2010 The Updated Version of History
Amsterdam: A Brief History of Ins & Outs Press by EDDIE WOODS I When Eddie Woods & Jane Harvey left London in March 1978, heading initially for Amsterdam, what they had in mind was to once again go traveling, first around parts of Europe they had not yet sufficiently explored, then--depending on how 'things' turned out--possibly back to India or even (again) to lands beyond. Amsterdam was a logical jumping-off point: Not only did Eddie want to finally see the fabled 'Kathmandu of the West'; he had also been asked by Max Handley, at that time chief editor of International Times (IT), to call upon Dutch writer Simon Vinkenoog, in hopes of getting an in-depth article from him on the Operation Julie LSD case, a lengthy police surveillance undertaking that culminated in an astonishing trial and long prison sentences--up to 13 years--for most of the defendants. (Vinkenoog was also a well-known expert on psychedelic substances and a personal friend of David Solomon, an American writer who was among those charged and convicted. Eddie, moreover, had worked on IT with David's youngest daughter, Lin.). Once in Amsterdam, Eddie took the opportunity to look up several other people, among them William Levy, a fellow expatriate American with whose literary work (The Virgin Sperm Dancer, Wet Dreams, etc.) Eddie was long familiar. He had Levy's telephone number from the English poet & playwright Heathcote Williams. (Along with Vinkenoog, (1) but to an even greater extent, Levy would become a pivotal figure in the development of Ins & Outs magazine. He and Eddie soon became close friends.) As well as trotting about the city "interviewing people" (as Jane humorously put it), Eddie sat in their room in the Hotel Arrivé knocking off poems & stories on the manual typewriter he had borrowed from Simon. Jane, meanwhile, kept track of their finances (they were rapidly going broke) and checked out other Amsterdam attractions. She soon came upon, and more than once, an interesting 'Wanted' poster. Some unnamed person was looking for people to write for a new magazine. She went along to the address given, listened in, then came back and told Eddie. Eddie wasn't interested, but (after much urging) he went to a meeting anyway. Salah Harharah was a Singapore-born Yemeni who ran a travel agency, Interjet. And it was he who wanted to start a magazine, for which he already had a name: Ins & Outs. But (apart from two staff members who in three months' time had accomplished nothing) a name was all he had. The model was obviously London's Time Out; what Salah had in mind, therefore, was an events periodical that would primarily cater both to Amsterdam's international community and its burgeoning tourist trade. He explained to Eddie that even though many other Amsterdam travel agents were 'sort of backing' the project, he couldn't actually pay either writers or editorial staff. "What I need," Salah said, "are people who are willing to work for the love of it." To which Eddie replied: "If I am going to work for love, then I've got to love what I'm doing. You don't want me." But Salah did want Eddie. In fact, he wanted Eddie to edit his magazine, as he made abundantly clear in several visits to the Arrivé. Eddie clarified his position. He had nothing against an events magazine, it simply wasn't the sort of thing he cared to do just then. On the other hand, and for a reasonable fee, he would be willing to set up such a publication, run it for about a year, and then find someone else to take over as editor. Salah insisted he could not pay, even as Jane reminded Eddie that their options were now severely limited: they had enough money left to pay for exactly one more night at the hotel. The following morning the couple moved to the spacious office-cum-living quarters behind Salah's travel agency. Very soon afterwards Ins & Outs magazine was in the process of being born. But, as Salah would eventually come to realize, it was precisely the kind of magazine that Eddie loved. (2) Quite suddenly, interesting people started showing up from everywhere. Mel Clay, formerly of The Living Theater (and now a confirmed & obviously talented writer), contributed a 'punk opera' to the first issue--which was on the newsstands and in the mail to dozens of people abroad by June 1st. As did Ira Cohen, whom Eddie & Jane had first met in Kathmandu in 1976. (Indeed, this issue of Ins & Outs would later be sent by Henry Miller to Irving Stettner in New York, suggesting that Ira's "Kathmandu Dream Piece" be reprinted in Stettner's own magazine, Stroker.) There was the science-fiction writer Rachel Pollack and the photographer/painter Marc Morrel, also Americans. Simon Vinkenoog jumped in with an Amsterdam column, while Dutch writers Hans Plomp and Steef Davidson were busy preparing manuscripts (all in English) for future numbers. Bill Levy, then on holiday in France (and from which he sent a poetic letter that appeared in the second issue), was watching carefully and