William S. Burroughs, Cat Fancier

David Metcalfe on October 2, 2012
http://www.disinfo.com/2012/10/william-s-burroughs-cat-fancier

William S. Burroughs loved his cats. The outlaw author known for his unabashed avant-sexual space operas and hyper-spatial exploratory prose wasn’t one to apologize for his utter disgust over a society he saw crumbling under the iron claws of Control. However, behind the icy eyed visage of ‘El Hombre Invisible’ was a heart warmed with the gentle purrs of his coveted feline companions.

As Yony Leyser, director of the critically acclaimed bio-pic Williams S. Burroughs: A Man Within, discusses in an article for Vice, understanding Burroughs’ cats is central to understanding the man behind the myth:

“Author William S. Burroughs made his love for all things feline known in his book The Cat Inside, in which he refers to cats as “psychic companions” and innate “enemies of the state.” In his final journal entry, written just before he died, Burroughs discusses love as the ultimate cure-all. I feature the quote in my documentary William S. Burroughs: A Man Within. What I fail to mention in the film is that the specific love he is referring to is what he felt for his cats. The more complete journal entry reads:

Only thing can resolve conflict is love, like I felt for Fletch and Ruski, Spooner, and Calico. Pure love. What I feel for my cats present and past.
Love? What is it?
Most natural painkiller what there is.
LOVE.

Burroughs also subscribed to Cat Fancy for many years, saving hundreds of issues for his personal library. In May 2010, his manager, James Grauerholz, pitched a story to the pussy-friendly publication about the writer’s unwavering love for his kitties. The editors of the magazine must have been startled by the pitch, which began:

While William S. Burroughs is increasingly regarded as one of the most important writers of the 20th century, his artistic genius is often overshadowed by tales of his outlaw lifestyle: founder of the Beat movement; his drug addictions and homosexuality; the accidental shooting of his wife in a drunken William Tell routine; and, later in life, his unofficial status as the godfather of the punk rock movement. Of all the wild stories in Burroughs’s life, the best (and most secret), came last: That he did indeed find love and redemption before he died—through his cats.

The magazine’s editors (foolishly) said they would pass, and that was that. It seems Burroughs got the last laugh, though. A quick internet search for Cat Fancy’s HQ results in the address 3 Burroughs Drive in Irvine, California (the number 3 was thought to hold special powers by the author).

Head over to Vice.com to read the rest of the article, and an in-depth interview with Roger Holden, the man who WSB entrusted with the care of his cats.

Photo of the Week

Kenn Thomas of Steamshovel Press & William S. Burroughs (well, sort of...)

You Can't Win

Author: Jack Black
Publisher: Macmillan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can%27t_Win_(book)

You Can't Win (ISBN 1-902593-02-2) is an autobiography by Jack Black. The book tells of his experiences in the hobo underworld, freight hopping around the still Wild West of the United States and Canada, becoming a burglar and member of the yegg brotherhood, getting hooked on opium, doing stints in jail, and escaping, often with the assistance of crooked cops or judges. The book was a best seller in 1926. It has been republished in 2000 in the Nabat series of radical autobiographies, by AK Press. William S. Burroughs cited it as an extremely influential book in his life, and lifts the book's style and stories in his 1953 book Junkie. Burroughs himself wrote the introduction to the AK Press reissue of the book. On the copyright page is a message from the publishers that any convict can obtain a copy of the book by mailing them ten dollars and a contact address (the list price is sixteen US dollars or eleven British pounds).

Publication history

Black, Jack. You Can't Win. New York: Macmillan Company, 1926. Foreword by Robert Herrick. OCLC 238829961
_____. You Can't Win: the Autobiography of Jack Black. New York: Amok Press, 1988. Foreword by William S. Burroughs. ISBN 0941693074 OCLC 153562506
_____. Du kommst nicht durch. Berlin : Kramer, 1998. ISBN 3879562407 OCLC 75910135
_____. You Can't Win. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: AK Press/Nabat books, 2000. ISBN 1902593022 OCLC 44737608
_____. You Can't Win. [S.l.] : BN Publishing, 2007. ISBN 9562915093 OCLC 187421471

Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/You-Cant-Win-Jack-Black/dp/9562915093/thekonformist
Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/YOU-CANT-COMPLETE-UNABRIDGED-ebook/dp/B004GB1FGC/thekonformist

Fantagraphics to Publish Lost William S. Burroughs Graphic Novel

“Ah Pook Is Here is a consideration of time with respect to the differing perceptions of the ancient Maya and that of the current Western mindset. It was Burroughs' contention that both of these views result in systems of control in which the elite perpetuate its agendas at the expense of the people. They make time for themselves and through increasing measures of Control attempt to prolong the process indefinitely.

