Foujita's Great Rare Book Of Cats Est. $60K-$80K At Bonham's

by Stephen J. Gertz

A copy of Michael Joseph's Book of Cats, published in New York by Covici Friede, 1930, with drawings by Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968), is being offered by Bonham's in its Fine Books and Manuscripts sale on Monday, February 10, 2014, in Los Angeles as lot 103, It is estimated to sell for $60,000 - $80,000.

The book, comprised of twenty prose poems by Joseph with twenty accompanying full-page etched plate drawings by Foujita is here in its limited edition of 500 copies, this being copy no. 333. It is signed by Foujita on the limitation page and features a plate signed by Foujita, Semiramis. This copy includes an additional suite of the plates on Japanese vellum with fragments of the original envelope they were housed in.

Tsuguharu Foujita was the most important Japanese artist working in the West during the 20th century.

Foujita by Madame D'Ora, 1927.

And he loved cats.

"His name in Japanese means "field of wisteria, heir to peace." He was the son of a general, and a black belt in judo. In Paris during the 1920s - where he was known as Fou-Fou or Mad-Mad - Tsuguharu Foujita was the most famous (and most eccentric) artist in Montparnasse. He had a haircut modeled on an Egyptian statue and a wristwatch tattooed on his wrist. He wore earrings, a Greek-style tunic, a "Babylonian" necklace, and on occasion a lampshade instead of a hat. (He claimed it was his national headdress)...

"He arrived in Paris from Tokyo in 1913 and soon rented a studio in the Cité Falguière, where Modigliani and the Lithuanian-born painter Chaim Soutine were working. Foujita was a good cook; he was meticulously clean - he tried to teach Soutine to brush his teeth and to use a knife and a fork. Foujita had frequented Isadora and Raymond Duncan's school of movement and dance (hence the Greek-style tunics). He'd favored the Café La Rotonde, where Trotsky used to play chess, over the Dôme, the favorite haunt of the Fauvists" (Durden-Smith. Lost Art, Departures, July/August 1999).

He and Modigliani hung out together. He was pals with Leger, Gris, Braque, and Matisse, By 1918 he was the most famous artist in Paris, at his peak more successful than Picasso, another good friend. When he installed a bathtub with hot running water in his studio he became everybody's best friend; female models flocked to his studio. Alice Ernestine Prin, aka Kiki, when not posing for him was a fixture in his tub. He was the cleanest man in town and the toast of Montparnasse. In 1925 he won France's Legion de Honneur and the Belgian Order of Leopold I.

In 1926, the French state bought its first Foujita. Not quite twenty-five years later, France bought its first Picasso. He was married three times.

Foujita's artwork at auction has reflected his strength and reputation, with prices in the low-four to mid-five figures for drawings, and upwards of $400,000 for paintings. Prices for the Book of Cats in its original limited edition have been very healthy. This is a book that appears to be recession-proof, with art collectors and cat fanciers vying for precious few copies in collectible condition. Without the extra suite of plates auction prices have lately ranged from $25,000 - $30,000. Within the last few years copies with the additional suite have sold for $42,000 - $60,000. This is a book that will never lose its value as long as cat people with a bankful o' kibble desire it. This volume is certainly the most popular and desirable book on cats ever published.

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UPDATE 2/11/2014: Sold for $77,500 incl. premium. 

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Foujita cat images courtesy of Bonham's, with our thanks. Some images may appear here in different tone than in the copy offered. 

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Meet Paul Parrot, Rare Bird Casanova & Star Of Rare Book

by Albert

Today's guest blogger is, once more, Albert the Writing Parrot, a thirty-four year old Yellow-Naped Amazon, Booktryt's mascot, my ward since his five-months old birthday, and, pathetically, my most successful long-term relationship. He knows more about these books than I do. If his writing voice sounds similar to mine do not be surprised. He is, after all, a parrot  - SJG.

Title-page.

Me again, pressed into service with the promise of a filbert thrown my way. I'm a conditioned fool.

Tittums Deserting Fido.

As the go-to bird on parrot books I'm often asked, What's the best volume on Mr. Paul Parrot, the notoriously horny hook-bill, fine-feathered lothario, and wandering roué with wings?

