Alexandre Grothendieck and Survivre et Vivre

Survivre et Vivre

Survivre et Vivre was a radical environmentalist magazine which was issued c. 1970-73, and published by the group of the same name, formed by the eccentric genius and founder of modern algebraic theory -  the mathematician Alexandre Grothendieck, certainly one of the most fascinating figures in modern science. At least 19 issues were published. I've been on the lookout for this magazine for several years, and have only been able to track down numbers 11-19. OCLC locates holdings only at the BIBLIOTHEEK UNIVERSITEIT Van Amsterdam and the Bibliotheque Internationale. 

Grothendieck was born in Berlin, the son of anarchist parents. He was opposed to the war in Vietnam, and is famed for having lectured in the forest surrounding Hanoi as it was being bombed. In 1970 Grothendieck left the world of institutional mathematics over a dispute over military funding of the institution he taught at, the IHES. At this time he formed Survivre et Vivre. 

Grothendieck is rumored to now be living in isolation, perhaps in the Pyrenees. During this time a number of manuscripts he is purported to have written have emerged in limited circulation, some on apocalyptic or milennarian themes. In 2010 he is reported to have declared that all of his works published since he left academia were published without his permission, and requested that duplication of his work cease, and that libraries containing his later works should remove them.  

The graphics of Survivre et Vivre seem to betray an influence from Situationism, featuring satirical underground comics, collages, and detourneed comic strips and advertisements. In these issues I find work by Grothendieck, Jean-Marie Damais, Francois Maille, Didier Savard, Denis Guedj, D. Meuret, Robert Jaulin, and Louis Dewez. I can't find any writings on the magazine in any language, and in a way this post is something of a cry for help - I'm looking for anybody who might know anything about this strange magazine, which seems conspicuously absent from any account of the underground press during that period. Send me an email. 

"This is the shock of recognition of all global hipsters!!

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Georgakas was a founding member of Black Mask - Weissner was a member of Georgakas' Creative Vandals group as well as the publisher of the still underappreciated Panic Press, the imprint under which which this manifesto was published. The format and printing of the book differ from the other Panic Press products, or for that matter any other books I've seen from the period. The text is dittoed, rather than mimeographed, on thin and fragile orange paper. The faintness of the ditto printing almost seems fetishized, placed in stark contrast to the stark silkscreen portraits, two of which are place within the text. 

The manifesto takes the form of a dialogue, largely between Weissner and Georgakas. "This is the shock of recognition of all global hipsters!! ..: This Is The Intergalactic-Supernebulae-Beyond-Timespace-UBER-Everythingkeit : GEIST!!! the word. . . "

Georgakas, Dan & Carl Weissner, Frederike Poessnecker. Manifesto for the Grey Generation. Heidelberg: PANic, 1966. First edition. Oblong 4to, dittoed and silkscreened pages stab-stapled and tape bound. illustrated with two internal silkscreens in addition to the cover silkscreen. Some almost imperceptible smudging to cover, else fine. SOLD. Inquire. 

Money-making Schemes of the Avant-Garde

Exhibition announcement for a solo show by Maciunas at his seminal AG Gallery, the gallery Maciunas himself founded with Almus Salcius. Legend has it that Maciunas intended to bankroll the avant-garde programming of the gallery by importing luxury foodstuffs from Europe, but neither the art nor the food was enough to keep the gallery open; it would close in July of 1961, after having been open for less than a year.  In that short time, however, Maciunas was able to show the works of future members of the Fluxus movement. Scarce, very early Fluxus ephemera from a short-lived but influential space. 

Maciunas, George. Works of George Maciunas At A. G. New York: A. G. Gallery, [1961]. First edition. 3.5 x 10,.5" exhibition announcement, offset printed on card stock. Near fine. SOLD. 

September 20 - Peaches & Bats Release Party at Division Leap

Two from the The Archangel Press

This year I finally tracked down a copy of Abraham Lincoln Gillespie's The Shaper, which is as far as I know is not only the first separately published work by the poet, but also the only work published in his lifetime. The Shaper was published by the Archangel Press, a press I know nothing about, but which published another one of my favorite books of visual poetry - Kenneth Lawrence Beaudoin's 6 Eye Poems.

Today I got to put the two works, which are presented in a uniform format, side by side. Both are among the strangest, most overlooked works of visual poetry that I know of, and represent a little documented strand of visual poetry in the United States.

Gillespie was a member of the group that centered around Transition Magazine in the 20's and 30's. His work not only eschewed standard spelling and punctuation, it incorporated symbols and drawings and resembles musical notation. A selection of his work appeared in the third issue of Beaudoin's little magazine Iconograph, and was the only section of the magazine that had to be mimeographed, as the printer couldn't handle the eccentricities of the piece.

