Super Copy Of William Burroughs' Scarce Digit Junkie $15,000 At New York Antiquarian Book Fair

by Stephen J. Gertz

A copy of the incredibly scarce first U.K. edition of William S. Burroughs' Junkie, published in London by Digit Books in 1957, is being offered at the upcoming New York Antiquarian Book Fair, April 3-6, 2014. Inscribed by Burroughs to his friend, Phoenix Bookshop owner Robert Wilson ("For Bob Wilson / With all best / wishes / William Burroughs / as William Lee") and in unusually wonderful condition, the asking price is $15,000.

Yes, that's $15,000 for a mass-market paperback book. But it is the most difficult Burroughs "A" item to acquire and one of the most collectible vintage paperbacks of all. It is definitely the most desirable drug-lit. paperback.

Banned by British censors immediately upon publication with all copies in retail circulation ordered returned to their distributors and then all copies in distributors' warehouses commanded to be destroyed, few copies have survived. I've only seen three copies in over thirty years of collecting and book selling, the last one in 2002. That copy, uninscribed, was owned by a friend who sold it to a British dealer for $5,000. What a difference twelve years and an inscribed copy with stunning association in excellent condition makes. This copy is likely the finest extant; if there's a better one it has yet to surface.

William S. Burroughs, c. late 1970s.
Photographer: David Sandell.
Provenance: Though not noted, from the collection of Tuli Kupferberg.

"For many struggling writers and poets of the latter half of the twentieth century, Robert A. Wilson [b. 1922] was a familiar and comforting presence. As the third proprietor of the Phoenix Bookshop in New York City from 1962 to 1988, Wilson provided both encouragement and financial support to beginning writers. A great lover of literature, Wilson specialized in rare books and manuscripts and shipped his material to enthusiastic readers in all parts of the world.

"Through the bookshop, Wilson published the work of many notable writers, including Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore, W.H. Auden, Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Bishop, and Richard Wilbur. During his twenty-six year tenure as the proprietor of the Phoenix, Wilson oversaw the publication of no less than forty-three volumes.

"An avid collector of rare books and manuscripts for his own personal collection, Wilson himself is the author of more than a dozen volumes, many of which he published on a mimeograph machine in the back room of the Phoenix. Among these are Auden's Library (1975); Marianne Serves Lunch (1976); Robert Haggard's She (1977);  Faulkner on Fire Island (1979); and Tea With Alice (1978), an interview with his friend, Alice Toklas.

"In 1988, financial difficulties forced Wilson to close the doors forever, thereby ending the Phoenix's fifty-six year history" (University of Delaware, Special Collections, Robert A. Wilson Collection).

Wilson's memoir, Seeing Shelley Plain ( 2001), relates how he transformed a small, obscure book shop into a internationally renowned literary harbor. Within he writes of his close, long-standing friendships with some of the great figures of 20th century literature, including Marianne Moore, W.H. Auden, and Burroughs, and provides mini-biographies of many famous "Beat Generation" poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Diane Di Prima, Gregory Corso, and Michael McClure. It also contains a previously unpublished piece by Burroughs.

When Junkie was originally published in the U.S. in 1953 by Ace Books it was issued in a two-fer edition inversely bound with a reprint of ex-Bureau of Narcotics agent Maurice Helbrant's 1941 Narcotics Agent. By doing so Ace exploited the contemporary craze for dope-themed literature but played it safe in a hostile environment that in 1952 had seen the United States Congress hold hearings on literature it considered morally repugnant for children and of dubious cultural or otherwise value to adults. Ace took no chances, correctly reasoning that Helbrant's tough anti-dope book would mitigate Junkie's unapologetic, outlaw romantic, almost positive view of heroin use.

The British edition - the first separate edition of Junkie - without the influence of Helbrant's book was a bit too much for British authorities. The back cover to the Digit edition, a masterpiece of sensational drug eroticism, didn't help. Falling firmly onto the censors' list of Yikes! its overt message of sex and drugs was not one the British wished to be delivered.

The front cover art to the Digit edition recreates rather than reproduces Al Rossi's original for the Ace edition and, strictly speaking, attribution should read, "after Al Rossi"; it is a repainting of the original with subtle differences in color, framing, the figures' hair, face, etc.

The book is being offered by Brian Cassidy, Bookseller, who, in celebration of Burroughs' centennial, is devoting an entire display case to Burroughs material, including the photos seen here, at the Fair, which will include another scarce gem, a precious copy of the 1957 off-print of Burroughs' Letter From a Master Drug Addict To Dangerous Drugs, which originally appeared in Vol. 53, No. 2 of The British Journal of Addiction (1956). A notorious Burroughs rarity, it was issued at his request in a print-run estimated at no more than fifty copies, tops. In excellent condition it is being offered for $3,000.

Letter From a Master Addict..., is, as critic Carol Loranger has written, "one of Burroughs' most subversive pieces of comic writing. The 'scientific' language and deadpan asides both anticipate and replicate...the 'scientific' language and asides of much of the narrative of Naked Lunch...The language of the article, together with Burroughs' heavy use of passive constructions and medical jargon, careful attention to definition of terms, and (for botanicals) use of Latin species names, combines with its encyclopedic organization and tabulations of data to effectively imitate science writing of the day - an imitation Burroughs then undermines with odd anecdotes" (Postmodern Culture, Volume 10, Number 1, September 1999).

William S.. Burroughs, c. 1962,
with Antony Balch in the Beat Hotel, Paris.
Photographer: Nicolas Tikhomiroff. $4,000.

The fact that this piece by Burroughs (whose Junkie pseudonym, William Lee, was blown by this time) appeared near simultaneous to the Digit edition of Junkie likely helped doom the book's appearance on the British welcome wagon of wholesome literature, William S. Burroughs a serious saboteur of mainstream cultural and moral values. 

So, go to the 2014 New York Antiquarian Book Fair, with over 200 expert dealers from nearly twenty countries around the world exhibiting, check your steely dan at the door, go to the booth of Brian Cassidy, Bookseller, wish Burroughs a happy 100th birthday, and drool over a fine selection of his contributions to the decline of Western civilization.

Afterward, visit the offices of Dr. Benway, Burroughs' go-to medico, who doesn't give a bat's butt about a patient's state of mind but has some marvelously graphic things to say about how to remove a patient's brain with the sucker none the wiser and better off for its excision. In a brainless world the brainless are kings with the brainful at a distinct disadvantage.

