William S. Burroughs sitting up in back bedroom waiting for my company..., 1953, printed later

Inscription

signed by artist, lower right on sheet in black ink: Allen Ginsberg; artist inscription, across bottom under image: William S. Burroughs sitting up in back bedroom waiting for my company, we slept together & worked on manuscripts of "Yage Letters" and "Queer", his Junky [underlined]'d been printed by Ace Books paperback that spring, I'd taken it to editor friend Carl Solomon, was myself working as copyboy for $30 a week at "New York World Telegram" paper downtown - "He is staying with me, I come home from work 4:45 and we talk until one AM or later. I hardly get enough [?] sleep, can't think about work seriously, am all hung-up in a great psychic marriage with him for the month-" (letter to Neal Cassady, September 4, 1953). Bill arrived from South America in August, met Corso first time, Kerouac visited writing _Doctor Sax_, Allen Ansen dropped by - Bill went crosstown to score for Dolophine in the village, then left in December for first stay in Tanger, I hitched to Palm Beach to visit his parents X-mas, then went on to Cuba, Mexico, & Bay Area California to dwell awhile with Cassady family: Here striped wallpaper, $29 a month three room small apartment 206 East 7th St. # 16, Lower East Side Manhattan, Fall 1953.; on verso, by unknown hand, across lower center in graphite: GD-AG-58; upper right corner: V 1; lower right corner: BK.1A #21/184 NY Fall/53 GDC-857

Provenance

Allen Ginsberg Estate; Ellen and Gary Davis, Greenwich, CT (through Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York); gift to NGA, 2008.

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