William Burroughs and Brion Gysin | TIME [Bootleg]

William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin

TIME [Bootleg]

Sussex, UK: Urgency Press Rip-Off, 1972

26 pp., 20 x 32 cm., staple-bound

Edition of 495

An unsanctioned xerox bootleg of the Burroughs/Gysin book from seven years prior [see previous post]. The publication was “specially prepared in hurry for bickershaw festival” by Roy Pennington. The Bickershaw Festival was a rock festival held in Lancashire, England, between the 5th and 7th of May, 1972, featuring acts such as Captain Beefheart, Cheech & Chong, Donovan, Dr. John, Grateful Dead, and the Kinks. For reasons unknown, the publication was not sold at the festival. 

The work reproduces the contents of the ‘C’ Press edition, but in a slightly different order, leaving out page 9 of the original. Rather than stapled at the left hand side, the photocopied bootleg is stapled at the top. 

It was produced in five runs of 99 copies each. 

William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin | TIME

William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin

TIME

New York City, USA: C Press, 1965

26 pp., 8.5 x 11”, saddle-stitched

Edition of 1000

"The reputation of an underground author is a fragile thing” wrote Time magazine in November, 1962. "For example, it had been assumed for years that Henry Miller was unprintable but highly readable. Then Grove Press, merely by publishing his Tropics, proved that Miller is unreadable but highly printable. A reading of Naked Lunch, the grotesque diary of William Burroughs’ years as an addict, suggests that no such drastic deflation will occur with him.”

The anonymous and deeply mean-spirited review, titled "King of the YADs”1, went on to accuse Burroughs of being an ex-junkie, of murdering his 28 year old wife Joan Vollmer, and of cutting off one of his fingers to dodge the draft. 

While the first two are a matter of public record, Burroughs sued for libel. The magazine refused to settle, and Burroughs won in court. According to his biographer Ted Morgan, he was awarded a paltry five pounds and five shillings in compensation. Apparently the judge thought little he had too little a reputation to be damaged. 

Denied the opportunity to read his prepared statement in court, Burroughs instead focused his grudge on this publication three years later.  

“The imbalance of power between a mass publication and an avant-garde pamphlet like TIME is self-evident,” wrote S. E. Gontarsk, in Burroughs Unbound. "Still, Burroughs pursued the personal settling of scores on an imaginary level and as a creative engine within the limited circle of a like-minded audience. The idea of contamination and of the influence through contiguity used in his appropriation of Luce’2 media formats has its roots not only in Burroughs’ fascination with newspapers but also in his early experiments with photography.”

The staple-bound publication approximates the size of Time Magazine, and uses an altered cover of the offending issue [see below]. The top half is reproduced faithfully, but the bottom is obscured by a drawing of a landscape with a figure in the foreground, over which is superimposed the author's name in capital letters. Below this is a list of cover prices for Time magazine in various countries around the world. 

Burroughs is credited as designing the cover himself, perhaps an early example equating the Cut Up writing method, with its visual art grandparent the collage. 

Brion Gysin introduced Burroughs to the Cut Up technique that he popularized, though his contributions here seem to be limited to a four-page spread of line drawings. Both believed that the Cut Up technique had mystical and magical powers, including time travel: "When you cut into the present, the future leaks out”. Burroughs famously declared that “Language is a virus from outer space”, a parasite to fight against. 

Similarly, Burroughs had some McLuhanesque theories about medium and message, and believed that the column format of periodicals was intentionally sinister. Sixty years later, his paranoid skepticism of the news media is now shared by the general public, with seven in ten Americans now declaring they have “not very much” confidence in journalism (36%), or “none at all” (34%).

In his essay Ten Years and a Billion Dollars 3 Burroughs wrote: “You can see how easy it is, if you own a newspaper, to start slipping in non-existent events; this has been and is being done all the time — by Time especially, in fact. Starting with being a week ahead, they literally write the news before it happens; which is why they print so many false statements that they have to retract. And so you get a retraction from them — how many people read the retraction compared to the number who have read the falsified story?”

The masthead of TIME lists (along with a declaration that "There are no typographical errors in this edition”) the four variations from within the edition of a thousand:  "This first printing appears in 4 editions: 4 copies hors commerce4; 10 copies numbered A-J, hardbound, each containing an original manuscript page by Burroughs and an original drawing by Gysin, signed by both; 100 numbered and signed copies ; 886 copies in a trade edition.”

TIME was produced as the fourth title from poet Ted Berrigan’s C Press. Joe Brainard was the art director and poet Ron Padgett served as project editor. 