getting ready to leap in. (3) In part to maintain the pretense (for Salah's benefit) of Ins & Outs being an events publication, Eddie decided to lead with a piece on Amsterdam's famed Festival of Fools, which would be taking place at various indoor venues, as well as on the streets, for nearly three weeks in June. The pretense evaporated, however, when the cover story ("Fools Rush In," by Woodstock Jones)) was instead a quasi-magical account of the making of Jacques Katmor's cult film The Fool. (4) Events listings (particularly the kind that never really date) would always be a part of Ins & Outs, but right from the start it was a given that this was an entirely different sort of magazine than what Salah was hoping for. Daily activities at the magazine's office further highlighted the difference. There was the editorial activity, which was always intense; and there was the 'scene.' The office flat behind the travel agency became a focal point for artists & writers who knew what was happening there, as well as for many others who were curious enough to walk in and find out. And there might well be something happening at any time of day or night. Debates raged, events were planned. Occasionally, often to relieve the pressure, there were live (usually solo) musical performances. Now & then people 'camped out' there, including Ira Cohen for awhile. Before long Eddie & Jane abandoned the bedroom and starting sleeping on the floor in front of their desks. The telephone rang constantly. Mail started to pour in from at least half a dozen countries; among the batches were more good stories & poems than could ever be published. Kudos arrived from all quarters. Cherry Valley's Charles Plymell called Ins & Outs "the only exciting mag going in underground literary tradition." While Irving Stettner wrote that it had "more verve than all the American mags combined." After seeing the first issue, Allen Ginsberg sent the draft manuscript of what he considered his most major work since "Kaddish," namely "Plutonian Ode." The poem's first-ever publication was in the third issue of Ins & Outs. (5) Despite all the acclaim for this vigorously new 'international literary & features periodical,' even by the time the second issue was in preparation, Salah Harharah was already nearing his wits' end over developments. It soon became clear that he was also withdrawing all but the most basic support for the project. As for his so-called backers, they'd opted out at the start. Although they had grudgingly accepted an invitation to attend the coming-out party heralding the publication of issue no. 1, within the first hour they walked out en masse and held a 'protest meeting' on the street. (6) Nor were the magazine's financial prospects made any better by Eddie having thrown out a full-page back cover advert (along with a 12-issue contract) from Avis Rent-A-Car, because he didn't like the looks of it, replacing it with an aesthetically more pleasing non- paying ad for Satino toilet tissue. If Eddie himself found the second issue somewhat subdued (even while many others reckoned that Ins & Outs had really 'hit its stride' with that number), there was no doubt in anyone's mind that issue no. 3 was bound to be a blockbuster. The only trouble was, Eddie was refusing to do it. In Salah's eyes the office had become a madhouse, a surrealistic nightmare space into which he hardly ever ventured. He continued to provide food, lodging & a minimal amount of spending money for Eddie & Jane. When office supplies were needed, he came up with the cash. Somehow, before becoming totally disenchanted, he'd even managed to pay the two young art directors, who had signed on at the very beginning for a set fee. And when pressed for an answer, he always insisted that he was still one hundred percent behind Ins & Outs. In actual fact he was very much behind: the printers, it turned out, still hadn't been paid a penny for either of the first two issues. There was also a sizable arrears with one of the two typesetters. This was not good. Eddie started pushing Salah hard to pay up. Salah's stock reply was "No problem." But there was a problem. Although the printers were willing to wait "awhile longer" on the amount already owing, they refused to do any work whatever on the next issue unless they were paid for it--in cash, in full, and in advance. Salah refused, insisting his credit was good. He even suggested finding another printer. For Eddie that was the final straw. The issue was half edited. Some preliminary layout work had been done, but Eddie told the art directors to stop. He then announced to all & sundry that there would be no third issue. He was quitting. Salah protested, though not much. But serious objections did come, and from a rather surprising neck of the woods. A few local businessmen, among them a British import-export merchant, as well as the Israeli owners of the vegetarian restaurant Mushroom 22, had taken a special liking to Ins & Outs and didn't want to see it fold. Dealing