The Soft Machine & The Subterraneans
Burroughs, William S. The Soft Machine. Grove Press, 1967 (1st Black Cat Ed., 4th Printing). Softbound.
Kerouac, Jack. The Subterraneans. Grove Press, 1981 (1st Revised Black Cat Ed., 3rd Printing). Softbound. Intro by Gerald Nicosia. Cover design by Roy Colmer.
Two Grove Press mass-market paperbacks by Beat icons, both featuring covers with high-contrast manipulations of equally iconic photos: a portrait of Burroughs by Left Bank alumnus Charles Henri Ford (who despite his characterization by Louis Kronenberger as a chronicler of 'more or less professional young homosexuals', had an affair with Djuna Barnes and typed her newly completed novel, Nightwood, in Tangiers in 1932) and a Bohemian coffee-house scene snapped by documentarian Burt Glinn (whose beat ranged from Warhol's Factory to Khruschchev's unprecedented visit to the US to the chaotic events of the Cuban revolution).
