“But if the Bard were alive today, I suspect his signature would not be worth much. He would be a celebrity. Signing books at Barnes & Noble. Writing shows for Netflix and HBO” I imagine you’ve seen this, but in case you haven’t: Twilight Z…
Dear Jed, I just bought a Henry Miller Collection. I found 1-4 of the Rhinozereros Mag. In beautiful shape. They belonged to journalist Ben Grauer. I am curious as to what they would sell for? Love to hear from you… my phone number is 603-3…
Well, the internet certainly can lead you to some interesting and unexpected places. After seeing him mentioned on RealityStudio and on Nakedlunch.org, I recently became intrigued by Alex Neish, a Scotsman who put out an issue of the Edinbu…
# 10 – The Digit Junkie (1957). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. It was the spring of 2003. My first marriage had just fallen apart. I was living in a one bedroom apartment…
Though William Burroughs died in 1997, a steady stream of work taken from his archives has been published on what seems like an almost yearly basis. This is due to various scholars around the world digging into the available work to “look b…
As is well known, William S Burroughs was a globetrotter who lived in several countries during his lifetime, including the USA, Mexico, and France. One of his lesser-known stop-offs was in Scotland. The country was an important one in the w…
Anyone who has collected Burroughs’ novels eventually finds Port of Saints, the 1971 novel which operated as a kind of sequel to The Wild Boys, although it was not published until 1980 in a widely read edition put out by Blue Wind Press. Yo…
I bought my first copy of the Olympia Press edition of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch from eBay. I had no idea what I was doing. I had never seen a copy in person. I knew little about the principles of collecting. But I had the money and th…
When I lived in Mexico City at the end of the 1940s, it was a city of one million people, with clear sparkling air and the sky that special shade of blue that goes so well with circling vultures, blood and sand–the raw menacing pitiless Mex…
Excerpt from the book Amongst Nazis: William S. Burroughs in Vienna 1936/37 (Moloko Print, spring 2020) His mid-1930s visit to Vienna has always seemed a brief but colourful episode in Burroughs’ biography, but Antonic’s study has turned it…
I tend not to read academic work on William S. Burroughs, though there are exceptions. Oliver Harris never fails to be as insightful as he is eloquent. Recently I also enjoyed Véronique Lane’s book on the relationship between French writers…
“Lost Masterpiece Rediscovered” claims the blurb on the cover of William S. Burroughs’ “The Revised Boy Scout Manual”: An Electronic Revolution. Without criticizing the marketing team too much, “lost” should be “previously unavailable but l…