An Elegy for Jimmy & Lucy’s House of K (Post45, 2023)

The house of knowledge is bookended by a poetics of death. In issue one of Jimmy & Lucy’s House of “K” (1984-1989), the reader learns of two such passings. The very first entry of the first issue of the magazine, published in May of 1984, entitled “HOW STRANGE TO BE GONE IN A MINUTE” is Stephen Rodefer’s take on the loss of Ted Berrigan (1934-1983):

He did what he did, and there was no gain without say — for he was amused and alive; and all those vital or fatal humors were generally intelligent to a disarming degree, even when you didn’t get it . . . Just yesterday I bought SO GOING AROUND CITIES in Lenox, Mass., signed “Ted Berrigan — on the premises.” And so he was, and will be I imagine for a long time, just as he deserved.

The second entry is written by Barry Lane for Hollis Frampton (1936-1984), concluding this first issue of the magazine. The final page of the issue houses a reminiscence of Frampton on the screen. It is followed by a stark low-fidelity, black-and-white reproduction of a still from Nostalgia (Frampton, 1971) on the inside of the back cover, stretching the contents to the limit of the interior. 2 The image is entirely burnt out in its electrostatic reproduction.

Hollis Frampton died last month. I found myself feeling a loss, yet I hardly knew him. Over the years I saw a few more of his films. They were unique and magical in a way that made you believe he could have made a million films, and still you’d have questions. I’ll miss him like the ride you remember when you first hit the road, and someone picks you up and takes you a long way toward where you think you want to go.3

Like Frampton’s films, Jimmy & Lucy’s House of “K” has taken me a long way further than I had thought I wanted to go, even when I didn’t get it.

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Snelson, Daniel. “An Elegy for Jimmy & Lucy’s House of ‘K’ (1984-1989).” Post45 Contemporaries for “Little Magazines” special issue, ed. Nick Sturm. June 6, 2023.

Full article available at Post45 Contemporaries as part of a cluster on “Little Magazines” edited by Nick Sturm.

See also our conversation on the Post45 podcast here.