Step into my cage, sit at my zygodactyl feet, lend me an ear (I need a nosh), and I shall tell you, strictly entre-nous, a scandalous tale exceeded only, perhaps, by that of Aly Khan, the "fabulously wealthy, hard riding, fast driving, restless man of the world with a liking for parties and beautiful women" (NY Times, Feb. 7, 1958) for whom hi-fidelity was strictly for sound recordings; faithfulness to wives and lovers cramped his style.

There was Hon. Joan Guinness, Pamela Churchill Harriman, Rita Hayworth, Gene Tierney, countless other high-profile lovers, as well as the UCLA Pep Squad, the Pan American Airlines stewardess brigade, and a cast of gorgeous thousands from various Hollywood epics, take your pick. He needed a spreadsheet to keep track of the sheet spreads on his schedule.

Tittums Walking Out With The Parrot.

What's the book? In 1858, The Faithless Parrot by Charles H. Bennett was published by George Routledge and Co. of London as part of their New Toy Books series. The great, innovative color printer Edmund Evans engraved and printed the book's seven woodcuts based upon Bennett's designs.

It's the (one and only) cautionary tale of Paul Parrot, who, having seduced Tittums, a cat, from the arms of her lover, Fido, a dog (it's a modern relationship), and then two-timing her with the widow Mrs. Daw, a comely jackdaw,  gets his comeuppance when Tittums catches him in the act and he gets plucked within an inch of his life. 

The Parrot Courting The Jackdaw.

"Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the parrot mind" (Marcus Tullius Psittacine Cicero). It's a lesson Paul Parrot missed at Eton.

He's a votary of Oscar Wilde: "Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failures” (The Picture of Dorian Gray).

Eaves-Droppers.

To which I can only reply, Double, double, toil and trouble: Bill Shakes knew what he was talking about - I date more than one bird at a time and I'm a nervous wreck;  I'm faithful secondary to woeful and that's fine with me. I once woke up with two scarlet macaws and an African Gray next to me in a sleazy nest. They must have slipped me a Rophie - I have no idea how I got there and, worse, have no memory of what was probably an ecstatic night but all l took away from it was feather-burn and a hangover. So much for bird of paradise wanna-be's.

It never ceases to amaze me how some kitties will fall for any suave hookbill with a silver-tongue, to wit:

The Parrot Exposed.

"One morning, when Tittums came in from a visit she had been paying her mamma, she was followed by a gentleman from the tropics, who, with all the impudence of his race, made himself quite at home, pressed Tittums’ paw to his heart, called her 'the loveliest of Cats,' asked her to oblige him with a song, which he had been told she could sing very sweetly, and never took the least notice of poor Fido, who was sitting in the corner. To tell the truth, poor Fido was very cross, and began to growl quite savagely; the more so when, to his dismay, he beheld the pleasure with which Tittums heard all this nonsense. He could not think what right the bold stranger had to come there unasked; for all that he had bright red and green feathers, a rakish, broad-brimmed hat, and a gold-headed walking-cane, he was not good-looking, that was very certain.

"But Tittums was very much struck by his appearance and bearing; his feathers were so pretty, he spoke so many languages, shrieked so terribly and in such a loud voice, had travelled so much, and was so struck by the beauty of Tittums, that, poor little Cat as she was, she ceased to care a button for faithful Fido, and kept all her sly glances for Mr. Paul Parrot.

“'Lovely Tittums,' said Mr. Paul, 'you must forget such upstart puppies as Fido. Listen to me—I am a traveller—I speak five languages,—I have a palace made of golden bars, within which is a perch fit for a king,—I have a pension of bread and milk and Barcelona nuts: all of which I will share with you. Tomorrow we will go for a trip into the field next to the house. Good-bye for the present, my dear Pussy Cat;' and he went away kissing his hand."

Pussycats, this is the bird your mother warned you about. Never trust a mister who kisses his own hand.

The Parrot Getting a Good Picking.

Because this is a typical mid-nineteenth century children's book it's a didactic moral tale that must conclude with Mr. Paul Parrot paying the wages of sin.

"As soon as Mrs. Daw was left alone with Paul, she began to upbraid him with his falseness. 'You vulgar, stuck-up, ugly, awkward deceiver! You have neither honesty enough to live by, nor wings enough to fly with.' Whereupon she jumped at him and gave him such a plucking as spoilt his good looks.

"Never after this was the Parrot able to hold up his head. Every one scorned him; even his golden palace turned out to be a brass cage; and for his misdeeds a chain was fastened round his leg. He was confined to a wooden perch, which, out of pure spite, he was always pecking."

