Countdown; a subterranean magazine -- complete run of 3 issues

(The Editors of Countdownmag)

Published by New American Library, New York, 1970

[all three volumes are still tightly bound and apparently unread, with each having some minor edgewear and light surface wear to the covers (issue 3 additionally has some smudgy ink-staining along the upper right edge of the front cover]. Mass Market PB (B&W photographs, graphics, comics) A short-lived attempt to replicate the success of the publisher's more mainstream-y "New American Review" publication, in the same "paperback magazine" format, this was essentially an anthology of material (articles, poetry, graphics, interviews, political manifestos, etc.) drawn from the contemporary underground press, described in John Wilcock's editorial introduction to the first issue as "the loving product of the best minds of my generation." (Wilcock, described in the first issue as "a hit-and-run editor, and ex-Daily Mirror reporter, who saw the light and turned revolutionary [and] is one of the founding fathers of underground newspapers," had been a co-founder of The Village Voice in 1955, and later of the Underground Press Syndicate, a network of 200 or so countercultural newspapers and magazines established in 1966, the operating principle of which was that any member publication would permit its content to be freely reprinted by any other.) Although intended (per statements in issues 2 and 3) to be published five times a year, the publishers pulled the plug after just three issues. The contents provide an excellent snapshot of the circa-1970 counterculture, with many of the usual New-Left suspects represented: Jerry Rubin, Eldridge Cleaver, Timothy Leary, Allan Ginsberg, Herbert Marcuse, Diane Di Prima, Gary Snyder, etc. Features picked out at random from flipping through: an article on how to take (and survive) an LSD trip; an article/interview on the films of filmmaker Stanton Kaye, a one-time cinema wunderkind; an interview with Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha; a transcript of Allen Ginsberg's testimony at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial; a report on the Hog Farm commune in New Mexico; "Revolution and Education" by Eldridge Cleaver, a transcription of a tape recording he made for the Black Panthers. (All this and much more resides within these pages, but good luck looking for a table of contents, because there ain't one. Also, the pages are all numbered in reverse order, starting from the back of each book. Because forward page-numbering and tables-of-content are so bourgeois, don't you know?). Seller Inventory # 28610

Bibliographic Details

Title: Countdown; a subterranean magazine -- ...
Publisher: New American Library, New York
Publication Date: 1970
Binding: Softcover
Illustrator: Illustrated by (cover design) Aldo Rostagno
Condition: Near Fine
Edition: First Edition.