Member: michaelstevens

Yeah Michael, Valis, The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration - the trilogy, plus the later Radio Free book about did it for me too. Reading that stuff when it came out in the Seventies and living in LA in like '73 and '74 and eating my fair share of speed at the time abt did me in, but I can still remember finding all these PKD paperbacks in this crazy used bookstore in So. Bay Gardenia and not learning until some years later that PKD himself was nearby at the time and going quietly or not so quietly mad; pink beams, temporal lobe epilepsy, entheogenic trancespeak, the works; just a stupid hippy kid drivin' cab and readin' sci-fi...What I always liked best though was the short story, Faith in our Fathers, first published in one of Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions anthologies...and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch about put me over the edge way before any of the exegesis was ever published. A sub-genre at the time: ' speculative fiction ' they liked to call it for awhile; what we liked to call acid sci-fi: some of Robert Silverberg's seventies novels, Man in the Maze, et al; PKD, the aforementioned Dangerous Visons; Jim Sallis and Michael Moorecocks' New Worlds anthologies, Damon Knight's Orbit series; amd how not mention UBIK forchristsake! And Sam Delaney's Triton and especially Dhalgren is something I've never gotten over and still return to till this day...Anyways...And then there's William Tevis, but let's not go there just now...
all best,
John

posted by jadecar08 at 11:38 pm (EST) on Nov 11, 2009

Congratulations Michael!!! Great to see The Road to Interzone completed. Can't wait to read it!I'm finally back up and posting a few things. Have my entire Kerouac collection to put up.
Best,
John

posted by jadecar08 at 11:30 am (EST) on Sep 8, 2009

Hi Mike,

I used to see Harold Norse around San Francisco but never talked to him. I don't read much poetry. I'm more into contemporary novels.

There are sample chapters of all my books on my web site.

Best of luck with your forthcoming book.

Nikos.

www.nikosdiaman.com

posted by NADiaman at 11:24 pm (EST) on Aug 23, 2009

Recently purchased the Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Couldn't find any Anna Kavan at the used bookstore. Read her bio and a few reviews of some of her books, I want to read her.

posted by j_miah23 at 9:41 pm (EST) on Aug 20, 2009

Yes, it is me. Thanks for the add on facebook, by the way. I have Sun and Steel in my collection, got it at a used bookstore a few weeks ago. Have yet to read it. I see you like Mishima, so I'm guessing perhaps I should read this book. I am also interested in Samurai culture, so it might be a good read for me.

posted by j_miah23 at 9:58 am (EST) on May 18, 2009

Well..we had a good time too...i forget, are you alergic to guacamole?

i talked about the new project with the book Dr and she is excited to help out in any way....

posted by bakunin10 at 4:27 pm (EST) on Feb 8, 2009

Oh dear....
So I've been listening to the new NL audio at the rate of about 1 disc/night, and ran across a real mistake by the reader : in the passage from the Talking Asshole routine, "He had a number he called 'The Better 'Ole' that was a scream, I tell you...", the reader pronounces 'Ole as ¡Olé!, like he was at a bullfight or something.

Oh, puppy, puppy, no, no.....

'Ole is just "Hole" with the H dropped, like in a cockney-ish accent, right?! Maybe he got confused by the quotation marks. Anyway, an unfortunate blunder in the book's most famous passage.

posted by Proclus at 3:58 pm (EST) on Jan 31, 2009

Yeah, I figured you owned the Burroughs interview. How not. Yes, Knickerbocker was an interesting writer, though unfortunately a suicide years ago. As I said he was doing the original Lowry bio when he offed himself; I've oftened wondered if it wasn't the bleakness of the Lowry material that drove him to it. He was mostly a critic and did an awful lot of it for various lit journals ( it really shd be collected by someone ), but he did a number of short stories as well found mostly in " Black Humor " Anthologies from the Sixties. He was lumped in with some of those cats: Bruce Jay Friedman, Terry Southern, early Barth, Vonnegut, even Pynchon were at one time tagged as " Black Humorists. " His Introduction to Lowry's Lunar Caustic, " Malcolm Lowry and the Outer Circle of Hell " still remains one of the finer early critical responses to Lowry's work.

