{"id":13053,"date":"2015-03-23T13:25:37","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T17:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=13053"},"modified":"2015-03-23T13:25:37","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T17:25:37","slug":"fugitive-literature-granary-books-has-done-the-deed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/fugitive-literature-granary-books-has-done-the-deed\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Fugitive Literature’: Granary Books Has Done the Deed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jan Herman’s new memoir & his take on it, from his blog<\/a>:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s what happened: I was invited to speak about \u201clittle magazines and William S. Burroughs\u201d on a panel with Jed Birmingham<\/a> and Charles Plymell<\/a> at the 2014 Burroughs Centennial Conference<\/a> hosted in New York City by the Center for the Humanities<\/a>. After my talk, Steve Clay came up to me and asked to publish what I\u2019d said. I didn\u2019t know Steve, though I\u2019d met him once years earlier, but I knew of his Granary Books<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Among Granary\u2019s many titles was At a Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing: 1960-1980<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> based on a 1998 exhibition at the New York Public Library. Co-edited by Clay and Rodney Phillips, who was the curator of the library\u2019s Berg Collection at the time, the book, to quote its description, \u201cdocuments a period of intense exploration and experimentation in American writing and literary publishing.\u201d It serves as \u201ca monumental catalog, especially considering the ephemerality of the mimeo publications and their histories.\u201d<\/p>\n

A little magazine I had done in the late-\u201960s, The San Francisco Earthquake,<\/em> was mentioned in it with an illustration, but didn\u2019t get much attention. I don\u2019t think it was a matter of geography. I think it was just an oversight, because there are dozens of major entries for little mags \u2014 mimeos and otherwise, as well as small literary presses \u2014 that were based in far-flung places like Tulsa, Oklahoma (Ron Padgett\u2019s White Dove Review<\/em>); Mexico City (Margaret Randall\u2019s El Corno Emplumado<\/em>); Gloucester, Massachusetts (Gerrit Lansing\u2019s SET<\/em>); Paris (John Ashbery\u2019s Art and Literature<\/em>); Banalbufar, Mallorca (Robert Creeley\u2019s Divers Press<\/em>); Bolinas, California (Bill Berkson\u2019s Big Sky<\/em>). And of course it included a ton of fugitive New York City poetry rags. Maybe Clay was making up for the oversight.<\/p>\n

My Adventures in Fug Lit<\/em><\/a> is subtitled \u201cHow I got to San Francisco\u201d (TRUE), clerked at City Lights (TRUE), started a little magazine (TRUE), published William Burroughs (TRUE), and landed in Vermont (TRUE) as editor in chief of Something Else Press.\u201d (AGAIN TRUE). Granary\u2019s description says it \u201cprovides a vivid first-person account (SO TRUE!<\/a>) of Jan Herman\u2019s years in the small press underground of the sixties and seventies\u201d (TRUE), that Earthquake<\/em> and my Nova Broadcast Press \u201cpublished Beat, post-beat and Fluxus writers and artists\u201d (TRUE), that I was \u201ceditor in chief of Something Else Press\u201d (TRUE), and that the book \u201cis illustrated throughout with color photographs and reproductions.\u201d (BEAUTIFULLY TRUE!) If you\u2019d like to order a copy, go to granarybooks.com<\/a>, but don\u2019t forget to select \u201cwrappers\u201d (the trade paperback). For anyone who wants to buy a deluxe signed\/numbered copy, you\u2019re out of luck. Those babies are \u201csold out.\u201d (TRUE)<\/p>\n

One thing to remember: Fug Lit<\/em> is based on a presentation I tailored to an audience of Burroughs fans, many of them academic specialists and book collectors. So, though \u201cvivid,\u201d my memoir may seem a bit technical for a general audience. There is nothing in it about addiction (except to language), 12-step programs for alcoholics, treatment programs for drug abusers, cures for sexual maladies, or rock stars in recovery. The tale starts like this:
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Jan Herman’s new memoir & his take on it, from his blog: March 23, 2015 by Here\u2019s what happened: I was invited to speak about \u201clittle magazines and William S. Burroughs\u201d on a panel...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,202],"tags":[1638],"class_list":["post-13053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-book-launch","tag-jan-herman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13053"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13057,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13053\/revisions\/13057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}