitch, “YES, IAM WILLIAM BURROUGHS. . . .,” from C: A Journal of Poetry Volume One, Number 10 (1965)

“What a glory to be a writer — to do
something absolutely useless and to
have the world love you for it!”
–Homer

(trans. R. Gallup)

I knew a fellow the only book he ever read was Naked Lunch — go in the automat any day, and there he was dunking pound cake and reading Naked Lunch. Finished it like clockwork every Saturday night, took it up again Sunday morning like going to mass.

Once I asked him why he didn’t try something else. He just gave me that cold, undersea look and dunked a chunk of pound cake in his coffee (I watched while he attempted to get the soaking cake through the stiff erectile hairs that rimmed his round brown gristle mouth –)

“Hell,” he said, “clom fliday — Flame Thrower Police — disintegrate in green syrup — spotted Reptiles with flexible skulls — sucking translucent bacillus cock — disconnect artificial kidneys — aftosa fore and aft — carious yellow teeth — elastic metabolism — razor-sharp stools of white satin — bulbocapnine potientiated with curare — and like that –” And he sniffed and sucked stringy black snot into his nosepipe . . . .I felt I was being condescended to . . . .

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” I said. “Surely you’ve absorbed some strange language and are having trouble speaking in your native.” I gave him my best questioning look and watched for some sort of reaction from his dead, periscope eyes. . . . He merely reached a nab of pound cake that had fallen on the floor, brushed the dirt off of it, and dunked it with undersea fingers, shiny over the dirt, resting his intersection points on my sleeve . . .

“Clom fliday — hideous fluorescent aphrodisiacs — mountainous regions of maximum flexibility — organized coercion — liquefaction of protoplasmic core — intelligent annihilation — deteriorated liver cells — Nigger don’t let the sun set on you here! — uremia odors whimpering green under the vacant lot — portentiously inconspicuous — and more of the same –”

“Hmm. I see what you mean. Or rather I gather an impression of your feeling — amounts to the same thing, I guess . . . .”

“. . .thickly carpeted brocaded chair — northern sky, drifting clouds — green glacial winds, silent wings — sound of water sprinkler –”

“Yes, well my friend, you’re welcome to it. I prefer my humdrum and hobnob, must be going now. Back at the office at ten, you know. . .”

“. . .broken images — wadded banknote — spectral, coughing corridors — grey dishwater smell of flophouses — broken porticoes and smeared arabesques, iron urinals worn paper thin — cold, intense, impersonal and predatory . . . .”

“See you tomorrow then?” I watched for some register of my parting . . . .None. “Clom fliday . . .? Even that didn’t work . . . . “son las cosas de la vida . . . .esta mucho . . . .tant mierda . . . .como chinga?”

“. . . .So I shoot that old nigger and he flop on his side one leg up in the air just akicking.”

“Yeah, but you ever burn a nigger?”

“Likewise.”

“Funny thing those citizens turn all black and their legs drop off?”

Reaching for pound cake I found the lead tubule lying on the cold surface of the table . . . .a quick cut with my rusty blade . . . .black boiling fur, steaming fuzz through the stiff erectile hairs of my nose. . . .

“No glot, clom fliday . . .”

“The very same thing occurred to me.”

“Fifth floor . . .Room twenty-six. . .”

“Have you seen Pantopon Rose?”

TOM VEITCH

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 and I wrote together. We wrote alternate chapters of Malgmo’s End, and what he did was put some of my chapters into Literary Days. Joe Brainard did the cover of Literary Days and also one or two illustrations, depending on which edition you find. As for WHATS, that was what I called a “psychic novel”, meaning it had a day-to-day psychological continuity, although the chapters featured different characters and settings. It was much like a series of dreams in that respect.

How did the book come to be published by Ted Berrigan and C Press?

For some reason, Ted liked my writing. The first thing he saw by me was a first-person novel called The Transfigured, which Lorenz Gude showed him in late 1961 or early 1962. He loved it, and we immediately became friends. In fact, I was welcomed into the “Tulsa circle”, so to speak, which at that time was headquartered in Ted’s apartment near Columbia University. 

By the time Ted started C Magazine, I was living in Vermont, and he wrote me saying I ought to come back to New York and join the fun. I did, and we immediately began Malgmo’s End. After he had published C Magazine for a while he wanted to do chapbooks and pamphlets, and so he put together Literary Days, which was the first C Press publication as I recall.

What did C Press mean to you as a young writer? How did C, a journal of poetry, relate to the other mimeos of the time, like Elephant, Fuck You or Lines?

