Gary S. Davis
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Artwork
Bill Burroughs and Jack Kerouac locked in Mortal Combat with Moroccan dagger versus broomstick clear on the couch—they had its hold still a full second which I steadied camera on back of chair. They’d known each other nine years by then. Jack came in from Richmond Hill he’d finished Maggie Cassady, Bill stayed with me in two room apartment consolidating Yage Letters, he’d sent over the year from Peru and Ecuador. 206 East 7th st. Apt 16 Manhattan, September-October 1953.
Bill Burroughs and Jack Kerouac locked in Mortal Combat with Moroccan dagger versus broomstick clear on the couch—they had its hold still a full second which I steadied camera on back of chair. They’d known each other nine years by then. Jack came in from Richmond Hill he’d finished Maggie Cassady, Bill stayed with me in two room apartment consolidating Yage Letters, he’d sent over the year from Peru and Ecuador. 206 East 7th st. Apt 16 Manhattan, September-October 1953.
Allen Ginsberg
1953, printed later
Not on view -
Artwork
Jack Kerouac, railroad brakeman’s rule-book in pocket, couch-pillows airing on fire-escape three flights up overlooking backyard clotheslines south. He’d already published The Town & the City and completed a treasury of half-dozen unprinted classic volumes including On the Road, Visions of Cody,_ Doctor Sax_, early books of Blues and Dreams, & had begun The Subterraneans’ adventurous love affair with Alene Lee, “Mardou Fox.” Alene typed for W. S. Burroughs then in residence editing Yage Letters and Queer mss., unpublishable that decade, censorship ruled. I scribed “The Green Automobile,” Gregory Corso visited that season, 206 East 7th Street near Tompkins Park, Manhattan, probably September 1953.
Jack Kerouac, railroad brakeman’s rule-book in pocket, couch-pillows airing on fire-escape three flights up overlooking backyard clotheslines south. He’d already published The Town & the City and completed a treasury of half-dozen unprinted classic volumes including On the Road, Visions of Cody,_ Doctor Sax_, early books of Blues and Dreams, & had begun The Subterraneans’ adventurous love affair with Alene Lee, “Mardou Fox.” Alene typed for W. S. Burroughs then in residence editing Yage Letters and Queer mss., unpublishable that decade, censorship ruled. I scribed “The Green Automobile,” Gregory Corso visited that season, 206 East 7th Street near Tompkins Park, Manhattan, probably September 1953.
Allen Ginsberg
1953, printed later
Not on view -
Artwork
Jack Kerouac at Staten Island Ferry Wharf, we used to wander docksides under Manhattan’s bridges & thru truck parking lots along East River singing rawbone Blues, Leadbelly’s “Black Girl” or “Eli Eli,” chanting Poe’s “Annabelle Lee” & shouting Hart Crane’s “O Harp & Altar of the Fury fused!” or “Atlantis” to Brooklyn Bridge’s traffic spanned above. Time of his Doctor Sax & The Subterraneans, Burroughs was in town, up from Mexico, New York, Fall 1953.
Jack Kerouac at Staten Island Ferry Wharf, we used to wander docksides under Manhattan’s bridges & thru truck parking lots along East River singing rawbone Blues, Leadbelly’s “Black Girl” or “Eli Eli,” chanting Poe’s “Annabelle Lee” & shouting Hart Crane’s “O Harp & Altar of the Fury fused!” or “Atlantis” to Brooklyn Bridge’s traffic spanned above. Time of his Doctor Sax & The Subterraneans, Burroughs was in town, up from Mexico, New York, Fall 1953.
Allen Ginsberg
1953, printed later
Not on view -
Artwork
Bill Burroughs, more friendly + open than I realized at the time - 1953 - really pleased!
Bill Burroughs, more friendly + open than I realized at the time - 1953 - really pleased!
Allen Ginsberg
1953, printed later
Not on view -
Artwork
Herbert E. Huncke, author The Evening Sun Turned Crimson, who introduced "hip" vocabulary & attitudes to writers later labeled "Beat", his room Hotel Elite, N.E. corner 8th Avenue and 51'st street diagonally opposite Madison Square Garden. Rare glimpse of Huncke, then hustling bread on Times Square, strung-out - he fixed at the sink. Saw him infrequently that season, though we'd known each other well since 1945, found his room to say good bye, leaving New York to hitch south, Mexico and Bay area, here just before Christmas, Manhattan 1953.
Herbert E. Huncke, author The Evening Sun Turned Crimson, who introduced "hip" vocabulary & attitudes to writers later labeled "Beat", his room Hotel Elite, N.E. corner 8th Avenue and 51'st street diagonally opposite Madison Square Garden. Rare glimpse of Huncke, then hustling bread on Times Square, strung-out - he fixed at the sink. Saw him infrequently that season, though we'd known each other well since 1945, found his room to say good bye, leaving New York to hitch south, Mexico and Bay area, here just before Christmas, Manhattan 1953.