Padgett recalled later that "Burroughs was pleased with the result, but, given his characteristic reserve, he didn’t gush. Throughout the project he was cordial, polite, somewhat old-fashioned in his formal good manners. Brion Gysin was equally polite but a bit warmer in his demeanour." 

The trade edition originally retailed for $1.50. It now sells for about five hundred dollars a copy. The signed edition of a hundred sells for three and six times that amount, depending on condition. 

Many Burroughs scholars believe that the key to understanding his employment of the Cut Up technique is best studied here, not the better known Grove Nova trilogy of The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, and Nova Express, which is also known as the Cut Up trilogy. 

"A 1962 piece on the Beats and Naked Lunch had suggested he was a jailbird who had done time for murdering his wife; he sued and won, but received only negligible damages. In 1965 Burroughs took that 30 November 1962 copy and collaged it to make his own copy of Time.

This kind of creative defacement was very current due to the Situationists, for whom it was a major technique known as ‘détournement’. Burroughs’s work has a number of intersections with the Situationists, notably in his sense that reality is constructed as a movie and we have to ‘Storm the Reality Studio’; this compares with Debord’s ideas of the ‘Society of the Spectacle’ (which also led to Baudrillard’s dictum that the Gulf War was really a movie). These ideas were ‘in the air’ at the time, and Burroughs pre-dates Debord in book form, but there are earlier links between Burroughs and the Situationists through Scots writer, junky and theorist of insurrection Alexander Trocchi, who knew both Burroughs and Debord, and the British Situationist Ralph Rumney, who knew Gysin. Gysin referred to his lost book Memoirs of a Mythomaniac as a ‘detourned autobiography’, and Burroughs’s Time can be seen as a detourned copy of Time magazine: similarly, the aggressive use of cut-ups is also a form of detournement, alongside their more surreally creative aspect.”

- Phil Baker, William S Burroughs, Critical Lives

1. YADs refers to "Young American Disaffiliates". The article begins "The Young American Disaffiliates (they used to be called beats, but nothing stays simple) have not done well.”  The unattributed author is referring to Burroughs and other Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Jack Kerouac. The term "Young American Disaffiliates” does not seem to appear elsewhere, anywhere.  

2. Henry Luce was an American magazine publisher who founded Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated. He was known as one of "the most influential Americans of his day”. Luce also experimented with LSD, before it was illegal. 

3. The Burroughs essay “Ten Years and a Billion Dollars” was later collected in The Adding Machine (1985), but was originally published in a magazine: Crawdaddy, the September 1975 issue. 

4. Hors commerce translates from the French as “before business.” An hors commerce print was used as the color key and printing guide to insure consistency of the print run. A Printer’s Proof [or PP], essentially. 

James Riddle | E.S.P. Fluxkit

James Riddle

E.S.P. Fluxkit

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1966

3.5 x 4.75 x .75 cm.

Edition size unknown

A plastic box with a George Maciunas designed label containing a number of coloured cards. An instruction sheet reads: “DOP Instructions/Blindfold yourself securely and rub your fingers lightly over the colored papers. With practice you can learn to distinguish between the colors.”

In a letter to Paul Sharits dated July 1966, Maciunas wrote “Fluxus has no position on [William S.] Burroughs or psychedelics. Jim Riddle (a flux man) is very interested in psychedelics, ESP, LSD, etc. has done two Flux events last summer. One was ESP event across the country (by mail). Interesting results. [Brion] Gysin piece included for itself, not for his position on junk”.  

Jon Hendricks' Fluxus Codex notes that E.S.P. Fluxkit was "issued as an individual edition, and is a component of some Fluxkits and most copies of Flux Year Box 2”. It was also produced as an envelope edition (see earlier post, here, and below). 

The work - which originally was offered for sale for $3.00 - is held in numerous collections, including the Walker, MoMA, The University of Iowa Libraries, and Harvard Art Museum.

A physical book which compiles conceptual books by various artists

[Various artists]

A physical book which compiles conceptual books by various artists

Madison, USA: Partial Press, 2022

180 pp., 5.83 x 8.27”, softcover

Edition size unknown

A compendium that collects a series of ‘conceptual’ or ‘unrealized’ books and moves them one step closer to realization by bounding them together and getting them into bookstores. 

Edited and published (as Partial Press) by Carley Gomez and Levi Sherman, the book’s full title is 

A Physical Book Which Compiles Conceptual Books by Various Artists: Possibly Undermining Their Conceptual Commitment to Dematerialization, but Also Sparking Unforeseen Juxtapositions and Insinuating the Works into New Situations.

Featuring over ninety contributors from around the world, the volume presents books that previously only existed as "verbal statements, descriptions, or provocations”. Beyond conceptual works, the book features rhetorical, impossible and implausible books.