John Stanley Hart is the 'Ugly American' or 'Instrument of Control' - a billionaire newspaper tycoon obsessed with discovering the means for achieving immortality. Based on the formulae contained in rediscovered Mayan books he attempts to create a Media Control Machine using the images of Fear and Death. By increasing Control, however, he devalues time and invokes an implacable enemy: Ah Pook, the Mayan Death God. Young mutant heroes using the same Mayan formulae travel through time bringing biologic plagues from the remote past to destroy Hart and his Judeo/Christian temporal reality.”

Fantagraphics to Publish Lost William S. Burroughs Graphic Novel
Eric Reynolds
9 Sep 2010
FANTAGRAPHICS ACQUIRES LOST ‘GRAPHIC NOVEL' BY WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS & ARTIST MALCOLM McNEILL

SEATTLE, WA, SEPT. 9, 2010 --- Fantagraphics Books is proud to announce the acquisition of the only graphic novel written by — and possibly the last unseen work of his to be published — the innovative Beat writer and Naked Lunch author, William S. Burroughs. This lost masterpiece, Ah Pook Is Here, created in collaboration with artist Malcolm McNeill in the 1970s, will be published in the summer of 2011 as a spectacularly packaged two-volume, hinged set, along with Observed While Falling, McNeill's memoir documenting his collaboration with one of America's most iconic authors.

Ah Pook Is Here first appeared in 1970 under the title The Unspeakable Mr. Hart as a monthly comic strip written by Burroughs and drawn by the British cartoonist and painter Malcolm McNeil in the English magazine Cyclops. When the publication folded, Burroughs and McNeill decided to develop the project into a full-length, Word/Image novel (the term "graphic novel" had not yet been coined). Burroughs was 56 at the time, McNeill 23.

The book was conceived as a single painting in which text and images were combined in whatever form seemed appropriate to the narrative. It was conceived as 120 continuous pages that would "fold out." Such a book was, at the time, unprecedented, and no publisher was willing to take a chance and publish a "graphic novel." Burroughs and McNeill finally abandoned the project after collaborating on it for 7 years.

"It is singularly appropriate that after championing literate comics and the graphic novel form for over 30 years, Fantagraphics Books should bring a literary collaboration between one of America's most distinctive writers and his exemplary hand-chosen artist to light," says Fantagraphics Publisher and acquiring editor Gary Groth.

Ah Pook Is Here is a consideration of time with respect to the differing perceptions of the ancient Maya and that of the current Western mindset. It was Burroughs' contention that both of these views result in systems of control in which the elite perpetuate its agendas at the expense of the people. They make time for themselves and through increasing measures of Control attempt to prolong the process indefinitely.

John Stanley Hart is the "Ugly American" or "Instrument of Control" - a billionaire newspaper tycoon obsessed with discovering the means for achieving immortality. Based on the formulae contained in rediscovered Mayan books he attempts to create a Media Control Machine using the images of Fear and Death. By increasing Control, however, he devalues time and invokes an implacable enemy: Ah Pook, the Mayan Death God. Young mutant heroes using the same Mayan formulae travel through time bringing biologic plagues from the remote past to destroy Hart and his Judeo/Christian temporal reality.

Ah Pook Is Here was an experiment, not just in terms of the form in which the idea was expressed but the possible effects the form might produce. Burroughs was preoccupied throughout his career with the fundamental nature of words and images, particularly with regard to their ability to transcend time. In the case of Ah Pook Is Here, the rapport between artist and writer produced results that confirmed that contention. Ah Pook is the kind of extrapolative, futuristic feat of imagination that a reader would expect from the author of Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded — a mind-boggling tour de force, dramatizing outré theories with a science fiction patina.

The second book in the set is Observed While Falling, written by Malcolm McNeill, an account of the personal and creative interaction that defined the collaboration between the writer and the artist, the events surrounding it, and the reasons for its ultimate demise. McNeill describes his growing friendship with Burroughs and how their personal relationship affected their creative partnership. The book is written with insight and humor, and liberally sprinkled with the kind of the hilarious anecdotes one would expect working with a writer as original and eccentric as William S. Burroughs. It confirms the prescience of Ah Pook Is Here with respect to the contemporary graphic novel; Burroughs' exploration of the artistic potential of combining words and images was a revelation to the artist. The book offers new insights into Burroughs' working methods as well as how the two explored the possibilities of words and images working together to form the ambitious literary hybrid that they didn't know, at the time, was a harbinger of the 21st century's "graphic novel."

"Fantagraphics is honored to bring this major work into print and to publish what is quite possibly the last great work from one of America's most original prose stylists," added Groth. "Burroughs once said that 'The purpose of writing is to make it happen.' We are proud to make Ah Pook Is Here finally happen."

Fantagraphics Books ( http://www.fantagraphics.com/ ) has been the world's leading publisher of comics and graphic novels since 1976, with titles by R. Crumb, Charles Schulz, Joe Sacco, Daniel Clowes and many others. In 2007, the company launched its prose division, which books by Alexander Theroux (Laura Warholic), Monte Schulz (This Side of Jordan), and Stephen Dixon (What Is All This?)