ArchivesSpace at the University of Iowa

Scope and Contents

This is the biography of Jon and Louise Webb and their trials and tribulations of printing of the Outsider magazine, tributes to Charles Bukowski and Kenneth Patchen, and, the assembling of Henry Miller's "Insomnia." These works are held by the Sackner Archive. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents New York Times book review: William S. Burroughs "didn't say anything for shock value," his student Sam Kashner once observed. "His life had shock value." Born to a prominent St. Louis family in 1914, Burroughs linked his lineage at every point to the fatal plotlines of American hubris and power. His mother's family had been slave owners in the antebellum South; his paternal grandfather invented the adding machine, a building block in the embryonic military-­industrial-media complex. His uncle Ivy Lee, a pioneer of public relations, counted Hitler's regime among his preferred clients. Burroughs himself spent time in Vienna in the 1930s and learned a lesson he never forgot: Everything Hitler did was legal. Laws could spur, not deter, the blackest of crimes. To top it off, young Bill had also attended the Los Alamos Ranch School in New Mexico, which in 1943 would be co-opted for the Manhattan Project. "The sick soul, sick unto death, of the atomic age" became his great...

Scope and Contents In this deluxe edition, Patti Smith has written a poem in a separately printed broadside commerating her feelings about Robert Mapplethorpe. The book is the autobiography of Smith's young years and her deep relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Patti Smith is a writer, performer, visual artist, poet and rock star who has currently returned to the music scene.Bartholomew Amazon.com review: Before she became the Godmother of Punk, Patti Smith was just some girl who came to New York in search of herself. We have a tendency to view her as always having been a rebel, guitar in hand, spouting her distinctive mix of poetry and invective at society. But the reality was that Smith came to New York as a refugee, uncertain of who she was and what she wanted to be. That's sometimes a bit hard to believe or realize, but in "Just Kids" Smith reveals just that: she wasn't one half as confident then as she is now, and that she had no idea what she was going to do once she arrived in...

Scope and Contents This book is the autobiography of Smith's young years and her deep relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Patti Smith is a writer, performer, visual artist, poet and rock star who has currently returned to the music scene.Bartholomew Amazon.com review: Before she became the Godmother of Punk, Patti Smith was just some girl who came to New York in search of herself. We have a tendency to view her as always having been a rebel, guitar in hand, spouting her distinctive mix of poetry and invective at society. But the reality was that Smith came to New York as a refugee, uncertain of who she was and what she wanted to be. That's sometimes a bit hard to believe or realize, but in "Just Kids" Smith reveals just that: she wasn't one half as confident then as she is now, and that she had no idea what she was going to do once she arrived in New York. While this is true of almost everyone from her generation, it is somehow shocking and bizarre to ponder. More interesting was that...

Scope and Contents

This is a definitive biography of Patchen's life and work. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

Designated as one of a series of books in Circles of the Twentieth Century. Well researched history of the Beat poets. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents The two-part exhibition "The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters" was organized by Rodney Phillips, curator of the Berg Collection, as part of the Centennial celebration of The New York Public Library. This catalogue is based on the exhibitions which presented writers from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries with drafts, letters, diaries. photographs and memorabilia in a personal and intimate setting. An essay by Dana Gioia, "The Prado of Poetry: A History of the Berg Collection" describes the background of Dr. Albert and Dr. Henry Berg and how their collection became one of the world's primary sources for literary research on American and English writers. In a scholarly introductory essay, "The Magical Value of Manuscripts," Dana Gioia writes, "The manuscript of a literary work became more than words; it represented a direct and unmediated physical link between viewer and author - a holy relic or shamanistic fetish...The scholarly alibi of libraries that...

Scope and Contents

Robert H. Jackson contributed an essay "William S. Burroughs: A Man with Qualities" and loaned much of the manuscripts to this exhibition. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.