The Letters Of William S. Burroughs: Volume I: 1945-1959

The Letters of William S. Burroughs: Volume I: 1945-1959

From Library Journal The first of a projected two volumes, these letters cover the activities of Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac in the years that gave birth to the Beat Generation. Written mostly to Ginsberg or Kerouac, the letters provide a rare glimpse into Burroughs's psyche, revealing his struggle with drug addiction, his confusion over his sexual identity, and his search for a form fluid enough to mirror his mind and art. Although much of this correspondence first appeared in Letters to Allen Ginsberg 1953-1957 (1982) and in The Yage Letters (1963), this new collection is highly recommended both for the additional letters it contains and for its detailed explanatory notes.- William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNYCopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. A volume of correspondence chronicles the early career and early inspirations of the noted author of Naked Lunch and Junky. 15,000 first printing. 15,000 ad/promo. From Publishers Weekly Between July 1945 and October 1959, Burroughs, the future author of Naked Lunch , kept up a voluminous correspondence with beat compatriots Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and, to a lesser extent, with Neal Cassady, Paul Bowles and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The 180 letters presented here in chronological order tell of his drug and sex habits, day-to-day existence and developing writing technique. In the correspondence, Harris, a British university lecturer on American literature, finds "mandarin intellect and hipster humor" emerging from "a life that was often deluged by disaster." Several times, for example, police intercepted letters and used them to bring drug charges against Burroughs. Mailed from self-imposed isolation in outposts such as New Orleans, East Texas, Mexico City and Tangier, Burroughs's letters are full of despair and myopic worldviews. Still, this correspondence yields valuable insights into Burroughs's literary development. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews The MTV generation's idea of an outlaw-writer, Burroughs finds himself a minor/grand old man of sorts--which is why, presumably, this book. These letters were mostly to Allen Ginsberg (whom for a surprisingly long time Burroughs knew only through correspondence), and they're chocked with complaints about the availability of drugs in the US or Mexico, about the fickleness of Tangier boy prostitutes, about publishing Junkie, Burroughs's first book. Very little is made of Burroughs's shooting his common-law wife in the head in 1951 (an ``accident''), very little about the several agonizing heroin cures that he was forced into--experiences that might serve as staining moral crises in another writer's life here seem lightly, affectlessly catalogued. Post-mod scholars will have a field day, however, with the accretion in the letters of the ``sketches'' that would make up Naked Lunch--bits and shticks so easily capsulized to friends in these letters that they call into question the honesty of ever having considered as a ``novel'' the book made out of them. Looking for artistic influences and wellsprings for Burroughs himself will come harder: Burroughs was more interested in the paranoid fringes, in Wilhelm Reich, Westbrook Pegler, and L. Ron Hubbard. He hardly situated himself as a literary fella at all. Early documents from the Godfather of Grunge. -- Copyright ?1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.