NOW Magazine No. 2 (NOW NOW) Charles Plymell Burroughs Ginsberg Wallace Berman

Description

NOW is one of the core underground literary/art magazines of the mid-1960s—edited by Charles Plymell and printed in San Francisco at the height of the Beat-to-underground transition. Issue no. 2 (NOW NOW) functions less like a periodical and more like a snapshot of a scene still inventing itself: raw, argumentative, anti-institutional, and fiercely alive. (A third in the series — Now Now Now — was the third and final in the run.)

NOW NOW is noted in the mimeo revolution for its use of color and artwork. This issue includes work and appearances by a who’s-who of post-Beat American counterculture: Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs (as William Lee), Wallace Berman, Philip Whalen, Lew Welch, Bob Kaufman, Neal Cassady, and others. The Wallace Berman imagery alone places this firmly in the Semina-adjacent visual lineage, while the editorial statements by Plymell articulate the magazine’s mission as documentation, not polish. Condition-wise, this copy wears its history openly. That matters here. NOW was printed on low-grade paper, sold cheaply, folded, passed hand-to-hand, and often discarded. Clean copies are exceedingly rare; surviving copies very uncommon. I can find one currently online (and priced significantly higher.) Collectors also value completeness, authenticity, and survival—and this copy delivers all three.

A legitimately scarce piece of 1960s underground literature and art, priced for the collector who understands that NOW was never meant to be pristine—only real.