Friday Weekly Round-Up - 187

[Ed Sanders (accompanied by Steven Taylor) reads William Blake's Auguries of Innocence on the occasion of Ed's 75th birthday celebrations, held at the Bowery Poets Club in New York last week]

[Hal Willner]

[Hal Willner and Lenny Pickett, Bearsville Studios,December 

1987, mastering the Lion For Real.Photo c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

This coming Tuesday, August 26,
 at 10PM, in New York City, at John Zorn's experimental music space, The Stone, an Allen Ginsberg poetry set with Hal Willner (voice) and Doug Weiselman (guitar, clarinet), Jane Scarpintoni (cello) and Kenny Wollesen (drums). The set (the second of two sets, the first is with an as-yet-unannounced "special guest" piano-player) k
icks off a five-day residency for Willner.

On Wednesday, there's a spoken-word reading of Lou Reed's "The Raven". On Thursday, Chloe Webb and Hal Willner read Gregory Corso with the Steve Weisberg Band. On Saturday, Hal and Ed Sanders read from Edgar Allan Poe  (with Lenny Pickett on saxophone)…

For a full listing of concerts - and indeed details of other Stone evenings - see here  

Regarding previous Hal Willner-Ginsberg projects - see, for example, here 
- and here
- (and, of course, note, most especially - here) 
 ( & If you don't have that collection, pick it up via the recent re-issue from Ginsberg Recordings)

[Allen Ginsberg - Allen Ginsberg Nude Self-Portrait, Portland, Seattle, 1991 - Photograph via the University of Toronto Collection, Gift of the Larry and Cookie Rossy Family Foundation, 2014]

September 2nd (through to December 6) are the dates of the University of Toronto's photo show - "We Are Continually Exposed To The Flashbulb of Death" - curated by Barbara Fischer (of the University of Toronto Art Center) and John Shoesmith (of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library)  (drawing from the close to 8,000 prints recently donated by the Rossy Family Foundation).  The official opening reception will be on September 18, with a key-note address (the annual Janet E Hutchinson Lecture) given by pre-eminent queer-studies scholar, Jonathan Katz.  

On September 29, there will be a tour of the Allen Ginsberg Photography Collection at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library by John Shoesmith - "Shoesmith will introduce visitors to photos not seen in the exhibition at UTAC, including unique and intimate drug-store prints of (Jack) Kerouac, (William) Burroughs, and other leading Beat figures, along with never-before-seen prints of Ginsberg's friends and fellow artists. The photos also include numerous "selfies" taken by Ginsberg throughout the years."    


On September 8, there will be a guided tour of the exhibition led by Canadian poet Victor Coleman. On September 23, Marcus Boon may be heard in conversation with Louis Kaplan (discussing Beat culture and photography).. 

For full details of the schedule of events, see here

Speaking of art exhibitions, William S Burroughs - Animals in the Wall - heads up - opens in London (at the Londonewcastle Project Space), next Friday. 
For a teaser/trailer (including remarks from James Grauerholz) see here
For more information (a press release about the event) see here

Allen Ginsberg in China - Another "must-read piece" - "Reading Howl in China" by Xiaolu Guo in the current issue of  Aeon -  "When I first read the Chinese edition of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" in 1998 I was a skinny 15-year-old..", the author writes, "One Morning, I Took a Walk in China" - What a cool title! I dreamed that one day I would write a poem entitled "One Morning, I Took a Walk in America"… "Dare to dream! Since when do we need courage to dream? In China it depends upon what sort of dream a young person is "given". Our dreams are so textured by the minds of our masters that it can sometimes seem as if there is no true dream left in the human imagination."