It is hard to say. I remember those times as mostly being about freedom and having fun. As Lorenz Gude (who was the New York Poets’ unofficial photographer) has said, “you could be walking home at four in the morning having had an experience that at seven o’clock in the evening you had no idea you were going to have, and that happened regularly.” For Ted poetry was very much a social thing, a literal meeting of minds and hearts. For Ed Sanders it was a revolutionary thing, sticking it to the establishment, and so forth. Aram Saroyan came along later, with Lines. He moved down from Cambridge, as I recall. Lines was about the poetry itself. One could say a lot more about those days, of course, and people have. As young men, we were really trying to find out who we were and what was our mission in life. Ted knew what his mission was, and so he became a mentor to us.

Somehow William Burroughs got a copy of Literary Days. Were the two of you corresponding? Burroughs was corresponding with Ted Berrigan by 1963-1964. How did Burroughs get in the pages of C, a journal of poetry?

Ted put together a mailing list and sent out lots and lots of copies of C, free of charge. He probably got Burroughs’ address from Ginsberg, or maybe from Bob Wilson (Phoenix Bookshop). Burroughs loved to get stuff like that in the mail. He would read it thoroughly and get into correspondence with the people who sent him these mags and books. Apparently when he read Literary Days, something about it turned him on, for he immediately did a cut-up / intersection piece, combining it with his own work, and send that to Ted, who published it in C Magazine 9.

Can you briefly describe “Intersection Shifts and Scanning from Literary Days by Tom Veitch?”

Better than describe it, I can include it with this Q&A, because Ron Padgett just sent me a copy of it! [You can read “Intersection Shifts and Scanning from Literary Days by Tom Veitch” here. — Ed.]

What was Burroughs’ reputation in New York at the time?

Wow. Burroughs was a god, of course. We were reading the Olympia Press editions of his works — Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine, The Ticket that Exploded. These works were supposedly “banned in Boston,” but Ted discovered you could order copies by mail direct from Paris at a bookseller’s discount. 

Reading The Soft Machine (which is a cut-up work) we got that Bill had discovered a key to breaking the mental patterns that imprison most of us. Beyond that, I had a kind of mystical experience when I first read Naked Lunch. That is to say, I read the whole book in one afternoon and evening, and when I went to bed the book kept going, all night long! So I guess the version I “read” — including the dreams — was about three times longer than the published version!

By late 1964, Burroughs was in New York City. Berrigan met Burroughs shortly thereafter. What was the reaction in literary circles to Burroughs’ return to the US?

Well, as you probably know, Burroughs was greeted as the returning hero. He was a celebrated figure at that point, and as I recall Nova Express came out around that time and knocked everybody for a loop. We loved it. 

When Burroughs returned to America, he was first staying at the Chelsea Hotel, and people would make a pilgrimage to meet him there. Ted and I went to the Chelsea together, to meet Bill for the first time. As we entered the hotel, we ran into Terry Southern, who was just leaving. Terry had a glazed transported look on his face, as if he had just had an audience with the Pope… or maybe Jesus himself.

What was your interaction with Burroughs at this time? I have heard there was a planned illustrated Naked Lunch.

My idea of illustrating Naked Lunch came much later, around 1971 or 72. My interaction with Burroughs at that time (1964-65) was as a kid who looked up to him and found him extremely fascinating. He was a teacher.

I hear you have a draft memoir of your experiences with Burroughs. What is the status of that project? 

Yes, it is going to be a short book, about 150 pages. I have written quite a bit of it, but I won’t do any more until I find somebody such as a publisher who will pay me some money to finish it. 

Joe Brainard was working with Burroughs for an illustration for “St. Louis Return.” Have you seen that illustration? Were there any other collaborations with Burroughs going on at the time?

I hadn’t heard of the Brainard illustration. I asked Ron Padgett, and he hasn’t heard of it either. We would love to know more.

I don’t know what collaborations Burroughs was doing — he had so many friends, you know. I will tell you this, though, that in person he was a very strange man. I couldn’t imagine sitting with him in a room and working together on a literary piece. He was also using various drugs at that time, although not like his old heroin days. One day we went to visit him and he started ranting about some LSD that some hipsters had given him the day before. “I felt like my whole body was on fire!” he said. “It was one of the worst experiences of my life!” Burroughs told us he had taken apomorphine to bring himself back from the experience.

Can you describe The Naked Express? Who would have run off the single sheet copy that I have?

