Dick Higgins, poet and publisher

unknown photographer 1970s

Dick Higgins had tremendous creative vitality. He was alive with ideas. Besides being an artist and publisher, Higgins was an arouser, an organizer, a proselytizer. He lit fires for Fluxus.

A YouTube Dick Higgins interview by Norrested & Thomsen in Copenhagen - Higgins discusses the differences and similarities between the dada and fluxus movements

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9feLztCuQ18

another YouTube video interview - Higgins shows Something Else Press Books and tells anecdotes about production and about authors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKAhRlsbawc&NR=1

A bitter lamentation by someone who calls himself Allen Bukoff, PhD, Social Psychologist and Fluxus Artist. It's addressed to some high profile artists and admonishes them for letting the movement slip away. He peevishly announces that he is shutting down a number of sites that I, for one, would have liked to look at.

http://www.fluxus.org/higgins/

A Child's History of Fluxus by Dick Higgins - odd but interesting

http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/dhiggins-childshistory.html

Dick Higgins explains and discusses pre-fluxus metadramas - link also includes many.

http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lhiggins.htm

Jan Herman

 

The Something Else Press sales catalogue is fascinating reading.  Double click to enlarge these pages by Jan Herman.

Buying Something Else

Something Else Press printed wonderful books and pamphlets. I just came across the press' last catalogue 1973/74. Jan Herman, sales manager, wrote descriptions of each book. What great descriptions! I wanted to read every single book.
Chris Stephens often ordered books from Something Else Press. One day in 1974 he telephoned to place an order. Jan Herman answered the phone. He sounded down. "Sorry. Can't. We're broke," he told Chris. "We're out of business. Closed down."
Chris was appalled. "But where are the books?" he asked.
"Lawyer has them. Has all our papers. You might be able to get something from the lawyer I suppose. I don't know how he's handling it."
Herman gave Stephens the lawyer's number. Chris called. The lawyer wasn't filling individual orders but he asked if Chris wanted to buy everything. Chris did. The lawyer sent lists of books stored in Vermont and in NYC. They negotiated a price for the entire inventory and papers. The lawyer said Chris would have to send a truck for them but that he'd arrange workers to load the boxes onto the truck.
Chris was very pleased about the books but not about getting them. For one thing, he had a weekly poker game at our apartment, which he hated to cancel. For another Chris didn't relish a lengthy road trip.
I did. I love road trips. I rented a truck and packed the kids into the back of the cab. I brought along my friend from Marvin Cohen's creative writing class, Bruce Hovenstot. It was evening by the time we were finally ready to roll. The poker players had already arrived. I drove out into the night. Bruce quietly criticized my driving the whole way to Vermont.
We were waiting outside a Vermont barn at the appointed hour next morning. The lawyer came with some workers. We didn't get to meet any of those notable authors and poets and artists in person, but we did get to pack thousands of boxes of their work into the U-Haul truck.
I drove back. We unloaded at our loft on 38th Street. Those books took up a lot of room but we had a lot of room. We had the whole top floor, 17th, and around that time we took the 16th too. Chris picked up more Something Else Press books from the NYC distributor. For months we looked through those boxes.
Business files were there too. Chris could see that production costs on some titles exceeded wholesale price. No wonder they were broke.
Chris Stephens himself, and Frank Scioscia too, have often flipped conventional business wisdom. The riverrun proprietors routinely bought high and sold low. But the difference is that those lines rarely crossed.
Something Else Press was publishing remarkable material. It pumped creative energy into our society. Their bankrupcy leaves us all slightly bankrupt. It was a very fine press - a very fine project.

Richard Kostelanetz

We had an exhibition of Richard Kostelanetz' work. Chris Stephens had purchased the stock from Something Else Press. The Kostelanetz books in the inventory brought Stephens and Kostelanetz together. "You should have an exhibition of my work," Richard told Chris.

Chris was happy to agree. We had an interesting book space in the garment district. It was huge - the whole 17th floor. We hung Kostelanetz' work from the ceiling down into the loft. Clever work it was. Kostelanetz combined sophisticated word play with bold graphics.

Richard supplied a list of addressees to receive an announcement of the show. He organized the guest list for the opening night party.

People came from around the world to that party. There were 250 guests. It was the biggest and best autor party we ever had. The guests were literary celebrities. They came because of Kostelantetz. And they came to such an unlikely place: Christopher P. Stephens, Bookseller, Inc - 17th floor, 325 West 38th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues. No one minded the incongruity of location.

Kostelanetz had too much energy to just bask in the attention. He moved from group to group; his conversation moved from language to language. He brought guests around to show them his work and introduce them to one another. The talk was all avant garde books and art and happenings.

For months afterwards we received regrets from people not able to break away from (movie, deadline, interview, mountain climbing, high level political meeting) committments to come to the party. We'd been intrigued by his work from the beginning, but until this party we hadn't realized the extent to which Richard Kostelanetz is a star.

Kostalanetz' website: Richard Kostelanetz

Something Else Press

Something Else Press (1963 - 1974) was a strong publishing voice of experimental writing. The list includes major concrete poets and fluxus artists. Dick Higgins ran the press. His wife, Alison Knowles, indirectly helped him name it. When he offered her suggestions for the name of the press, she said, "No. No. Not that either. Name it something else." So he did.
All of the people involved with the press were creative artists. None was a business major. Higgins kept the press afloat with his own personal money but eventually the Something Else Press had to close down operations.
The press left an indelible mark on the experimental literay scene.

a wikipedia entry lists publications