Visionary dreams. Hallucinatory dreams. Allen and Henri Michaux. In celebration of the publication of Thousand Times Broken  (three-books-in-one, three previously-untranslated Michaux texts), City Lights features Allen's Michaux recollections (taken from a 1967 one-off magazine, Interim Pad ) - "I sent (him)", Allen writes, "a polite note around the corner from Rue Git-Le-Coeur where I stayed, I said I was a jeune poete Americaine who had much experience in the same hallucinogenic field as himself, and would like to exchange information with him…"
Harriet at The Poetry Foundation spotlights this post 

For more on Michaux and the Ginsberg-Michaux connection, see our 2013 posting on the Allen Ginsberg Project here

Last weekend's Ed Sanders Birthday Bash is reviewed and reported on here 

For a direct link to video of that evening (and other Bowery Poets Club evenings) see here
(tho', as participant-performer Penny Arcade points out, "Hey screen goes black thru all of Ed's set…what gives?")
Fortunately, there were other cameras, Tequila Minsky, the indefatigable Thelma Blitz...

Here's another of Minsky's recordings (placed here in hommage to the late great Tuli Kupferberg)








Don't Hesitate - Marc Olmsted's memoir/scrapbook is now available from SPD 

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 184

[Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky on Cape Breton, 1992 - Photo - Phyllis Segura]   

"...Peter was a taciturn and rugged man with a gruff exterior and a submerged explosive intensity. To (Allen), he may have represented an opportunity to merge (as (Walt) Whitman put it) with the "landscape of the common world'. Like Herbert Huncke or Neal Cassady, Peter expressed the Beat notion that writing is not the exclusive province of an aristocratic, university-educated elite, that a more vital resource than the library or museum may be the idiom and lessons of the street and ordinary life. The paterfamilias of this view was William Carlos Williams whose suggestion to Ginsberg that an indistinct frontier separated a poet's own prose journals from the stuff of poetry became a key ingredient in Beat writing, and Orlovsky's, where the ideal of spontaneity and the need for emotional release was more of a priority than intellectual calculation and design.."

John Tytell's review of Peter Orlovsky's  A Life In Words recently appeared in the American Book Review and is available here



We re-direct you also to our own recent Orlovsky postings - here and here (featuring selections from the volume)





"We are Continually Exposed to the Flash-Bulb of Death" - The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg (1953-1996) - In honour of the recent acquisition by the University of Toronto of "close to 8,000 prints", there will be an exhibition, (organized by the University, in collaboration with the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library), at the University of Toronto Arts Center, starting on September 2nd, and running through to December 6th.  On September 29, John Shoesmith, outreach librarian, "will introduce visitors to photos not seen in the exhibition".  More Toronto announcements, Ginsberg-in-Toronto announcements, will be appearing shortly.

The Collected (Gregory) Corso Interviews book that we mentioned a few weeks back - Rick Shober's Tough Poets Publishing venture - "thirteen interviews that span the most productive years of his career, from 1955, when his first collection of poems was published, to 1982, the year following the publication of his last book of all new poetry." 
-  Rick Shober writes: "I was able to get Richard Brukenfeld to write the foreword. He, as I'm sure you know, was the Harvard undergrad who published Corso's first book, The Vestal Lady on Brattle, in 1955. His foreword talks about the poet's early days in Cambridge and as a "stowaway" on the Harvard campus. Pretty entertaining stuff."
  "After four years [Shober started working on the project in 2010] the book is finished (design and layout), and all reprint permissions are in hand. Now I'm trying to finance it with a little DIY crowd-funding by pre-selling copies".  
Go here to support this worthy venture - The Whole Shot



Thanks to Dangerous Minds for alerting us that William Burroughs makes it this week onto the cover of the America supermarket tabloid -  The National Examiner - "Do The Rich and Famous Get Away With Killing People?" - Uh? - As a necessary corrective and counterpoint, please read this 
Seventeen years tomorrow since William Burroughs passing

