Back to top
2.
Minutes To Go.
Paris: Two Cities Editions, 1960. First edition. Wrps. Cover design by Brion Gysin. Minor fading to spine; very faint stain to upper wrapper and light spotting to lower wrapper; o/w Near Fine.
Together with: two TLS from the book’s publisher, Jean Fanchette, written on Two Cities stationery, to Fred Hunter (an early Burroughs collector in England and co-founder of the spoken word label Stream Records), dated April 3 and May 20, 1963. Approx 102 + 279 words respectively (mailing envelope for second letter present).
In the first letter Fanchette advises on the availability of Two Cities magazine (“We are still printing after an interruption due to the usual financial reasons”), and in the second he replies to “a few of the questions” from Hunter: “Yes, Burroughs wrote a piece for No. 6 of Two Cities. I also published ‘Minutes To Go’ a roster with Burroughs, Beiles, Brion Gysin & Corso. Want it? I enclose and there’s another 7/6 to add to above bill.” In a holograph postscript Fanchette adds: “You should get the new set, the 2 copies + ‘Minutes To Go’ within a week. Pay quickly please. It will help us to get #9 out. It’s stuck at the printer who wants MONEY, MONEY, MONEY” (a familiar problem, since Fanchette had been unable to pay the printing bill for “Minutes To Go” until Gaît Frogé put up the money).
In addition, two carbon copy typed letters from Hunter to Fanchette are included, dated June 10 and June 18, 1963 (approx. 336 + 133 words respectively). In the first Hunter acknowledges receipt of Two Cities and “Minutes To Go”, and recalls a meeting with Burroughs (probably at one of Jonathan Williams’s parties in Well Walk, Hampstead): “I met Burroughs just the night before he left for Paris and had a pleasant hour with him - he’s been oddly reviewed by English critics and idolized by the plushly-rich beatnik set circling around the culture trap at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. I think he’d found this rather disconcerting - and the literary conventionalism of Little England too much to endure. All in ‘The Sleep of Newton’ was Blake’s phrase and I find it rather apt for Burroughs who goes way-out into legitimate areas of experience which our literary types despise as the arena of science or space fiction. One reviewer - John Wain in the New Republic - spent all his space in praising Henry Miller and saying LUNCH was useful for students of medical textbooks!” (Hunter’s mention of the ICA probably refers to the Domaine Poétique evening of cut-ups held there on March 28, organised by Brion Gysin and for which Burroughs taped a text).
In his second letter Hunter requests a copy of “Naked Lunch” for a friend, adding that “I’ve tried other places to get a copy, but without success. It was even on sale in ‘Better Books’ in Charing Cross Road for two days, without any police raids or anything.”.