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18.
An open reel tape of William Burroughs reading from “Nova Express” and “Time”, recorded at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. Spring 1965.
Quarter inch tape on a 5-inch BASF plastic spool. Duration 57.15; 3.75 ips. Good sound quality, with occasional background sounds of traffic, bird song, church bells and children playing outside.
The first two parts feature Burroughs reading “The Crab Nebula” and “The Death Dwarf in the Street” sections from “Nova Express”. After about 16 minutes, a second, unidentified voice is heard very briefly. During his reading of “The Death Dwarf”, Burroughs occasionally stumbles over the words, before giving up and announcing that “I can’t read this for some reason or another”. Earlier, during the section on working with tape recorders in “The Crab Nebula”, Burroughs follows the line in the text - “This takes some experimentation” - with the impromptu aside: “to put it mildly”. In the third part, Burroughs reads “Burning Heavens, Idiot” (the same text as published in The Insect Trust Gazette, apart from the first three lines), and ends abruptly before announcing “Cut”.
Roughly mid-way through the tape, Burroughs reads extracts from “Time” (published in April 1965) for approximately 10 minutes. This is followed by another 10 minute section consisting of these recordings cut-up, with an unidentified collaborator’s voice reading from “Time” cut-in and alternating with Burroughs’ own, accompanied by electronic hum and hisses. The collaboration isn’t that successful, and the final 10 minutes or so consists solely of tape cut-ups of Burroughs’ reading from “Time”.
Housed in a plain white card tape box (number ‘1’ written in ink to lid). Tape digitised and transferred to CD.