Interesting response on the Ginsberg Facebook (why not here? use of our Comments facility anyone?) on the Gordon Ball cadets-reading-"Howl" image that we posted here last week -  In response to one poster, wondering on the relationship between "Howl" and a military education - Sean Dadson: "I took that course while attending the Virginia Military Institute. Col. Ball, the Professor, was a friend of Ginsberg. Actually, that course changed my life and enhanced many others.. We were attending what many referred to as "The Conservative Bastion of the South". It definitely helped me out of that rut..".."I believe Ginsberg gave a reading at VMI, as a "perfect bohemian" society, but I'd have to confirm with some of my class mates who attended the reading.. so, yeah, it was productive and eye-opening if only for a few of us.." 
And several of his class mates did get back to him -  Chris Valenti: "I was there then. It was the best thing that could happen to cadets. Gordon Ball was my academic advisor as well. I only recall the privilege I felt at the chance to see him and learn from his colleague.."
.."Why do people find this bad or counterproductive? Art and poetry should expand the mind into other forms of consciousness, not simply reaffirm what you think you know."

For those in the San Francisco/Bay Area, in case you missed the opening performance on Sunday, you have two more chances to catch the West Edge Opera's production of the Glass-Ginsberg's Hydrogen Jukebox, tomorrow (Saturday) and next Friday August 8
Artistic Director, Mark Streshinsky speaks about the production here. Joshua Kosman reviews it for the San Francisco papers ("Sunday's splendid performance") here

William Burroughs - Star Me Kitten & The Priest They Called Him

[Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Michael Stipe (REM) and William Burroughs]

[William Burroughs and Kurt Cobain] 




More Burroughs for the weekend - collaborations with Michael Stipe and Kurt Cobain (REM and Nirvana) - "Star Me Kitten" and "The Priest They Called Him".

Beginning with "Star Me.." (yes, "Star Me" - the allusion is to the Rolling Stones' "Starfucker" ("Star Star"). The source, is the 1996 collection,  "Songs in the Key of X - Music From And Inspired By "The X-Files") 

Burroughs: "All right. Just something I picked up. A knack of going along with someone else's song, putting myself into it. It evolved from "Lili Marlene", Marlene Dietrich, not one of my favorite people but, that's where it came from"

"He's got three for the price of one./Nothing's free but guarenteed for a lifetime's use./ I've changed the locks/and you can't have one/You, you know the other two./The breaks have worn so thin that you could hear -/ I hear them screeching through the door from your driveway./ Hey love, look into your glove-box heart./What is there for me inside? This love is tired./ I've changed the locks. Have I misplaced you?/ Have we lost our minds?/ Will this never end?/It could depend on your take./You. Me. We used to be on fire/ If keys are all that stand between,/Can I throw in the ring?/No gasoline./Just fuck me kitten./You are wild and I'm in your possession/Nothing's free so, fuck me kitten/I'm in your possession/So fuck me kitten."

The Kurt Cobain and William Burroughs connection is given, in some detail, here (and also here) - "The Priest They Called Him". Cobain, apparently, contacted his hero, Burroughs, in 1992, and sounded him out about the possibility of them, perhaps, doing something together. Burroughs sent him a tape of a reading he'd done of a short story, originally published in the early (19)70's in the collection, Exterminator. Cobain added some guitar backing, (based, loosely, on "Silent Night" and "To Anacreon in Heaven") and the piece was released (as a limited-edition 1o-inch EP picture disc - it was subsequently re-released on CD and 10-inch vinyl).



At the time of the collaboration, the two had not met. They met in October 1993, in Lawrence, Kansas, during the first week of Nirvana's "In Utero" tour. Burroughs describes the meeting: "I waited and Kurt got out with another man. Cobain was very shy, very polite and obviously enjoyed the fact that I wasn't awestruck at meeting him. There was something about him fragile and engagingly lost. He smoked cigarettes but didn't drink. There were no drugs. I never showed him my gun collection". 
In Charles Cross's biography of Cobain, Heavier than Heaven, there's a further revealing note concerning this brief encounter - "They chatted for several hours…As Kurt drove away, Burroughs remarked to his assistant (James Grauerholz), "There's something wrong with that boy; he frowns for no good reason". 

and here, as an extra, as a bonus, William S Burroughs and Gus Van Sant   

Friday's Weekly Round-Up 166

Chogyam Trungpa would have been 75 years old today

Previous Trungpa birthday postings on the Allen Ginsberg Project may be viewed here and here 

For a rich wealth of Trungpa materials - see here (Shambhala), here (the Chronicles Project) and here (the Chogyam Trungpa Legacy Project)

not forgetting his pivotal role in establishing "the first fully-accredited Buddhist-inspired university in America" - Naropa

A selection from Johanna Demetrakas' 2011 documentary - Crazy Wisdom - The Life and Times of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche may be viewed here

Here's, on the occasion of his birthday, footage of Trungpa, from 1975 - Surrendering Your Aggression



more video (and audio) lectures are available here on the Chronicles site.