directly with Eddie, they offered to collectively finance the third issue. Eddie accepted, on the condition that they merely put up the money and then backed off. They would have no say whatever on the contents of the magazine. The new patrons agreed. Ins & Outs was once more 'in business.' And, from very shortly after issue no. 3 rolled off the presses, in another kind of deep trouble. Or so it seemed for the first few days. Amsterdam had long been recognized as a free-press haven. Prior to the American War of Independence, John Adams went there to publish tracts which couldn't see the light of day in the Colonies. (Ironically, Adams even lived for a time only a few doors up from the eventual Ins & Outs Press offices.) Over the next two centuries any number of foreign-language books and magazines were produced there and in other Dutch cities, simply because there were no other places where they could even be printed. As William Levy pointed out in his short essay "The Limits of Freedom," (7) such publications ranged from the 18th-century Leyden Gazette (a French-language journal of radical political commentary) to Suck magazine in the 1970s. But while both explicit sex and politics fell easily within the compass of Dutch intellectual tolerance, combining the two--especially when the Crown was also involved-- could prove problematic. One group that had recently started testing those limits was the Amsterdam Palette Union, a small consortium of (mostly well-known) Dutch painters, more or less headed by Aat Veldhoen. The Palette Union's forte was raw visual satire, mainly in the form of pornographic caricatures. Typical of these black & white drawings was one depicting then-Queen Juliana being sexually penetrated by the NATO bear while her husband, Prince Bernard, smiles in the foreground and American missiles loom overhead. Police response to the public dissemination of this work, usually in the form of mass-produced posters and handbills, was to first confiscate it, then later on return it--before charges had to be pressed and the case come to court, a case which the prosecution might well lose. But when, in the summer of 1978, the authorities moved forcefully against a very public exhibition (across from a police station!) of several large oil canvases created jointly by all the Palette Union's members, Aat Veldhoen was introduced to Eddie, with an eye toward an eventual magazine article, one which would also present some of the group's work. For while the media had always covered both the confiscations and the occasional (but very short-lived) arrests, no newspaper, magazine or television station dared to show even a single painting or drawing. Nor had any of the work ever been seen outside of the Netherlands. Issue no. 3 of Ins & Outs changed all that. (8) Before the issue even hit the bookshops and newsstands, let alone got sent abroad, Eddie was busted (mostly due to a police misunderstanding), spent 12 hours in solitary confinement, and found himself on the verge of being charged with lèse majesty. (Eddie wrote at amusing length about this bust, in a piece entitled "Contrary To Myth: The Ins & Outs of a Porn Bust in Holland.") Indeed, at least two national newspapers immediately carried the story, while the prestigious NRC Handelsblad made it the lead item on their front page (and also followed this with a very long editorial). But it was the School of Journalism in Utrecht that finally put paid to any notion the Ministry of Justice might have had to formally prosecute. Not only did their official journal interview Eddie; the editors also took the bold step of themselves publishing three of the Palette Union's strongest pornographic drawings. Furthermore, the police had managed to confiscate only one copy of the magazine, as the entire print run of 2500 had been carefully hidden within hours of Eddie's arrest. Issue no. 3 sold out very quickly. In Holland, mainly because of the Palette Union brouhaha, coupled with coverage of P78, the first of Benn Posset's eventually-legendary One World Poetry festivals. (9) Abroad (primarily Britain and the United States), in great part due to the presence of such literary heavyweights as Allen Ginsberg, Heathcote Williams with an abridged version of his latest play, The Immortalist, Ira Cohen, Bill Levy, once again Rachel Pollack, and others. But even as Ins & Outs magazine was truly making its mark, its first incarnation was also rapidly drawing to a close. Ins & Outs Press was still to be conceived. Yet before the birth-cum-rebirth, there would be a hiatus. II Salah Harharah had finally had it. He was a travel agent, not a magazine publisher. And Ins & Outs, though an international literary success, was neither putting money in his pocket nor furthering the aims of his primary business interests. Curiously enough, issue no. 3 had actually managed to pay for itself (at least on paper), and from advertising alone. But whatever revenue came in immediately went back out, mainly to cover Eddie & Jane's