Item #40977 A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964. William S. BURROUGHS.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.
A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.

69.

A collection of 23 b/w photographs by William Burroughs, taken during his “St. Louis Return” assignment for Playboy magazine in December 1964.

Vintage silver gelatin prints. 8.1x11.8cm. (13); 5.5x7.9cm. (9); 7x9.2cm. (1 deckle edge). Together with holograph hypnopompic notes written on Pennsylvania Railroad stationery, and a SIGNED presentation copy of the issue of Paris Review that published “St. Louis Return” following its rejection by Playboy.

i) of the 23 photographs, 19 were taken from the moving train Burroughs was travelling on from New York to Missouri. They feature fleeting images of bridges over rivers, a large graveyard, abandoned buildings, and wintry landscapes with old car wrecks. As he wrote in “St. Louis Return”, expressing himself in cinematic terms: “look out the train window /Take/: acres of rusting car bodies - streams crusted with yesterday’s sewage - American flag over an empty field - Church of Christ /Take/ crooked crosses in winter stubble”. The other four photographs were taken in St. Louis, three of them in a park (probably Forest Park), and one shows an unidentified house (not Burroughs’ family home on Pershing Avenue, but possibly that of his childhood friend, Kells Elvins).

Six of the prints were exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery in London in 2014 (illustrated in “Taking Shots: William S. Burroughs”, p.66) and each of these bear small remnants of art tape to the verso.

ii) a sheet of Pennsylvania Railroad stationery featuring two holograph texts by Burroughs written in blue ink (63 words). Single sheet, folded twice (17.6x25.3cm.). Printed stationery headed “En Route Pennsylvania Railroad” in red. Burroughs’ inchoate and partly illegible texts were probably notes written after waking from a dream; one section reads: “…rooming with Indian boy - deformed genitals on the other - I was perhaps coming down with jaundice - Anyone can see suffering… ”.

iii) The Paris Review 35 (Fall 1965). Ed. George Plimpton. SIGNED and inscribed by Burroughs at Conrad Knickerbocker’s interview with him: “For Richard Aaron William Burroughs” (Aaron brokered the sale of Burroughs’ archive to Roberto Altmann in 1973).

Illustrated with pages from Burroughs’ “St. Louis Journal” and prints “St. Louis Return” after Playboy’s editor had rejected Burroughs’ original submission and paid him off. The text is closely connected to the series of photographs Burroughs took during the journey (“Looking out the train window - click click clack - back back back - Pennsylvania Railroad en route”; “I looked out the train window. Snapping an occasional picture with my Zeiss Ikon”), and the return to his hometown (“driving around St. Louis with brother ‘Bru’ stopping here and there to take pictures”).

“The Art of Fiction” interview with Burroughs, conducted by Conrad Knickerbocker in St. Louis on New Year's Day 1965 and published in the same issue, reveals much about Burroughs’ creative process. In one section he describes looking out the window of the train to St. Louis “taking photos” and noticing “all the signs and what I was thinking at the time… I got some extraordinary juxtapositions”. In another, he describes how he does “a lot of exercises in what I call time travel, in taking coordinates, such as what I photographed on the train, what I was thinking about at the time, what I was reading and what I wrote; all of this to see how completely I can project myself back to that one point in time.”

When Knickerbocker asks if he composes on the typewriter, Burroughs replies that he uses the typewriter and scissors: “I can sit down with scissors and old manuscripts and paste in photographs for hours; I have hundreds of photographs. I usually take a walk every day. Here in St. Louis I’ve been trying to take 1920 photographs, alleys and whatnot”, a reference to his nostalgic search for anything in St. Louis that might have survived from his childhood years.

It’s not known how many photographs Burroughs took during his assignment to St. Louis. Some of them were taken on the journey there, some while he walked through his old neighborhood, and others while being driven around the city by his brother, Mort. It’s also unclear how many have survived; about 85 are held in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library; the 23 prints here, however, are the only copies known to have been offered for sale on the open market.

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