The title can be purchased from Fungus Books, in Pittsburgh, a small but well-curated store dedicated to "Rare, new, & used books, records, printed matter.” Fungus was founded by writer Ed Steck, alongside partners Seth Glick (Concept Art Gallery) and Michael Seamans (Mind Cure Records). Seamans stocks a small display of vinyl records in the store, where one might find Sun Ra, Sonic Youth, Brian Eno, Moondog, Jandek, and Terry Riley disks. 

The bookstore carries some of my favourite contemporary publishers of artists’ books: Primary Information, Siglio Press, and New Documents. Our visit was brief, but I spotted several gems, such as 

Brion Gysin’s Dream Machine Plans, a rare Ben Vautier pamphlet, Steve McCaffery’s double volume Seven Pages Missing and Marcel Duchamp’s The Blind Man reprint. Other author/artists in stock included Harry Smith, Susan Howe, Luis Bunuel, Bernadette Mayer, William Burroughs, Yvonne Rainer, James Baldwin, Valie Export, Dieter Roth, Destroy All Monsters, and many others. 

The store is located at 700 & 1/2 South Trenton Avenue, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Visit their site here. 

A physical book which compiles conceptual books by various artists is also available as an ebook, for $2.00, here.  

"When Levi first envisioned the anthology, he pictured conceptual books in the vein of 1960s and ‘70s Conceptual art, and we did receive such books. Like many Fluxus publications, these conceptual books build a frame through which to view everyday experiences in a new light. An Index of Beginnings and Endings by Ellen Bruex makes this explicit: “Instructions: Move through your days with awareness of new beginnings and final endings.” Some instruction pieces lend themselves to execution, relying on chance to produce novel outcomes. Random Color Generated Instant Book by Esther K Smith & Susan Happersett exemplifies this approach with detailed, plainspoken instructions and everyday materials. Other instructions are more poignant as mental exercises. In this category, we would place Who Has Seen the Wind by Cathryn Miller of Byopia Press. One could feasibly print her ninety-nine sonograms of the wind, but it is Miller’s Duchampian declaration that these imagined prints are art, specifically asemic poems, that is so striking. Despite their variety, these works all share Conceptual art’s emphasis on the viewer/reader rather than the artist. They remind us that reading is a creative, constitutive act.”

 - Carley Gomez

Gysin, Brion | The Process

Gysin, Brion

The Process

Garden City, USA: Doubleday & Company, 1969

352 pp., hardcover

Edition size unknown

Described as "a powerfully psychological novel", is notable for being the artist's first full-length novel, and for its descriptions of Gysin's encounters with L. Ron Hubbard and The Master Musicians of Jajouka.

The work is valued at around $500, depending on condition. 

Brion Gysin was born on this day in 1916. 

The Nova Convention

[Various Artists]

The Nova Convention

New York City, USA: Giorno Poetry Systems, 1979

Gatefold 2LP set/double cassette

Edition size unknown

In 1978, Semiotext(e) founder Sylvere Lotringer approached John Giorno about organizing a tribute to William S Burroughs, bringing together European and American academics for a series of seminars, celebrating the writer as a "philosopher of the future", someone who best understood postindustrial society.

Giorno was more interested in a counterculture event that would feature musicians, poets, novelists and artists alongside academics, maybe a star attraction. Keith Richards was added to the bill at the last minute to meet the final requirement, ensuring that the event quickly sold out. 

Titled The Nova Convention, the event took place between November 30th and December 2nd, 1978, in the East Village at the Entermedia (the former fabled Phoenix Theater, now the Village East Cinema). The "convention" featured music performances, readings, screenings and panel discussions, that sought to grapple with some of the implications of Burroughs' writings and influence. 

The audience was made up of academics, students, publishers, writers, artists, punks and people wanting to see the Rolling Stones guitarist. However, complications from his Toronto heroin arrest prevented Richards from attending. 

Philip Glass performed a minimalist solo work on the synthesizer, and was booed. Burroughs friend and associate Brion Gysin took the stage next, with the audience shouting "Where's Keith?"

Frank Zappa was recruited at the last minute to appear in place of Richards. Too late to arrange his band, he agreed to read from talking asshole scene from the Burroughs classic Naked Lunch. 

Patti Smith appeared next - nervous to follow Zappa - in a fur coat and iguana-skin cowboy boots. During her introduction a heckler shouted, "Tell it to the iguana." Smith is reported to have surreptitiously masturbated onstage through a slit in her coat pocket, to maintain her command over the audience. 

"I know you guys came in to see Keith," she told them, breaking the news for the first time. "Well, Keith ain't here. He's on a plane right now between L.A. and Toronto. He asked me to tell you all that if anybody wants their money back they can come and get it right now." She then proceeded to pull some crumpled bills out of her pocket, but no one approached to claim them. 

