Evergreen Review, Volume 5, Number 20, September-October 1961

Burroughs contributes “Comments on The Night Before Thinking”, pp. 31-36. This is in response to "The Night Before Thinking" by Ahmed Yacoubi, which precedes it. As noted in the introduction by Paul Bowles to the Yacoubi work, "[w]hen I showed the piece to William Burroughs, he was enthusiastic, and I suggested that he might want to furnish some comments. This he agreed to do."

Published in New York City by Evergreen Review/Grove Press in September, 1961.

This copy was acquired from The Book House in Dinkytown (Minneapolis, MN.).

Bibliographic Information:

• M&M C30
• Shoaf III.23
• Schottlaender v4.C23
• Raven 19610900EREV.5.20, b10

Selected Contents:

• Ahmed Yacoubi: "The Night Before Thinking" (prose)
• Paul Bowles: introduction to "The Night Before Thinking"
• William Burroughs: "Comments on The Night Before Thinking" (essay, prose)
• Michael McClure: "On Seeing through Shelley's Eyes the Medusa" (poetry)
• Brendan Behan: "The Big House" (script)
• Pete Brown: 
• "Sitting Reading Lorca" (poetry)
• "Waking" (poetry)
• Robert Creeley: "The Book" (prose)
• Aleksander Tesenin-Volpin: "The Raven" (poetry, translated by George Reavey)
• Janheinz Jahn: "On Their Own Feet" (prose, translated by Oliver Coburn)
• Vladimir Mayakovsky: 
• "And You Think You Could?" (poetry, translated by Victor Ehrlich and Jack Hirschman)
  
• "Once More on Petersburg"  (poetry, translated by Victor Ehrlich and Jack Hirschman)
• Al Sens: "The Poet's New Audience" (comic)
• René Daumal: "The Catechism" (prose, translated by Simon Watson Taylor)
• Vincente Huidobro: "She" (poetry, translated by Jerome Rothenberg)
• Octavio Paz: "The Dialectic of Solitude" (essay, translated by Lysander Kemp)
• Martin Williams: "A Purple Dog, a Flying Squirrel, and the Art of Television" (review)
• Fairfield Porter: "Poets and Painters in Collaboration" (combined review of Odes by Frank O'Hara, Permanently by Kenneth Koch, Salute by James Schuyler, and The Poems by John Ashbery)
• letters

Publishing Information: 

• Editor: Barney Rosset
• Managing Editor: Fred Jordan
• Associate Editors: Richard Seaver, Marilynn Meeker
• Contributing Editors: Walter Höllerer, Jerry Tallmer, Martin Williams
• Business: Beverly Reice
• Design: Richard Brodney
• Circulation: John Pizey