No compulsive horn-dog parrot pecker one-liners. Sorry to disappoint. What am I, Henny Youngbird?

There was a parrot-babe knocking on my hotel room door all night! Finally, I let her out.
 

I know a parrot who's frank and earnest with pussycats. In Fresno, he's Frank and in Chicago he's Ernest.

Take my mate - please!

Rimshot.

I give The Faithless Parrot 5-Seeds, my highest rating. It's a true rarity; according to OCLC there are less than a dozen copies in institutional holdings worldwide. The Cotson Children's Library at Princeton only has it as reprinted within Routledge's 1865 compilation, The Comical Story Book With Comical Illustrations: Printed In Colours. It was separately reprinted by Routledge in 1870.

I'll have that filbert now.
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BENNETT, Charles H. The Faithless Parrot. Designed and Narrated by… London: G. Routledge and Co., n.d. [1858]. First edition. Quarto. 15, [1] pp. Seven full-page woodcuts engraved and printed in color by Edmund Evans.

Rear wrapper.

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Images courtesy of The Gutenberg Project, with our thanks.

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Of Related Interest:

The Writing Parrot On Rare Parrot Books.

Parrots Found In Rare Book On German Birds: The Writing Parrot Squawks.

The Shadow Of Your Smile Is A Monkey: The Caricatures Of Charles H. Bennett.
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A Thrilling Dust Jacket By Paul Davis

by Stephen J. Gertz

First edition, 1963.

In 1963, after publishing seven James Bond novels, Ian Fleming wrote something entirely different after being offered a writer's dream assignment. At the behest of his friend, Charles Denis Hamilton, editor of the Sunday Times of London, Fleming undertook a five-week, all-expenses paid trip to visit and report on the world's most exciting cities.

The result was Thrilling Cities (London: Jonathan Cape, 1963), its material ultimately providing Fleming with background for the five Bond novels and seven short stories that followed.

The book featured a stunning dust jacket design by Paul Davis.

Three Penny Opera. 1976.
Raul Julia.

Anyone alive, awake  and living in New York City during the 1970s knows the work of Paul Davis, whose posters for Joseph Papp's Public Theater and Shakespeare in the Park were instantly iconic and remain indelible images.

"The revolution was already in full swing when in the late 1950s a young artist named Paul Davis entered the fray. Some renegade illustrators and art directors had already begun to revolt against the saccharine realism and sentimental concepts prevalent in most American magazines and advertising...

Henry V. 1976.
Paul Rudd.

"Although Paul Davis was not among this first wave, he was swept up by it and soon contributed to the illustration and design of the epoch. By the early 1960s, he had developed a distinct visual persona which, owing to a unique confluence of primitive and folk arts, brought a fresh new American look to illustration. In a relatively short time he was among the most prolific of the new illustrators, and his style had a staggering impact on the field...

"From the sixties to the present, he has contributed some paradigmatic approaches to the eclectic mix of American graphic art" (1989 AIGA Award, biography by Steven Heller).

Hamlet. 1975.
Sam Waterston.

Davis, born in 1938 in Oklahoma, told Heller of his early years during the 50s. “It was a turning point in American illustration, It was a rejection of Norman Rockwell, who was at his best a great Flemish painter and at his worst a bad cartoonist, as well as of the entrenched Westport style of romantic illustration.”

Gaining confidence, he took his portfolio to Push Pin, Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast's design shop, at the time the hottest in the business. After initial rejection they asked to rep his work. Influenced by many, including Thomas Hart Benton, Davis was attracted to American folk art. "There was no school here," he said, "there was no academia."

Measure For Measure. 1976.
Meryl Streep and John Cazale.

His style ultimately developed into fusion of American indigenous art and the surrealism of René Magritte. In 1963 he left Push Pin to work as an independent. The dust jacket for Thrilling Cities followed in that year. As the 60s evolved, so did Davis, who now began to incorporate elements of social realism into his work. By the end of the 60s, however, he made a conscious decision to "rid my work of all the elements that referred to other styles."

The Taming of the Shrew. 1978.
Meryl Streep and Raul Julia.

