The Small Press / Mimeograph Revolution 1940s - 1970s

by Stephen J. Gertz

Jim Schock. Life is a Lousy Drag.
Unicorn Publishing, Co., 1959.

A remarkable research collection of small press magazines and other printed matter representing the growth and proliferation of avant-garde and small press publications, often mimeographed, has come to market via Granary Books in New York.

The Outsider, no. 1. 1961.
Jon Edgar Webb, ed.
Complete run.

The collection is based upon (but not limited to) A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, the New York Public Library's acclaimed 1998 exhibition and catalog that explored the explosive and fertile period of intense innovation and experimentation in American literature and publishing that occurred below the mainstream's radar during the 1940s - 1970s.

The Insect Trust Gazette, no. 3. 1968.
Robert Basara, Leonard Belasco, Jed Irwin, William Levy, eds.
Collection includes nos. 1, 3.

Merlin, no. 1. Spring 1952.
Alexander Trocchi, ed.
Collection includes vol. 1, nos. 1–3, vol. 2, nos. 1, 3.

The individual - a reclusive New Jersey inventor - who amassed the collection joyfully suffered from that dreaded of all maladies, libri legendi aegritudinis, the book collector's disease: he "became obsessed with the secretive nature of the world contained in the exhibition's catalog."  He used the catalog as a guide and thus put together a singular library, one that he augmented with important ancillary material focusing on the West Coast scene.

The Illiterati, no. 4. Summer 1945.
Kermit Sheets and Kemper Nomland, eds.

The Digger Papers. [1968].
24 pp. Published by Paul Krassner.

The Beat Generation, Counterculture, New York School, Venice West, San Francisco Renaissance, Wichita Vortex, Black Mountain, Mavericks, Hippies, Diggers, and related manifestations of the swirling undercurrent of creativity of the era are all represented in the collection, which includes complete runs and significant examples of Angel Hair, Beatitude, Big Table, Black Mountain Review, C, Caterpillar, Fuck You, Gnaoua, Grist, The Hasty Papers, Insect Trust Gazette, J, Kulchur, Locus Solus, Matter, Measure, Miscellaneous Man, Merlin, Mother, Now, Open Space, The Outsider, Pacific Nation, Poems from the Floating World, Renaissance, San Francisco Earthquake, Set, Some/thing, Tree, Trobar, Whe're/, and Yugen.

[Wallace Berman]. Frammis.
Jack Hirschman and Jack Mueller, eds.
Published by Artaud’s Elbow, Berkeley, 1979.

Edward Leedskalnin. A Book in Every Home:
Containing Three Subjects: Ed’s Sweet Sixteen,
Domestic and Political Views.
Self-published, 1936.

Edward Leedskalnin was born January 12, 1887, in Latvia.
At 26 he was engaged to wed a girl 10 years younger whom
he called his "Sweet Sixteen." She broke off the engagement
the night before their wedding and, brokenhearted,
he moved to North America.

Around 1919 he purchased a small piece of land in
Florida City and over the next 28 years constructed
(and lived in) a massive coral monument dedicated
to his "Sweet Sixteen" called "Rock Gate Park."
Working alone at night, Leedskalnin eventually dug
up and sculpted over 1,100 tons of coral into a monument
that would later be known as the Coral Castle.
He would often be asked how he was able to move such
huge boulders and replied:
"I know the secrets of the people who built the pyramids
(being those at the site at Giza in Egypt)."

A Book in Every Home is the longest of Leedskalnin's books
and is a treatise on moral education. He also wrote theories
on magnetism and electricity, including what he called the
“Perpetual Motion Holder.” He went to the grave
refusing to reveal his secret knowledge of the Egyptians.

The '60s West Coast scene is represented by samples of The San Francisco Oracle, The Southern California Oracle, Communications Company (the publishing arm of the Diggers); items relating to the explosive San Francisco music scene including a collection of handbills and postcards from Family Dog and others; newspapers and magazines of radical politics such as The Berkeley Barb, Ramparts, The Realist; uncommon pre-zine self-published journals of offbeat commentary such as Horseshit and Jack Green's Newspaper; and a wide assortment of pamphlets, magazines and diverse additional obscure and rarely seen publications from the period.

