JOURNALS

Sidney E. Parker edited or published a handful of journals in his life. The earliest was titled The Anarchists, written while he was transitioning from a young Communist into Anarchism, until his last En Marge, when he was an Egoist.

His wife Pat was a frequent contributor, but also published her own journal, PMT Times. At some point we will try to post more information about it.

The Union Of Egoists site hosts downloadable copies of many issues of these journals, and so they’re not being hosted here in addition.


1952 – The Anarchists

the-anarchrist-pageoneRecently discovered among Parker’s papers is a mimeographed issue of The Anarchists. Volume 1, No. 1, from December of 1952.

It is unknown how many issues were made, or how many copies of each issue there were.


1955 – Man!

man-vol1-no1A revival of a journal by the same name, S.E. Parker edited the first three issues.

In a 1993 interview, Sid gave some background on it:

“What it was was an attempt to revive an American publication which had existed in the 1930’s edited by a man called Marcus Graham, whose real name was Shah Marcus (ed. – Shmuel Marcus, 1893-1985). He was somebody who still had a deportation order over his head from the 1930’s but they couldn’t deport him because he refused to tell them which country he was born in, so they didn’t know where to send him. He got very paranoid as a result of this thing hanging over his head and wouldn’t come out into the open; but I had written to him and he asked me if I could revive the paper over here, which I did, and edited three issues. It came out every month. When I got involved with pacifism I decided that Marcus Graham’s brand of apocalyptic “up the masses” anarchism wasn’t compatible with what I was talking about and I handed it over to Arthur Uloth who edited a further three issues. There were other people involved in this, a group of people including Leah Feldman and Jim Peake.”


1961 – Individualist-Anarchist Publishing and Translation Project Bulletin

Among Sid’s papers we discovered two issues of this single-page item that transformed into Minus One. The issues were Number 2 (Feb. 1962), and Number 3 (March 1963), the last issue. It’s safe to speculate issue one came out in 1961, since number two was so early in the year of 1962. Of interest is that he planned on calling his forthcoming journal “EGO”. The journal read:

This will be the last number of this bulletin. Its place wil (sic) be taken by “EGO – an individualist-anarchist bulletin.”  It is hoped that “EGO” will serve the purpose of being both a distinctive voice of individualist-anarchism in the English language and be a means of keeping individualists of “our kind” in touch with one another. Contributions, suggestions and offers of help in distributing, will be very welcome.


1963 – Minus One

minusone-vol01-no01Sid, from the same 1993 interview:

“(Minus One) started off as an occasional publication; in other words, I brought it out when I had enough money and enough material. At that time, we were living in furnished rooms, we had a young son, and I was working long hours, so I didn’t have much time to devote to it. Later on, it came out in the mid-‘60s, over a fairly long period, every two months. By now, I had one or two people to help me with it; they used to help to collate and distribute it, and its circulation went up to about 250. About a hundred were composed of sales in various places. Frances Evans and Shirley MacLaine sold quite a lot at Marble Arch for about one or two years. It appeared in various directories, and I used to get an enormous number of exchanges at that time. Of course what it was generally noted for was my telling people why I thought that my brand of anarchism was the brand of anarchism and everybody else’s was wrong: Which had been my habit for many years in different guises.”

There is an index and contents page, and many issues that can be downloaded, from the Union of Egoists website.


1963 – Twice

uoe-sep-twice-1963-2To our knowledge there was only one issue of Twice, a creative writing journal co-published with his wife Pat Parker.

There is an index and a downloadable PDF at the Union of Egoists website.

 


1982 – Ego

pp1423-ego-01-1982-2Sid, describing the change in name:

What happened was that I was tending to the view that anarchism could only be a minority interest. This was partly what Armand himself had written, because he could never make his mind up throughout his life whether there was ever going to be an anarchist society or that it was just a hopeless dream. I had also read the writings of the Sydney Libertarians, the Australian group, who argued that libertarianism was only one among many interests in society, and that it would remain such. I adopted their view as well, and this was increasingly reflected in Minus One, and was also increasingly reflected in the declining circulation, because some readers wanted to be told that there was a heaven on the horizon even if was called an individualist heaven, and of course I said there wasn’t…

I dropped the name Minus One in 1982, because by that time I had stopped calling myself an anarchist. Since Minus One was classified and identified with anarchism, I decided I wasn’t going to continue the title, but continue the publication, first calling it Ego, then The Egoist, then back to Ego again.

There is an index and contents page, and many issues that can be downloaded, from the Union of Egoists website.


1990 – One (unpublished)

one-feb1990A copy of a journal titled ONE was located in Sid’s materials. It was just a two sided single page formatted like En Marge (1995) would be 5 years later. It is unknown if any copies were produced or distributed, but assume it wasn’t as the contents were published in The Egoist#12.

Just below the masthead was the notice:

NOTA BENE: From now on ONE will be published in place of THE EGOIST. ONE will take the form of a personal “viewsletter” and will appear when I have something to say. Unsolicited articles will not be accepted, but readers’ letters will be welcome. (snip)


1995 – En Marge

enmarge-01-a4webSid finally decided that he wanted to issue a smaller occasional journal, which he referred to as a “viewsletter,” that he intended to only issue infrequently. Much like the mock-up of One done five years earlier, En Marge would be one double-sided sheet of paper.

In the last issue of Ego, in 1994, he announced:

“From the next issue Ego will be incorporated into Non-Serviam which is edited and published by Svein Olav Nyberg. However, I intend to issue occasional ‘viewsletters’, usually consisting of one or two A4 sized pages.”

Only two issues were ever published, the second being in 1996.

There is an index and a downloadable PDF at the Union of Egoists website.