Shambhala released  The Collected Works of Chogyam Trunpa Rinpoche (edited by Carolyn Rose Gimian) in eight individual volumes. 

Carolyn Rose Gimian also collaborated with Diana J Mukpo (Trungpa's wife - they married when she was a mere sixteen) on her revealing, candid and intimate memoir, Dragon Thunder.  

By the way, this weekend (Sunday March 2nd) sees the start of the Tibetan New Year, Shambhala Day or Losar, auspicious, we hope - goodbye to the Year of the Water Snake!, hello to the Year of the Wood Horse! 

In other news
Barry Miles' Call Me Burroughs  biography continues to get an enthusiastic reception.  Ann Douglas declares it "authoritative" in last Sunday's New York Times - "Appropriately, this biography, as Miles is at pains to tell us, (she writes) "is..collaboration, resting on the monumental research (James) Grauerholz did for a biography he abandoned in 2010, and the extensive taped interviews Ted Morgan conducted for Literary Outlaw, his pioneering 1988 biography. Miles himself knew Burroughs for many years, it was he who discovered the lost manuscripts of Queer (1985) and Interzone (1989), and he has written a number of books on the Beat Generation, including a fine biography of Ginsberg and an early study of Burroughs. Although he occasionally simplifies Burroughs' story with superficial moralizing..his access and wealth of detail will make this the go-to biography for many years to come."

Davis Schneiderman interviews Miles here for the Huffington Post 

James Attlee's review appeared recently  in the (London) Independent

Duncan White's review appeared, a few weeks earlier, in The Daily Telegraph


[William S Burroughs - Self Portrait (1959)]

Iain Sinclair's lecture on Burroughs, "Ghosts of a Ghost - William Burroughs, Time surgery and the death of the image"  (delivered in conjunction with the show of photography currently up in London at the Photographer's Gallery, and following an introduction by John Sears, the show's co-curator), may be viewed, in its entirety, here. 

Sears and curator Patricia Allmer are interviewed here





Did you all hear of these recently-discovered, previously-unknown, Sappho poems? 

Friday's Weekly Round Up -159

[Allen Ginsberg and William S Burroughs - Photograph by Hank O'Neal]

2014 is - in case you didn't know - the William Burroughs Centennial year (next month, February 5th, he would have turned 100), and, not only on the 5th, but on a variety of occasions, there will be events, arranged by a variety of groups, around the globe.

Here in New York City (the Allen Ginsberg Project's home-base), for instance, there will be city-wide celebrations throughout the month of April.

Long before that, however, we'll be witnessing happenings. Perhaps the biggest so far, organized by Charles Cannon, is in the unlikely location of Bloomington, Indiana, for five days, from the birthday of February 5 through to February 9 -  "The Burroughs Century", as Cannon has described it - "We are calling the event the Burroughs Century, but we are not looking backward, rather, we believe that the Burroughs Century is ongoing, that we are in the midst of it, and we intend to stage an event that indicates the full range of that continuing influence, including a film series, art and literature exhibits, speakers and panels, musical performances and more". The celebration will culminate in "a two-day symposium featuring scholars, artists, critics, and musicians who will discuss Burroughs, his work, and its influence on American culture and beyond". Beat scholar, Oliver Harris will be the keynote speaker.  From January 24th to February 6 at the Grunwald Gallery of Art at Indiana University, as something of a preamble to the festivites, there will be an exhibition of Burroughs' "Shotgun Paintings". The Burroughs Century blog, incidentally, is well worth checking out (it's being constantly updated) and can be accessed here 