day-to day living expenses, buy office supplies, and pay a few pressing bills. The printers, however, still did not get paid, other than for the third issue. Salah's main move was to rent out the magazine's office space as a flat (to a paying tenant!) and move the magazine into an end corner of the travel agency, cordoned off by a clapboard wall. Although he'd effectively pulled out, and cut off all further funding, he was reluctant to tell people to leave. Especially Eddie & Jane, who had nowhere else to go. Publications work, of a sort, stumbled on for awhile. People showed up for daily meetings, ideas were kicked around, vague plans were made or at least discussed. Once the poetry festival ended, some of the poets who were still in town stopped by with books, and to chat, and also to make long-distance telephone calls--on Salah's bill! Eddie & Jane occasionally found places to crash, sometimes for several days, more often for only a night or two. Otherwise they slept on the floor in the minuscule office. The thrill and momentum of the first few months was clearly gone. Then, seemingly out of the blue, a national radio station (KRO, in Hilversum), commissioned Eddie and Hans Plomp to compile and narrate an hour-long documentary on P78. The program was aired in late October, and both presenters were handsomely remunerated. Now that Eddie & Jane had some cash in their pockets, it was decision time. If they stayed in Amsterdam, with no lodgings and no income, endlessly discussing publications projects that were bound to go nowhere, they would very soon be stone-broke. A few of the regular hangers-on had also managed to score some money (doing readings, from patrons, or with the odd dubious scam), but none were willing to part with a penny, not even for postage stamps. Eddie & Jane decided to split. (10) From Friday night till late Sunday afternoon (November 3rd-5th), the couple worked at carefully organizing and packing the magazine files. They wrote out a list of instructions (where things were, who to contact about what, etc.), and made another list of suggestions...both of which they left, along with a goodbye note, in the flat where they'd been staying, knowing it would be another two days before the girl whose place it was returned to find any of it. They wished everyone luck, but said nothing about where they might be heading. They themselves knew only their first stop. On November 5th they took the midnight bus to Paris. From Paris and a first encounter with George Whitman and his somewhat eccentric version of the famous Shakespeare & Co. bookshop, (11) the two made their way down to the Côte d' Azur and Marseille, and ended up--their funds now depleted--in Barcelona. It was an interesting if difficult winter. Eddie passed long hours in cafés writing, Jane got a job teaching English, both of them sold their small hordes of foreign coins & banknotes at the Sunday market on the Plaza Real, along with the few pop badges (or buttons) they had stuffed in their shoulder bags for just such an emergency. (12) They also hung out with Harold Norse (and his then-lover David Wentworth), who had gone to Barcelona from Amsterdam and was staying in a Plaza Real hotel, still writing his memoirs while working on a new set of poems ("Life & Death in the Plaza Real"). (13) Sometime in January (1979), tiring of a financial situation that continued to veer along a very precipitous edge, Eddie phoned his Israeli restaurateur friends in Amsterdam to see if they could help out. They proffered some advice and wired money. The advice concerned certain business possibilities that awaited were Eddie to return to Amsterdam. The money enabled the pair to breathe more easily, eat heartier meals, and included enough for the return bus fare. By this time rent was no longer a problem, as a young Spanish couple (friends of friends in Amsterdam) had provided them with a spare room in their small but comfortable flat, at no charge. Eddie & Jane mulled over their very few options and made a choice. Jane would stay in Barcelona awhile longer and continue teaching English, Eddie would go back to Holland. He made the 24-hour journey on February 8th. The following three months set the tone for things to come. Eddie plunged into giving readings almost from the moment he arrived back in Amsterdam. (14) He arranged for a series of places to stay, while seeing which way the wind would blow. And, in conjunction with friends, he began organizing various business ventures. (15) He soon realized, as well, that editing and publishing had become very dear to him. As had Ins & Outs. For one thing, everywhere he went (or so it seemed), someone was handing him a manuscript. While very many more, along with photographs, drawings and other artworks--sent from all over the world by writers & visual artists who wanted to appear in Ins & Outs--had piled up at the former magazine office (which is to say, at Interjet Travel Agency) on the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, in