Books by William S. Burroughs

Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

by William S. Burroughs, James Grauerholz

William S. Burroughs, eds. James Grauerholz and Barry Miles, Naked The Restored Text, paperback

Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

by William S. Burroughs, James Grauerholz

Bill Lee, an addict and hustler, travels to Mexico and then Tangier in order to find easy access to drugs, and ends up in the Interzone, a bizarre fantasy world, in a commemorative edition that features restored text, archival material, Burroughs's own later introduction to the book, and his essay on psychoactive drugs. 30,000 first printing.

Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

by William S. Burroughs, James Grauerholz

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 For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume—that contains final-draft typescripts, numerous unpublished contemporaneous writings by Burroughs, his own later introductions to the book, and his essay on psychoactive drugs—is a valuable and fresh experience of a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.

The Yage Letters Redux

by Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs

In January 1953, William Burroughs began a seven-month expedition into the jungles of South America, ostensibly to find yage, the fabled hallucinogen of the Amazon. But Burroughs also cast his anthropological-satiric eye over the local regimes to record trademark vignettes of political and psychic malaise. From the notebooks he kept and the letters he wrote home to Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs composed a narrative of his adventures that appeared ten years later as “In Search of Yage” within The Yage Letters.
That book, published by City Lights in 1963, was completed by the addition of Ginsberg’s account of his own experiences with yage as he traveled through South America in 1960, and by the addition of other Burroughs letters and texts.
For this new edition, Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has gone back to the original manuscripts to untangle the history of the text, telling the fascinating story of its genesis and cultural importance in his wide-ranging introduction. Also included in this edition are extensive materials, never before published, by both Burroughs and Ginsberg that shed new light on their adventures in exploration and writing
“A complete understanding of the literary legacy of William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg is impossible without reading this amazing collection of letters and documents centered on yage, the fabled hallucinogen of the Amazon. . . . These crucial texts go beyond simple curiosity about mind-changing drugs to set the foundation of what would later become a literary movement that changed American literature.”—Bloomsbury Review
"Burroughs' book about his search for the 'ultimate fix', The Yage Letters, possesses an equally strange and secret history. Published in 1963 but written a decade earlier, it has long been seen as a fascinating curio in the Burroughs canon, yet a new edition of the book, edited by Oliver Harris, places it more centrally in the list of key Burroughs texts. . . . The Yage Letters marks the point when Burroughs moved full-time into his own, fully realised universe."—The Independent UK
William Burroughs is widely recognized as one of the most influential and innovative writers of the twentieth century. His books include: Junky, Naked Lunch, Queer, The Wild Boys and The Place of Dead Roads.
Oliver Harris is a professor in literature and film in the School of American Studies at Keele University. He is the editor of The Letters of William S, Burroughs (Penguin) and the 50th anniversary edition of Junky (Penguin).

Rub Out the Words: The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1959-1974

by William S. Burroughs

“Burroughs’s voice is hard, derisive, inventive, free, funny, serious, poetic, indelibly American.”
—Joan Didion

“Burroughs is the greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift.”
—Jack Kerouac

Carefully edited from more than 1000 of his personal correspondences, Rub Out the Words is a collection of 300 of the best letters of Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs, written between 1959 and 1974. A truly remarkable compendium, it offers an eye-opening and insightful look into the artistic process and complex personal life of the legendary literary outlaw in the post-Beat era—providing a new understanding and appreciation of an author who stood alongside Paul Bowles and Charles Bukowski as one of the most creative and rebellious American artists of the 20th century.

Junky: The Definitive Text of "Junk" (50th Anniversary Edition)

by William S. Burroughs

Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch, an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junk, his first book, a candid, eyewitness account of times and places that are now long gone. This book brings them vividly to life again; it is an unvarnished field report from the American postwar underground. For this definitive 50th-anniversary edition, eminent Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has painstakingly re-created the author's original text, word by word, from archival typescripts. Here for the first time are Burroughs's own unpublished Introduction and an entire omitted chapter, along with many "lost" passages and auxiliary texts by Allen Ginsberg and others. Harris's comprehensive Introduction reveals the composition history of Junk's text and places its contents against a lively historical background.

