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The Burroughs File

By William S. Burroughs (Author)

Paperback published by City Lights Books

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Trenchant writings by that sardonic ""hombre invisible,"" William Seward Burroughs, perpetrator of Naked Lunch and other shockers. These malefic and beatific, mordant and hilarious straight-face reports on life are mostly from scatter-shot publications in obscure places, foreign and domestic. Including complete texts from White Subway, Cobblestone Gardens, and The Retreat Diaries, this collection delineates Burroughs' comprehensive world-view and his ""insurrectionary sense of America's underside,” as Tom Carson epitomized it in The Village Voice.


Also included are essays on Burroughs by Alan Ansen and Paul Bowles, and facsimile pages from the famous cut-up scrapbooks of the mid-century: The Book of Hours, John Brady's Book, and The Old Farmer's Almanac.


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Trenchant writings by that sardonic ""hombre invisible,"" William Seward Burroughs, perpetrator of Naked Lunch and other shockers. These malefic and beatific, mordant and hilarious straight-face reports on life are mostly from scatter-shot publications in obscure places, foreign and domestic. Including complete texts from White Subway, Cobblestone Gardens, and The Retreat Diaries, this collection delineates Burroughs' comprehensive world-view and his ""insurrectionary sense of America's underside,” as Tom Carson epitomized it in The Village Voice.


Also included are essays on Burroughs by Alan Ansen and Paul Bowles, and facsimile pages from the famous cut-up scrapbooks of the mid-century: The Book of Hours, John Brady's Book, and The Old Farmer's Almanac.


Product Details
Paperback (227 pages)
Published: January 1, 1984
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 9780872861527
Other books byWilliam S. Burroughs
(41)
  • Naked Lunch

    Naked Lunch
    The Restored Text
    Since its original publication in Paris in 1959, Naked Lunch has become one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Exerting its influence on the relationship of art and obscenity, it is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American culture. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume—that contains final-draft typescripts, numerous unpublished contemporaneous writings by Burroughs, his own later introductions to the book, and his essay on psychoactive drugs—is a valuable and fresh experience of a novel that has lost none of its relevance or satirical bite.
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    And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

    And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
    In the summer of 1944, a shocking murder rocked the fledgling Beats. William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, both still unknown, we inspired by the crime to collaborate on a novel, a hard-boiled tale of bohemian New York during World War II, full of drugs and art, obsession and brutality, with scenes and characters drawn from their own lives. Finally published after more than sixty years, this is a captivating read, and incomparable literary artifact, and a window into the lives and art of two of the twentieth century’s most influential writers.
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    Junky

    Junky
    The Definitive Text of "Junk"
    Junk is not, like alcohol or a weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life. In his debut novel, Junky, Burroughs fictionalized his experiences using and peddling heroin and other drugs in the 1950s into a work that reads like a field report from the underworld of post-war America. The Burroughs-like protagonist of the novel, Bill Lee, see-saws between periods of addiction and rehab, using a panoply of substances including heroin, cocaine, marijuana, paregoric (a weak tincture of opium) and goof balls (barbiturate), amongst others. For this definitive edition, renowned Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has gone back to archival typescripts to re-created the author's original text word by word. From the tenements of New York to the queer bars of New Orleans, Junky takes the reader into a world at once long-forgotten and still with us today. Burroughs’s first novel is a cult classic and a critical part of his oeuvre.
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    The Place of Dead Roads

    The Place of Dead Roads
    A Novel
    A good old-fashion shoot-out in the American West of the frontier days serves as the springboard for this hyperkinetic adventure in which gunslingers, led by Kim Carson, fight for galactic freedom. The Place of Dead Roads is the second novel in the trilogy with Cities of the Red Night and The Western Lands.
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  • April 20, 2012
    LIBRARIANBRYAN
    LibraryThing User

    This collection gathers much of Burroughs' shorter work which appeared in literary magazines during the 1960s and other rare ephemera. The book reminded me of the uncanny power of Burroughs' mind and why I was so fascinated with his work so many years ago. Most of this material was produced during the same time as his Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine, The Ticket that Exploded, and Nova Express), i.e., his most formally experimental phase. The Burroughs File proves not only was there a method to his "madness," but there was really just a METHOD period. Burroughs used to this method to unfold the nature of reality, political control, and biological enslavement. And, of course, to heal himself from those aforementioned. Highly recommended for beginners or devotees.

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    This collection gathers much of Burroughs' shorter work which appeared in literary magazines during the 1960s and other rare ephemera. The book reminded me of the uncanny power of Burroughs' mind and why I was so fascinated with his work so many years ago. Most of this material was produced during the same time as his Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine, The Ticket that Exploded, and Nova Express), i.e., his most formally experimental phase. The Burroughs File proves not only was there a method to his "madness," but there was really just a METHOD period. Burroughs used to this method to unfold the nature of reality, political control, and biological enslavement. And, of course, to heal himself from those aforementioned. Highly recommended for beginners or devotees.


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Paperback

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$15.95
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