Detail from The Shaper

Beaudoin's 6 Eye Poems consist of visual poems made out of collaged pieces of text laid over abstract drawings in colored pencil. The words appear to have been laboriously clipped out of magazines. On the title page Beaudoin claimed to have made 6000 of them. The poems are by turns beautiful and wry witty, but what is truly remarkable to me about them is that they were conceived of as a protest against the economies of printing. Here is Beaudoin's prefatory statement -

"I have gone through the laborious and expensive procedure of constructing 6000 individual EYE POEMS in vrai collage not because I regard it a media practical for the reproduction of poems despite the possible controls over poetic tone in printed words as opposed to the abstract word. I regard this little adventure in vral collage rather a protest against an economy which forces a poet to resort to the use of second hand print while the "new nightgown" or the "new bra" can command the most elegant available. Those of you who buy these poems may find them thin, fragmentary, as poetry, possibly not even successful decor. But you may also as I have in the manufacture of poems, derive a certain satisfaction in possessing an example of protest against an irresponsible economy."

Beaudoin was one of the early and important publishers on the beginnings of the Mimeograph Revolution in the 30's and the 40's, especially the strand which grew out of the pacifist movement. 6 eye Poems are a co-option and subversion of the language of mainstream advertising at a primal and beautiful level. With their commentary on consumer printing, they represent a strange but essential part of the story of the art of the Mimeograph Revolution. 

Detail from 6 Eye Poems

Beaudoin, Kenneth Lawrence. 6 Eye Poems. New York: Archangel Press, 1948. First edition. 4to. Six unbound collages and a title page mounted on black paper, housed in a printed envelope. Contents near fine with some minor toning and bumping to tips; envelope good only, with foxing, creasing, and tearing, but generally sound and intact. SOLD

Gillespie, Abraham Lincoln. The Shaper. New York: Archangel Press, 1948. First edition. 7 leaves, offset printed on thick card stock and housed in a printed envelope. Cards near fine with some light creasing and toning to margins; Envelope good only, heavily toned and chipped at margins, with some splitting. SOLD. 

Inquire. 

The Cleveland Manifesto of Poetry, The Asphodel Bookshop and the Future of Bookstores

The Cleveland Manifesto of Poetry

The Cleveland Manifesto of Poetry was published from Jim Lowell's Asphodel Bookshop in 1964, a year after the bookstore opened at 465 The Arcade. It prints statements by Russell Atkins, d. a. levy, Russell Salamon, Adelaide Simon, Jau Billera, and Kent Taylor. The statements still seem relevant today, especially those of Atkins and levy, whose manifesto begins "To write surface poems with the appearance of artificial flowers in order to communicate with persons by forcing them to resort to instinctive methods of understanding." It is a beautiful and surprising characterization of the concrete tendencies in levy's poetry and bookmaking. 

Lowell and the bookstore are credited at the top of the manifesto, but in reverse, so the attribution is best read in a mirror. This was perhaps one of the first contrary moves the store made, but certainly not the last. The Asphodel Bookshop went its own way, most famously during its 1966 censorship battle with the police. In doing so it sheltered and developed the local poetry scene to such an extent that it is impossible to imagine the Mimeograph Revolution in Cleveland without it. 

This wasn't a new role for a bookstore. There is a rich and well-documented history of bookstores helping to develop literary scenes, including censorship issues. But this wasn't Paris or San Francisco. What seems truly remarkable about the Asphodel is what it accomplished in relative geographical and cultural isolation. In this regard it reminds me of another bookshop I've been researching, Judson Crews' Motive Bookshop in Waco, Texas, which sheltered a number of little magazines of the Mimeograph Revolution in the years leading up to World War II. 

The isolation of these small, curatorial pioneer shops gave them increased importance to their local scene. They filled a role similar to the one played by local record stores in the seventies and eighties. In fact, Ohio record stores such as the Drome in Cleveland and Garbage in Kent played a crucial role to the Cleveland Punk and Ohio zine scenes, and it would be fascinating to find out if Asphodel was, even in some small way, an inspiration for those stores. For the past few years I've been researching shops like these for an exhibit that we'd like to have some day about the important role of such venues. These small, curated spaces of the past also point out a possible path for bookstores in the future. We live in an economic era in which large, general bookstores have become very difficult to operate successfully, but I think that there will be space in the future for small, curated spaces that will once again play an important role in supporting local art scenes. 