Gnaoua, no. 1. Spring 1964.
Ira Cohen, ed.
Sole issue, no. 1]

Measure, no. 2. Winter 1958.
John Wieners, ed.
Collection includes nos. 1–2.

The writers, artists, and photographers who contributed to these magazines include a who's who of  American (and, to a lesser degree, European) arts and letters in the second half of the twentieth century,  the wrecking crew whose adventures and experiments upset the status quo and built the foundation for a new American post-War culture, a once alternative fraternity now in the mainstream of Postmodern America with a degree of acceptance that they could never have imagined, once outside, now venerated, 21st century insiders:

Now Now. 1965.
Charles Plymell, ed.
Collection includes nos. 1–2.

Robert Duncan, Kenneth Patchen, Denise Levertov, Alex Comfort, William Everson, William Burford, Alexander Trocchi, Christopher Logue, Patrick Brangwyn, Alfred Chester, H. Charles Hatcher, James Fidler, Patrick Bowles, Richard Seaver, A.J. Ayer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, Robert Creeley, Jack Kerouac, Edward Dahlberg, William S. Burroughs, Gilbert Sorrentino, Lenore Kandel, ruth weiss, Philip Lamantia, Gregory Corso Richard Brautigan, Joe Brainard, Ted Berrigan, Andy Warhol, Gerald Malanga, Frank O'Hara, John Thomas, Charles Bukowski, Neal Cassady, George Bataille, Ed Ruscha, Antonin Artaud, Brion Gysin, Sinclair Beiles, Michael McClure, Bruce Connor, Michael McClure, Allen Ginsberg, Bruce Connor, Wallace Berman, Dennis Hopper, Robert Bly, Gary Snyder, V.R. (Bunny) Lang, Leroi Jones, Alfred Jarry, Peter Berg, Emmett Grogan, and Paul Krassner.

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All images courtesy of Granary Books, currently offering this collection, with our thanks. Inquiries can be made here.
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William Burroughs' Intro To Naked Lunch At $175,000

by Stephen J. Gertz

Calling Dr. Benway:

The first and final draft corrected typescripts of William S. Burroughs' Introduction to the first American edition (NY: Grove Press, 1962) of Naked Lunch (Paris: Olympia Press, 1959), his seminal, controversial work and one of the landmark publications in the history of American literature, have come to market. The asking price is $175,000.

From the collection of his friend and editor, Alan Ansen, they are being offered by Glenn Horowitz, Bookseller, the New York City dealer who has made a habit of pulling literary rabbits out of his hat. Within that context these typescripts may be fairly ranked as the rabbit who ate Cleveland.

The first, titled "Postscript" in Burroughs' penciled holograph, is comprised of five recto-only leaves corrected by Burroughs in black ink, with page numbers in same. It is unknown when, exactly, he wrote it but it appears to be c. 1960.

The heavily corrected typescript is Burroughs' first pass at his extended essay, Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness, that would serve as the introduction to the American edition of Naked Lunch. “Postscript” discursively explores the themes and sentiments which motivated Burroughs to write the introduction; it is the text upon which the polished, buffed, and published version was based. 

Bits and pieces of “Postscript” can be found throughout “Deposition,” as well as in its final post-postscript, and the relationship between “Postscript” and the published introduction is immediately obvious. For example, page one of the “Postscript” typescript includes the following notes:

"Hasheiesh [sic], Mescaline, LSD -- ? under the title what is? Who must have junk to live in the structure? When there are no addicts carriers will disintegrate - virus opium."

"Talk exact manner in which junk virus controls words in monkey considered sacred by those who purpose to keep the virus of numbers or remove the bottom number street to cover basic frequency."

The published introduction directly addresses the points noted above, concerning the difference between hallucinogens - hashish, mescaline, LSD  - and heroin. Burroughs writes in part, “There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence. The action of these drugs is physiologically opposite to the action of junk. A lamentable confusion between the two classes of drugs has arisen owing to the zeal of the U.S. and other Narcotic departments...” The introduction also sets forth upon “the exact manner in which the junk virus operates.” 