__________

Images courtesy of Brian Cassidy, Bookseller, with our thanks.
__________

It's about time and long overdue that a census be taken of all extant copies of the Digit edition of Junkie. Any volunteers?

__________
__________

Cleaning Up With William S. Burroughs And Mata Hari's Knickers

by Alastair Johnston

Mata Hari (nee M'greet MacLeod, 1876-1915),
caught with her pants down, as usual

     Martin Stone has a knack for finding great literary association items. The legendary British rock guitarist (Savoy Brown, Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers, Pink Fairies, Wreckless Eric) was celebrated in a memoir by Peter Howard, Martin Stone, Bookscout, and immortalized in Iain Sinclair's novel White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987) and he is still on the search. Peter Howard, in his fond reminiscence, recalls Stone tracking down T. E. Lawrence's driver's license (though he was not able to acquire it). Finding it was not as significant as having the imagination to look for it, says Howard. (Lawrence died in a motorcycle wreck in 1935, presumably with his license in his wallet.)

     (Further aside: Mentioning the author of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, I always recall a bit by the great British satirist Alan Bennett: "Clad in the magnificent white silk robes of an Arab prince he hoped to pass unnoticed through London. Alas, he was mistaken... No one who knew T. E. Lawrence as I did, scarcely at all, could fail but to be deeply impressed by him. I went down to Clouds Hill to visit Lawrence, or "Tee Hee" as he was known at school, and knocked at the door of the rose-covered cottage. The door was opened by a small, rather unprepossessing figure, slight of frame, fair-haired and with the ruddy gleaming face of a schoolboy. -- It was a schoolboy: I had come to the wrong house...").

     Recently on Facebook, Stone mentioned he had bought Mata Hari's knickers formerly held in the Black Museum in Paris. Mata Hari, the famous spy who was executed by a French firing squad in 1917, was perhaps better known for not wearing her knickers. (They have a Clousseau-like provenance: A retiring inspector of police asked for them as a going-away present during WWII; his son inherited them, didn't want them, and sold them to an antique dealer in Versailles. Now who would not want Mata Hari's knickers?) Stone did not reveal the price nor how much he made on the sale other than to say when he was younger he could have bought a nice house from the proceeds.

Martin Stone, bookscout, on the scent of some rare knickers.

(Picture tweeted by AnyAmount of Books, 

Mais oui, c'est un Office Depot à Paris).

     In his essay "A Blockhead's Bookshelf" (collected in William Targ's Carousel for Bibliophiles [New York, 1947]), Walter Blumenthal says "you cannot hope to own a copy of Paradise Lost bound in the apple tree that proved Adam's undoing," but he does cite a Shakespeare bound in the tree featured in The Merry Wives of Windsor and other similar "association" items. These range from fanciful to preposterous, but imagination can conjur up some wonderful association items and, like our hero Martin Stone, imagining them can lead to discovery. Think of an I.O.U. from Godwin to Shelley, a ticket to see the World in Miniature issued to J. Swift, a map of the Hebrides marked up by Dr Johnson, a prescription for clap medicine made out to James Boswell, a laudanum prescription made out to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The riverboat pilot's license of Sam Clemens. Put but your fancy in it.

Literary association item, awaiting authentication

     Fill the blank with the object of your desire. What do you collect? What do you crave? Seek and ye shall find. Somewhere there must exist a fair copy of Byron's autobiography, the original of which was burned in the offices of John Murray by Tommy Moore, "Hobby-O" Hobhouse and other craven cowards. Perhaps the scandalous tell-all autobiography, if a copy exists, is buried in some family archive in the attic of a stately home. I met a financier in New York who has Byron's Greek passport.

     There must be a name for non-literary artifacts with literary associations. Disjecta literaria? I have a paper plate used as a fan by Philip Whalen at a party, so inscribed by the poet in his elegant calligraphy. He would have thought of it as a goof, not a piece of literary history. It was a piece of trash, but Phil's comment ennobles it somewhat humorously.

Paper plate with food stains, inscribed by Philip Whalen 
(Dixie Paper Co., 9" picnic plate, Minden, Louisiana, ca. 1978)

       So how does one evaluate such things? People collect them for their literary association though they have no intrinsic literary value. Here's a case in point. The Pacific Book Auction Galleries in San Francisco have a sale coming up on October 10 of "Beats, Counterculture and the Avant Garde." It comprises 200 lots collected by Richard Synchef over the last 40 years or so. He seems to have been particular keen on getting authors to sign and inscribe works. He owned a copy of Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test signed by 40 members of the counterculture: Diggers, poets, artists, Grateful dead roadies, etc. Now it can be yours for about ten grand. Some of the figures in his collection, such as McClure and Snyder, are alive so their signatures can still be had. (Just last weekend Snyder was signing broadsides at the Watershed Festival in Berkeley.) But the Big Guns of Beat, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso and Burroughs have gone to their eternal rest.

      Some of Synchef's acquisitions border on fetishism. He has a check from Jack Kerouac to the IRS (dated December 1963) for $300, now worth an estimated $1000 to $1500. Then there's Neal Cassady's Letters from Prison (New York, Blast Book, 1993) signed by Carolyn Cassady and her 3 children, the recipients of the letters. "Rick, good to see you at the Beat Museum. Keep the Beat!" "Hey Rick - you flatterer! Best, Carolyn Cassady" and "It's too much! Jami Cassady." This brings up some strange visions of "The Beat Museum" and a desperate autograph seeker; maybe Neal Cassady himself was in a glass case there (Estimated $400 to $600). The strangest item of all, perhaps, is the shopping list of William Burroughs (1914-97).

rubbing alcohol, Lysol, honey, milk -- boil, then inject?

     While Burroughs is by far the most interesting of the so-called "Beat" writers, how valuable can this shopping list be? Dated circa 1989 it is estimated to sell for $500 to $800. It is a curiosity, containing "Small garbage bags," "Cat pans" (or is that cats paw?!), "rubbing alcohol" and "Lysol," as well as "Castille soap (the kind that makes water softer)". We get the sense Burroughs was a bit of a clean freak. Then there's "Saltines" and "Gravy" (amended in manuscript to "Brown gravy"): pretty sad dietary items. A second hand has added "Bic 'good news' razors (10-pak)" and "gourmet vinegar - white balsamic." Are biographers going to make bank with this, like the discovery that Abe Lincoln grew up eating pork ribs? I met Burroughs a few times and somewhere have letters from him.

