Dick Higgins’ Writings Are Back

A new book by Dick Higgins? Posthumous, of course. He died 20 years ago, unexpectedly, his life cut short by a heart attack at age 6o. It was a terrible shock to all of us who knew him. The book — Intermedia, Fluxus and the Something Else Press: Selected Writings by Dick Higgins — is being published by Siglio. I haven’t seen it yet, but I have no doubt it will be a great reminder of the fertility of Dick’s mind and of how well he expressed it, particularly if it quotes heavily from foew&omb, a favorite of mine. Also, notwithstanding the impression created by the angry jacket photo taken from an iconic 1962 performance of his “Danger Music, No. 17”, it is likely to reflect what I recall of Dick’s large generosity of spirit during the heyday of the Something Else Press before he “flipped his wig” as we used to say.

If you have never heard of Dick Higgins, take a look at Siglio’s press release, which quotes Dick’s self-description from an unpublished autobiographical manuscript in the book’s afterword:

I suppose I’m part Emerson or Thoreau, and part Davey Crockett. For all my delight in other cultures and languages, my pleasure in digging gold nuggets out of bypassed selves, I’m still a crackerbarrel yankee at heart. I’ve whored, seduced, and gambled. I’ve been a precocious brat and a sedate businessman. I’ve been insane and sick. I’ve had enough fancy dinners to know that the best food is food for thought. I’ve worked in factories and universities enough to know that there’s really precious little difference between them. I’ve tried to be a saint and found that wasn’t me.

There’s a party to launch the book on Thursday, Nov. 8, at the Printed Matter bookstore in Manhattan. It will include a conversation with co-editor Steve Clay, who is also the publisher of Granary Books, the curator/art historian Alice Centamore, the Siglio publisher Lisa Pearson, and Christian Xatrec, the director of the Emily Harvey Foundation. One caveat: Fluxus has taken over Dick’s afterlife, more so it seems than when he was still around. It shouldn’t. An old friend of Dick’s, Richard Kostelanetz, thinks it’s a kind of diminishment. I tend to agree. Dick was far more than Fluxus.