Six total fascicules, four issues (15, 25, 44, and 66 pp.) and two supplemental booklets (16 and 12 pp.), first two issues mimeographed. Various sizes, octavo and quarto. All original wrappers, three side-stapled, two stapled, one bound. Some light chipping and edgewear to wrappers of first two issues, no. 2 with cover coming loose from staples, some scattered toning, Supplement to Now with some water-staining and dust-staining, overall very good. New York: Neon, 1956-1960. "Supplement to Now" with hand-written dedication from Fielding Dawson on front flyleaf, reading "For Bob, Fee Dawson, 21 April 1959" A complete run in 4 issues plus the two supplements issued of the short-lived New York poetry and prose magazine edited by writer and critic Gilbert Sorrentino (1929-2006). In his opening note to the first issue of Neon, Sorrentino writes, "Anyone who tries to start and maintain a magazine in America is virtually doomed from the start...the material in the magazine will be compared by all the professional artlovers to things which they have seen in bigger and more renowned magazines; as if nothing ever started...NEON is going to try to be sort of a midwife to the writing of young men...writing which would have a hard time being published in the bigger magazines...I am printing it because I believe it presages better things."
And in an editorial prefacing the second issue, Sorrentino goes on, "Without magazines like NEON, the difficulty remains: no outlet for the avant-garde writer. The little magazine has fostered modern literature since before the First World War. It has been its strength and support and oftentimes its only outlet. While the little magazine exists, exists still with the purpose of publishing the new, the different, the radical, literature will exist come war or peace or assembly-line education."
Contributors to the issues and supplements includesWilliam Fleming, John Richardson, Sam Abrams, John Freiwald, Noel Stock, Sorrentino, Jose Martinez, Paul Goodman, David Galler, William Carlos Williams, Richard Appleton, John Haag, Alva Turner, Jeanne-Ruth Hammer, Hubert Selby Jr., Robert Stock, Curtis Zahn, Carl Larsen, Stuart Perkoff, James M. Singer Jr., Harland Ristau, James Boyer May, Seymour Gresser, Robert Vaughan, Eric Cashen, Emilie Glen, Lorine Niedecker, Joel Oppenheimer, Max Finstein, David Rafael Wang, Kenneth Beaudoin, Louis Zukofsky, K.P.A. Taylor, Mason Jordan Mason, Judson Crews, Ben Timms, Lewis Turco, George Moorse, Sid Shapiro, Cleon Marquis, E.W. Northnagel, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Fielding Dawson, Leroi Jones, Joshua Slocum, Joe Early, Tony Weinberger, Ron Loewinsohn, and Alfred Siegel. (Inventory #: 53313)
And in an editorial prefacing the second issue, Sorrentino goes on, "Without magazines like NEON, the difficulty remains: no outlet for the avant-garde writer. The little magazine has fostered modern literature since before the First World War. It has been its strength and support and oftentimes its only outlet. While the little magazine exists, exists still with the purpose of publishing the new, the different, the radical, literature will exist come war or peace or assembly-line education."
Contributors to the issues and supplements includesWilliam Fleming, John Richardson, Sam Abrams, John Freiwald, Noel Stock, Sorrentino, Jose Martinez, Paul Goodman, David Galler, William Carlos Williams, Richard Appleton, John Haag, Alva Turner, Jeanne-Ruth Hammer, Hubert Selby Jr., Robert Stock, Curtis Zahn, Carl Larsen, Stuart Perkoff, James M. Singer Jr., Harland Ristau, James Boyer May, Seymour Gresser, Robert Vaughan, Eric Cashen, Emilie Glen, Lorine Niedecker, Joel Oppenheimer, Max Finstein, David Rafael Wang, Kenneth Beaudoin, Louis Zukofsky, K.P.A. Taylor, Mason Jordan Mason, Judson Crews, Ben Timms, Lewis Turco, George Moorse, Sid Shapiro, Cleon Marquis, E.W. Northnagel, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Fielding Dawson, Leroi Jones, Joshua Slocum, Joe Early, Tony Weinberger, Ron Loewinsohn, and Alfred Siegel. (Inventory #: 53313)
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