Allen Ginsberg
1953, printed later
Not on view -
Artwork
Bill Reck in his coldwater flat Lower East Side circa 1953, one of eminent Subterraneans (Vide Frity Nichols); he entered J.K.'s Book of Dreams as Dick Beck. outside his window off Bowery and East 2'd Street, a cemetery, he wrote "Love is a lime green tree," last line of poem looking out
Bill Reck in his coldwater flat Lower East Side circa 1953, one of eminent Subterraneans (Vide Frity Nichols); he entered J.K.'s Book of Dreams as Dick Beck. outside his window off Bowery and East 2'd Street, a cemetery, he wrote "Love is a lime green tree," last line of poem looking out
Allen Ginsberg
1953, printed later
Not on view -
Artwork
William S. Burroughs sitting up in back bedroom waiting for my company...
William S. Burroughs sitting up in back bedroom waiting for my company...
Allen Ginsberg
1953, printed later
Not on view -
Artwork
Donald Cook and his son Michael, an apartment near Columbia University, Francis Mechner in background, young psychology grad students. Later they proposed innovating Basic Systems Computer teaching machines. New York, Fall 1953.
Donald Cook and his son Michael, an apartment near Columbia University, Francis Mechner in background, young psychology grad students. Later they proposed innovating Basic Systems Computer teaching machines. New York, Fall 1953.
Allen Ginsberg
1953, printed 1990
Not on view -
Artwork
William Seward Burroughs and Alan Ansen, two elegant gentlemen at entrance to defunct San Remo Café , N.W. corner Bleeker looking north up MacDougal Street, then the heart of Greenwich Village. Before vogue of the Cedar Bar, poets painters Kerouac's "subterraneans" Gregory Corso Carl Solomon myself Frank O'Hara Larry Rivers Maxwell Bodenheim drunk even Dylan Thomas ate drank and talked till 3 AM at this central café - superb inexpensive veal parmigiana and spaghetti a la vongole in rear restaurant, wooden tables - At that season W.S.B.'d published Junkie and we were assembling Yage Letters and Queer, Burroughs improvising earliest routines for Naked Lunch. Alan Ansen had been Polymath secretary to W.H. Auden a decade before, helping type "Age of Anxiety." One mid-afternoon, Fall 1953, fixed with trembling hand.
William Seward Burroughs and Alan Ansen, two elegant gentlemen at entrance to defunct San Remo Café , N.W. corner Bleeker looking north up MacDougal Street, then the heart of Greenwich Village. Before vogue of the Cedar Bar, poets painters Kerouac's "subterraneans" Gregory Corso Carl Solomon myself Frank O'Hara Larry Rivers Maxwell Bodenheim drunk even Dylan Thomas ate drank and talked till 3 AM at this central café - superb inexpensive veal parmigiana and spaghetti a la vongole in rear restaurant, wooden tables - At that season W.S.B.'d published Junkie and we were assembling Yage Letters and Queer, Burroughs improvising earliest routines for Naked Lunch. Alan Ansen had been Polymath secretary to W.H. Auden a decade before, helping type "Age of Anxiety." One mid-afternoon, Fall 1953, fixed with trembling hand.
Allen Ginsberg
1953, printed 1993
Not on view -
Artwork
Myself seen by William Burroughs, Kodak Retina new-bought 2’d hand from Bowery hock-shop, our apartment roof Lower East Side between Avenues B & C, Tompkins Park trees under new antennae. Alan Ansen, Gregory Corso & Jack Kerouac visited, Jack’s The Subterraneans records much of the scene, Burroughs & I edited letter-manuscripts he’d sent from Mexico & South America, Alene Lee (“Mardou Fox” of The Subterraneans) typed final drafts. Neighborhood was heavily Polish & Ukranian, some artists, junkies, medical students, cheap restaurants like “Leshkos” corner 7th & A, rent was only ¼ of my monthly $120 wage as newspaper copyboy. Time of “The Green Automobile” poem to Cassady, Fall 1953.
Myself seen by William Burroughs, Kodak Retina new-bought 2’d hand from Bowery hock-shop, our apartment roof Lower East Side between Avenues B & C, Tompkins Park trees under new antennae. Alan Ansen, Gregory Corso & Jack Kerouac visited, Jack’s The Subterraneans records much of the scene, Burroughs & I edited letter-manuscripts he’d sent from Mexico & South America, Alene Lee (“Mardou Fox” of The Subterraneans) typed final drafts. Neighborhood was heavily Polish & Ukranian, some artists, junkies, medical students, cheap restaurants like “Leshkos” corner 7th & A, rent was only ¼ of my monthly $120 wage as newspaper copyboy. Time of “The Green Automobile” poem to Cassady, Fall 1953.
Allen Ginsberg
1953, printed 1995
Not on view -
Artwork
Kodak-Retina snapshot by William Burroughs, living room 1953 Lower East Side, Jackson Mac Low portrait with recorder by Iris Brodey on wall. We were working on Bills S.A. letters. I had job on N.Y. World Telegram.
Kodak-Retina snapshot by William Burroughs, living room 1953 Lower East Side, Jackson Mac Low portrait with recorder by Iris Brodey on wall. We were working on Bills S.A. letters. I had job on N.Y. World Telegram.
Allen Ginsberg
1953, printed later
Not on view -
Artwork
William Burroughs on roof of apartment house East Seventh Street where I had a flat, we were lovers those months, editing his letters into books not published till decades later (as Queer, 1985) Lower East Side Fall 1953.
William Burroughs on roof of apartment house East Seventh Street where I had a flat, we were lovers those months, editing his letters into books not published till decades later (as Queer, 1985) Lower East Side Fall 1953.
Allen Ginsberg
1953, printed 1990
Not on view