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88.
WIPE No. 1 (London: 1970).
Editor unknown. Oblong 12mo. String-bound brown paper wrps. Unpaginated. Pastel green crêpe type paper printed in brown, rectos only. Cover art by Ralph Steadman. Illustrated throughout.
Contains “Martin’s Folly” (2pp.) by William Burroughs.
Scatalogically scarce and bibliographically rare, not recorded in any of the Burroughs bibliographies nor located online in any institutional library. The Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry at the University of Iowa contains only an announcement for Wipe: Entertainment for the Lavoratory (though not the book itself), which describes it as “the first illustrated toilet paper… sold in a carton of 26 packs by the Great Alternative Stores in London”, consisting “of a booklet with 100 printed sheets with writings and artwork”.
No publication record can be found for this intentionally ephemeral book, though its list of contributors features a lengthy laundry list of contemporary countercultural luminaries. It includes (sometimes multiple) texts by Alexander Trocchi (five contributions); William Burroughs; Sinclair Beiles; Michael Horovitz; Ivor Cutler; Carolee Schneemann; Paul Ableman; Michael Zwerin; Libby Houston; Feliks Topolski; Heathcote Williams; Seymour Krim; Henry Woolf; Michael Fineberg; and Harvey Matusow; with illustrations by Mal Dean; Ivor Cutler; Ed Barker; Ralph Steadman; Don Martin; Jeff Nuttall; Carolee Schneemann; Helen Oxenbury; and Alexander Trocchi and photography by John Linton and Carolee Schneemann (“Meat Systems Incorporated”).
Lower wrapper dampstained and detached from string; upper wrapper slightly creased; some sheets slightly dog-eared and edge-browned; o/w Good.
A lightweight toiletry title as rare as the proverbial manure from a rocking horse.