Yet those influences could not be extinguished and they are seen in what became his lasting contribution to American graphic art: his posters for Joseph Papp. They "challenged the conventions of contemporary theater advertising (particularly posters) in three ways: First, they were not encumbered by the usual bank of ”ego“ copy...Second, without mimicking style, Davis' posters referred to the late 19th-century European tradition of poster art which was ignored by the contemporary posterists...The third, and final, challenge to conventional theater posters was his basic methodology. Davis read the play, went to the rehearsals or readings, and talked to the actors and directors. 'They seemed to think,' he says, 'that I was doing this revolutionary thing by actually reading the scripts'" (ibid., Heller).

First edition, 1968.
The influence of American folk art  is clear.

The stylistic journey of Paul Davis from Thrilling Cities in 1963 to True Grit in 1968 through his theater posters during the mid-1970s encapsulates American graphic design during the latter half of the 20th century, and captures an artist avoiding the faddism of '60s pop and psychedelia to follow his own path toward an instantly recognizable and lasting body of work.

First edition, 1976.

In a declarative meow to make cat lovers purr, Davis brought his chops to bear on the feline side of life with his dust jacket for Jean-Claude Suares and Seymour Chwast's The Illustrated Cat (1976).

LEEUW, Hendrik De. Sinful Cities of the Western World.
NY: Pyramid #27, 1951. First edition in paperback.
Cover by Fred. W. Meyer.
First edition: NY: Citadel, 1946.

Ian Fleming's Thrilling Cities is not to be confused with Hendrik De Leeuw's Sinful Cities of the Western World which deals with an altogether different sort of thrilling urban adventure.

Fleming dedicated Thrilling Cities to Charles Denis Hamilton, the Times editor who was responsible for Fleming's assignment. Hamilton's copy, the dedication copy inscribed by Fleming, in fine condition as seen in today's header image, recently came to market. It sold for £12,500 ($20,200).

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Image of Thrilling Cities courtesy of Peter Harrington, with our thanks.
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Celebrating Ronald Searle's Wicked World of Book Collecting

by Stephen J. Gertz

Ronald Searle was a great friend of rare books and the collecting world. We mourn his passing this week at age 91. 

The following originally appeared on Booktryst, October 26, 2010 in appreciation of the 21st birthday of his hilarious visual satire on trade terminology for describing a book's condition. The captions are his.

"Ever since as a child I lurked, lingered and slobbered in anticipation over the sixpenny book boxes of the Cambridge booksellers, I have never ceased to rummage wherever more than two books are brought together…

"As for catalogues: whenever I managed to beg, take, or even pinch one on my rounds, my weekend was made. I would spent it alone in my room, lost to the world over items of such unspeakable exoticism that if an armful of delights from the most perfumed local harem had been offered to this pimply teenager on a golden dish, they would barely have received a third glance…

"Thus the rot set in.

"Ten thousand bookshops and twenty thousand catalogues later, I lick my wounds, while all around me almost a half a kilometer of books now groan from lack of space" (Ronald Searle, Introduction to Slightly Foxed - but still desirable).

SEARLE, Ronald. Slightly Foxed -  But Still Desirable:
Ronald Searle's Wicked World of Book Collecting.
London: Souvenir Press, (September)1989.
First edition.

Happy belated 21st birthday to Slightly Foxed - but still desirable, cartoonist and illustrator Ronald Searle's satire on book collecting, specifically the condition terminology typically seen and understood by the Illuminati but Esperanto to those outside the trade or hobby; it looks like English, it reads like English, but it might as well be Martian.

A little dog-eared but otherwise acceptable copy.

Illustrated throughout with sixty-one full-page color drawings, it remains as fresh, charming, and delightfully irreverent as when originally published. In celebration of its coming of age, Booktryst presents a selection of its caricatures with the original captions.

A little thumbed, otherwise attractive copy.

A nice, bright set.

Cracked but holding.

Evidence of some insect damage.

Early manuscript notes.

Generally a little loose.

Leather labels and intricate decoration.

Lovingly thumbed by former owner.

Name on fly.

Slight splitting of paste-down.

Stitching a little loose.

Tail-edge shaved.

Somewhat spotted, but otherwise desirable.

Some worming of the epoch.

Some light surface abrasion.

Copies of the trade edition are currently selling for around $100. Copies of the signed limited edition  in fine condition, however, will set you back $1000.

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SEARLE, Ronald. Slightly Foxed - but still desirable. Ronald Searle's Wicked World of Book Collecting. London: Souvenir Press Ltd., 1989. Signed and limited edition of 150 copies. Quarto. 124 pp. Sixty-one color drawings. Blue leather. Spine lettered in gilt.