Always loved Rudy's work. I picked up my original paperback copy of Nog when I was a kid back when it came out. Still not in bad shape. Yeah, I do remember it was called ' The Octopus ' in the UK, but have never seen a copy. My copy of Flats is a first, an ex-library HC sans DJ, but still in nice shape. Check out his newest thing: The Drop Edge of Yonder. Just out this year. A totally cracked/cosmic Western. I'm not as familiar with his screenplays and films as I'd like to be, but I do like his autobiographical Buddhist travel memoir he published a few years ago: Hard Travel To Sacred Places. Highly recommended. Thanks for writing.
All the best,
John

posted by jadecar08 at 10:38 am (EST) on Jan 6, 2009

Michael, Listing some old Paris Reviews I noticed Number Thirty-Five from 1965 contains The Art of Fiction Interview with Williams Burroughs. Also contains a thing called, St. Louis Return, in their Chronicle Section. Don't know if its appeared elsewhere or not; the interview or the prose piece? The interview was conducted by Conrad Knickerbocker, Malcolm Lowry's original biographer, and an interesting Sixties " Black Humor " writer in his own right. Let me know if you don't have it in your WSB Archives.
John

posted by jadecar08 at 12:41 pm (EST) on Jan 5, 2009

Yeah, Mike, but it's probably because I don't have a real life outside of my immersion in my library. Like you mentioned in our earlier correspondence, it feeds an obsessive/compulsive personality well. You've got me beat if you listed 1800 books in one month though. I'm not surprised it took you awhile to recover.
John

posted by jadecar08 at 10:20 pm (EST) on Jan 4, 2009

Michael,
I've been putting up an increasing number of my Beat titles recently. I noticed you had put up the William S. Burroughs Literary Archive catalog by Ken Lopez Bookseller, but for some reason when I listed it, it didn't come up as a match with yours which you had posted with picture, if I'm not mistaken, earlier. I don't know why except that maybe I have it listed differenty than yours or perhaps accessed it from a different search engine. I didn't put an image of the catalog up, so I had hoped to plug in yours, you know in the " title option " thing...No matter. Anyway, check out some of the Beat things I've put up if you have the time. There's still more comin.' Let me know if you like any of them and I've put up a review of
"Hippos " on the Beat Group link. You've probably already read it; I think I pasted it from The Times or someplace like that.
Best New Year's Wishes,
John

posted by jadecar08 at 1:28 am (EST) on Jan 1, 2009

Hi Michael,
I thought I would drop by for a visit and now I see all of your Mickey
Spillane acquisitions. This sort of takes me back to my Navy San Diego boot camp days (circa June, 1951). Also, the movie, Marty ("Man, that Mickey Spillane, he sure could write!").

posted by Naren559 at 10:11 pm (EST) on Dec 19, 2008

Looks like we have quite a few books in common. I see you like Burroughs. I discovered him in high school, reading Naked Lunch during the study hall. Needless to say, I was amazed that someone was actually allowed to write something that imposing and graphic. I've always like the Beats, mainly Kerouac and even the lesser known Gregory Corso. It seems I have some catching up to do. You've got over 2000 books in your library. Thanks for adding me as a friend.

posted by j_miah23 at 3:23 pm (EST) on Sep 16, 2008

Leaks! arrrgh.... I had a roof leak about a year ago, damaged some Paul Bowles books among others. Only total loss was an old textbook on philosophy of art.

Ian Fleming?

posted by Proclus at 6:21 pm (EST) on Aug 18, 2008

Hey, I see you've got your WSB multimedia on now. Great!

posted by Proclus at 6:59 pm (EST) on Aug 4, 2008

I posted a review of Haxan (and L'Inferno) on my blog yesterday (apologies for being a blog pimp). I wouldn't say that I found it boring - but I've gotten used to the rhythm of silent films.

I'm thinking of starting a thread in the group "Chapel of the Abyss" for corrosive viewing (as a complement to the corrosive reading thread), and might start it off with these films.

Nice to hear from you...

Maki

posted by Makifat at 7:53 pm (EST) on Jul 11, 2008

You probably already know this, but in 1968, WSB did the narration for the re-release of a silent Swedish film called "Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages." I had already sat through the original film when I discovered the Burroughs version on the disc, so I didn't watch the whole thing again. Burroughs does provide a kind of spooky invocational chant at the beginning.