     In one he thanks me for sending him a Victorian pamphlet on the Cure for the Opium Habit. Now there's a useful piece of his writing (if I can find it). I always thought it would be amusing one day to tell my grand daughter that I did drugs with Burroughs (when she is older and will not be shocked). I imagine Old Bill got fairly sick of young cocks like me showing up with their sad stash and offering to get him high. He never seemed fazed by any of it though. But now any piece of him seems to have intrinsic value, even a shopping list. Who would want this scrap enough to pay hundreds of dollars for it? You could apply the Cut-Up technique to it, but you'd still have a banal piece of waste paper.
__________

Corrections: The Kerouac check and Burroughs shopping list were not part of Mr. Synchef's collection. Those items were added to the auction by PBA Galleries to round-out the sale. Additionally, the copy of Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was signed by only one of the Grateful Dead's roadies.
__________

Of Related Interest:

Beware of Hart Crane's Sombrero.

Ernest Hemingway's Typewriter Comes To Auction.
__________
__________

William S. Burroughs Exposes Scientology To Allen Ginsberg

by Stephen J. Gertz

Title page.

Serendipity struck Scientology when, simultaneous to actress Leah Remini's recent and very public defection from the controversial organization, a copy of William S. Burroughs exposé, Ali's Smile / Naked Scientology, came to market. It wasn't just any ol' copy. It was a Presentation Copy, Allen Ginsberg's, inscribed by Burroughs on the front wrapper, "For Allen / Love / William S. Burroughs," and signed "Allen Ginsberg aug 30, 1979 City Lights" on the half-title.

The book collects the author's various newspaper and magazine essays on Scientology and the Scientology-themed short story, Ali's Smile. Burroughs joined the organization during the Sixties, took courses, and became a "clear." But soon afterward he became disenchanted with the group's authoritarian and secretive nature and left the organization in 1970. Officially expelled, he was declared by Scientology to be in a "Condition of Treason."

Burroughs was initially attracted to Scientology because of its promise to liberate the mind by clearing it of traumatic memories that impeded personal growth, and, by extension, social progress and freedom from social control. His frequent collaborator, the artist Brion Gysin, introduced him to it and Burrough's "cut-up" technique in his early books reflected the influence of Hubbard's Dianetics and the fracturing of consciousness to attain a higher reality.

But as his biographer Ted Morgan noted, Burroughs "… had hoped to find a method of personal emancipation and had found instead another control system."

Burroughs wrote:

"In view of the fact that my articles and statements on Scientology may have influenced young people to associate themselves with the so called Church of Scientology, I feel an obligation to make my present views on the subject quite clear..."

"...Some of the techniques are highly valuable and warrant further study and experimentation. The E Meter is a useful device … (many variations of this instrument are possible). On the other hand I am in flat disagreement with the organizational policy. No body of knowledge needs an organizational policy. Organizational policy can only impede the advancement of knowledge. There is a basic incompatibility between any organization and freedom of thought. Suppose Newton had founded a Church of Newtonian Physics and refused to show his formula to anyone who doubted the tenets of Newtonian Physics? All organizations create organizational necessities. It is precisely organizational necessities that have prevented Scientology from obtaining the serious consideration merited by the importance of Mr. Hubbard’s discoveries. Scientologists are not prepared to accept intelligent and sometimes critical evaluation. They demand unquestioning acceptance.

"Mr. Hubbard’s overtly fascist utterances (China is the real threat to world peace, Scientology is protecting the home, the church, the family, decent morals … positively no wife swapping. It’s a dirty Communist trick … national boundaries, the concepts of RIGHT and WRONG against evil free thinking psychiatrist) can hardly recommend him to the militant students. Certainly it is time for the Scientologists to come out in plain English on one side or the other, if they expect the trust and support of young people. Which side are you on Hubbard, which side are you on?" (Burroughs On Scientology, Los Angeles Free Press,  March 6, 1970, reprinted in Ali's Smile / Naked Scientology).

That Burroughs presented this copy of Ali's Smile / Naked Scientology to Allen Ginsberg is of no little significance. Burroughs had been proselytizing to his friend about Scientology as early as 1959. In a letter to Ginsberg dated October 27 of that year he wrote: "The method of directed recall is the method of Scientology. You will recall I wrote urging you to contact local chapter and find an auditor. They do the job without hypnosis or drugs, simply run the tape back and forth until the trauma is wiped off. It works. I have used the method - partially responsible for recent changes."

Ginsberg was also concerned with personal liberation and freedom from social totalitarianism. With this copy of Ali's Smile / Naked Scientology Burroughs presented Ginsberg with his conclusions about the group and his deep concerns, which can be neatly summarized in a line from The Who's We Won't Get Fooled Again, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Dogma, orthodoxy, and authoritarian control were antithetical to everything Burroughs and Ginsberg stood for.
____________

BURROUGHS, William S. Ali's Smile Naked Scientology. Bonn: Expanded Media Editions, 1978. First collected edition of previously published work, first printing in wrappers, a Presentation Copy inscribed to Allen Ginsberg. Octavo. 106, [4] pp., text in German and English, translations by Carl Weissner. Pictorial wrappers.
____________
____________

A Beatnik from the Middle Ages

by Alastair Johnston

Notes from the Cosmic Typewriter The Life & Work of Dom Sylvester Houédard, edited by Nicole Simpson (n.p., occasional papers) 192 pp., paperback, with color illustrations $30

Though not as well known as his contemporaries Dieter Rot and Ian Hamilton Finlay, Dom Sylvester Houédard (dsh) is acknowledged to be one of the key figures in the concrete poetry movement of the 1960s. Starting (roughly speaking) from Apollinaire's Calligrammes, as well as Dadaist and Futurist experiments (Yes, I have heard of Ancient Greek acrostics), poets took an interest in the typographic form of their verse. Live performance also became an important component in twentieth-century poetry. For most people, poetry in the 1950s and 60s is synonymous with drug-taking Beatniks, but Houédard was a Benedictine monk who lived and worked in Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire, England. And while he was active in the poetry and small press publishing scene in the 1960s, his work has now vanished: most of it unique or produced in small editions ended up in private collections.

