Hutton, Bill

Broadside: "The Declaration of Independence"

Circa 1968. First Edition. “Editor 's Note : With this issue THE SUN begins a new feature which will appear in this space every issue until further notice. "BILL HUTTON'S HISTORY OF AMERICA," short stories and bizarre historical sketches taken from Hutton 's books The Strange Odyssey of Howard Pow and A History of America, will properly mark the Bicentennial observation here in These States and bring people some welcome/satiric relief from all the earnest horseshit being passed out in red-white-and-blue buckets. Hutton, a native of Birmingham and Detroit, studied journalism at WSU in Detroit, worked for the Nantucket (Mass.) LIGHT as a summer reporter, and saw his first publication in magazines associated with John Sinclair and the Detroit Artists' Workshop in 1965-66. Settling in Buffalo, N.Y., for some reason Hutton opened Buffalo's (and one of the nation's) first psychedelic ballrooms-BILLY ZEIGFIELD'S HEAVEN-which quickly drew the fire of the local gestapo. Weekly trips to Timothy Leary's Millbrook estate, in G. Gordon Liddy's Queens County, NY, didn't help either, and Hutton was busted in the spring of 1967 for a number of marijuana and LSD crimes committed with the sons and daughters of Buffalo literary honcho Leslie Fiedler (Love and Death in the American Novel). His painful contact with the bestial narcotics police of the Buffalo area was a terrifying, deeply traumatic experience, and Bill Hutton has never fully recovered from the shock. In and out of the Pontiac (Michigan) State Hospital for the past eight years, Hutton's mental health has been tragically disrupted since these stories were written, and he remains a "mental patient" at Pontiac to this day. His brilliant satiric writing, however. has never been more accessible, and the first of the SUN's regular reprints-a story set in Detroit 's Prentis/Second neighborhood, written in 1965-should help Hutton gain some of the respect and attention his work has deserved since it was first printed in mimeographed editions of 500 and 1000 by the Artists' Workshop Press and the Coach House Press (Taranto). The following story is taken from The Strange Odyssey of Howard Pow and is entitled "Squaw Creek Orgy.””—Ann Arbor Sun, July 30, 1975. While very little is known about Bill Hutton, the satirist, writer, and presumably publisher of this broadside and the broader work this writing comes from, what we do know is that he was/is a Michigan native who, through some literary-geographical alchemy, got involved with John Sinclair (1941-2024) and the Detroit Artist Workshop. It would seem that the DAW published a number of Hutton’s early works and that he had a promising career as a literary figure. However, as the quoted portion above points out, Hutton’s violent run-ins with the police (in a time where the police would not hesitate to, in the parlance of the time, fuck you up for simply carrying LSD or Marijuana) left him deeply traumatized and emotionally scarred. Seemingly, Hutton’s output drastically reduced, if not completely stopped, shortly after his hospitalization. Offered today is a broadside of a piece of writing that was originally published in Hutton’s “History of America” 1968, titled “The Declaration of Independence”. Emblematic of the rest of his satirical writings, “The Declaration of Independence” is bizarre, hilarious, and bleeds with the radical weed-and-LSD-loving politics of the time. It should also be noted that the scanned photo of the broadside appears duller in these pictures than it is in actuality. The broadside is a bright, neon, magenta-adjacent color; stark, bold, warm, and immediately eye-catching. The broadside is as aesthetically interesting and bold as it is in the sense of the literary. From the collection of scholar, poet and our dear friend Robin Eichele (b. 1941), noted Mimeograph Revolutionary & co-founder (with the late, great John Sinclair [1941-2024]) of the Detroit Artists’ Workshop. Broadside (appx. 6” x 8 ½”). First & presumably only printing. Broadside is in very fine condition with only slightest wear at fine edges, otherwise pristine. Very Fine. [Item #6730]

Price: $60.00