Artwork by Joe Brainard. Edited by Ron Padgett.

From 1963 to 1978 Joe Brainard (author of I REMEMBER) created more than 100 works of art that appropriated the classic comic strip character Nancy and sent her into an astonishing variety of spaces, all electrified by the incongruity of her presence. Whether inserted into hypothetical situations, dispatched on erotic adventures, or seemingly rendered by the hands of artists as varied as Leonardo da Vinci, R. Crumb, Larry Rivers, and Willem de Kooning, Brainard's Nancy revels in as well as transcends her two-dimensionality. Together these works accumulate into a sophisticated, complex work of great wit, equal parts surprise and subtlety.The Nancy Book is the first published collection of Brainard's Nancy texts, drawings, collages and paintings (with nearly eighty full page reproductions), including collaborations with luminary New York School poets such as Frank O?Hara and Ted Berrigan, an essay by Ann Lauterbach that illuminates, with critical and poetic acumen, the complexity of Brainard's transformation of Nancy.OEvery page of this book will make you smile or laugh'not with recognition but with startled joy. Joe Brainard took an unchanging icon of the American norm and inserted her into countless fashionable or scandalous contexts, subtly metamorphosing something that seemed eternal into absurdly contemporary forms. He is as funny as only a philosopher can be.O Edmund White.OJoe Brainard's pursuit of the once ubiquitous fuzzy-haired pest Nancy chronicled one of the great love-hate relationships in American popular culture. It's wonderful to have it all between the covers of a book.O John Ashbery

"This is Ron Padgett's memoir - the unlikely and true story of two childhood friends, one straight and one gay, who grew up in 1950s Oklahoma, surprised their families by moving to New York City in search of art and poetry, and became part of a dynamic community of artists and writers whose work continues to shape American culture." "Much of this intimate memoir is told in Joe Brainard's own direct and unforgettable voice. Dozens of letters, journal entries, poems, photographs, and artworks create a stirring portrait of the times - one that illuminates not only Brainard's life and art, but also the lives and work of his many friends, including Frank O'Hara, Alex Katz, Anne Waldman, Ted Berrigan, Fairfield Porter, Edwin Denby, Rudy Burckhardt, and Kenward Elmslie." --Book Jacket.

Essays by John Ashbery, Constance Lewallen, Carter Ratcliff. Foreword by Kevin E. Consey.

This collection offers the first place for the importance of Brainard's poetry, collaborations and art to be recognised for their contribution and influence, all in one place.

Journalist Dan Rather relates stories about the people, events, and values that made him what he is today.

Out of print for more than 40 years, Bean Spasms is a facsimille of a classic New York School collaboration between poets Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett, with further writings, illustrations and cover by artist and writer Joe Brainard Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard and Ron Padgett's Bean Spasms is the defining publication of the 1960s literary/Pop scene in New York. Originally published in 1967 by Kulchur Press in an edition of 1,000, and out of print for more than 40 years, Bean Spasms is a book many have heard about but relatively few have seen, and which--until now--has been consequently shrouded in legend. The text is comprised of collaborations between poets Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett, with further writings, illustrations and cover by artist and writer Joe Brainard. The three began collaborating in 1960, and kept a folder of their works titled "Lyrical Bullets" (a humorous homage to the well-known collaboration between Coleridge and Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads). As Ron Padgett describes, in his introduction to this new facsimile edition, their collaborations included "plays, a fictitious correspondence, a picaresque novel, goofy interviews and poems of various types and lengths, as well as mistranslations and parodies of each other's work and the work of others." Poet friends dropping by during writing sessions would also add lines, and although Berrigan and Padgett also contributed visuals, and Brainard contributed texts, all works in the book were intentionally left unattributed. Full of wild wit and joy in experimentation, competition and collaboration, Bean Spasms is a classic document of the New York School.