Saturday, November 19, 2016

Going Cold Turkey (in Cyberspace), by Jan Herman



The computer screen has become a substitute for reality, dominating us not just by way of social media but — old news — by making artifacts like books on paper seem obsolete. I plead seriously guilty, witness this blogpost with its images and descriptions. A package that came in the mail with several new items from Cold Turkey Press got me to thinking more than usually about this. Issued in minuscule editions, Cold Turkey chapbooks, folios, and cards compose a rare yet necessary archive that subverts the ordinary in literary content and artistic quality. Their scarcity notwithstanding, they are essential cultural documents — scholarly without being academic, exotic but not obscure, their intelligence distinctive. To be truly appreciated, however, these hand-made manifestations of the publisher’s mind must be experienced in the material world and not as digital simulacrums in cyberspace...More here 

Sacred Fix at the Librarie Shakespeare and Company, Paris


Thank you to Yannis Livadas for sending me this photo: Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and George Whitman at the Librarie Shakespeare and Company, Paris. Photo by Francois Lagarde. However, Yannis's eagle eye picked up what the unidentified man on the right is reading ... Sacred Fix by Sinclair Beiles. Date unknown. Sacred Fix was published published by Cold Turkey Press in 1976, and I think Ginsberg still had his beard till the mid-'70s. So maybe late '70s or early '80s?