times only recently gone by Amsterdam's Fleet Street. And these, along with the main magazine files, were now stored on somebody's houseboat, as Salah Harharah had also left town on a new venture of his own. Eddie immediately secured a post office box, for himself and for 'Ins & Outs Press.' And just as immediately arranged that all mail addressed to himself or the magazine at N.Z. Voorburgwal 123 be indefinitely forwarded to the p.o. box, rather than for the usual three months. (The arrangement exists to this day, and every now & then a letter or packet still arrives via that route.) The files took a little longer to get hold of, due to the instructions Salah had given the houseboat owner. Until one day in March or April a letter arrived from Salah, postmarked Malaysia, saying that if Eddie should ever reappear, the files were his for the asking. Meanwhile, over the winter (and of course unbeknownst to Eddie till after his return), the American poet Ronald Sauer, mainly with the assistance of Ira Cohen, using both manuscripts from the files and newly-solicited material, had edited a poetry anthology to be issued with an Ins & Outs (magazine) imprint. Titled Crippled Warlords, it was dedicated to Eddie Woods & Jane Harvey, and included the "Eddie Woods Memorial Poem" (16) --which had many readers, most notably Janine Pommy Vega, believing that Eddie had passed away. And yet Eddie had also contributed a poem ("At Fascist Hands," in a handwritten version) only one day before the issue went to press. Jane, who had made one previous trip up, returned from Barcelona in early April, by which time Eddie was back into the full swing of Amsterdam literary life. He had recently written, by special commission, a long prose poem about the momentous final night of P78. (17) He was doing readings and other performances. He was renewing old contacts and establishing others. Having taken over the distribution, in Holland and abroad, of Crippled Warlords, he was also following up on the remaining sales and accounts receivable of the first three issue of Ins & Outs magazine. And he continued to collect manuscripts for an eventual fourth number. There was even talk of opening a bookshop. But Jane had serious misgivings about staying in Amsterdam, mainly because she'd already seen too many relationships go on the rocks there. Although very laid back in certain respects, it was also a city of abrupt personal changes. Putting matters into the hands of the gods, so to speak (and counting, in part, on Amsterdam's severe shortage of low-rent housing), she told Eddie-- midway through April--that unless they'd found affordable accommodations within two weeks, she was moving on and he could decide whether to accompany her. On the last day of the month, a casual acquaintance called to Eddie on the street and asked if he'd like to take over his garret walk-up in the heart of the red-light district. Eddie said he certainly would. He and Jane moved in the following afternoon. (18) The magazine files were soon transferred, unpacked and neatly arranged, giving part of the small flat the air of an office. Concurrent with making plans for some sort of Ins & Outs revival, Eddie took on the job of putting together a regular Amsterdam section for London's International Times, now being edited by Chris Sanders. Compensation for this work came in the form of a quantity of free copies of the newspaper, which Eddie & Jane could then sell in the Netherlands. Around this time, Eddie was asked to present, at the Milky Way multimedia center, a Soyo Productions performance evening built around William Burroughs...a packed-house event that included the Dutch rock star Herman Brood reciting poems to the foot-tapping accompaniment of a small band of local Hell's Angels. While the evening proved a smashing success, and gave Eddie and William an initial opportunity to really get to know one another, (19) it also provided the occasion for the first real crack to develop in Eddie and Benn Posset's professional as well as personal relationship. What specifically occurred is almost too picayune to warrant repeating here. It involved a somewhat public dispute over whether to call an intermission halfway through, but at its heart lay a one-sided power struggle that seemed determined to grow. Ever since P78, Benn had been progressively setting out to establish an umbrella organization for poetry events in Amsterdam. What Eddie now realized was that Soyo Productions/One World Poetry was equally intent on becoming a monopoly. Further confrontations ensued, the bitterest of which saw Benn usurp two prearranged Milky Way evenings, practically at the last minute, from Ronald Sauer, and Eddie eventually staging those events himself on different dates in the name of Other World Poetry. (20) Apart from very occasional readings in small cafés scattered about the city, these were the last independent poetry events (i.e., not under the auspices of Soyo Productions) to be put on in Amsterdam for several