Back to top
48.
Return to Columbia.
LA: Pacifica Radio Archive, 1983. Cassette tape (BC2364). Duration approx. 24.00.
Burroughs and Ginsberg in conversation with James Grauerholz, recorded for a radio show first broadcast on WBAI Radio in 1975, before the “Return of the Poets: Another Night at Columbia” poetry reading at the McMillin Theatre, Columbia University on April 17. The occasion, moderated by Anne Waldman, celebrated the original groundbreaking reading by Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso at Columbia on February 5, 1959 (Burroughs was in Paris at the time) and reunited the four writers onstage for the first time since their reading at the Mistral bookshop in Paris in 1958.
During the radio programme, Ginsberg recalls the 1959 reading and, despite an invitation, Jack Kerouac’s absence from it. He also discusses the writing process with Burroughs (who describes needing to ‘see’ his characters, often in dreams ,“which are films”, before hearing and writing them), as well as Life magazine and its coverage of the Beats (it ceased publication in 1972), Stephen Spender turning down an offer to publish sections from “Naked Lunch” in Encounter in 1965, and general talk about conspiracies, CIA or otherwise.
Printed inlay card slightly age-toned, o/w Very Good plus.
