Irving Rosenthal (b. 1930) edited the issues of the Chicago Review in 1958 that featured the writings of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others -- issues that led to Chicago University suppressing the magazine for the unsuitability of its content. Rosenthal left the Chicago Review with most of its other editors and founded the short-lived, but very influential, literary magazine Big Table. Again because of its controversial content (several chapters of Naked Lunch by Burroughs, and a piece by Kerouac), the first issue of Big Table was seized by the Post Office. Subsequently a federal judge deemed it to be serious literature, rather than obscenity. In the Sixties, Rosenthal lived in Morocco and, later, New York City. His novel Sheeper, excerpted here by permission of the author, was published by Grove Press in 1967. Writer and Stanford University professor Gilbert Sorrentino calls Sheeper "perhaps the most elegant single work to emerge from [the Beat] era." Some people think that Bill Heine was the inspiration for Rosenthal's feared, admired, vividly drawn and most disreputable character "Bill India" in Sheeper. Click here to read about "Bill India" -- and don't forget... Sheeper is a novel... and it was all a long, long time ago...

Click to purchase a copy of Sheeper from Abebooks.com or Amazon. Sheeper is currently out of print in English, but used copies are generally available. Francophones, collectors, and others can order an in-print copy of Sheeper in French translation by clicking here for French Amazon.com.

Herbert Huncke (1915 - 1996) was a central figure in the Beat literary movement. Friend and inspiration to Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac, he represented for them the real deal, the life of the city streets. As Burroughs wrote, "Huncke had adventures and misadventures that were not available to middle-class... college people like Kerouac and me." Huncke himself was from a well-off Chicago background, but had abandoned his roots by the time he encountered Burroughs et al. in the Fifties. Author of Guilty of Everything and The Evening Sun Turned Crimson, among other works, Huncke wrote extensively about his friend, roommate, nemesis, fellow traveler -- you name it -- Bill Heine. Click to read selections from Huncke's writings about his encounters with Bill in the Sixties in downtown New York, taken with permission from the literary estate of Herbert Huncke from The Herbert Huncke Reader (William Morrow and Co., 1997):

• An anecdotal selection from Guilty of Everything
• An impressionistic selection from Huncke's Journal

Click to purchase a copy of the Huncke Reader from Abebooks.com or Amazon. Unfortunately the Huncke Reader is currently out of print, but used copies are generally available.

The magician speaks! Unavailable anywhere else, here are selected memoirs of Bill Heine. Included: The Summoning of the Leopard Demon; A Memory of the Poet Bob Kaufman; more will be added as they become available.

AU REVOIR and REST IN PEACE -- Bill's great friend, the poet, mystic, and Judaic scholar Lionel Ziprin, passed away on March 15, 2009, at the age of 84. Bill and Lionel had been friends since the Sixties; in recent years, the two had kept in touch by writing postcards to each other almost every day.

In addition to his literary and philosophical achievements, the charming Lionel was a great wit and raconteur. He will be sorely missed.

Click here to read Lionel Ziprin's extensive obituary in the New York Times.