The Naked Express was a collage I did for Lines magazine. It is a tribute to Bill Burroughs, but there is nothing by him in it, unless there’s something I lifted. It wasn’t a collaboration…. Which reminds me of another story. One time I was having dinner with Burroughs and he was going on about how “your words don’t belong to you,” and things like that. So I said to him, “You mean I could publish an edition of Naked Lunch and put my name on the cover.” He snorted. “Of course! Barney Rosset would have a problem with it, but it would be o.k. with me!”

Did you attend Burroughs’ St. Valentine’s Day Reading? C 10 was issued that night. Was it distributed at the reading? Run off after the reading or in celebration of the reading?

No, I wasn’t at that reading. I think I was not even in New York at that time, so I can’t answer your question about C 10.

Same question for the other events of 1965. Whether you attended or not, what effect did Wynn Chamberlain’s party on April 23, 1965 (Burroughs read with Mack Thomas), Lester Persky’s 50 Beautiful People Party, Panna Grady’s party for Burroughs have on your circle?

I was at the Wynn Chamberlain event, and it was great. Bill had all these props that he was arranging for his reading. He had a hand-rolled cigar that he meant to light up and smoke til it got that great cone of ash that he liked, but he didn’t have anything with which to cut the tip off the cigar. So I whipped out a pocket knife I always carried and handed it over to him. He immediately made some dry crack about “you can always depend on a boy to carry a pocketknife,” or something like that. Unfortunately the pocketknife was quite dull and made a mess of his cigar, alas. It made me feel bad to disappoint “Uncle Bill” as we sometimes called him.

Did you read Burroughs’ interview with Conrad Knickerbocker in Paris Review 35? How did that change your impressions of Burroughs?

I didn’t read it at the time, but I read it many years later. It gives one the feeling of deja vu, because it is a compilation of things he was saying in conversation in 1964 and 1965. It is almost as if he is playing back a series of tapes of dinner conversations, word for word.

How did Time come about? Ron Padgett told me that he recreated an identical copy of the original manuscript (he even tracked down the same model of Burroughs’ typewriter) and the copies were offset from that.

Ted asked Burroughs for something he could publish as a chapbook, and Bill handed him the Time manuscript, which was already completed. Ron became the editor of the project, so I am sure Ron can tell you more about how it all came about than I can. But I do remember visiting Burroughs with Ron at Bill’s Canal Street loft. Some of that is in my book, including the time Bill tried to hypnotize me with Moroccan music so that he could get me into bed… But I’m not at all gay, so it was no-go. He didn’t seem to mind that I gave him the brush off. We just went on being friends, and when I entered a cloistered monastery a few months later, he used to send me postcards and Christmas cards.

Let me ask you something. What did you feel when you heard Burroughs’ voice opening the sixth season of The Sopranos? 

Tom Veitch Magazine

Covers of issues 1-4 of Tom Veitch Magazine, produced in San Francisco in 1970-1971.

Tom Veitch Magazine #1

Tom Veitch Magazine #2

Tom Veitch Magazine #3

Tom Veitch Magazine #4

Let me tell you about a score of years on the window one
Summer The Speaking Clock his past history..I remember as I
write it September 17, 1899..Remember pale reflection trembling

in the park..fragrant blossoms drifted from time gone by to kiss 
us on the cheek..clothes in a heap..the Milk Bar..the weight of 
clothes on my fragile famished body..’come with me’ she said and

I followed her out on the porch of the Asphyxia Hotel..It was
agony to breathe in the No. 2 Intake..boiling in horror the cabin
reeks of exploded star..cool evening body of an idiot..’Aha

my son’ he said whimsical first novel on his mouth..’ You are fort-
unate I recognized your hidden talent when I did, my young man:
1940 to July 17, 1951 which amounted to 4,399 teas and 9,281

dinners..Tell me again cabin reeks of exploded star? Winner or
loser only one caller this week plain Mr. Jones or Mr. J. if you
prefer Billy club days..Remember a young cop whistling ‘Annie

Laurie’ down cobble stone streets twirling his club drew Sept. 17,
1899 over New York that morning the empty room said: ‘A chair
that folds’..Pietro Beregio, screaming something in Italian thinks

different: ‘wiped to shit by the fucking rebels what do we do?’
A whistling in the air. My camera is broken. In the early dawn
light several dogs lay dead in the brown dry fields..I could not

see.. I could not move..The heat scorching my skin..half thing
neither existing nor actors..sick of it you hear?..clothes in 
a heap the blast of the Milk Bar..throwing blood strawberry

malt, intestines, semen, rocks, through the air..dust and smoke
the man who never was T. (for Terrence) Haming Gibraltar Security
policeman killed in a mysterious explosion on the quai of Tangier

Feb. 6, 1942..(during this time I wrote novels letters to the editor
and so forth)..Where did he die?..On my breath in this saloon
of the Mons Calpe out of Tangier for Gibraltar..cold coffee sitting

right where you are sitting now..a chair that folds..I picked up
my little bag and walked into the Missouri night stepping over
the ashes..Find out now the world is dead? Tell me again?

