National Geographic on the Mimeo Revolution

National Geographic has an article on the Mimeograph Revolution, in which Greta Weber quotes poet Jerome Rothenberg (who wrote the preface to the indispensable A Secret Location on the Lower East Side) and expert Kyle Schlesinger, who remarks on mimeo's fast nature: “It’s not so much different from blogging or tweeting now.”

Weber also went to the Rare Book and Special Collections section at the Library of Congress to cradle a Burroughs short story; and she looks at early mimeo machines and the artists and poets surrounding the movement:

Mimeographed work has a quick-and-dirty aesthetic that matches its rebellious spirit. They’re also fragile, so I was surprised to find one in perfect condition in the Library of Congress’s Rare Book and Special Collections section. A librarian dug one up for me and presented it on a plastic book cradle. About the size of a passport, it was a flimsy copy of a William Burroughs short story “stomped into print” in 1964 and held together with two staples. Some of the ink was smudged, the pink construction paper felt like it could tear at any moment, and the presentation seemed almost juvenile given the notoriety (and notoriousness) Burroughs would soon rise to.

But when I read the story, a satire of President Roosevelt meeting with made-up political characters, the raw form made sense. “TOTAL ASSAULT ON THE CULTURE,” the back cover read. And the culture took notice. The story’s publisher, Ed Sanders, ran one of the most well-known independent presses of the era, and even appeared on the cover of Life magazine in 1967.

“The reason why he was on Life was because he had his hands in all these counterculture pies that was really presenting a viable, interesting alternative to mainstream media,” says Jed Birmingham, a book collector and writer for a blog about the Mimeo Revolution, which Schlesinger edits. Mimeographed magazines represented a new era in American culture, hence their home in the Library of Congress. There are also literary zine collections housed in universities such as the University of Iowa and New York University.

Read the full story (with pictures!) at National Geographic.

P.S. Laura Sims took her students to the NYU Fales Avant Garde collection to look at C: A Journal of Poetry--her report is also a good read on this subject, at Jacket2. At top: C, issue 4, cover by Andy Warhol.