Anyway, if you do the Netflix thing, it's available...

posted by Makifat at 12:38 pm (EST) on Jul 10, 2008

That'll be great. Thanks! I'm sure you have many more W.S.B. books than I've displayed on my site. Take care. Pitou.

posted by Pitoucat at 5:59 pm (EST) on Jun 19, 2008

Good luck with The Road to Interzone. I'm glad you like my W.S.B. book covers page. If you have any corrections or additions, please let me know.

posted by Pitoucat at 5:53 pm (EST) on Jun 18, 2008

Hi Michael,

My Burroughs site has just been updated:

http://mysite.orange.co.uk/burroughs-boo...

thought you might be interested ...

posted by Pitoucat at 3:28 pm (EST) on Jun 17, 2008

Congratulations on breaking the 2,000 mark! I got there a few weeks ago and right now I am just sitting on that nice round number basking in the glory of accomplishment. I DO have a few books I have yet to list and a few more expected shortly, however.

posted by LordNigelKnickKnack at 6:32 am (EST) on May 16, 2008

Did you read where "And the Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks" is finally being released in November?

I didn't think it would ever see the light of day!

posted by GlennCooper at 4:46 am (EST) on Mar 2, 2008

Hi. The last time I checked your profile, you were in East Texas; now I see Archer City. I have never been but I understand it is a real fun place.

posted by Naren559 at 9:13 pm (EST) on Feb 17, 2008

65 books in common; I, too, have a large Burroughs collection.

There's only three of us who have "The Birthday Book" ... :)

posted by GlennCooper at 3:51 am (EST) on Dec 14, 2007

I have the David Solomon LSD book also. I'll list it and scan in the cover so that you can borrow the image.

posted by LordNigelKnickKnack at 4:35 am (EST) on Sep 25, 2007

Have you ever heard of / seen a copy of a book called Mindfuckers: The Rise of Acid Fascism in America? I've been looking for it for awhile. I noticed you, in addition to being a former bookdealer, have the David Solomon-edited LSD book of essays, so I wondered if you might know more about it.

posted by ashleybessbrown at 9:54 am (EST) on Aug 28, 2007

I just gave your library a quick once-over. Greetings, friend!

posted by LordNigelKnickKnack at 11:23 pm (EST) on Aug 15, 2007

Thanks for your note re: INMAN DIARY. I found a one-volume condensed version of the diary for $13.00 (including postage) and it should arrive in the next couple of weeks. After getting your note, I'm glad I settled for that instead of shelling out a massive amount for freighting the 2-volume edition. Abnormal psychology does fascinate me (as a lay person and scribe) and so do shut-ins, agoraphobes. I'm also interested in journals--I have Gide's diaries and I've also recently put in an order for the Goncourt brothers diaries. Appreciated your note and thoughts...

posted by CliffBurns at 1:42 pm (EST) on Jun 29, 2007

Michael: A fellow PKD fan.

I note that your library contains a copy of "The Inman Diary". Have you read it? Can you give me your impressions? I've been fascinated with this book for more than 20 years and more than once have thought about obtaining it--is it worthwhile or merely a curio?

posted by CliffBurns at 3:41 pm (EST) on Jun 2, 2007

Korzybski (circa 1948) pointed a direction that has taken me heavy into "words" (e.g. Wittgenstein, Chomsky, et al) That has branched in diverse directions. Lots of novels (I raraly keep novels). All of which has provided comfort to get me through a required "work world". And now I am here. Have you been to Archer city? I regretfully have not yet gone.

posted by Naren559 at 6:02 pm (EST) on May 2, 2007

When I saw your comment to Proclus from "texas" curiosity took over. Greetings from Arlington, "texas"

posted by Naren559 at 10:12 am (EST) on Apr 24, 2007

Hi, nice to see someone interested in Burroughs! Your collection will no doubt eclipse mine. Seeing your name reminded me that I actually have a copy of your bibliography, but it's in my files instead of on my bookshelves, so I forgot to add it here! I'll have to do that soon.

posted by Proclus at 5:41 pm (EST) on Apr 11, 2007