Berkeley Barb, Volume 17, Number 14, April 6-12, 1973

Part one of four installments of "Your Own Heart Is Your Guru" an interview of Allen Ginsberg by Gay Sunshine Press editor Winston Smith, pp. 19-21, in which Burroughs is mentioned. On the cover: “Life and Gay Times with Kerouac, Cassady, & Burroughs”.

"... I was interested in Rimbaud and Whitman, and I had met Burroughs by then. I was getting teaching from Burroughs that included Blake and Spengler (The Decline of the West); and semanticism was important, separating words from the objects they represent, not getting confused by labels, like gay or queer, in those days."

"If you consider sex from a Hindu, Buddhist, Hare Krishna, even Christian fundamentalist viewpoint – a warning about the body and a warning about attachment itself – it becomes interesting. Burroughs has actually written about it at length in a way hip people and even radicals have found very interesting: the sex 'habit' – sex as another form of junk, a commodity, the consumption of which is encouraged by the state to keep people enslaved to their bodies. As long as they're enslaved to their bodies, they can be filled with fear and shock and pain and threat, so they can be kept in place. The road of that, he said, leads to the great palace of green goo, the garden of green goo..."

Published in Berkeley, CA. by The Berkeley Barb in April, 1973.

This copy acquired from Bolerium Books (San Francisco, CA.).

Bibliographic Information:

• Not in M&M
• Not in Shoaf
• Not in Schottlaender (v4)
• Raven 19730406BBAR.17.14

Selected Contents:

• John Hurley: "Nation Behind Oglala"
• Ken Kelley and Kathie Streem: interview with Sacheen Littlefeather, "My Heart Spoke"
• Robert Fierce: photograph of Timothy Leary in a police car
• Dave Haldane: "CMI Split: Both Sides Air Views"
• Sam Silver: "High Court Frees Freep"
• Dancing Bear: "Rennie's [Davis] Rap: How He Found God"
• Peter Prick: "Peoples Prick Gets Stiffed in Park"
• Kate Coleman: "Where Angels Fear to Tread"
• Paul Krassner: "Rumpleforeskin"
• "Gays Back Bobby [Seale]"
• Steve Wise: "Big Mama Thornton"
• Winston Leyland: interview with Allen Ginsberg, "Your Own Heart Is Your Guru"

Publishing Information:

• Editor and Publisher: Max Scherr
• Managing Editor: Ken Kelley