Earlier than that, however, is Patricia Allmergh and John Sears' "Taking Shots - The Photography of William S Burroughs", which opens January 17 at London's Photographer's Gallery  (and is up through March 30). 
A fully illustrated catalog co-published by The Photograpers' Gallery and the German publishers, Prestel is (or rather, will soon be) available.
Harris will be lecturing there too (part of a Conference - "Beyond the Cut-Up - William Burroughs and the Image" - scheduled to take place in the Gallery, Saturday February 15 - poet/professor Allen Fisher (of Manchester's Metropolitan University) has also been confirmed as a participant)




Meanwhile, in Lawrence, Kansas, at the Lawrence Arts Center, "an exhibition of William Burroughs' art and collections titled "Creative Observer"" will be on show (opening January 17), January 17 through March 2nd - "This multimedia experience" - Ben Ahivers and Yuri Zapancic, its organizers, announce - "will provide insight into Burroughs prolific creative energy as well as revealing his ideas on observing art and people. Included in this exhibit will be collaborative works with such artists as Brion Gysin, Robert Rauschenberg, Kurt Cobain, Keith Haring, and George Condo, among others".  
As with the Bloomington, Indiana and London, England, celebrations, various ancillary events will take place around the main event. On January 28, "friends and acquaintances will share stories and memories of their time with William Burroughs". On February 1st, Beat biographer, Barry Miles joins Ira Silverberg and James Grauerholz in a talk and the launch of Miles' brand-new book (written in collaboration with Grauerholz) "Call Me Burroughs" (Miles, incidentally, appears for Rainy Day Books in Kansas City, a couple of days earlier, to sign copies and answer questions about the book)



























John Giorno, long-time, friend and accomplice of Burroughs, has a show, "Everyone Gets Lighter", currently up at the Max Wigram Gallery in London. For more information about that show, see here   

No further news to report about the current hospitalization of Amiri Baraka, although he remains in our thoughts and prayers and we'll keep you posted.

Some time since we featured Ginsberg parodies. (In recent years, "Yelp", maybe, was the most prominent one, but we've noted several others). Debora Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle tried her hand, at years end, with "an Ode to Obamacare" - "Ow! (the annotated version) - with apologies to Allen Ginsberg" - "What sphinx of Beantown and beltways threw away the individual market and left adults yearning for their substandard policies//Amazon! Connectivity! Drones! Enrollees! Sign-ups are unattainable goalposts!.."   

Speaking of San Francisco - The proposed "Rainbow Honor Walk", that we reported on a couple of years ago, an equivalent to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a strip along Market and Castro Street, honoring LGBT pioneers, is now not just an idea but a reality. Singer Sylvester James, was the first of twenty LGBT legends to be so honored (Allen will be among that company), recently, with a bronze plaque.

Here's Eileen Myles (from her book "The Importance of Being Iceland") on Allen as a gay icon - "A Speech About Allen"    

Meanwhile in New York City - the joyful return to the East Village of the Mee Noodle shop!

William Burroughs Birthday

[William Burroughs on his Cabin Porch, Lone Star Lake,Lawrence Kansas, May 28,

1991.photo c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

We've featured some of this footage before - William S Burroughs' Home Movies  - but no matter. Here on the occasion of what would have been William Burroughs' 99th birthday is the full feature - Lars Movin and Steen Møller Rasmussen's 2007 documentary Words of Advice - William S Burroughs On The Road, featuring priceless documentation of his 1983 reading tour in Denmark, combined with other later Burroughs-in-Lawrence-Kansas footage, and contributions from James Grauerholz, John Giorno, Hal Willner, Jennie Skirl, Regina Weinreich and Ann Douglas. Graham Rae's review in Reality Studio of the 2010 DVD release of the film is here, Greg Barbrick in Blogcritics reviews it here. 
Happy 99th Birthday, William!

