Burroughs’ Birthday

February 5, 2018Simon Pettet

William Burroughs’ birthday today

Here’s a guest-posting from our good friend and Burroughs aficianado, Oliver Harris

“How does Burroughs manage to stay so young? After all, he’s 104 and has been dead for over 20 years, and yet he still seems to have more life in him than most so-called living writers. Is it because he was always more than a writer? I’m thinking of a remark he made to Paul Carroll in June 1959, the same week that Maurice Girodias asked him for a manuscript of Naked Lunch and so launched his “career”; that he was carrying out “research … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 347

January 5, 2018Simon Pettet

Looking forward and looking back, with the year’s first “Weekly Round-Up”, starting off with Allen Ginsberg – Fotografìa y Poetica Beat at the Photology Gallery in Garzon, Uruguay –  the first ever showing of Allen’s photographs in South America!  (this show is coming to a close, closing-date is next Tuesday, January 9).

And more photo news – Opening January 29, and up through 27 April, at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto – ‘Fleeting Moments, Floating Worlds, and the Beat Generation – The Photography of Allen Ginsberg” 

“This exhibition”, the Library states, in its preliminary … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 305

March 3, 2017Simon Pettet

ag-kaddish

Hot news from Real Gone Music – reissues of two essential Beat albums (limited editions in vinyl) – Allen’s classic 1966 recording of Kaddish and the Jack Kerouac-Steve Allen‘s recording Poetry For The Beat Generation, (Jack’s debut as a recording artist).

Both are officially due out April 7, but pre-ordering will be available and details will be announced soon.

For further information on both these records – see this comprehensive article –  here 

jack-k-album

& Just out from the Cambridge University Press, and available in paperback – The Cambridge Companion to The Beats – edited by Steve Belletto… Read More

Naked Lunch @ 50: Anniversary Essays

May 13, 2009admin

“‘Disgusting,’ they said . . . ‘Pornographic’ . . . ‘Un-American trash’ . . . ‘Unpublishable’ . . . Well, it came out in 1959, and it found an audience . . . Town meetings . . . Book burnings . . . And an Inquiry by the State Supreme Court . . . That book made quite a little impression . . .” — William Burroughs

Naked Lunch@50: Anniversary Essays, edited by Oliver Harris and Ian MacFadyen, to be published by Southern Illinois University Press in June 2009, is the first book devoted in its entirety to William Burroughs’ … Read More