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Images courtesy of Ikahime at Flickr.
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Living With Burroughs

The following originally appeared in e*I*21, Volume 4, Number 4, August 2005 in slightly different form.

by Stephen J. Gertz

For one year I lived with the grandmaster of Beat literature, William S. Burroughs. I remember it well. It was 2002. Burroughs died in 1997. Though I have paranormal experiences from time to time (generally confined to sexual encounters) this was not one of them. Although….

If the soul of an author resides within their text, their spirit haunts the manifestation of the text, the physical object that is the book itself. Handling and, I dare say, fondling the book can evoke the jinn within; the book as an Aladdin's lamp, the essence of a writer summoned forth with a caress.

I've had Marie Antoinette in my hands: I handled a set of beautifully bound volumes in full crimson morocco leather with elaborate gilt decoration and ornamentation with the armorial device of Antoinette; her copy, and I experienced an olfactory hallucination, her scent in my nostrils. I spent an afternoon with Mark Twain, examining and cataloging a copy of his A Dog's Tale with a particularly intimate and poignant inscription written in his hand. I felt he was at my side, whispering in my ear; we shared a cigar.

I've had many similar experiences but none more dramatic than the year I was surrounded by arguably the finest private collection of William Burroughs material in the world. Joe Zinnato, a friend and book dealer, had amassed the collection over a 30-year period but was now seeking capital to expand his holdings in another area of literary interest. We made a deal whereby Dailey Rare Books of Los Angeles, the rare book sanctuary I once called home, would represent the collection's sale, an amalgamation of original manuscripts with corrections in Burroughs' hand; letters, scribbled scraps; the overwhelming majority of Burroughs' titles and editions found in Maynard & Miles' bibliography, many signed; over 150 magazines with Burroughs' contributions, all quite rare, many signed, with additional articles/stories of interest from other notable writers, including Charles Bukowski; Burroughs contributions to other books and anthologies; a great deal of ephemera including autograph post- and greeting cards, a boxful of private snapshots and more formal photographs all but one never published; LP records, videos, reel-to-reel and cassette tapes featuring Burroughs; original cover art by frequent collaborator, Brion Gysin; artwork by the literary artist himself; and a sheaf of letters from Paul Bowles to a third party discussing Burroughs, Tangier, Maurice Girodias, and more.

I was surrounded by eighteen boxes representing not just the man's work but his life. And Burroughs' presence was palpable; El Hombre Invisible, the nickname bestowed upon him due to his tall, gaunt, ashen, spectral appearance - he looked like a hip undertaker; his life, indeed, a hip if painful undertaking - was in attendance. Like a kid in a candy store, I was in nirvana, Burroughs at my side as I examined each piece.

It isn't often that one has the opportunity to track a literary creation from conception, drafts, layouts, printing, publication and sales but here it was: the archive to Burroughs' TIME, one of his better "cut-ups."

Though Dadaist Tristan Tzara had experimented with the form, taking established text, deconstructing it by scissoring it into pieces and reassembling the scraps into a literary collage, it was Burroughs who fully explored and exploited the idea, one that began when artist and Burroughs' friend and frequent collaborator, Brion Gysin, accidentally cut through a newspaper he was using as under pad for an art piece he was cropping with a razor-knife. It was a natural extension to what Burroughs had done with Naked Lunch, which was written in pieces, scraps and shards of text over time, then typed into manuscript. The manuscript was then deliberately shuffled like a deck of cards; the text requiring a few shuffles before Girodias finally accepted it for publication. The shuffles were never random; this was not a chaotic, chance editorial exercise but rather the willful reorganization of text toward a determined, ordered end.

And so here was the original issue of Time magazine Burroughs used with all the spaces where text had been cut-out; a 26-page signed, typed manuscript with corrections in his hand; another draft, a 14-page typed manuscript with autograph corrections; an 11-page typed manuscript/collage with title page; a 12-page photo-negative of the prior item with extra drawings and highlighting by Joe Brainard; a 32-page small mock-up of the book in ink by Brainard; the cover as prepared by Burroughs with art by Gysin; the publisher's ledger/account book with production costs, orders to whom and how many; and over 100 pieces of mail concerning ordering and publication, including the copyright certificate, and the complete list of where copies of the 1-10 edition and 1-100 edition were sold, providing a remarkable insight into the marketing of the book.