Within the five-page “Postscript” is a handful of dialogue and a paragraph referring to “Mr Bradly Mr Martin,” a character appearing in the novels of Burroughs' Nova Trilogy: Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket that Exploded (1962), and Nova Express (1964). In part, they read:

“Light in eyes and I saw the brains...no time to stop and eat switch fuzz behind me...I told him I'd do it I told him if I catch you on the West Side push you on the tracks...hustle your own mooch...”

"And he looked at me over the blade caught the tarnish black and white subway dawn..Old photo..Couldn't reach me with the knife and fell on the tracks I told him he would and he rushed for I – overcoat I held there teaching him the cloth in the turnstile and learned the cloth stuck there like star fish smoking and switch fuzz whistling down the iron stairs and I caught an uptown cold sore…"

"Mr Bradly Mr Martin teaching him the cloth in the junk hold saw the brains fuzz the rail…"

Neither the dialogue nor the narrative made it into the Introduction and appear to be unpublished.

The final draft appears in three typescripts:

• “Deposition. Testimony Concerning a Sickness,” (ca. 1960), a corrected ribbon typescript of thirteen recto-only leaves (including the one-page “PSS or PPS” noted below), with Burroughs’ holograph corrections in blue ink and copy-editing notes in red ink.

•“Deposition. Testimony Concerning a Sickness,” (ca. 1960), a corrected carbon typescript of eleven recto-only leaves (lacking final page) very neatly incorporating in another hand the changes to the ribbon typescript above, either by erasing the type and replacing it with the correct text or interlined with Burroughs’ text.

• “PSS or PPS.” (ca. 1960), a one-leaf corrected ribbon typescript with Burroughs’ holograph corrections in black ink. It is stapled to “Deposition” above. 

These are a ribbon typescript and carbon copy of Burroughs’ introduction, "Deposition,” as published by Grove Press. The thirteen-page typescript is corrected by Burroughs and his changes are incorporated into the carbon copy as well as the final text as published. Burroughs’ holograph annotations include clarifications to language, e.g., “these notes” becomes “the notes which have now been published,” “measurable” becomes “accurately measurable,” etc., and include corrections to spelling and changes in emphasis with the addition of underlining.

The one-page “PSS or PPS” was not included in the book but did appear with “Deposition” in Grove Press' Evergreen Review (Volume 4, Issues 11-12). It was introduced “as a late post-postscript - a newspeak précis.”

Alan Ansen ("Rollo Greb" in Kerouac's On the Road) was a poet, playwright, and close friend of many Beat Generation writers. Living in Tangier, he spent time with Paul Bowles, Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and others. He lived in Greece during the last forty or so years of his life

Considered to be the only man capable of shaping the hundreds of random pages generated by Burroughs into publishable form, Ansen was brought in by Ginsberg to help edit Naked Lunch. He later preserved the Ginsberg-Burroughs correspondence along with many of the photographs from the period.

To have fresh Burroughs autograph/typescript material enter the marketplace (ABPC records no Burroughs typescript/manuscript material coming to auction within the last thirty-six years) at this late date is somewhat miraculous; all that could be found had, it seemed, been unearthed. But that was before The Amazing Horowitz waved his magic wand, said "abracadabra," and conjured this material out of nowhere and into and out of his hat.

• • •

And now, a treat: Burroughs recites passages concerning Dr. Benway - the Marcus Welby, M.D. from Hell who "performs appendectomies with a rusty sardine can" - from Naked Lunch in his deadpan nasal monotone mashed-up with footage from an episode of Dr. Kildare, and behold! Burroughs' voice coming out of Richard Chamberlain's mouth. Oh, to hear Burroughs croon Three Stars Will Shine Tonight, the 1961 TV show's hit theme song.


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All images courtesy of Glenn Horowitz Bookseller with our thanks.

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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.

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Postcard image courtesy of Brian Cassidy, Bookseller, with our thanks.
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When Kerouac Met Dostoyevsky

by Stephen J. Gertz

Jack Kerouac's "Dostoyevsky Mad-Face" by Allen Ginsberg, 1953.

