Asemics 16 - Airgun Target Chapter - homage to burroughs & warhol

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Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 9, 2011 at 8:46am

Erni saves the day again! I didn't think anyone had heard of Harold Norse. Erni, personally I'm starting to see the Burroughs-Gysin work as extremely significant. Why did I think Barry Miles was a record producer? I do like his writing on Burroughs. David surprised me again with the revelation there was a Beat Hotel in the US.

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 9, 2011 at 8:04am

And, gotta add - from Kerouac to Olson, I do trust Tom Clark's writing about these people above almost all the rest. He has the benefit of having been there for some of it, knowing the characters, knowing the terrain, AND being an excellent researcher. The academics generally mangle it beyond recognition or have their own agendas. I'll shut up now.

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 9, 2011 at 7:36am

And to show you how it all works. I do like Harold Norse' "Beat Hotel" - but as I recall Norse claims he invented cut-ups, not Burroughs. There are a lot of old-timers who claim to have had a role in editing "On the Road" too - as that was, in truth, another mess as a manuscript apparently. Who knows?

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 9, 2011 at 7:30am

OK David, Burroughs always had assistants - going back to Britain. Lucky folks, I'm sure. All deserving of praise. Grauerholz is given credit for his "Midwestern values." Yes Erni, it was definitely a Ginsberg contact.Grauerholz managed to turn the Burroughs legacy into an industry. In truth, this probably saved Burroughs from dying in poverty - the sad fate of too many writers and artists. Great posts guys - the Beats are actually a sideline for me and I make no claim to being an end-all and be-all on the topic. Did do some time at Naropa :)

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 9, 2011 at 7:23am

Thanks Erni - I am humbled.

Comment by David Stafford on July 9, 2011 at 4:15am

yes, grauerholz took over steven's job when he left burrough's employ and stayed with him until his death and is now, I believe, the keeper of the burroughs flame...I met him a number of times. He reminded me of an extremely earnest boy scout. He didn't have Steven's flair but he stuck it out.

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 9, 2011 at 4:06am

That's great David. We add Steven Lowe to the bits and pieces about Burroughs. I think the original Beat Hotel was in Paris in the 1950s - where they all stayed. I think the cut-up technique was invented there. There's a lost Beatnik named Harold Norse who wrote a book, Beat Hotel, that has accounts of that.

 

OK, James Grauerholz (?) hooked up with Burroughs during the Bunker days, remained with him after the move to Kansas, and managed Burroughs' career. Grauerholz had managed rock bands - a lot has been written about him. He was involved in the release of the trilogy that included "Cities of the Red Night." I don't know who else was involved. Grauerholz gets a lot of credit, because I guess Burroughs' drafts were an editing nightmare. Ginsberg stitched "Naked Lunch" together from a pile of molding paper on Burroughs floor, or so goes the legend. The Beats - the lives are part of the art, for sure. Love to hear these accounts and learn new sources. Thnx

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 9, 2011 at 3:54am

One of Burroughs' disciples was a novelist named Kathy Acker (Blood and Guts in High School, Kathy Goes to Haiti, etc. etc.). Interesting story there. Interesting way into that world...

Comment by David Stafford on July 9, 2011 at 3:54am

okay, not known for my veracity around here I must preface this with the popular "true story"...some years back I was a typesetter employed by a guy named Steven Lowe who needs a bucket load of footnotes (after he folded the type house Casa Sin Nombre he went to Palm Springs and opened up The Beat Hotel http://www.palmspringslife.com/Palm-Springs-Life/July-2004/Winning-... which closed after he died a few years ago). Anyway in the 70s Steven worked for William Burroughs as a personal assistant. (Steven's father claimed that he wrote most of Cities of the Red Night but Steven never made that boast. It's entirely plausible to me however). Burroughs and Steven remained good friends (as he was with all the Beats, Ginsberg, Whalen, Waldman) and in the latter part of the 80s, when type was giving way to desk top publishing steven opened a gallery (while keeping the type house open) and Burroughs had a show of his shotgun paintings. He came out to stay for a few days for the opening and (this is absolutely true) I brought him my rubber stamp collection to play with. I met him and shook his hand and all that but the fun part of the story is imagining him playing with my rubber stamps. I had high hopes he was going to release a line of prints with my rubber stamps but that was a bridge too far. I had a catalog of the show that we produced for the opening but I sold it on eBay for $70. Sigh....I must have felt broke. One more thing, before all this happened Casa Sin Nombre produced a number of broadsides. I believe there were three in total starting with Philip Whalen and ending with Anne Waldman. In the background of the Burroughs print was a close up of some lowdown cocksucking. Laid over this were some textural selections from his work. The picture however was so artfully hidden behind layers of text and screens and colors that it was all but indiscernible to the viewer unaware. This is the kind of joke that Steven loved. This was years before photoshop of course so it was all done the hard way. I think I've succeeded in cleaning out my thimbleful of Burroughsiana. That's my story: all true.

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 9, 2011 at 3:46am

My favorite is when Paul McCartney set Burroughs up with expensive recording equipment in London - the equipment that wasn't destroyed was sold. McCartney mildly pissed according to the Barry Miles bio. So no Beatles-Burroughs tapes. Apple was set to launch a spoken word division and was signing on poets but dissolved before there were any releases.

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