I have not been able to read Time magazine since without reflexively juxtaposing text:

"J-Lo and Ben split over Weapons of Mass Destruction found in Martha Stewart Living With Alzheimer's Disease in the Sudan where civil war fought with box-office bomb Gigli poisoned well-water taints the oases bottom line Kofi Annan Lincoln's secret lover on Martha's 300-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets during K-Mart Blue-Light Special Forces operations in Afghanistan to flush Osama from movie theaters in Darfur where children are starving for entertainment the whole family can enjoy without retribution from death squads Martha claims ‘innocent!’”

There's an 8x10 black and white photograph of Burroughs in Paris standing on rue Git-le-Coeur outside of the most famous fleabag-flophouse in literary history, the nameless joint otherwise known as The Beat Hotel by its eccentric guests, whom John De St Jorre in his history of the Olympia Press, Venus Bound (1996), characterized as "a colorful collection of painters and prostitutes, jazz musicians and petty criminals, poets and hustlers, writers and junkies." Whoosh! I’m carried away on a magic carpet to my spiritual home; I've a room down the hall from Burroughs, picking goatee'd hipster lice in berets out of my hair while Burroughs, in the communal latrine, curses in his deadpan-ironic nasal monotone that octopus tentacles are strangling his bowels, that he'd give Jesus a blowjob for a decent shit, his cuckoo ca-ca clock clamorin' for constipation's end.

Another: Burroughs and Gysin superimposed over a section of Notre Dame cathedral taking their place as the stoned saints of Beat amongst the saints in stone bas-relief that adorn its façade.

And another, perhaps the most succinctly defining image of Burroughs ever, he at a construction site standing in front of a large sign: "DANGER."

I open the box of snapshots - over 60 color photos, many taken by Burroughs' bibliographer and friend, Barry Miles - and I'm immersed in Burroughs private life in Tangier as no other who didn't know him personally or view these photographs could be: WSB in a red bathing suit sunning himself on the roof of his apartment building--a startling image as he is almost always seen in his uniform: dark suit, white shirt and tie; Burroughs comfortably sitting between two of his Moroccan boy-toys, youngsters in full Arab drag with crossed swords in their belts, and Burroughs’s jinn whispers in my ear: "those junior janissaries of jism had Damascus steel in their shorts and lips made for mouthfuls of phallic mirth"; Burroughs sitting in front of his typewriter, caught in the act with Gysin standing at his side; and many, many others. I'm embarrassed yet thrilled by the intimacy; I'm a fly-on-the-wall spying into WSB's quotidian life.

I want to dive into the boxes of books but simple physics prevents me from jack-knifing into the library, so I take them out individually: a pristine copy of a first edition Naked Lunch in very fine dust jacket. Few realize that many of Girodias' Traveller's Companion paperbacks with their simple, uniformly designed printed green wrappers, were issued with djs. I pass my hand over the stylishly designed dj and, to my surprise and annoyance, Jack Kerouac shows up, dripping 100-proof ectoplasm. The guy needs to be seriously squeegeed. He’s a bloated, bleary wreck.

“What brings you here, Jack-o?” Bill politely asks.

“Stakin’ my claim, Bill, just stakin’ my claim.”

Apparently hung-over from a drinking session with Mom in the afterlife and desperate to shore-up his  literary reputation, he starts riffing on his importance in the literary canon.

"On the Road is the archetype American novel, the quest for bountiful horizons, the car as modern-day horse galloping into flaming sunsets that never sink into the night, toward frontiers unfettered by geography, a road trip of the mind traveled on the double-laned mystic highway boundless and beautiful and fueled by Benzedrine; an American classic that captures - and continues to do so - the optimistic, fundamental American yearning for adventure, redemption and home that is just over the next hill if we have the courage to drive fast and forward. Hell, it so captured the American imagination that an early '60s T.V. show was based on it, Route 66 starring George Maharis and Martin Milner with a theme by Henry Mancini. Whad'ya think, Bill?"

"I'll let 'Unfortunately Straight Steve-arino' answer, ol' Jack." He gave me the nod.

