This installment of In the Stacks takes us to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University.From Homer:Fragment from Homer's Odysseyis dating from between the third century to the second century BCE. One 2000 papyrus fragments housed at Columbia.Original contract between Herman Melville and Harper & Brothers for "The Whale," or better known as Moby Dick. Columbia acquired the archive of the publisher in 1975.Alexander Anderson. Wood engraving of garden-house scene, (6.5 x 8 cm.) Anderson has been considered the father of wood engraving in America. Arthur Rackham. Self-portrait, 1924. The Rackham collection at Columbia contains 413 drawings, watercolors, and oil paintings, as...
The Camera Work of Allen Ginsberg
W. S. Burroughs at rest in the side-yard of his house..., 1991, gelatin silver print, © Copyright 2010 The Allen Ginsberg LLC. All rights reserved. A new exhibition of the photographs of Allen Ginsberg opened this week at the National Gallery of Art. The exhibit, titled Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, features 79 black-and-white portraits. Most were donated to the National Gallery by Gary S. Davis who acquired, via the poet's estate, one print of every photograph in Ginsberg's possession at the time of his death. Most of the usual suspects of the Beat Generation are represented.The exhibition is divided...
Don Draper Eats A Naked Lunch
Portrait Of The Artist As A Psychotic Junkie.Self-Portrait By William S. Burroughs, 1959.(Image Courtesy Of Columbia University Library.)There are a lot of weird parallels, or at least perpendiculars, between junkie hipster supreme William S. Burroughs (and/or his literary doppelganger William Lee), and Mad Men's Don Draper. I couldn't get that idea out of my head after looking over an April 2010 online exhibit: Naked Lunch: The First Fifty Years. Columbia University curator, Gerald W. Cloud created the virtual show to commemorate the celebrations held at Columbia's libraries in 2009, marking the half-century since the 1959 Paris publication of Burrough's most...