Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan
Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan is a 1968 pamphlet by the English writer James Graham Ballard . It is written in the style of a scientific publication and reproduces a number of bizarre experiments which ostensibly attempt to measure the attractiveness of Ronald Reagan , which is caused by psychosexual disorders . Reagan was Governor of California at the time and was running for presidential nomination back in 1968. Ballard was inspired by the media appearances of Reagan.
The text, also characterized as an experimental postmodern short story, led to various controversies and legal consequences shortly after it was first published. Long before his presidency , it takes the well-known media aura of the Great Communicator to extremes with satirical and obscene means and despite its brevity is one of Ballard's most momentous publications.
Initial release
The first book publication of Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan in early 1968 was published by the Unicorn Bookshop in an edition of 250 copies. After a police action against the Unicorn bookstore on January 16, 1968, three copies of the brochure were among the material confiscated for obscenity. The publisher, bookseller and poet William Huxford Butler (1934–1977) was ruined by the subsequent trial (August 1968). The well-known underground newspaper International Times published the text in its number 26 from 16. – 29. February 1968.
It was only in the second half of the year that it appeared in Ronald Reagan: The Magazine of Poetry , published by the American New Wave authors John Sladek and Pamela Zoline , who also designed the cover.
The booklet also contained texts and a comic by J. Sladek, a Ronnie Reagan dress-up doll on the back, as well as texts and poems by Vito Acconci , Jack Andersson, Michael Brownstein, Thomas Michael Disch , John Giorno , Lee Harwood, Raymond LaRochelle, Ron Padgett , Peter Schjeldahl , Anne Waldman , Lewis Warsh .
The first releases are sought-after rarities today.
Other publications and effects
When the texts Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan and Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy were to appear on Doubleday in 1970 as part of Ballard's collection of short stories, The Atrocity Exhibition, the publisher stepped in and had the circulation crushed. The Atrocity Exhibition was first published in English in 1970 by Cape and in 1972 in the USA by Grove Press under the title Love & Napalm = Export USA and then again in 1990 in the large-format RE / Search edition illustrated by Phoebe Gloeckner .
The German first edition appeared in 1970 under the title Love & Napalm = Export USA.
David Lodge took the motif in the 1975 novel Changing Places .
Distribution at the 1980 Republican Congress
At the 1980 Republican Congress in Detroit , former members of the Berkeley Situationist International distributed a copy of Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan to delegates under the title 'Official Republican' 1990 Presidential Survey and stamped the Republican seal. According to Ballard, the paper was accepted as serious.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Picaresque novels of the 80s, Volume 52 of Mannheim's contributions to linguistics and literary studies, author Werner Reinhart, Verlag Gunter Narr Verlag, 2001, ISBN 3823356526
- ^ Website of the Ballard specialist Mike Holliday . To Bill Butler MySpace , otherwise My Brighton and Hove .
- ↑ International Times Archive
- ^ David Langford : The Uncollected John Sladek
- ↑ Ronald Reagan: The Magazine of Poetry # 1, London 1968, 52 pp. Contributions ( Memento of the original from March 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ [1] ( JGBallard website)
- ↑ [2] (Mike Holliday website)
- ^ A b Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan
- ↑ 1970 by Carl Weissner translated by Melzer Verlag . Excerpt from the anthology: March Texts 1, 1969. Reprint (excerpt) in the double anthology "March Texts 1 & Trivialmythen", edited by Jörg Schröder , Area-Verlag, Erftstadt 2004
- ^ Change of location , trans. Renate Orth-Guttmann, List, Munich 1986 ISBN 3-471-78037-8
- ↑ Linda Kauffman: Bad Girls and Sick Boys . University of California Press, Berkeley 1998, ISBN 0520210328 , pp. 169-171.
- ↑ In: JG Ballard . RE / Search , No. 8/9, 1984 and in: JG Ballard: The Atrocity Exhibition . San Francisco, RE / Search Publications, 1990
Web links
- Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan in full text