The Fales Library and Special Collections has acquired an archive of the East Village Other (EVO), the East Village’s underground newspaper, and Gothic Blimp Works, an underground comic tabloid published by EVO in 1969, from Peter Leggieri, an editor at the paper.
New York University’s Fales Library and Special Collections has acquired an archive of the East Village Other (EVO), the East Village’s underground newspaper, and Gothic Blimp Works, an underground comic tabloid published by EVO in 1969, from Peter Leggieri, an editor at the paper.
The East Village Other was published in the 1960s and early 1970s and contained the writings of P.J. O’Rourke, Ishmael Reed, Suze Rotolo, and Claudia Dreifus, as well as the illustrated works of Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Kim Deitch, Trina Robbins, and Spain Rodriguez, among many others. The collection acquired by Fales is composed of more than 100 issues of EVO, including the inaugural publication in October of 1965.
Gothic Blimp Works was launched in the spring of 1969 and featured comics Spiegelman, Rodriguez, and Crumb, along with Trina Robbins and Larry Todd, among others. NYU’s acquisition includes all eight issues of the publication.
The Fales coincides with the forthcoming “BLOWING MINDS: The East Village Other, the Rise of Underground Comix, and the Alternative Press, 1965-1972,” an exhibition highlighting the newspaper. The exhibition includes original copies of the East Village Other, enlarged covers of the newspaper’s seminal issues, and artifacts from its 2nd Avenue office. It runs from Feb. 29 through March 16 at the Carter Journalism Institute, 20 Cooper Square, 6th Floor (between 5th and 6th Streets). Viewing hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. For more information, call 212.998.8044. Subways: 6 (Astor Place); N, R (8th Street).
More information on the exhibition and on a Feb. 28 panel discussion featuring EVO writers and editors is available at: http://EastVillageOther.org. Along with the Local East Village, the exhibition sponsors are NYU’s Fales Library and Special Collections, and NYU’s Program in Museum Studies, with support from the New York Council for the Humanities, the NYU Humanities Initiative, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and Alan Abramson.
About NYU’s Fales Library and Special Collections
The Fales Library, comprising nearly 250,000 volumes, and over 15,000 linear feet of archive and manuscript materials, houses the Fales Collection of rare books and manuscripts in English and American literature, the Downtown Collection, the Food and Cookery Collection and the general Special Collections of the NYU Libraries. The Fales Collection was given to NYU in 1957 by DeCoursey Fales in memory of his father, Haliburton Fales. It is especially strong in English literature from the middle of the 18th century to the present, documenting developments in the novel. The Downtown Collection documents the downtown New York art, performance, and literary scenes from 1975 to the present and is extremely rich in archival holdings, including extensive film and video objects. The Food and Cookery Collection is a vast, and rapidly expanding, collection of books and manuscripts documenting food and foodways with particular emphasis on New York City. Other strengths of the collection include the Berol Collection of Lewis Carroll Materials, the Robert Frost Library, the Kaplan and Rosenthal Collections of Judaica and Hebraica, and the manuscript collections of Elizabeth Robins and Erich Maria Remarque. The Fales Library preserves manuscripts and original editions of books that are rare or important not only because of their texts, but also because of their value as artifacts.