A lot of his creative output was in the form of typed pages produced late at night in his cell on his trusty portable Olivetti (like Aram Saroyan, he failed to interest the Italian typewriter company in sponsorship -- or even acceptance of how their machine had become a vital part of artmaking). dsh typed letters manifestos and sometimes would disconnect the platen to make free-floating abstract images using the typewriter keys. In this his work is similar to that of H.N. Werkman, the Dutch artist of the 1930s and 40s, whose typed 'tiksels' he would have seen in Typographica. dsh made poem objects (though often using non-archival plastic), and he published in little magazines.

a particular way of looking (1971)
courtesy of Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete & Visual Poetry

But dsh was instrumental in bringing a wider appreciation of concrete poetry (which includes sound poems in performance) to Britain. He first wrote about it in Herbert Spencer's influential bi-annual journal Typographica 8. He reached out to the Noigandres group in Brazil, Eugen Gomringer and Henri Chopin in Europe, and other British practitioners like Finlay, Bob Cobbing, and Edwin Morgan. He started Openings Press with the artist John Furnival and they involved German typographer Hansjörg Mayer in their productions also.

A spiritual as well as literary activist, dsh got out of the abbey to become engaged with the Tibetan community who were foundering once the Chinese had kicked them out of their homeland. As a child dsh had read in the paper of the "God-king" of Tibet and was fascinated, particularly since the British press did not use the quotation marks. His War service in India (with Army Intelligence in Bangalore) made him aware of how the spiritual becomes the everyday in some cultures. He was interested in Zen and read the writings of D. T. Suzuki. In 1949 he joined the monastery and was ordained as a priest ten years after. Later in life he became involved with the Oxford-based ibn Arabi society. So his was in fact an ecumenical dialogue with poetry.

In addition he spent five years as literary editor of the Jerusalem Bible (1961-6).

His most famous poem is a revision of 17th-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho's famous "Frog" haiku, whose terse seventeen syllables read

     furu ike ya
     kawazu tobi ko mu
     mizu no oto

I am sure you know it by heart. But dsh stripped it even further to

            f  r o g
           p o n d
           p l  o p

Memorial print (litho, silkscreen & letterpress) by John Furnival, 1992

In later versions he enlarged the three Os, making them into an enso, or Zen circle, and further blurring the boundaries between poetry and painting. This reduction communicates his idea of "paintings and poems that are not 'about' life but that ARE live direct living acts."

dsh was very much an artist in the spirit of his age -- David Toop describes him (tonsured with horn-rims) as either "Sergeant Bilko in the unfolding of a scam or a beatnik from the Middle Ages, time-transported to the delirium of London's avant garde." Toop describes the sound poetry of the time (performed at "serious" venues like the Hayward Gallery or the ICA, so not merely coffee-shop ravings) as incorporating shamanic and secret speech, and he mentions the "range from Antonin Artaud to Slim Gaillard, and Screamin' Jay Hawkins to Professor Stanley Unwin."

dsh also collaborated with John Cage in the mid-60s, though how this came across in performance remains a paradox. They performed jointly in the "Chieko Shiomi Concert of Falling Events." Here are his notes for three of the seven movements in their collaborative work "c-dagesh" (the title is based on their names "cage" + "dsh"; dagesh is the Hebrew dot that accents letters to make them hard sounds at the beginning of words), a "7 note suite":

cevent

leave room for seven days: re-enter & sweep toward typewriter: type the following poem:

     c  -
            CC
         h -
            H
            H
           - observe dust resulting - some particles will have downward movements - those settling on the surface of the poems paper-environment constitute the total phonic event

seven-t

asked two tibetan policemonks to hold a teak door horizontal - on it deposited a single bead of quicksilver - for 17 hours they succeeded in keeping the bead on the wood - 17 hours later an ant i had popped into a fold of the habit of one of them caused him to scratch with his left hand - & the bead rolled off the edge

heaven-t

wrote words cacaca lemm - nenipi roto tut - cut paper into 20 pieces - dropped on lawn from tuliptree they formed word immaculatecontraception

dsh 141164 Courtesy Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive of concrete & Visual Poetry

   

That dsh was greatly loved and respected by his contemporaries is clear here from their devotion in the essays and the careful reproduction of his typed letters and typewriter poems. There are type facsimiles of his major essays and a bibliography. One of the contributors, Charles Verey, is working on a full-scale biography of dsh.

The poems are a delight but the main course is the group of five essays included. dsh is curious and smart and takes the pulse of the moment (end of 1963) in "Beat and Afterbeat: a parallel condition of poetry and theology," written in familiar beat-prosody which readers of Ginsberg and Kerouac will recognize. His bibliography for this article includes four works of Anselm ("the Finn at the BBC") Hollo: Red Cats, Jazz Poems, Paul Klee, and & what else is new, a small poetry pamphlet; the Selected Poems of Corso (just published in England) alongside Edith Sitwell's latest collection; two magazines (Evergreen Review & Pa'lante) and a list of anthologies that defined the canon of 60s poetry: New American Poetry edited by Don Allen, Living Voices edited by Jon Silkin, New Departures edited by Michael Horovitz, Poetry Today edited by Elizabeth Jennings, and A. Alvarez's Penguin anthology, The New Poetry; he also includes Elias Wilentz' The Beat Scene. The first page is a total rush:

So what's happening? 1963 times running short & poetry the mad sad joy of the shadow church wefting nylon tantras inter man & man & world & Yahweh patching up the zimzum with a certified 2-way stretch of now & bursting thru our mental claptraps giftwraps & stale thought-think outlines with delirious mantic words has come a bit unstuck. And poetry here to begin with can include any even 1-line stuff from real poet shadow saints.

Then he introduces Anselm Hollo, before getting on to Vatican 2! A few pages later he tells us what's wrong:

After WW-2 we never felt naively déçu like after WW-1: partly because of the 20s partly because the 40s saw the real shrinkage (planetarisation) of the world begin partly because todays ultimate horror is the art-protest area built-in to new social fabrics (Germany England France America) that make both god & poet hygienic.