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 Naked Express does the same for the mimeo scene in the Lower East Side in the mid-1960s. A month or so ago I came across this mysterious item in the BeatBooks catalog. Here is the description from the catalog:

Veitch, Tom. The Naked Express. Np: no date. Single sheet, printed on both sides. Credited to Tom Veitch and “Willy”, with, in facsimile holograph, William Burroughs’ signature and the inscription, “(collaborations 1964/1965)”. Burroughsian cut-up and collaged newspaper columns and typescripts (incl. small ads for Joe Brainard’s first one-man show and “C” Magazine), done as the credit suggests, in collaboration with Burroughs in 1964/1965. Short edge-tear; sl. age-toning; faint stains to verso. o/w Very Good plus.

I stopped in my tracks when I saw it. I had never come across this item before. It is not mentioned in the bibliographies by Maynard & Miles or Eric Shoaf. No mention of Veitch in any Burroughs bio that I know of. Daniel Kane does not mention Veitch in his book, All Poets Welcome, which chronicles the literary scene on the Lower East Side in the 1960s. Clay and Phillips do not list The Naked Express in the C: A Journal of Poetry / C Press portion of Secret Location on the Lower East Side. If C Press even published it. What in the hell was this?

I bought it and eagerly awaited the package from London. I was quite happy when it arrived. As you can see from the images, it is a striking item for anyone interested in Burroughs’ newspaper experiments of the mid-1960s. I immediately thought of Time, APO-33, and a host of other magazine appearances, but what seemed most similar was Sigma Project No. 1: “The Moving Times” poster. That poster was designed to hang in London subways in 1965. The Moving Times combined advertisement, underground newspaper, broadside, and poster art all at once. It seemed like a fantastic way to get the word out about Project Sigma, a hazily defined counterculture movement dreamed up in large part by Alexander Trocchi as he was on the nod. Trocchi got the idea from Timothy Leary’s “consciousness revolution” mixed in with the radical thought of the Situationists. Like a lot of Trocchi’s big ideas (think the Long Book), Project Sigma was long on hype and short on results. The poster idea never fully flowered in the days before the Summer of Love. Burroughs’ “Invisible Generation” essay appeared in poster form in 1966 after it was printed in International Times. Listed in Maynard & Miles as yet another Sigma Project item, it apparently never was distributed beyond the offices of IT. The posters proved much too expensive to produce on a large scale. Several hundred (??) copies of The Moving Times were printed, but they never appeared in the tube and the idea was abandoned. The Naked Express looks exactly like one of the smaller size offprints of The Moving Times that were in fact printed on both sides.

When I saw The Naked Express in the BeatBooks catalog I realized that it fit in nicely with the story I am slowly unpeeling, like an onion, on Burroughs in New York City in 1964-1965. While researching that piece way back when, I came across no mention of The Naked Express, but I did run into the name and work of Tom Veitch. In 1964, C Press published Veitch’s first book, Literary Days. That book is mentioned in Secret Location on the Lower East Side and it is a fine example of the C Press aesthetic. Is there such a thing? Anyway, Literary Days is DIY publishing at its best. Think of all those wonderful issues of C: A Journal of Poetry with the Joe Brainard covers. Brainard designed the cover for Literary Days as well. (By the way, I recommend the recently released book celebrating Brainard’s fascination with the Nancy comic strip. Nancy appears on C Issue 11. If you love the artwork of Brainard, The Nancy Book is a must. Re-read Brainard’s masterpiece, I Remember, while you are at it.)

For those interested, copies of Literary Days are available online for $30-$45. A particularly nice copy showed up on eBay around the time that The Naked Express was available. The eBay copy had a photograph of Veitch tipped in and, if I remember correctly, was signed. Some truly amazing photographs of Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett during the period I am discussing were also available. If you were into the Tulsa wing of the New York School (to borrow a phrase of John Ashbery’s), it was a bonanza on eBay. All these items were heavily sought after and a few of them — such as this photograph — have found their way back on the rare book market.