Sometime during March-April, 1949, John-not-yet-Jack Kerouac, 27 years old and living with his parents as "The Wizard of Ozone Park" (Queens, NYC), as his Beat friends referred to him, bought a cheap reprint edition of short stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He annotated the book, and entered his ownership signature.

Dostoyevsky was an important influence on Kerouac; his novel, The Subterraneans, was consciously modeled on Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground, one of his favorite books, and there are many references to the Russian author in Kerouac's novels and letters.

Dostoyevsky was something of a guiding literary and philosophical spirit to the Beats (and buddy - Kerouac affectionately called him "Dusty"), and Notes From the Underground, which Sartre considered to be a major forerunner of existentialism, a  handbook of sorts for the Western Man isolated, apart from, and at odds with the culture in which he lives, alienated from the mainstream, an outsider creating and living life on his own terms. Notes from the Underground is the companion piece to Mezz Mezzrow's Really The Blues (1946), the  gospel of hipster-jazz subculture that the Beats adopted as their book of revelations. The two books serve as the liturgy to Beat theology.

In 1949, the year that Kerouac bought this book, he had just completed the legendary road trips with Neal Cassady that began in July, 1947, wrote The Town and the City, was working on Dr. Sax,  and crafting the first draft of On the Road (in its essential religiosity a sort of Brothers Karamazov in a car; Kerouac, a devout, though lapsed Catholic;  a lonely, fallen altar-boy on an odyssey seeking enlightenment, redemption and communion with the Godhead, Brother Cassady his co-pilot and navigator riding shotgun no matter where he sat. On the Road is not about getting kicks on Route 66. Kerouac is an Irish-Catholic Siddartha). 1949 was a key year in Kerouac's journey, and Dostoyevsky was heavily on his mind.

In a letter written to his friend Alan Harrington on April 23, 1949 Kerouac wrote: "I've just read 'An Unfortunate [sic] Predicament,' a long story by Dusty-what's-his-name. I studied it carefully and found that he begins with 'ideas' and then demolishes them in the fury of what actually becomes the story. This letter is a similar venture. However, nothing detracts from the fact that this is a mad letter. 'So be it! So be it!'"

And boy, did he so be it. The first two pages of An Unpleasant Predicament (1861), one of the stories in the collection, are  annotated by Kerouac, who has written six remarks in the margins commenting on Dostoyevsky's usage and writing.

For example, next to the sentence that begins: "The fact..." Kerouac writes: "Truly 'the fact.' Always fluffs the rest, & gets to the 'fact.'"

Next to the word "fond" Kerouac writes: "fond always gives a batty tone -- just right."

About Dostoyevsky's use of the word "actual" he writes "Dusty's way of being a card."

Commenting on the sentence, "He was a bachelor because he was an egoist," Kerouac writes "A Family man's reflection."

Inappropriate behavior, scandalous activity, moral experimentation, ambiguity, and socio-political and literary polemic set within a mocking, carnivalistic atmosphere characterize this story of three generals' argument of ideas that degenerates when one of them, wishing to test his liberal-humanistic thinking, leaves, crashes the wedding of a subordinate, and gets drunk to satirically disastrous result. This was the Beat's bread and butter at its merriest, stepping on sacred cultural cow-pies, enjoying the squish, and hoping the scent offends bourgeois nostrils.

This copy of Dostoyevsky's short stories is a wonderful personal artifact from Kerouac's developing years as a writer, demonstrating his early literary thinking and roots. The year he bought and read it, the author, the subject - here dawn energetically breaks on the Beats and especially on Jack Kerouac.

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(KEROUAC, Jack). DOSTOIEVSKI, Fiodor [Fyodor Dostoyevsky]. Short Stories. New York and Boston: Books, Inc., n.d. [c. 1940s]. Reprint edition. Octavo. 248 pp. Signed and dated by Kerouac, with his holograph margin annotations in pencil.

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Images from book courtesy of Between the Covers, currently offering this volume, with our thanks.

Photo of Kerouac ©Allen Ginsberg LLC 2010, from Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg. Courtesy of National Gallery of Art.

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Listen to Jack Kerouac recite a three-minute excerpt from The Subterraneans here.

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