Cities of the Red Night: A Novel

by William S. Burroughs

While young men wage war against an evil empire of zealous mutants, the population of this modern inferno is afflicted with the epidemic of a radioactive virus. An opium-infused apocalyptic vision from the legendary author of Naked Lunch is the first of the trilogy with The Places of the Dead Roads and his final novel, The Western Plains.

The Ticket That Exploded: The Restored Text

by William S. Burroughs

As this new edition reveals, the cultural reach of The Ticket That Exploded has expanded with the viral logic of Burroughs’s multimedia methods, recycling itself into our digital environment. A last chance antidote to the virus of lies spread by the ad men and con men of the Nova Mob, Burroughs’s book is an outrageous hybrid of pulp science fiction, obscene experimental poetry, and manifesto for revolution—as fresh today as it ever has been. Edited from the original manuscripts by renowned Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris, this revised edition incorporates an introduction and appendices of never before seen materials.

The Adding Machine

by William S. Burroughs

"Sheer pleasure. . . . Wonderfully entertaining."—Chicago Sun-Times

Acclaimed by Norman Mailer more than twenty years ago as "possibly the only American writer of genius," William S. Burroughs has produced a body of work unique in our time. In these scintillating essays, he writes wittily and wisely about himself, his interests, his influences, his friends and foes. He offers candid and not always flattering assessments of such diverse writers as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Samuel Beckett, and Marcel Proust. He ruminates on science and the often dubious paths into which it seems intent on leading us, whether into outer or inner space. He reviews his reviewers, explains his famous "cut-up" method, and discusses the role coincidence has played in his life and work. As satirist and parodist, William Burroughs has no peer, as these varied works, written over three decades, amply reveal.

The Soft Machine: The Restored Text (Cut-up Trilogy)

by William S. Burroughs

A total assault on the powers that turn humans into machines by writing and fixing our life scripts, Burroughs’ original “cut-up” book was itself rewritten in three different forms. This new edition of The Soft Machine clarifies for the first time the extraordinary history of its writing and rewriting, demolishes the myths of his chance-based writing methods, and demonstrates for a new generation the significance of Burroughs’ greatest experiment. Edited from the original manuscripts by renowned Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris, this revised edition incorporates an introduction and appendices of never before seen materials.

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

by Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs

More than sixty years ago, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac sat down inNew York City to write a novel about the summer of 1944, when one of their friends killed another in a moment of brutal and tragic bloodshed. The two authors were then at the dawn of their careers, having yet to write anything of note. Alternating chapters and narrators, Burroughs and Kerouac pieced together a hard-boiled tale of bohemian New York during World War II, full of drugs and obsession, art and violence. The manuscript, called And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks after a line from a news story about a fire at a circus, was submitted to publishers but rejected and confined to a filing cabinet for decades. This legendary collaboration between two of the twentieth centuries most influential writers is set to be published for the first time in the fall of 2008. A remarkable, fascinating piece of American literary history, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is also an engrossing, atmospheric novel that brings to life a shocking murder at the dawn of the Beat Generation.

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

by Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs

The legendary novel whose true events inspired the film KILL YOUR DARLINGS

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.

Junky: The Definitive Text of "Junk"

by William S. Burroughs

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.

Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader (Burroughs, William S.)

by William S. Burroughs

With the publication of Naked Lunch in 1959, William Burroughs abruptly brought international letters into the postmodern age. Beginning with his very early writing (including a chapter from his and Jack Kerouac's never-before-seen collaborative novel), Word Virus follows the arc of Burroughs's remarkable career, from his darkly hilarious "routines" to the experimental cut-up novels to Cities of the Red Night and The Cat Inside. Beautifully edited and complemented by James Grauerholz's illuminating biographical essays, Word Virus charts Burroughs's major themes and places the work in the context of the life. It is an excellent tool for the scholar and a delight for the general reader. Throughout a career that spanned half of the twentieth century, William S. Burroughs managed continually to be a visionary among writers. When he died in 1997, the world of letters lost its most elegant outsider.