A copy of Veitch’s Literary Days fell into the hands (and eventually the scissors) of William Burroughs, because Burroughs created a cut-up based on the book. Burroughs’ “Intersections Shifts and Scanning from Literary Days by Tom Veitch” appeared in C Issue 9 in the summer of 1964. If you compare the cover of Literary Days with the cover of C Issue 9. They are almost the same. The C Journal cover appears to parody the idea of a Brainard style and the Literary Days cover in particular. Perhaps there is more going on here. Was Brainard, like Burroughs, recycling Literary Days? It is interesting to note that around this time, Brainard drew a cover for “St. Louis Return.” According to the Brainard Archive at UC-San Diego, Brainard drew the cover in 1963, but Burroughs did not return to St. Louis and write the piece until late 1964. Right in the period we are discussing. The “St. Louis Return” cover was rejected and never used. Playboy rejected the piece and “St. Louis Return” was eventually published in Paris Review 35 along with Conrad Knickerbocker’s blockbuster interview with Burroughs. (The published interview also contains a manuscript page from “St. Louis Return.”) Brainard, Burroughs, and Veitch appear one after the other in Issue 9. Perhaps this grouping in the magazine comments on their creative collaborations. “Intersections Shifts” presents Burroughs the poet. Reading it you can see how a piece like this would appeal to poets and artists of the New York School, particularly ones like Ted Berrigan or Brainard who incorporated the cut-up and collage into so much of their work.

When The Naked Express came in the mail, I started digging some more. Who is Tom Veitch? Why would Burroughs cut up his work? Why would Burroughs get a copy of Literary Days? What was the full nature of their “collaboration?” Clearly Burroughs was interested enough in Veitch’s work to cut it up. I started googling and digging. Star Wars fans probably know Tom Veitch for his comic book work. You may have heard of Tom’s brother Rick Veitch. If you have been following the story of Burroughs collaborations with Malcolm Mc Neill, you can see where this is going. Turns out Tom Veitch and Burroughs talked in the mid-1960s about a project to create an illustrated Naked Lunch. Like Mc Neill, the potential collaboration made quite an impression on Veitch. In July 2006, Veitch read at Kingdom Books from a 150-page memoir in progress on his interactions with and thoughts on Burroughs. I contacted Ron Padgett who put me in contact with Veitch. The Burroughs memoir still exists and it is currently on the back burner given Veitch’s incredibly full plate. Hopefully selections will find their way online or in a little mag. Maybe even here on RealityStudio. Has anyone out there heard Veitch read from this memoir? Has anyone seen a hard copy? I would love to hear more about it. Does anybody know any details about a proposed illustrated Naked Lunch project from the mid-1960s? Did I make this up? It makes sense, but I cannot find any details on it.

So The Naked Express was, like the memoir years later, an expression of Veitch’s fascination with Burroughs. According to Veitch, it was more of a tribute than collaboration. Burroughs did not actually provide any of the material. It must have been written in late 1964. The title, obviously, refers to Naked Lunch and Nova Express. Nova Express was released in October of 1964. A close look at The Naked Express reveals all sorts of links to the mimeo scene in the Lower East Side of the mid-1960s. “A Nice Day” was a collaboration of Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett. The holograph at the top of The Naked Express is in the handwriting of Ted Berrigan (the initials are “T.B.”). Berrigan had his own collaboration of sorts with Burroughs in the publication of Time in 1965. The name “Willy”, in reference to Burroughs, has a ton of associations. Burroughs referred to himself in letters as Willy Lee, the junkie writing boy. William Lee, of course, was the pseudonym for the Ace Junkie. There are a ton of others, but in 1965 in the Lower East Side mimeo scene, “Willy” would refer directly to the Fuck You Press publication of Roosevelt After Inauguration. That publication listed Willy Lee as the author, instead of William Burroughs. Burroughs’ other contribution to C Issue 9, “Giver of the Winds is My Name,” features Egyptian hieroglyphics. Possibly, Ed Sanders turned Burroughs on to them. The Naked Express appeared in Issue 3 of Aram Saroyan’s Lines, another wonderful mimeo, in early 1965. Later in that year a Burroughs cut-up turned up in Lines 5.

My details on The Naked Express and the collaboration between Veitch and Burroughs is patchwork at best. Consider this post a call for information. If anybody has any more info on the illustrated Naked Lunch, The Naked Express or similar pieces of ephemera that tell an interesting story about Burroughs, please drop me a line.