years. Eddie's predictions were coming true, even as he was penning his infamous Other World Poetry Newsletter. Infamous? Eddie has always insisted that he wrote the newsletter (again using the pseudonym Woodstock Jones) in hopes of initiating a dialogue with Benn. "I was trying to talk to him, he wasn't listening, so I had to speak louder," he said. Instead, its publication--in the summer of 1979, only weeks before P79 was set to begin--instantly caused a rift of mammoth proportions. This, even though Eddie phoned Benn the night before the newsletter went to press, to tell him what was about to occur and why. Benn's response was, that no matter what the newsletter pertained to or said, it didn't seem like a good idea. It was a very long time before Benn viewed the matter in anything but a totally negative light. [Eddie has now written an essay on the politics of poetry that puts his turbulent relationship with Benn Posset in clear and proper perspective. As regards that relationship, one immediate consequence of the newsletter's publication was that Benn did not speak to Eddie for two years--until the ever- canny Brion Gysin successfully contrived to put the two on speaking terms again. What is more, Eddie was blackballed from directly participating in any paying poetry events, in & around Amsterdam, for a considerable spell. Indeed, although he and Benn frequently did business together, and even though Benn later on secured many sizable sponsorship donations from Eddie, it was not until 1993--the year before Benn's death--that Eddie was once again invited, by Benn himself (rather than via the 'back door' and not get paid for it), to perform for Soyo Productions. Nonetheless, Eddie wrote and delivered the eulogy at Benn's funeral.] Hundreds of copies of the newsletter--which was at once an insider's history of P78 and an impassioned critique of One World Poetry--were straightaway sent to poets, periodicals and libraries the world over. Poets arriving for P79 came to the Milky Way clutching copies they'd brought with them and asking whoever might have an answer just what was going on. Others wrote back, or telephoned, and gave their own views. One letter, from Brion Gysin, all but giggled with delight. Eddie attended the festival, on the strength of a press pass. But when Benn let it be known that he wanted to personally vet any article Eddie might write, Gregory Corso used Eddie's retort ("That's censorship!") as an excuse for mischievously spreading the rumor that Eddie had called Benn 'a fascist.' And this very nearly got Eddie punched out by another poet. Still, it was a great festival, as were all those that followed. For Benn Posset, whatever his faults, certainly knew how to organize. Other World Poetry Newsletter, written and laid out in the small flat on the Oudezijds Achterburgwal, was the first publication to carry the imprint of Ins & Outs Press. And who printed it? Mekka: precisely the same two enthusiastic Dutch fellows who had printed the first three issues of Ins & Outs magazine, and who would eventually print all of Ins & Outs Press' offset productions. But no, they were never paid for the first two numbers. As they saw it, that was Salah's debt; when Eddie offered an arrangement to pay the entire arrears in installments, they said it had already been written off against their taxes. But they never again allowed the name Mekka (the Dutch spelling of Mecca) to be officially associated with Ins & Outs. (21) One of the acquaintances that Eddie had renewed after returning from Barcelona was with Henk van der Does, who was still working as a shop assistant at the Real Free Press, for very many years not only Holland's, but possibly all of Western Europe's, premier comic book emporium. Henk had studied the intricacies of the book trade at university and desperately wanted to start his own bookshop. He had some money put aside, as well, and quickly agreed to invest a portion of it in Eddie's budding business ventures. Henk also apprised both Eddie & Jane of the benefits of having a registered foundation (a peculiarly common practice in the Netherlands for all sorts of enterprises, but especially cultural endeavors), and expressed his willingness to become a member. And he outlined his ideas for a bookshop, explaining how it could go hand in hand with a small literary press (yes, à la San Francisco's City Lights). Eddie & Jane agreed, a notary was consulted, and the search for a suitable shop premises got underway. After rejecting a couple of possible locations, Eddie & Jane saw, while on an afternoon stroll, that an attractive storefront which had housed an Indian boutique was now empty and for rent. It appeared to have an office space directly above; and better yet, it was just down the canal road from their flat, i.e. 'on the quiet fringe of the red-light district.' The building itself (typically narrow, with five and a half stories) was one of Amsterdam's oldest, was next door to an equally old church, and more than two centuries |