Camille's Reports #1

Dick Higgins/Something Else Press

Camille's Reports #1

New York City, USA: Something Else Press, [1965]

8.2 x 13.9 cm.

Edition size unknown

Camille Gordon is the alter-ego of Dick Higgins, and later possibly other artists who worked for the press (Emmett Williams, Ken Friedman, etc.) who found it awkward promoting their own publications. 

In the early days of the press, Higgins was the sole employee, serving as editor, designer, producer, and press strategist. He wrote the newsletters and the dust jacket blurbs for the books. This sometimes put him in the awkward position of having to write effusively about one of his own works. The name Camille Gordon was used to thwart this problem, and also make the press seem less like an outfit operating out of someone’s living room. 

This is the first of twelve "news cards" mailed out by the Something Else Press to advertise forthcoming titles. The format was eventually retired in favour of the newsletters, which “Gordon” also contributed to. 

The character was killed off in Newscard #12 ("killed on Route-1 when her car smashed into a chicken truck”) but then resurrected again in the Something Else Newlsetter, Vol. 1, No. 7 ("It isn't true. She's gone to Afghanistan, to Mazar-i-Sharif, with her fiancé, a folk song collector [...] we're awfully glad to hear she's okay”). 

A second pseudonym used was "Charles Gagnon" whose initials are also C.G. and for Dick Higgins sound like the French adverb ci-gît, which means "here lies.” 

Abebooks lists three copies of this title, between $125 and $250 US. Currently Division Leap is selling the above example on Ebay, with a current bid of $15.00, here. 

"I once played a joke with Dick’s pseudonym. A female photographer friend of mine had been hired by the New York Review of Sex, one of many tabloids that sprang up in the mid-sixties touting the new sexual freedoms, to shoot prostitutes and their pimps in Times Square. While she managed to do this very discreetly, she was afraid of having her name credited in the published spread. I offered, and she used, Camille Gordon. This upset Dick, so I never let on until now that it was my doing.”

- Barbara Moore