Item #5587 Time [Original and Bootleg, Signed]. William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin.
Time [Original and Bootleg, Signed]
Time [Original and Bootleg, Signed]
Time [Original and Bootleg, Signed]

Time [Original and Bootleg, Signed]

New York: 1965. Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett, ed., Joe Brainard, art director. First printing. Unpaginated, offset printed in illustrated wraps. 8 ½ x 11 in. Stamped with edition no. 51, signed below by Burroughs and Gysin on colophon. The first edition comprises 1000 copies: 886 in a trade edition; 100 numbered and signed; 10 lettered A-J, hardbound, with original manuscript page by Burroughs and original drawing by Gysin, signed; and four hardcover numbered copies hors commerce with original manuscript page by Burroughs and original drawing by Gysin, signed. Printing of 100 copies, numbered and signed. Very good with scuffs and small stains to wraps, chipping at spine, inside pages clean.

Sussex, England: Urgency Press Rip-Off, 1972. One of 495 copies printed by Roy Pennington. Xerox, bound with three staples at top edge. 8 x 13 in. Very good, bumps to edges, some corners of sheets creased, price penciled on to front cover. Item #5587

Burroughs’ own version of the November 30, 1962 issue of Time Magazine, with a collaged cover, four drawings by Gysin, and 26 pages of typescripts comprising cut up texts by Burroughs, inserted with various images and advertisements. Originally conceived after Time published a libelous review of Naked Lunch in their November 30 1962, titled “King of the YADS” [Young American Disaffiliates], in which it was claimed Burroughs cut off his finger to avoid the draft. Painstakingly laid out and put together by Ron Padgett and Joe Brianard, Time is an example of Burroughs’ merging of visual collage and textual cut-ups, part parody and critique of mass media and part sincere artistic synthesis of mediums. The bootleg mimeograph edition was created by Roy Pennington in England, printing 5 runs of 99 copies each, to be distributed at the Bickershaw Festival to British Burroughs fanatics deprived of the rare American publication. Due to paper size and format, the layout differs and is bound with staples to the top edge. There is an added page in the beginning describing the printing and background of the bootleg publication. Pennington describes his changes as in the spirit of Burroughs, “...at the risk of giving the game away allow me to explain: the column headings are sequitors, but often in reverse. What goes up, can go down”.

Exceedingly scarce apart or together.

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