The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead (Burroughs, William S.)

by William S. Burroughs

The Wild Boys is a futuristic tale of global warfare in which a guerrilla gang of boys dedicated to freedom battles the organized armies of repressive police states. Making full use of his inimitable humor, wild imagination, and style, Burroughs creates a world that is as terrifying as it is fascinating.

Queer

by William S. Burroughs

The definitive text of William S. Burroughs’s early, long-unpublished novel, reissued on the seventieth anniversary of the year of its writing, set to be adapted for film directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Daniel Craig
Originally written in 1952 but not published till 1985, Queer is a haunting tale of possession and exorcism. Both an unflinching autobiographical self-portrait and a coruscatingly political novel, it is both Burroughs’s only realist love story and a montage of comic-grotesque fantasies that paved the way for his masterpiece, Naked Lunch. Set in Mexico City during the early fifties, Queer follows William Lee, the protagonist of Burroughs’s debut novel Junky, a man afflicted with acute heroin withdrawal and romantic yearnings for Eugene Allerton. As Lee breaks down over the course of his hopeless pursuit of desire from bar to bar in the American expatriate scene, the trademark Burroughsian voice emerges, a maniacal mix of self-lacerating humor and the ugly American at his ugliest. Now a cult classic and a highly regarded part of his oeuvre, reissued on the seventieth anniversary of the year of its writing, this edition of Queer features a contextualizing introduction by the eminent Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris.

The Ticket That Exploded (Burroughs, William S.)

by William S. Burroughs

In The Ticket That Exploded, William S. Burroughs’s grand “cut-up” trilogy that starts with The Soft Machine and continues through Nova Express reaches its climax as inspector Lee and the Nova Police engage the Nova Mob in a decisive battle for the planet. Only Burroughs could make such a nightmare vision of scientists and combat troops, of ad men and con men whose deceitful language has spread like an incurable disease be at once so frightening and so enthralling.

Sidetripping

by William S. Burroughs, Charles Gatewood

A first hand account of '60s and '70s counterculture seen through the eyes of pioneering photographer Charles Gatewood and legendary scribe William S. Burroughs. Chronicling the grotesque, surreal, and liberated American underground, Gatewood and Burroughs created a lasting, disturbing, and engaging portrait of this tumultuous period in American culture.

Don't Hide the Madness: William S. Burroughs in Conversation with Allen Ginsberg

by William S. Burroughs

Two seminal figures of the Beat movement, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, discuss literary influences and personal history in a never-before-published three-day conversation following the release of the David Cronenberg film of Burroughs’ classic novel Naked Lunch. The visit coincided with the shamanic exorcism of the demon that Burroughs believed had caused him to fatally shoot his common law wife, Joan Vollmer Burroughs, in 1951―the event that Burroughs believed had driven his work as a writer. The conversation is interspersed with photographs by Ginsberg revealing Burroughs’s daily activities from his painting studio to the shooting range. DON'T HIDE THE MADNESS presents an important, hitherto unpublished primary document of the Beat Generation.

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac (PENGUIN CLASSIC)

by William S. Burroughs

In 1944, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs were charged as accessories to murder. One of their friends, Lucien Carr, had stabbed another, David Kammerrer. Carr had come to each of them and confessed; Kerouac helped him get rid of the weapon - neither told the police. For this failing they were arrested. Months later, the two writers - unpublished at the time - collaborated on "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks", a fictionalized account of the summer of the killing.

Ah Pook Is Here!

by William S. Burroughs

En 1970 William Burroughs y el artista Malcolm McNeill comenzaron un pequeño proyecto conjunto, un cómic titulado The Unspeakable Mr. Hart, que se publicó en Cyclops, la primera revista inglesa de cómics para adultos. Poco después, los autores decidieron colaborar en una meditación más extensa sobre el tiempo, el poder, el control y la corrupción inspirada en los códices mayas y concretamente en Ah Puch, el dios maya de la muerte. Ah Puch está aquí incluía a su personaje Mr. Hart, pero se alejaría del modelo de cómic convencional para explorar diferentes yuxtaposiciones de imágenes y palabras. El objetivo era crear una obra que no cayera ni en la categoría de libro ilustrado convencional ni en la de cómic, un libro sin precedentes en aquella época, que ningún editor quiso arriesgarse a publicar con el particular formato propuesto por Burroughs y McNeill. La presente edición incluye la edición original sin los dibujos de McNeill y otros dos La revolución electrónica, donde el autor reflexiona acerca del uso de las videocámaras como instrumento de control social; y El libro de las respiraciooones, un texto conceptual ilustrado en forma de semicómic.

