Ah Pook is Here
Encyclopedia
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
and artist Malcolm McNeill. It began in 1970, when Burroughs was living in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and McNeill was in his final year of art school. It first appeared under the title The Unspeakable Mr. Hart as a comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
in the English magazine Cyclops. When Cyclops ceased publication, Burroughs and McNeill decided to develop the concept as a book.
After a year of research and preliminary design the text of the book had expanded from 11 pages to 50, and a complete mockup had been produced. By this point, the work had been renamed Ah Puch Is Here in reference to the Maya
Maya civilization
The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...
n Death God. Straight Arrow Books
Straight Arrow Press
Straight Arrow Press is a publishing company that publishes the periodicals Us Weekly and Rolling Stone....
in San Francisco agreed to publish the proposed work in 1971 as a "Word/Image novel" which was to comprise 120 pages, some of integrated text and image, some of text alone and some which featured only pictures.
In 1973, McNeill moved to San Francisco from London to finish the project. However, the small advance
Advance payment
An advance payment, or simply an advance, is the part of a contractually due sum that is paid in advance for goods or services, while the balance included in the invoice will only follow the delivery. It is called a prepaid expense in accrual accounting.-See also:*Advance against royalties*Pay or...
proffered by the publisher made any more than a few months of working full-time on the project impossible, and when Straight Arrow closed in 1974 the book was without a publisher. Nevertheless, McNeill moved to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in 1975 to rejoin Burroughs and continue the work. They were unable to find another publisher and after seven years on and off, the project was finally abandoned. It was subsequently published in 1979 (by John Calder and Viking Penguinn) in text form only under the original title of Ah Pook Is Here
After 30 years the original visual works were resurrected and restored by McNeill for their West Coast showing at Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica, CA, April 4th to May 2nd, 2009 and a December 2008 showing in New York at Saloman Arts Gallery.
Burroughs reads from Ah Pook Is Here on his 1990 recording Dead City Radio
Dead City Radio (album)
Dead City Radio is a musical album by Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs, which was released by Island Records in 1990. It was dedicated to Keith Haring.The CD is a collection of readings by Burroughs set to a broad range of musical compositions...
; this recording, in turn, formed the soundtrack to the animated short Ah Pook Is Here directed by Philip Hunt.