"All you say is true," I began, "and On the Road certainly spawned a T.V. show but it was also responsible for every single piece-of-shit 'buddy' road movie ever made since to its eternal shame. What's more, methinks you a little too enamored by the sound of your own voice in print; you're the Thomas Wolfe of the Beat Generation, verbose 'til the reader wants to scream and I have bad news for you: like Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again. Your writing’s a combination of speed and Ex-Lax, projectile diarrhea of the mind. You weren't really a member of the Beat Generation, you were the prior generation’s last gasp, stuck in an idealized version of a bygone America, your Pre-WWII childhood tethering you unmercifully as you tried to break free of it and your mother.

"Billy-boy, in contrast, shucked all that. He rejected that America of down-home constipated consciousness, that childish yearning for a past that never was, that prolix, 19th century reminiscent novelistic style of yours out of time and out of gas for the Atomic Age. True, Naked Lunch is for many the anti-meal but so is James Joyce, for God's sake. As far as Naked Lunch never being adapted for television, that is all to it's credit. And while Cronenberg imaginatively adapted it for film, Naked Lunch has spawned not one idiotic movie after another as On the Road has. Billiam turned 20th century writing on its ear by sodomizing straight narrative up the Yazoo. Naked Lunch is not an American novel much less an American classic. It is, however, to its glory, a classic of world literature, transcending American parochialism to speak to the transnational, universal consciousness of the trickster renegade within us all that seeks to break the boundaries of the internal landscape. On the Road is petroleum-fueled metal on wheels, a hip bumper-car that ultimately crashes into the walls of East and West Coast; Naked Lunch is a nuclear age powered rocket puncturing the sky, shooting into space to another world.

"You say you influenced pop-culture. True, but that was close to 60 years ago. Naked Lunch, as all great art--and the book is a work of art--though it made an immediate impact amongst the cognoscenti, had a delayed influence upon popular culture. Decades after its publication it would inspire the Punk movement, David Bowie, Kathy Acker, Philip K. Dick, Apple’s Steve Jobs, and many others; a who’s who list of poets, artists, novelists, filmmakers, etc. In 1972, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker named their new group Steely Dan, thereby becoming the first group, musical or otherwise, to be named after a dildo. Not just any dildo but the most famous dildo in all of world literature, Burroughs' keister-pleaser in Naked Lunch, and I chuckle every time I hear Steely Dan on the radio, wondering if station management has any awareness that their disc jockeys are announcing a song by the great dildo band, Fagen's lyrics archetypal examples of Burroughs' Dada-Dante-esque world.

"No one can read your Visions of Cody in its complete, posthumously issued edition without experiencing, to one degree or another, drooping eyelids. One may get nightmares, one may even experience nausea but no one, no way no how, can ever fall asleep reading Naked Lunch.

"But most of all, Jack, you commit the unpardonable sin of absolute humorlessness or at best humor without a trace of tangy, social bite. WSB's work, in contrast, overflows with tartly ironic, acid wit; this guy could do stand-up - certainly not in a typical Vegas lounge but in a nice, seedy roadhouse joint in purgatory, The Infernal Komedy Klub where over-the-top Dadaesque ironic burlesque routines are appreciated.

"I rest Bill's case."

"A little rough on ol' Jack, weren't you, Steve-o?" Burroughs dryly commented.

"He's dead, he can take it," I coolly replied. “The nerve of this uninvited juice-head, horning in on my literary séance!” I turned to Kerouac. “Hit the road, Jack.”

I swear I caught Kerouac posing in his mother's Maidenform bra swilling Jack Daniels before dematerializing in a puffy huff back to wherever he's now calling home.

Envy

Now another: one of only 90 copies of the giant, enclosed in custom wood portfolio edition of Seven Deadly Sins with 7 woodblock silkscreen prints 45 x 31 inches on white 2-ply museum board each signed and numbered, a few of which Joe had archivally mounted and framed. I've got them standing upright on the floor and the effect is as if Burroughs had a mini-cam implanted backward in his forehead and I'm watching streaming, screaming video of Bill's brain at work. I've got so much of this stuff around me, have become so well acquainted with Burroughs that we're now on a first name basis.

Christ! Here's a beautiful copy of the British "Digit" paperback edition of Junkie, a book that comes on the market about once every ten years and now fetches upward of $5K depending upon condition, an almost mythic edition that few have actually seen, the first U.S. edition "double Ace book" paperback almost common by comparison. Joe has wisely enclosed both editions in plastic sleeves; my salivary glands are in overdrive.