Queer, 25th Anniversary Edition

by William S. Burroughs

The definitive 25th-anniversay edition of Burroughs's legendary second novel.

Originally written in 1952 but not published till 1985, Queer is an enigma-both an unflinching autobiographical self-portrait and a coruscatingly political novel, Burroughs' only realist love story and a montage of comic-grotesque fantasies that paved the way for his masterpiece, Naked Lunch. Set in Mexico City during the early fifties, Queer follows William Lee's hopeless pursuit of desire from bar to bar in the American expatriate scene. As Lee breaks down, the trademark Burroughsian voice emerges, a maniacal mix of self- lacerating humor and the ugly American at his ugliest.

A haunting tale of possession and exorcism, Queer is also a novel with a history of secrets, as this new edition reveals.

The Cat Inside

by William S. Burroughs

Best known for the wild, phantasmagoric satire of works like Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs reveals another, gentler side in The Cat Inside. Originally published as a limited-edition volume, this moving and witty discourse on cats combines deadpan routines and dream passages with a heartwarming account of Burroughs's unexpected friendships with the many cats he has known. It is also a meditation on the long, mysterious relationship between cats and their human hosts, which Burroughs traces back to the Egyptian cult of the "animal other." With its street sense and whiplash prose, The Cat Inside is a genuine revelation for Burroughs fans and cat lovers alike.

The Place of Dead Roads: A Novel

by William S. Burroughs

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.

The Burroughs File

by William S. Burroughs

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.
" … his Swiftian vision of a processed, prepackaged life, of a kind of electrochemical totalitarianism, often evokes the black laughter of hilarious horror."—Playboy
"Burroughs may be our only writer whose socio-political apacalyptica transcend both paranoia and triviality; his imagination is superb, his ear savagely satiric."—Kirkus Reviews
"Burroughs is the greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift."—Jack Kerouac
William Burroughs (1915-1997) is widely recognized as one of the most innovative writers of the twentieth century. His books include: Junky, Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine, and Cities of the Red Night.

Nova Express: The Restored Text

by William S. Burroughs

The most ferociously political and prophetic book of Burroughs's "cut-up" trilogy, Nova Express fires the reader into a textual outer space the better to see our burning planet and the operations of the Nova Mob in all their ugliness. As the new edition demonstrates, the shortest of the three books was cut by Burroughs from an extraordinary wealth of typescripts to create a visionary demand to take back the world that has been stolen from us. Edited from the original manuscripts by renowned Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris, this revised edition incorporates an introduction and appendices of never before seen materials.

Exterminator!

by William S. Burroughs

A wity, rauchy, satrical novel from the Beat legend and author of Naked Lunch

Conspirators plot to explode a train carrying nerve gas. A perfect servant suddenly reveals himself to be the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. Science-fantasy wars, racism, corporate capitalism, drug addiction, and various medical and psychiatric horrors all play their parts in this mosaiclike, experimental novel. Here is William S. Burroughs at his coruscating and hilarious best.

Naked Lunch

by William S. Burroughs

"Naked Lunch" is the unnerving tale of a monumental descent into the hellish world of a narcotics addict as he travels from New York to Tangiers, then into Interzone, a nightmarish modern urban wasteland in which the forces of good and evil vie for control of the individual and all of humanity. By mixing the fantastic and the realistic with his own unmistakable vision and voice, Burroughs has created a unique masterpiece that is a classic of twentieth century fiction.

The Place of Dead Roads

by William S. Burroughs

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.