Have you ever heard of Hay-on-Wye?
It’s a (the?) “book town”; the whole place is full of second-hand bookshops. As you may imagine, it is excellent but spooky.
I went a couple of weeks ago with my honey and his parents and we all came home with something. Poetry, a volume of collected Mandrake the Magician strips, and for me: Just about the bees knees. A 1971 issue of the Evergreen review which blew me away with it’s back-pages advert for safe, legal, non-judgemental abortions and tumblr-pretty cover photograph.
I forgot to photograph the abortion advert. Another time.
It’s concentrated atmosphere. “It didn’t feel like we looked that way at the time.. we felt very modern” said my gentleman’s dad. The author-profile photographs are perfect.
(Vivienne, you bad girl)
(We tried the “sauce” picture three different ways and I liked all of them, so..!)
It’s hilarious and charming and has a really terrible contribution from Burroughs – it’s dated as all get-out and there is a “am I still a feminist if I like to fuck texans with switchblade cocks” short story, and I love it.
I couldn’t afford the other issue (1967?) –
When I’m rich, friends. When I’m rich.
Hey, if you like 70s magazine snippets, skid over to Miss Peelpants cos she is a goldmine of that stuff.
Dress: giiift from my legs (etsy), legs’ socks: John Rocha, sunglasses: Myton Hospice Warwick
When I wore this last week my mother accused me of being ghostly because she was reading a book set in ye olden days of her youth. Then she said no-one looked as seventies as that, in the seventies. I told her she just didn’t know hip enough people. She agreed, as if it were a point of honour.
This is interesting to me. My memories of Evergreen were that it had a spine type cover…
Oh, did you read it? I wonder if the two issues in the shop were imported for sale, or if they came over with an American visitor?
i love it! i wouldn’t be surprised if my parents have some magazines like that stashed away somewhere, they never throw anything away, and the seventies was a great period for them, style wise!
What a trove that would be! Both my parents looked great in the 70s but neither of them thought they did so they barely kept anything. If you ever get a chance, DIG IN!