New in our Moloko Plus catalogue:
Sinclair Beiles/William Burroughs/Gregory Corso/Brion Gysin – Minutes to go redux
(Edited and introduced by Oliver Harris, published by Moloko Print, 2020)
From Oliver Harris’ introduction:
Cut-Up Ground Zero was Paris in April 1960 when Minutes to go appeared with a wraparound band that declared “un règlement de comptes avec la Littérature.” The meaning translates simply enough: “a settling of scores with Literature.” But the message that launched the cut-up project is a cryptic puzzle with a secret history, like Minutes to go itself, so that solving it offers a clue to the obscure readability of the text and to backstories that have remained in the dark for sixty years. … Piecing together a clear story of its creation and refusing to take the text at face value, we discover not only what didn’t make the cut and is hidden in the archives, but also what’s been hiding in plain sight—which in the case of the wraparound band is the mystery of why an English-language pamphlet written by four English-language authors for an English-language readership should announce itself in words of French.
Oliver Harris’ life as a Burroughsian began in 1984 with a PhD at Oxford that nobody would supervise. He has since gone on to publish and edit more than a dozen books about and by Burroughs, including William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination and new editions of three trilogies: Junkie Queer, The Yage Letters: Restored versions of Nova Express, The Soft Machine and The Ticket that exploded; and in 2020 Minutes to go redux, The Exterminator redux and BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS. He is Professor of American Literature at Keele University and President of the European Beat Studies Network.