I open the boxes of magazines with WSB contributions, the overwhelming majority signed. I've never told Joe but I took all of them out of their meticulously organized order within the boxes and rolled in them: one of 50 copies of the offprint to Burroughs' Letter From A Master Drug Addict to Dangerous Drugs; a copy of Big Table; Floating Bear; City Lights Journal; Cleft1, 2:4-7; Bulletin From Nothing; Insect Trust Gazette; Fruit Cup; Gay Sunshine; and hundreds more, including the rare Marijuana Newsletter 1:1,3.

Oh, my God! A 33-page original typed manuscript of his annotations to the catalog of the Burroughs archive in Lawrence, Kansas - his hometown - containing inked corrections in his hand.

A Xerox typed manuscript of Port of Saints presented to Richard Aaron (Am Here Books) by Burroughs; unique because Burroughs never kept the original manuscript. Aaron provided a sworn, signed statement of provenance and circumstance to Joe. I'm looking the manuscript over and I realize that this is so radically different than the published edition that it constitutes an original unpublished manuscript. I’m one of maybe ten people in the world to have seen and read it.

There's a cryptic autograph scrawl of Burroughs' on Pennsylvania Railroad letterhead that reads: "At Prie Ricard [sic?] rooming with Indian boy - deformed genitals on the other (Gerard) - I was, perhaps, coming down with jaundice - any one can see suffering. Does he think I dislike him? Some one has come for the laundry. I can hardly drag myself around. Then I might put out the dog and the [?] that vowed to bite our [?] where we lay."

A Letter to the Editor of After Dark Magazine on Burroughs' letterhead that sets the record straight, as it were: "Correction: William Burroughs is not going straight [heterosexual]. He knows it. Wouldn't You?"

I'm touched by a Christmas card with a short, warm inscription signed "Bill”; odd evidence that Burroughs, for all his radical, kaleidoscopic prose and messenger from the underbelly persona, is at heart a nice, thoughtfully tender guy from the Midwest. 

An autograph postcard to a publisher passes through my hands.

Dig this: Veteran Sirens, a 17-1/2x23" painting by Bill. It's advanced primitive fingerpainting, and most would say, "I coulda done that," but they didn't. Burroughs did.

Lookit! R. Crumb's Meet The Beats poster #2, one of five copies lettered A-E and signed by WSB. Listen! Original master 7" and 5" reel-to-reel tapes of Burroughs' audio collages, etc., including the master for the Call Me Burroughs LP; Bill's master audio cut-up of Dutch Schultz & Young Queer; Bill reciting Willie The Rat; the master of Bill reciting The Last Words of Hassan Sabha; much more to listen to - my ears are ringing - not the least of which is a tape of Burroughs singing (!) medleys of Marrakesh music; he makes Yoko Ono sound like Barbra Streisand in comparison, and must be heard to be believed but believe it, I heard him.

I reach back into a box and take out The Cat Inside, one of eighteen copies signed by Bill and Brion Gysin out of a total edition of 133 copies, and printed on fine Crisbrook paper, the entire book produced and published by the legendary Grenfell Press in 1986, the last collaboration between Burroughs and Gysin and certainly Burroughs' most sentimentally affecting work, written at a time when his personal and artistic maelstrom had somewhat settled and he could delight in the simple comfort of feline companionship and relate to the feline soul. Yet Burroughs was always--and remains, even after his death--the hippest cat on the scene. Bill's jinn leans over to me and whispers these words from the text, which can stand as a Beat Manifesto: "We are the cats inside. We are the cats who cannot walk alone, and for us there is only one place."

For Burroughs, that place, wherever it might have been in his head when he penned those lines, is in the literary firmament, his outlaw star burning through our polluted atmosphere to illuminate the post-modern human condition which may not be pretty but in the right light - Bill's light - can be seen in all its painfully dissonant beauty.

Epilogue

The dot.com bust pushed the big money into hiding, and institutions cried poverty. I couldn't sell the collection even at a dramatic discount to $225K. I packed it all back into the boxes, those corrugated cardboards filled with Aladdin's lamps. Joe has been selling the collection piecemeal over the last couple of years, and I often wonder if some lucky someone has taken any one of the items into their hands and lovingly rubbed it, thus releasing Bill's jinn for another one-on-one with El Hombre Invisible.
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Special thanks to Joe Zinnato; all Burroughs-related photography courtesy Joe Zinnato Collection, now, alas, broken-up and sold.

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