{"id":1897,"date":"2010-09-09T21:56:04","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T04:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2010\/09\/william_burroughs_long_neglect\/"},"modified":"2010-09-09T21:56:04","modified_gmt":"2010-09-10T04:56:04","slug":"william_burroughs_long_neglect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2010\/09\/william_burroughs_long_neglect.html","title":{"rendered":"William Burroughs&#8217; long-neglected graphic novel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Big score for Seattle&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fantagraphics.com\/\">Fantagraphics<\/a>: Next summer it will publish <i>Ah Pook Is Her<\/i>e, a graphic novel from the 1970s by Burroughs and artist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.malcolmmcneillart.com\/\">Malcolm McNeill<\/a>. Begun as a comic strip titled <i>The Unspeakable Mr. Hartt<\/i> in the London magazine <i>Cyclops<\/i>, Burroughs and MacNeil extended it into a novel of 120 pages that folds out into a single scroll painting with text inserted.<\/p>\n<p>No takers from the publishing world. (In the 1970s, the term &#8220;graphic novel&#8221; was not yet in use to signify a word\/image combo, and the project was considered uncommercially weird.) After seven years of effort, Burroughs and McNeill gave up on it.<\/p>\n<p>Burroughs was 56 when they met, McNeill 23. <\/p>\n<p>McNeill: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nIn the first meeting he&#8217;d introduced me to the Reactive Mind, Reichs&#8217;<br \/>\nOrgone theories, Randolph Hearst, &#8220;Nigger Killing&#8221; sheriffs, Mugwumps,<br \/>\nthe CIA, the Algebra of Need and a whole lot of other stuff I knew next<br \/>\nto nothing about. I knew right away I was in at the deep-end, but of<br \/>\nwhat, I had no idea. In time I realized I&#8217;d even got that wrong. &#8216;Deep&#8217;<br \/>\nin conventional space\/time orientation implies that there&#8217;s some kind of<br \/>\nbottom. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.vlib.us\/beats\/malcolmmcneill.html\">more<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Below, from <i>Ah Pook<\/i>, a &#8220;tornado of vigilantes sweeps up from the bible belt.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"malcolmmcneillpook.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/malcolmmcneillpook.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0pt auto 20px;\" height=\"146\" width=\"505\" \/>Jan Hermann on the influence of <i>The Unspeakable Mr. Hartt<\/i> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2009\/03\/taking_a_cue_from_hart_and_poo.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Big score for Seattle&#8217;s Fantagraphics: Next summer it will publish Ah Pook Is Here, a graphic novel from the 1970s by Burroughs and artist Malcolm McNeill. Begun as a comic strip titled The Unspeakable Mr. Hartt in the London magazine Cyclops, Burroughs and MacNeil extended it into a novel of 120 pages that folds out [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}