[2013 update - the full documentary is no longer available on You Tube but a trailer for the movie can be seen here

William Burroughs Home Movies

Yesterday, we featured William Burroughs being interviewed by Kathy Acker (in 1988). Today we continue a Burroughs weekend with the legendary, cinema verite, Lawrence, Kansas, home-movie footage shot by Wayne Probst (and edited by Michelle Tran), in, as the date-stamp shows, August of 1996 - Burroughs in retirement, with, as it turned out, less than a year left to live (August of the next year he would pass away).

Old Bull discusses the usual - guns and ammunition, weaponry (shows off his blackjack),  Allen appears approximately five-and-a-half-minutes in (head dips into the (left hand) corner of the frame) - and is seen again, comfortable and relaxed, later, quietly eating his supper. Steve Buscemi (currently filming Queer (and also appearing in a cameo role in On The Road) is seen in the company, as is William's secretary and amanuensis, the redoubtable James Grauerholz.  Patti Smith's mournful strumming provides a fitting sound track

Howard Brookner - Burroughs (ASV # 32)

Howard Brookner's 1985 Burroughs movie is, as we've said before, essential viewing (notwithstanding the presence of another equally comprehensive one, Yony Leyser's William S Burroughs: A Man Within (2010). Ed Koziarski, in 2oo9, in the Chicago Reader, explains the reasons for the second film - "(James) Grauerholz [Burroughs' friend, confident and literary executor] had been unhappy with (the) previous documentary..in which he'd also played an active role" - Koziarski quotes James - "I was surprised to see how my role in William's life had been handled in the final editing process..Basically, the BBC editors took a dislike to me. They..couldn't resist a "controversial" angle on "the Grauerholz guy". So they chopped together dozens of different speeches by me into a phony voice-over "monologue" accompanying a montage of scenes of me and William working together, etc. If you listen on headphones, you'll hear many, many audio splices. They made me look like a usurper and a smug, self-satisfied wise guy".

Despite that, the film remains a marvel - As Janet Maslin wrote, in a rave review in The New York Times, "Rarely is a documentary as well attuned to its subject as Howard Brookner's "Burroughs", which captures as much about the life, work and sensibility of its subject as its 86 minute format allows. Part of the film's comprehensiveness is attributable to William S Burroughs' cooperation, since the author was willing to visit old haunts, read from his works and even playfully act out a passage from "Naked Lunch" for the benefit of the camera. But the quality of discovery about "Burroughs" is very much the director's doing, and Mr Brookner demonstrates an unusual degree of liveliness and curiosity in exploring his subject".

Brookner, a wunderkind, tragically, died of AIDS in 1989 (he was only 34). The obituary writer in the Times noted the sardonic note he had taped to his refrigerator during the last years of his life: "There's so much beauty in the world. I suppose that's what got me into trouble in the first place."

Featured in "Burroughs" (alongside Allen), John Giorno, Brion Gysin, Terry Southern, Herbert Huncke, Lucien Carr, Patti Smith, Jackie Curtis, Francis Bacon (sic) , Mortimer Burroughs (William's brother) - and, particularly poignant, footage of William Burroughs Jr. ("Billy" Burroughs), Billy died in 1981, during the early stages of the filming.

The film had its genesis as Brookner's NYU master's thesis. It was screened in 1984 at the New York Film Festival. The BBC "Arena" version we have here appeared shortly after the writer's death in 1997, (with the beginning slightly re-edited to make it an obituary piece but with the rest of the film otherwise complete).

A transcription of Allen's contribution (he is featured mostly speaking of the infamous "William Tell incident", but also his early days with Burroughs - the two of them are filmed on a rooftop, recollecting their old "routines" and Allen can also be seen when Lucien Carr is "interviewing" Burroughs):

AG: "Well, Kerouac said that Burroughs was the most intelligent man in America and I probably repeated that a million times.."

AG & WSB (on the rooftop):

AG: You know what line of yours Kerouac liked the best?

WSB: What?

