Back to top
9.
Better Books now a Skoob. Original sTigma invitation card, March 1965.
White card printed in black. 9x11.5cm. SIGNED and annotated in pencil by Barry Miles (“Miles - the Manager!!”), with his pencilled annotation to verso.
Jeff Nuttall, along with John Latham, Bruce Lacey, Criton Tomazos, Keith Musgrove, Heather Richardson, Islwyn Watkins, and Dave Trace created the month-long multi-media environment called “The sTigma” in the basement of Better Books (then managed by Miles), named in response to, and allegiance with, Alexander Trocchi’s Project Sigma.
Latham’s contribution, part of his ongoing Skoob Tower Ceremonies, used books burned in a fire at Better Books in late 1964, stating at the time that “Better Books is a curious living organism which has a nutty life. People set fire to it” (Peace News, March 12, 1965).
He also created the claustrophobic entranceway of ‘valves’ comprising three doors constructed from old telephone directories and copies of The Economist, a tight one-way passage he later described as like “entering a mole’s burrow” (the visitors book included a handwritten rule stating “I undertake to go through the sTigma from beginning to end without turning back”, and among those who signed up to it were Mark Boyle, Peter Asher, Jane Asher, Jean Shrimpton, RD Laing, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ian Sommerville).
Fine. (Better Books/Better Bookz, p.170).