Sick with bronchitis, Smith was unable to sing but instead played clarinet and electric guitar, despite not being proficient on either. The New York Times review described her playing as "with virtually no technique in the conventional sense but with a certain understanding of the kind of effects that were within her grasp."

John Giorno - an always excellent performance poet - read two emotional and moving works and a young Laurie Anderson gave a presentation about the future, her voice electronically pitch-shifted. Anderson, Burroughs and Giorno would later team up for a spoken word tour together, and Burroughs appeared in Anderson's breakthrough film Home of the Brave. 

Burroughs received a warm welcome for his readings. Even when his subject matter is challenging, Burroughs' arresting voice, midwestern accent and haunting persona could be counted on to captivate an audience. He also provided the keynote lecture, and appeared on a panel discussion with Gysin, Timothy Leary, and Robert Wilson, moderated by artist Les Levine. 

The series was originally produced by Giorno Poetry Systems for WBAI radio, and released the following year as a double LP. 

Side One

1. Terry Southern – Vignette of Idealistic Life in South Texas

2. William S. Burroughs – Keynote commentary & Roosevelt After Inauguration

3. John Giorno – Eating The Sky

4. Patti Smith – Poem For Jim Morrison & Bumblebee

Side Two

1. William S. Burroughs – Benway

2. Philip Glass – Building, excerpt from Einstein On The Beach by Robert Wilson & Philip Glass

3. Brion Gysin – Kick That Habit, Junk Is No Good Baby, Somebody Special & Blue Baboon

4. Frank Zappa – The Talking Asshole

5. William S. Burroughs – From The Gay Gun: "This Is Kim Carson," "Just Like The Collapse Of Any Currency," & "The Whole Tamale"

Side Three

1. William S. Burroughs – What The Nova Convention Is About

2. Ed Sanders – Hymn To Aphrodite from Sappho

3. John Cage – Writing For The Second Time Through Finnegans Wake

4. Anne Waldman – Plutonium Ode & Skin Meat Bones

Side Four

1. Laurie Anderson & Julia Heyward – Song from America On The Move

2. Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky – Punk Rock, Old Pond; Feeding Them Raspberries To Grow, & Nurses Song

3. William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Timothy Leary, Les Levine & Robert Anton Wilson – Conversations

Brion Gysin | Dream Machine

Brion Gysin

Dream Machine

[no city]: Self-published, 1985

117.4 by 30.2 by 30.2 cm.

Edition size unknown

Signed, dated and inscribed to Keith Haring, this copy of Brion Gysin’s most celebrated work was offered for sale in the Sotheby's auction "Dear Keith: Works from the Personal Collection of Keith Haring" from October of last year. 

Haring happened upon the Nova Convention, in 1978 and subsequently read The Third Man by Gysin and William S Burroughs. The "Cut-up" method made a lasting impression on Haring, who was then a student. Eight years later Haring and Gysin collaborated on Fault Lines, a limited-edition artist book with writings by Gysin and drawings by Haring. 

Haring's copy of the Dream Machine was estimated to sell for between six and eight hundred dollars. The hammer price was almost thirty-three thousand US dollars. 

“I think a lot of people learned a lot of things from Brion. Unfortunately, much of his importance has been un-recognized or at least un-acknowledged. I feel lucky to have met him and enjoyed a few years of his long life. He is a legend. Brion’s writings and especially his paintings have helped me understand myself and my work in very important ways. He was difficult to keep-up with – a kind of saint from the underworld or (other world)? He understood my work (and life) in a way that only he could, because he lived it. His paintings give my paintings historical precedent.

He has been called the ‘grandfather of graffiti’ because of his ‘writing paintings’. Crossing the gap between East and West, he turned calligraphy into a kind of surrealist writing. From his expulsion from the Surrealist group by Andre Breton (for being gay) to his years spent in Morocco and Paris, he has been an “outsider”. Usually written out of history instead of into it.

Brion sometimes complained of this sort of conspiracy of un-acknowledgement, but I think inside he knew that it was the source of private personal satisfaction. Being popular, he knew, had its drawbacks. In a way, his purity and “otherness” was preserved and almost exalted by being “the outsider”. As usual, time will tell of his contributions and he will be respected for generations to come.

It seemed to me that Brion had done…everything (been everywhere) and somehow came out on top, but not knowing which end the top was on. I will miss Brion, but I hope he lives on, in ways, through me and through the things I learned from him. If I could accomplish a portion of the things he has, I would be happy.”

- Keith Haring, Journal entry dated July 26, 1986