In the case of the Asphodel, this curatorial aspect was also extended through the mail in the form of the mimeographed Asphodel catalogs, which often also printed work by poets, and are as important as any other little magazine of the Mimeograph Revolution. I never got to see the Asphodel Bookshop, but I keep a stack of the old catalogs handy and reread them often. They remind me of the power that a good book catalog can have. I was turned onto literature and bookselling when I was lucky enough to be handed a stack of bookselling catalogs by a neighbor when I was a teenager. 

levy, d. a. & Russell Atkins, Russell Salamon, Adelaide Simon, Jau Billera, Kent Taylor. The Cleveland Manifesto of Poetry (Principles Behind the Writings of 6 Cleveland Poets). [Cleveland]: [Asphodel Bookshop], 1964. First edition. 8 1/2 x 11" sheet, mimeographed in green from typescript at both recto and verso. Two holograph corrections in blue ink, presumably as issued. Fine. SOLD. 

MS. A Literary Workshop

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Wright, Talbot & Stephen Matthews, eds.  MS. A Literary Workshop. Los Angeles: Ms. A Literary Workshop, 1940-44. 8vo. First two issues each two folded, unbound sheets mimeographed from typescript on rectos only; subsequent issues mimeographed from typescript and drawing on both recto and verso, and saddle-stapled in printed card wraps. Final four issues offset printed. Some moderate dampstaining to no. 5, else all issues very good with expected toning.

After a long search, I was able to track down what I believe to be all issues published of this early west coast little magazine of the Mimeograph Revolution, published "on behalf of the new writers of Southern California". Editorship is not explicitly named in any issue; the correspondence address for the first two issues was Talbot Wright, and changed to Stephen Matthews for subsequent issues. MS. belongs to that strain of the Mimeograph Revolution which developed out of the anti-war sentiment of the Second World War (such as Untide and Compass). MS. published the work of renegade poets who worked well away from established literary centers, using the technology of Mimeograph to overcome their geographical isolation, in common with such magazines as Judson Crews’ Motive, and the first version of Kenneth Beaudoin’s Iconograph – MS. shared writers with both of those publications, and also Crescendo, Matrix, etc. This strand of the Mimeograph Revolution that happened in the forties away from the established literary centers deserves its own book length study, as most of these magazine are criminally overlooked.

Primarily a literary magazine, later issues also included some woodcuts and linocuts, including some beautiful linocuts in red by Connie Stengal in issue 8. 

Linocuts by Connie Stengal

Issue 10 includes some very early work by Jay Rivkin, predating her better known assemblage work (the biographical note here states that Rivkin “attended no art school, does pottery and greeting card art.")The magazine was notable for the inclusion of a higher than normal ratio of women contributors, and it also included contributions from a number of active and retired members of the armed forces.

The masthead of issue 9 notes that included the magazines Perspective, The Morgue, Newsletter, and Memo. At this point the war took a heavy toll on little magazines. In issue 8 the editor announced the beginning of his own service, and around this time changed the spelling of his name to “Steven Matthews” (unless editorship actually passed to another individual). Issue 9 bore a lament on the difficulties of publishing the magazine while in active service.

At least one further number was published, no. 10, in ’43 or ’44, which was perhaps the most politically involved issue. It includes the poem “Dig the Grave Deep”, by an anonymous Polish Guerilla, and a protest against the concentration camp internment of Japanese Americans by Harry Yanos, with three letters from Japanese Americans. No editors or correspondence name is listed for this issue. The contributor notes were written  by Jack Hughes. In the shop talk section, Alan Swallow lists the fellow little magazines that had ceased publication due to manpower and paper shortages; also, “Finding worthwhile material is troublesome with so many writers in the military.” We are aware of no further issues of the magazine; perhaps it fell prey to the same wartime stresses that caused so many fellow magazines to cease publication.

Authors published across the numbers include Stephen Guy, Oliver Sudden, Max Bowman, Gregory Ames, Leo W. Fielding, William Peterson, Mark Keats, Josephine Ain, J. Andrews, Ralph Lee, Leo Baefsky, Sidney Siegel, Harry Cimring, Leonard Lickerman, Gilbert Romaine, Robert Thorson, Mata Rae Friedman, Victor Tarrish, Cecile Kyle, Richard Lake, Ben Macin, Mark Keats, Steve Pratt, Catherine Ruth Smith, Joseph Crowley, H. N. Baker, Connie Stengal, Elizabeh Knapp, Mary Graham Lund, Oscar Collier, Rita Michaels, Veta Griggs, Sylvia Logan, Marion Lee, Manfred Carter, Raymond Kresensky, James Franklin Lewis, Jay Rivkin, Irving Meyers, Fritz Eichenberg, Judson Crews, Kenneth Beaudoin, Wendell Anderson (very early work, done while he lived in Oregon), Scott Greer, Charles Angoff, Alan Swallow, and Taro Suzuki (a member of the Nisei Writers Club). Hoffman et al. p. 354 (though they were only able to find two single issues to consult).

--> OCLC locates six holdings, most of which appear to be incomplete, and none which note an issue past no. 10. Decidedly uncommon. SOLD.