He rapses waxodical about the Beats: calling Burroughs a "writing liver." He feels for Corso, adores the hairy smelly Ginsy, but his biggest thrill is meeting another French-Catholic in Jean-Louis Kerouac. (dsh was born Pierre Houédard in Guernsey which is a British isle but geographically French.) What he detects is a heart/mind schism and he tries to explain this in art as well as theology:

…this new beat/monknik wind of popular fauve livedeparture biblical-liturgical theologies reacting against dessicated past systematisations - & this 2nd live wind of creative systematisation or cubist theology freezing for dead guests the mind-spirit impetus by conceptual bottling while hosts with satori participate in this & every insight - like reverse zen-archery & readers the hit becoming the hitters.

His task in this article is "the impossible serialisation of the surreal." He manages to separate British-English poetry from American-English, but only just, and sees the hope in pidgin "(esp Ee Tiang Hong of Malay Wale Soyinka of Nigeria & Zulfikar Ghose of Pakistan; french equivalents have had more influence on french eg alive negro poets Ed Glissant, Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor - lyric firbank/lorca negritude)."

Hollo, he thinks, is too too kind to the Brits, but also "whats it like to be translated by ah? A jokey fauve sensation like going through a loss-of-outline tank - he's creative exciting as zen when loose on noncrib russian translation he ties his love into lovely knots with two loose ends. His J poets are the ones to watch…"

dsh ends this blockbuster essay/crash course in modern poetry with a flourish:

The mad gay bliss of benedictine gravitas - so other than puritanical seriosità. Some people (?Mary McCarthy) get so wild at this sort of thing: theyd rather go to what they think their image of hell ought to be just to PROVE that gods like the image theyve given up of him reflecting themselves. They cld SHAKE that god - where the new wave just breezes around unzipping him & showing the mysterys all much deeper more mysterious. The new wave & the new wind are in the same direction: life prayer poetry jazz are participation in creativeness in god - they just dont exist outside performance.

i possibly am again (1967, PVC laminate) Courtesy Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive of concrete & Visual Poetry

The second essay "Between Poetry & Painting" is a Master's Thesis in telegrammatic form. dsh explores the Dadaist notion that "word and image are one," or as he puts it, Logos & Ikon on equal terms. There are no illustrations (but you can find many of them in Massin's Lettre et Image [Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970]), however a very wide range of sources is cited in his chronology including another clever typo: "1923 Werkman begins his 600 druksels: e. e. cunnings writes tulips and chimneys." Musicians, painters and architects make it to his shortlist as well as asian/arabic/hebrew sources. We also get a key glimpse inside his mind/lair when he contrasts his kinetic concrete poetry with writing about it:

kinkon/spatial is cool: hot-media (like this note about things) leave nothing unsaid: depend on fictitious feudal-author caged spirit in superior private-mind bossing the tenants of his literary space: cool is nouvelle-vague selfregulating anarchic system - communicator-receptor on equal terms sharing telstar communication ball…

wind grove mind alone
Courtesy John Rylands Library

His famous essay "Concrete Poetry & Ian Hamilton Finlay" expands on the last in more detail, explaining his terms such as constructivist, constrictive, nonsemantic & coexistential. "Introductionancestry Andchronology" is more of the same, this time with an emphasis on sound poetry (Finlay is a visual artist or environmental word-sculptor). These essays presents one aspect of Houédard's work; his commentaries on Meister Eckhart will have to wait for another anthology, but for those of us interested in visual arts and the poetic conjunction between language & typography this is a hefty box of chocs.
__________
__________

Alexander Trocchi Goes On The Lam

by Stephen J. Gertz

 "The most brilliant man I've ever met” (Allen Ginsberg).

A "unique and pivotal figure in the literary world of the 50's and 60's, an individual, that's it...they don't make 'em like that anymore" (William S. Burroughs).

"It is true, it has art, it is brave, I wouldn't be surprised if it is still talked about in twenty years" (Norman Mailer, on Cain's Book).

Mailer underestimated by at least thirty-three years.

In 1961, Alexander Trocchi (1925-1984), the Glasgow-born novelist who, in Paris during the early through mid-1950s as the bridge between the Beats and Europe, had established himself at the center of a group of British and American ex-pat writers in Paris, and, in the late '50s moved to New York City, was in trouble, major big-time.

World literature's second most famous junkie author, William S. Burroughs taking the top spot, Trocchi had provided a sixteen year old girl with heroin. In response to an epidemic of heroin addiction that was non-existent, the United States Congress passed the Boggs Act in 1956,  draconian legislation that mandated the death penalty for providing heroin to a minor. The evidence against him overwhelming and, arrested and arraigned, Trocchi was released on bail. But while awaiting a trial that would have sent him to the electric chair if found guilty, Trocchi appeared in a televised debate about drug abuse. During the live proceedings he nonchalantly shot-up. He immediately became the face of evil. His bail was revoked and he was under threat of immediate re-arrest and incarceration. He had to get out of New York and the U.S., pronto. He had no money.

The income generated by his partner in addiction, his wife, Lyn, who prostituted herself to support their habits, was not sufficient to effect a getaway. He turned to a bookseller friend for financial help, writing him a letter.

That plea has just come into the marketplace, along with Trocchi's personal, hand-painted copy of Cain's Book (NY: Grove Press, 1960), his autobiographical novel and literary triumph, banned in Britain upon its publication there in 1963, recounting his days and nights as a writer in New York while working as a scow pilot on the docks, scoring junk and getting high. Trocchi was so far gone that he was unable to attend the book's release party.

After laying out his desperate situation, complicated by Lyn's arrest and the detention of their son, Marc, he makes the request on page two:

"This is probably the last time I'll ask you to do me a favor - for a long time anyway + in one way or another I'll get your good wishes back to you. Nothing is too little, nothing is too much. Please give it to Diane Di Prima or, if you like, she'll lead you to my hide out. Please keep all this secret until I am safely gone.

Yours, Alex T.

Front flyleaf note.

With the assistance of Norman Mailer, a major fan and supporter, Trocchi was spirited across the border into Canada, where he was met by Leonard Cohen, then a young, aspiring poet. A few days later, after surviving Trocchi's company - hanging-out with the mad Scot presented multiple opportunities for too much excitement, often at the same time - Cohen smuggled him aboard a steamer bound for Aberdeen, providing, to Trocchi's ecstatic relief, "enough Demerol to kill a herd of elephants."

