WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS, CLAUDE PÉLIEU & CARL WEISSNER — So Who Owns Death TV?, Beach Books, Texts & Documents, San Francisco, 1967

A collaborative cut-up publication bringing together William S. Burroughs, French poet and collagist Claude Pélieu, and German writer and translator Carl Weissner. The pamphlet contains Pélieu’s Objective Galactic Time Demolition Plan 23, Weissner’s title text and an untitled Burroughs cut-up beginning “A boy as quoted in The Desperate Years.”

This is the expanded second edition, identified bibliographically as Maynard & Miles A13b. Issued in an edition of 3,000 copies, it adds a photograph of Pélieu, two photo-collages by Jean-Jacques Lebel and the black-and-red television image by Liam O’Gallagher, none of which appeared in the shorter first edition.

The publication belongs to the network around Mary Beach and Pélieu’s Beach Books imprint, where Beat writing, French avant-garde collage, translation and experimental publishing passed between San Francisco and Europe. Distributed through City Lights, the pamphlet converts television into a field of interruption: language cut, repeated and transmitted alongside appropriated images.

14 × 21.5 cm. 18 pages plus wrappers; 20 pages including covers. Saddle-stapled pamphlet printed in black and red. Distributed by City Lights Books. Condition: good vintage condition. General toning and handling wear, light surface marks and creasing to the wrappers, softened corners and edges, and minor oxidation around the staples. Internally complete and securely bound.

Securely packed; tracked UK and international shipping available.