Burroughs, William S.

Mayfair Academy Series More or Less

Brighton, Sussex, England: Urgency Ripoff Press, 1973. Limited First Edition. Stapled Wrappers. “The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict? The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don’t wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months’ shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don’t really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict. The questions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict’s special need. You don’t decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re an addict.”—William S. Burroughs, Junky, Prologue, p. xxxviii. William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) our patron-saint-demon here at Third Mind Books, is not only one of the most experimental and important writers of the last century but also is a writer who was a master of the grotesque, ashen-horror of life-loathing existential dread and junk-sickness. His deliberately erratic prose often depicts a nightmarish, sometimes wildly humorous, and fever-dream-on-LSD world. Burroughs’ legacy as one of the founding fathers of the Beat Generation, and generally a beloved canonical (if not controversial) writer is embodied in the number of legendary works he produced: Junkie (1953) [see item #4716]; Naked Lunch (1959) [see item #3487]; The Yage Letters (1963); Nova Express (1964) [see item #3373]; The Third Mind (1978) from which we derive the name of our establishment [see item #5899]; and Cities of the Red Night (1981) [see item #5891] just to name a few. Burroughs was a prolific writer and was published widely in literary magz, small press publications and obscure independent journals and one-off works, and as such many of these works are some of the rarest and most desirable in his oeuvre. Today we offer one such item, William S. Burroughs: Mayfair Academy Series (1973) published by the Urgency Ripoff Press out of Brighton, Sussex, England. Run by Roy Pennington in tandem with his brother Jim Pennington (our good friend, EBSN colleague & publisher/founder of Aloes Books), Urgency Ripoff Press published a number of unauthorized (but accepted with a wink and a nod by the author) works and in this case Roy noticed the articles that WSB was publishing in Mayfair magazine, a gentleman's magazine published in the UK, and began collecting them. The ten articles, printed on orange, green and blue paper, reproduced in William S. Burroughs: The Mayfair Academy Series, trace the unique period of WSB’s writings that were centered around Scientology (of which he’d become interested, if not enamoured with), and the sort of occultism & esoteric mysticism that works like The Third Mind are primarily concerned with. Also included is an excerpt from Pennington’s Philosophy MA thesis, “Appendage 2: Some Disparate Mentionables,” incorrectly titled in the table of contents as “Appendage Three.” With all points in Maynard & Miles, A25, pg 87; Shoaf, 27, pg 39; Schottlander, A28, pg 13. From the collection of Richard Cupidi (b. 1945), our esteemed friend in the UK who managed the legendary Unicorn Bookshop in Brighton, England with Bill Butler (1934-1977, the famed American-expatriate bookseller & publisher). From the late 1960s until the early 1970s, Unicorn proffered & published many outstanding productions by WSB, J.G. Ballard et al., some of which have become the scarcest, all-but-unobtainable Beat-&-Beyond collectibles (see for example our item #8217). After prevailing against censorious harassment efforts, Unicorn closed & Butler shortly thereafter met his untimely demise. Cupidi went on to found the Public House Bookshop in Brighton, which had a long & successful run but is now also closed, and he still resides there. We have been honored to obtain what Cupidi has termed “The Last Hurrah,” all the remaining treasures of Unicorn and Public House, some of which have become the stuff of Beat-&-Beyond Myth, and which now comes from our custodial hands and passes to yours. Chapbook in stapled wrappers. Limited first edition, one in a series of 650 as stated at copyright page. In relatively very fine condition with only the slightest wear to fine edges, moderate rusting at staples, and only the faintest fading at interior & exterior due to age-toning. Very Fine. [Item #8212]

Price: $500.00