Trocchi, who had been a leading literary light in Paris, publishing the acclaimed avant-garde journal, Merlin, and (along with his friends, including Terry Southern) writing erotica for Maurice Girodias's Olympia Press (under the pseudonyms Carmencita de las Lunas and Francis Lengel), eventually settled in London and continued to write but published very little; his addiction was deep and taking its toll. He died of pneumonia in 1984. Almost immediately afterward, interest in his career became resurgent and intensified and he earned, the hard way, the post-mortem accolades accorded to a literary genius who channeled his gift through a 26-gauge needle squirting diacetylmorphine into his bloodstream in an existential rebellion to separate himself from a world he rejected and surrender in thrall to the muse of nothingness and, in the process, lose everything that remained meaningful to him.

This copy of Cain's Book - the most important copy imaginable - and this letter chronicle his most significant and lasting contribution to literature, his career height and the incident that, as inevitable as a Greek tragedy, instantly toppled him.

Here, Alexander Trocchi, A Life In Pieces, featuring William S. Burroughs and Leonard Cohen:

__________

Images courtesy of Royal Books, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
__________
__________

Historic Collection Of Kerouac Letters Offered At $1,250,000

by Stephen J. Gertz

From "Old Sam Kerouac."

"To think that all that crazy stuff I’ve written 
since 1951 in a way started when you casually suggested, in Chinese restaurant on Amsterdam and 124th, remember? to try “sketching,” which I did, and it led to discovery of modern spontaneous prose" (March 1, 1965).

A highly significant and awe-inspiring archive of sixty-three intimate letters written 1947-1969 by Beat novelist and author of On the Road, Jack Kerouac, to his close friend, Edward White of Denver, Colorado, whom he met in 1946 in New York as a fellow Columbia University undergraduate and who inspired Kerouac's prose-style, has come into the marketplace. Mostly unpublished and seen for the first time, the letters, typed and autograph with some postcards, are being offered by Glenn Horowitz, Bookseller, of New York City.

__________

“And the other book is the On the Road idea...
I’ll get a new title for it like The Hipsters or  
The Gone Ones or The Furtives, or perhaps 

even The Illegals. A study of the new 

Neal-like generation of honkytonk nights.”
(January 15, 1949).

                                   __________                                  

"The White collection is probably the last foundational Kerouac correspondence that will appear in the market," Horowitz told Booktryst.  It is being tendered en bloc for $1,250,000.

__________

“Well, boy, guess what?
 I sold my novel to 
Harcourt Brace – 
(after one rejection from Little, Brown) 
– and got a $1,000 advance. 
Mad? – I tell you it’s mad. 
Mad? – me mad? Heh heh heh.”
(March 29, 1949, re: The Town and the City)

___________

New York Times reporter, former editor-in-chief of Details, and original columnist at Spin magazine. John Leland, author of 2007's Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of 'On the Road' (They're Not What You Think), has provided a lengthy and insightful Introduction to the collection's catalogue.

__________

“While all this is happening my star is rising,
and it’s an awful feeling.”
(April 29, 1949)
___________

He writes:

"The two exchanged at least 87 letters and postcards, starting in July 1947 – the month that began Kerouac’s travels in On the Road – and continuing until August 1969, two months before Kerouac’s death at age 47. Over the course of this correspondence their relationship evolves and contradicts itself, as friendships do, in response to the needs pressing on the two men. What they shared was the male restlessness and self-exploration of the postwar years, along with a love of literature and their own fundamental questions: What sort of men did they want to become – what model of lovers or patriarchs, with what voices to convey their visions, their art. 

__________

"And in this letter you’ll see all the wild thoughts
of a buddy 3,000 miles away who sits in his room
at midnight, madly drinking coffee and smoking,
typing away faster than he can think.

"And don’t I love to talk about myself.
What a gigantic loneliness this all is."
(May 9, 1949)
__________

"Since Kerouac didn’t like the telephone, and since the two men were often in different places, their letters provided a lasting stage on which to try out their future personae. White pursued painting, literature, and teaching before ultimately settling on architecture; Kerouac continued to search for the voice that best captured the life in his head. Each played a part in the other’s search."

Ed White was fictionalized as "Tim Gray" in On the Road.

___________

“I’ve written 86,000 words 
almost finishing On The Road...”
(April 20, 1951)
___________

You need a glossary to identify the parade of people Kerouac mentions within the correspondence, some obvious - William Burroughs, John Clennon Holmes, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg - and others not so obvious who wound up as characters in On the Road: Beverly Buford ("Babe Rawlins"), Bob Buford ("Ray Rolands"), Lucien Carr ("Damion"), Jason Brierly ("Denver D. Doll"), Hal Chase ("Chad King"), Frank Jefferies ("Stan Shephard"), and Allan Temko ("Roland Major"). And so brief biographies of each person who appears in the letters have been provided in the catalogue.

Others who Kerouac discusses include Joyce Glassman (later Joyce Johnson), Kerouac's sister Caroline, his mother Gabrielle, and his ex-wife, Edie Parker. 

___________

“Burroughs is in town, is a big celebrity
among the subterraneans.”

(August 31, 1953)

___________

In short, everyone who mattered to Kerouac and played a role in his life and writing is found in these letters, a majestic trove. 

___________

“Of late I’ve been lamenting anew our 
late beloved master Doctor Samuel Johnson, 
reading him at lezzure in the hot
Florida sunshine of my yard 
– and gadzooks whatta man!”

(August 7, 1961)

____________

Collection Catalog.

I asked Horowitz, who has an uncanny knack for scoring the work of famous writers - he represented David Mamet, Norman Mailer, Don Delillo, John Cheever, R. Buckminster Fuller, Spaulding Gray, Woody Guthrie, Hunter S. Thompson, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Vladimir Nabokov, etc., when they or their estates wished to sell their archives, and sold Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's Watergate notebooks in 2003 for $5,000,000 - how he got involved with this outstanding collection, an important piece of the puzzle that was Kerouac, a man who was "like a set of chord changes waiting for another musician to blow a chorus over it" (Leland).

"I started talking with Ed White in Denver twenty-five years ago," he told me, "a long patient negotiation that has led to this memorable catalogue prepared by our associate Heather Pisani.  

__________

“ English is the grooviest language!”
(February 9, 1962)

__________

"The project has, for our firm, a poignant quality: the White-Kerouac archive was the final major project that our colleague John McWhinnie oversaw.  It was John's vision for what we could do with the archive that, finally, persuaded the Whites to work with us. In many ways, this catalogue is a tribute to John, who will always be missed by those who were blessed to work with him." 