AG: "Motel motel motel loneliness moans across the still oily tidal waters of East Texas bayou". You remember? You know that? He wrote me a letter and then he spoke about it.

WSB: Yes, yes.

AG: He said that that proved..that was the first time that he dug your prose, because of your ear, as a musician.

On 115th Street in the apartment we shared with Joan and Jack, do you rewmember when we played out routines at that time, remember the characters?

WSB: Well, I remember some of them. You played "the well-groomed Hungarian"

AG: (affecting the accent); Yez., my deat, I vas the well-groomed Hungarian, and I am still here with you now and I am wanting to know, do you by any chance have some shade of recollection of the personage which you yourself identified with?

WSB: I think I was playing a sort of an Edith Sitwell part.

AG: Quite right, yes

WSB: I got in drag and I looked like some sinister old lesbian

AG: I do believe you also affected the title of "(the) Baronness"?

WSB: Ah, definitely, yes.

AG: And do you remember the liason we had to bring the foolish, rich, young, ruddy-cheeked American to my art gallery?

WSB: (keeping in character) Aha, of course, yes. You know, Americans, they are so full with money, it is our duty..

AG: Yez, and this was a very choice American..

WSB: ...it is our duty to relieve them of a little bit, you know.

AG: He had a straw hat, do you remember?

WSB: Yes

AG: What was that magic name? thirty years ago.. He was an American named..Kerouac..He was a nice boy, very nice boy. He was a writer, very good writer,

WSB: Very good writer

AG: Very good writer, very American..

WSB: Later, he became quite well-known, I believe (and) very famous.

AG: Yes, yes, very famous

WSB: He wrote some book called "On The Route", I think.

AG: On Route

WSB: En Route..

Well, I remember the line from "Howl", "I saw the best minds of my generation, starved, hysterical,naked..

AG(mock-exasperated): You can't even quote it right!

WSB: ...looking for an angry fix."

AG: Oh that, you got that.

WSB: Ok

AG: Burroughs fell in love with me and we slept together and I saw a very soft center where he felt isolated, alone in the world, and really needed a human, humane, gift in return of feeling and of affection, and, since I did love him, and did have that respect and affection, I think he responded. So I kind of felt privileged that I had.. "j'ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage" [Allen is quoting Rimbaud] - I alone had the key to this savage parade - which was the key of tenderness.

Huncke stole a prescription pad from an old doctor in Brooklyn and Bill wrote up some phony scripts (purportedly) signed by the doctor which he cashed right around Columbia...(Huncke and Burroughs got busted)..(and) then, I think, his (Burroughs') family send enough money to get him out, or his father came, or maybe his brother came. We were all very upset and very desolate because that was the first ring of iron I (we)'d heard in our small circle there..

Jack and I decided that Joan and Bill would make a great couple, that they were a match for each other, fit for each other, equally tuned and equally witty, equally intelligent and equally well-read, they were refined of mind..

He would lie down on a long couch, talking. She would sometimes lie next to him, put her arm around his abdomen..

I once went with Lucien on a trip to Mexico and we were with Joan about 24 or 48 hours before she died.. He was going around these hair-pin turns, and she was urging him on, saying, "how fast can this heap go?", while me and the kids were cowering in the back.

"Dream Record, June 8 1955" (Allen reads from his dream journals) - "(I dreamt of) a drunken night in my house with a/ boy in San Francisco. I lay asleep./ darkness/. I went back to Mexico City/ and saw Joan Burroughs leaning/ forward on a garden chair, arms/ on her knees. She studied me with/ clear eye and downcast smile, her/ face restored to a fine beauty/ tequila and salt had made strange before the bullet in her brow./ We talked of our lives since then./ Well what's Burroughs doing now?/ Bill on earth, he's in North Africa/ Oh, and Kerouac? Jack still jumps/ with the same beat genius as before,/ notebooks filled with Buddha./ "I hope he makes it she laughed./ Is Huncke still in the can? No,/ last time I saw him on Times Square/ And Lucien? - "Married, drunk/ and golden in the East/ You? New/ loves in the West - Then I knew/ she was a dream and questioned her/ - Joan, what kind of knowledge have/ the dead?..."