And by those in the trade who were fortunate to know him, this writer included. 

The catalogue, which includes commentary on each letter by Ed White and is collectible in its own right, is available for $25 and can be ordered here.

__________
__________

Allen Ginsberg On Neal Cassady's Ashes

by Stephen J. Gertz

On January 17, 1971, a college student in Pennsylvania wrote a letter seeking assistance from Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. 

Dear Mr. Ginsberg,

I am a junior at Bucknell University at Lewisberg. This winter I have been gathering material for an exhibit to be displayed in the University library the latter part of this spring and through the summer months. I have chosen 'Allen Ginsberg -- Profile of a Poet' to be the theme.

I have devoted a great deal of time and effort to this project -- research and collection of displayable items of your notable career.

The exhibit, I think, will be a good one, but it has nothing personal relating to the subject.

In short, I have written you with the greatest of hope that you would send me your autograph (letter or simply signature) to make the exhibit more interesting. Your effort, believe me, will be greatly appreciated.

Cordially,

Larry Diefenbach

Ginsberg immediately replied upon receipt of the letter on January 21st, returning it with his holographic response.

Larry -

Here's a poem + some odd items you may'nt have seen?

Good luck - Allen G. Jan 21, 1971

Delicate eyes that blinded blue Rockies, all ash
Nipples, ribs touched w/my thumb are ash
Mouth my tongue touched once or twice all ash
bony cheeks soft on my belly are Cinder, ash
earlobes & eyelids, youthful cock-tip, curly pubis
breast warmth, man palm, high school thigh,
baseball biceps arm, asshole anneal'd to
               silken skin all ashes, all ashes again.

Ginsberg dates the poem's creation June 1968, signs it, and includes his hand-drawn Buddha's footprint logo.

Neal Cassady, Beat Generation muse and the vivid model for wild man Dean Moriarty in Kerouac's On the Road and Ginsberg's on-and-off lover for twenty years, died in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico on February  4, 1968. His body was found by the railroad tracks just outside of town; he had passed-out after walking the tracks on a cold and rainy night after attending a wedding party and was discovered in a coma. He died a few hours later, just shy of his 42d birthday after a lifetime of terminal velocity in the pursuit of heightened existence. Cassady was cremated and the disposition of his remains became contentious, with his wife, Carolyn, fending off two women who laid claim to his heart while he was alive, and post-mortem. 

Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, used car lot, San Francisco, 1955.
©Allen Ginsberg Estate

His "ashes were the subject of squabbles, first between Carolyn and 'a wild-looking hippie girl' and then with Diana Hansen, to whom Neal had got hitched in 1950, while still married to Carolyn. She called repeatedly, requesting a portion. Carolyn resisted at first, but then 'sent Diana some ashes, with love'” (NY Times, Nov 19, 2006).

Ginsberg later wrote:

"in 1968, I went down from San Francisco to visit Carolyn Cassady in Los Gatos. There's a poem of mine called 'On Neal's Ashes' which is a record of that visit, of opening the wooden container from Mexico City which had a silken bag full of his ashes. I opened the box and touched my finger inside of it and then looked in it and there was all this black and white cinder with a little rough stuff in it, pieces of bone that were burnt and blackened. So I said, 'Oh, so that's what happened to Neal Cassady.' It seemed magical that he'd disappeared and transformed into this tiny pound of gritty ashes. But it was definitive as his death. I realized it had all come to that. I hadn't seen him for a number of years and his disappearance was no big deal until I actually saw the remains of his body" (A Valentine for William Blake, Introduction to an unpublished manuscript of Ginsberg's Blake lectures).

This letter is being offered at Bonham's-San Francisco in their Fine Books & Manuscripts sale on February 17, 2013. It is estimated to sell for $800-$1200.

Ginsberg can be heard reciting On Neal's Ashes on Holy Soul Jelly Roll Vol. 4: Ashes & Blues.

___________

Letter images courtesy of Bonham's, with our thanks.
___________

Jack Kerouac, Painter

by Stephen J. Gertz

An original, untitled drawing of Jesus' crucifixion executed in colored crayons by Beat novelist Jack Kerouac recently came to market, went on the road and onto a collector's wall, lickety-split, for $7,500.

The scene depicts the shadow of Christ on the cross with three figures in the foreground attending to his body as an angel descends from heaven. In the background, a man, presumably, Judas, hangs from a gallows as the sun shines over distant hills. Kerouac boldly signed his name in the lower left corner.

Kerouac made the drawing for a favorite niece, using her crayons and sketch paper. Catholicism, which played such a strong, if subtly understated and misunderstood role in his novels and cosmology, is overt here.

Though a spontaneous work, this untitled painting is a rich, fully realized piece on a par with some of Kerouac's best art as found in his Departed Angels: The Lost Paintings (2004).

The appearance of this painting for public sale was something of an event: Kerouac's visual art is held mostly by institutions and examples are exceedingly scarce in the marketplace.

__________

Image courtesy of Royal Books, with our thanks.
__________

Of related interest:

When Kerouac Met Dostoyevsky.
__________
__________

When Ginsberg & Burroughs Met Samuel Beckett

by Stephen J. Gertz

"Vodka with Bill and lisping boyish wrinkled Samuel Beckett
  - he sang Joyce lyrics he heard from Joyce's lips."

On September 26, 1976, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, in Berlin to perform a reading of his work, wrote a postcard to his close friend/lover poet Peter Orlovsky.

Dear Peter -

Been here a week, went to zoo with Bill [William S. Burroughs], several afternoons in East Berlin learning Brecht style MUSIK from poet Wolf Biermann - Now sitting in Cafe Zillemarkt off big [?] cafe avenue...looks like cobblestone floored Cafe Figaro - shooting mouth off about politics - probably wrong - Vodka with Bill + lisping thin boyish wrinkled Samuel Beckett - he sang Joyce lyrics he heard from Joyce's lips. See you the 15th. Allen."

To hear Ginsberg tell it in that one throwaway line, the meeting with Beckett was rich and enchanting. Imagine Beckett reciting Joyce, recalled from a meeting of the two modern giants of literature.  Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in that room!

Burroughs' recollection of the get-together was somewhat at odds  with Allen Ginsberg's. It's as if Ginsberg and Burroughs were reporting from different planets.

As Burroughs remembered it:

"I recall a personal visit to Beckett. John Calder, my publisher and Beckett's, was the intermediary for a short, not more than a half and hour audience. This was in Berlin. Beckett was there directing one of his new plays. Allen Ginsberg, Susan Sontag and myself were there for a reading. Also present in the visiting party were Fred Jordan [an editor at Grove Press] and Professor Hoellerer, a professor of English Literature at Berlin University.

"Beckett was polite and articulate. It was, however, apparent to me at least tat he had not the slightest interest in any of us, nor the slightest desire ever to see any of us again. We had been warned to take our own liquor as he would proffer none so we had brought along a bottle of whiskey. Beckett accepted a small drink which he sipped throughout the visit. Asking the various participants first what Beckett said, and what the whole conversation was about, seems to elicit quite different responses. Nobody seems to remember at all clearly. It was as if we had entered a hiatus of disinterest. I recall that we did talk of my son's recent liver transplant and the rejection syndrome. I reminded Beckett of our last meeting in Maurice Girodias' restaurant. On this occasion we had argued about the cut-ups, and I had no wish to renew the argument. So it was just, "yes," "Maurice's restaurant." Allen, I believe, asked Beckett if he had ever given a reading of his work. Beckett said "no."

"There was some small talk about the apartment placed at his disposal by the academy: a sparsely furnished duplex overlooking the Tiergarten. I said the zoo was very good, one of the best, with nocturnal creatures in dioramas, like their natural habitat...Beckett nodded, as if willing to take my word for this. I think there was some discussion of Susan Sontag's cancer. I looked at my watch. Someone asked Allen or Fred for the time. We got up to go. Beckett shook hands politely" (Beckett and Proust, in The Adding Machine: Selected Essays [1986], p. 182).

Susan Sontag had her own take on the meeting with Beckett. Interviewed with Burroughs by Victor Bockris for With William Burroughs: A Report From the Bunker (1982) she remembered:

Sontag: It all started like this: we were staying in this picturesque hotel in Berlin and Allen Ginsberg said, "We're going to see Beckett, c'mon,'"and I said, "Oh, William [Burroughs] are you are going, I don't want to butt in," and he said, "No, c'mon, c'mon," and we went. We knocked on the door of this beautiful atelier with great double height ceilings, very white. This beautiful, very thin man who tilts forward when he stands answered the door. He was alone. Everything was very clean and bare and white. I actually had seen him the day before on the grounds of the theater of the Akademie Der Kunst. Beckett comes to Berlin because he knows his privacy will be respected. He received us in a very courtly way and we sat at a very big long table. He waited for us to talk. Allen was, as usual, very forthcoming and did a great deal of talking. He did manage to draw Beckett out asking him about Joyce. That was somehow deeply embarrassing to me. Then we talked about singing, and Beckett and Allen began to sing while I was getting more and more embarrassed.

Victor Bockris: Bill [William Burroughs] says Beckett made you feel as if you would be welcome to leave as soon as you could.

Sontag: He didn't actually throw us out.

William Burroughs: Oh, the hell he didn't! See, I have an entirely different slant on the whole thing. In the first place, John Calder said, "Bring along some liquor," which we did. I know that Beckett considers other people different from him and he doesn't really like to see them. He's got nothing particular against the being there, it's just that there are limits to how long he can stand being with people. So I figured that about twenty minutes would be enough. Someone brought up the fact that my son was due for transplants, and Beckett talked about the problem of rejection, about which he'd read an article. I don't remember this singing episode at all. You see Susan says it seemed long, it seemed to me extremely short. Soon after we got there, and the talk about transplant, everybody looked at their watch, and it was very obviously time to go. We'd only brought along a pint and it had disappeared by that time.

Sontag: Allen said, "What was it like to be with Joyce? I understand Joyce had a beautiful voice, and that he liked to sing." Allen did some kind of "OM" and Beckett said, "Yes, indeed he had a beautiful voice," and I kept thinking what a beautiful voice he had. I had seen Beckett before in a café in Paris, but I had never heard him speak and I was struck by the Irish accent. After more than half a century in France he has a very pure speech which is unmarked by living abroad. I know hardly anybody who's younger than Beckett, who has spent a great deal of time abroad who hasn't in some way adjusted his or her speech to living abroad. There's always a kind of deliberateness or an accommodation to the fact that even when you speak your own language you're speaking to people whose first language it's not and Beckett didn't seem in any way like someone who has lived most of his life in a country that was not the country of his original speech. He has a beautiful Irish musical voice. I don't remember that he made us feel we had to go, but I think we all felt we couldn't stay very long.

Bockris: Did you feel the psychic push? That Beckett had "placed" you outside the room?

Burroughs: Everybody knew that they weren't supposed to stay very long. I think it was ten minutes after six that we got out of there. [...] He gave me one of the greatest compliment that I ever heard. Someone asked him, "What do you think of Burroughs?" and he said - grudgingly - "Well, he's a writer."

Sontag: High praise indeed.

Burroughs: I esteemed it very highly. Someone who really knows about writing, or say about medicine says, "Well, he's a doctor. He gets in the operating room and he knows what he's doing."

Sontag: But at the same time you thought he was hostile to some of your procedures?

Burroughs: Yes, he was, and we talked about that very briefly when we first came in during the Berlin visit. He remembered perfectly the occasion.

Sontag: Do you think he reads much?

Burroughs: I would doubt it. Beckett is someone who needs no input as such. To me it's a very relaxed feeling to be around someone who doesn't need me for anything and wouldn't care if  died right there the next minute. Most people have to get themselves needed or noticed. I don't have that feeling at all. But there's no point in being there, because he had no desire or need to see people.

Bockris: How did you feel when you left that meeting?

Sontag: I was very glad I had seen him. I was more interested just to see what he looks like, if he was as good-looking as he is in photos.

Burroughs: He looked very well and in very good shape. Beckett is about seventy-five. He's very thin and his face looks quite youthful. It's really almost an Irish streetboy face. We got up and left, the visit had been, as I say, very cordial, decorous...

Sontag: More decorous than cordial I would say. It was a weightless experience, because it's true, nothing happened.

Burroughs: Nothing happened at all.

Rarely has nothing been so fascinating and earned its much ado.

This little gem of a postcard is being offered by Brian Cassidy, Bookseller.

__________

Postcard image courtesy of Brian Cassidy, Bookseller, with our thanks.
__________
__________