Joan was not making it with Bill and was a little irritated with him. Bill had been off with a young friend. I had talked to her the day before. Julie, her daughter..was actually quite cute, was flirtatious, and I said, "She's gonna give you some competition!", and Joan said, "Ah, I'm out of the competition". So she'd sort of given up on love life..

My impression when we left was there was something scary about her, suicidal..

Just as she had said to Lucien, "how fast can this heap go?", I think she said to Bill, "(wanna) shoot that (glass) off my head?"..

I always kind of thought that she had kind of challenged him and led him into it, that it was sort of like using him to..that she was, in a sense, using him to get her off the earth, because I think she was in a great deal of pain..

Years later, I heard a few different things from Bill. He said he wept a great deal. He also said that at one time, many many years ago, he was puzzled at what got into him, that he would actually pick up on it..

Well, it gave Bill, certainly, a taste of mortality. It opened him up quite a bit. It was then that he began writing. It was then that Bill got very serious and began casting about for something to do to connect him to the reality around him. I think it grounded him a bit, because it's from then on, as I remember, that he begins writing Junkie.

[on "cut-up"] - Well, all of Burroughs seems to be coherent once you know his method. What Lucien called "charlatanism" is actually experimental writing (otherwise you'd call Cezanne a charlatan for trying to work with hot planes advancing and cold planes receding in the optical field of the eyeball - so Burroughs in cutting up was creating gaps in space and gaps in time, as also, as Cezanne (or as meditation) does)."

William Burroughs Birthday

[Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, Lawrence, KS, May 31, 1991. Photo probably snapped by James Grauerholz. c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]


[William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, rooftop of Burroughs' Villa Mouniera, Tangier, Morocco, May 1957. Probably snapped by Peter Orlovsky, c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]


[William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, 206 East 7th St Rooftop, New York City, Fall 1953. c Allen Ginsberg Estate]


[William Burroughs and Hal Willner, at Nelson's Diner, Lawrence, KS July 20, 1995. photo c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]


[James Grauerholz and William Burroughs, Varsity Townhouses, Boulder Colorado, July 29, 1985 c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]


[ William Burroughs, reading at Naropa University, Boulder Colorado, July 29, 1985 c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]



[William Burroughs, Tangier Beach, Morocco, May 1957. photo c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]


[W.S.Burroughs at rest in the side yard of his house looking at the sky, empty timeless Lawrence Kansas May 28,1991. But “the car dates it” he noticed when he saw this snapshot. (Ginsberg Caption) photo c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

Superbowl today but we turn to that other venerable US institution - William S Burroughs! Today would have been/is Burroughs' birthday - He would have been 98 today. We'll turn you over, as we have done in the past, to the incomparable Reality Studio ("a William S Burroughs

Community" - the William Burroughs community) for more (plenty more) Burroughs resources (with a tip of the hat also to the William S Burroughs Archive You Tube Channel, and a wealth of recordings, and other (audio) materials, readily available, here).

Howard Brookner's 1985 Burroughs The Movie is also, it should be pointed out, essential viewing. Commissioner of Sewers (1991) is similarly available, in its entirety, on line.

The BBC 1997 Arena documentary, filmed shortly after he died, is well worth watching.

And not forgetting Yony Leyser's recent (2010) documentary, A Man Within.

Burroughs' Paris Review interview may be accessed here. Here's a later, 1984, interview.

& here's a link to the valuable Collected Interviews (put out some years ago by Semiotexte and now available from MIT).

& to conclude with, a little spot of vintage Burroughs -  here's his film made in 1966 (with Antony Balch) on the "Cut-Ups" (heads up to Brion Gysin on this one)

Rub Out The Words: The Letters of William S Burroughs 1959-1974 will be published next week (more on that next week), the follow-up to 1995's The Letters of William S Burroughs 1945-1959.

Here's one more clip of "words of wisdom from William".

Birthday Greetings, Bill, wherever you are.