New Releases by William S. Burroughs

„Unul dintre cele mai importante romane ale secolului XX" Singurul romancier american contemporan despre care se poate spune că are geniu. Norman Mailer Sondând limitele relației dintre artă și obscenitate, Prânzul dezgolit este una dintre cărțile ce au redefinit nu doar literatura, ci și întreaga cultură americană. Romanul a constituit obiectul unui proces considerat ultima acțiune majoră de cenzură împotriva unei opere literare în Statele Unite. Verdictul final, favorabil, s-a datorat pledoariei unora dintre cei mai importanți scriitori americani ai epocii, precum Norman Mailer și Allen Ginsberg, care au certificat valoarea artistică a cărții. În 1991, regizorul David Cronenberg a ecranizat romanul, iar producția lui s-a transformat foarte repede într-un film-cult. „O carte de o mare frumusețe și de o splendoare rară, obsesivă." Norman Mailer „Un adevărat geniu și primul mitograf al celei de-a doua jumătăți a secolului XX, William Burroughs este descendentul direct al lui James Joyce. Prânzul dezgolit e un festin de neuitat." J. G. Ballard „Burroughs nu a dat naștere numai la metafore, ci și la generații pline de viață, înzestrate cu spirit propriu." Allen Ginsberg William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) s-a născut în St. Louis, Missouri. A studiat literatura engleza și antropologia la Harvard, apoi medicina la Viena. În 1951, pe când se afla în Mexic, și-a împușcat accidental soția. A debutat în 1953 cu Junky, iar în 1959 a publicat (în Franța) romanul Naked Lunch (Prânzul dezgolit). Apariția în 1962 a ediției americane a provocat un imens scandal. În 1982 este ales membru în Academia Americană și în Institute of Arts and Letters, iar statul francez îi acorda titlul de Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Din opera lui William S. Burroughs, în seria Anansi. Clasic vor mai aparea Junky și Queer.

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 relatos: 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.

First published in 1963 and representing Burroughs''s literary breakthrough in the UK, Dead Fingers Talk is, in the words of Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris, "e;a prophetic work of haunting power,"e; a unique experiment in writing that has for too long been overlooked. Combining new material with rearranged selections from Naked Lunch and his cut-up novels The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded, the book is a fascinating precursor to remix and mash-up forms in art and music, which owe much to Burroughs''s influence.This newly restored edition of Dead Fingers Talk, based on the novel''s archival manuscripts, will delight all Burroughs fans and lovers of experimental literature, and offer a new insight into the artistic process of one of the most original and influential writers of the twentieth century

Fires the reader into a textual outer space to show us our burning planet and to reveal the operations of the Nova Mob in all their ugliness. This book reveals how Nova Express was cut from a wealth of typescripts to create startling new forms of poetic possibility.

As seen through the eyes of Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, this is the gripping story behind the acclaimed film Kill Your Darlings, starring Daniel Radcliffe.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.William S. Burroughs was born in 1914. His first published novel was the largely autobiographical Junky, which remains a classic depiction of drug dependency. He died in 1997.Jack Kerouac was born in 1922. In 1947, he hitchhiked across America and wrote his most famous novel On the Road. He died in 1969.''The true(ish) story that Burroughs and Kerouac tell is sleazy, raw and painfully close to the bone even by the standards of the Beats ... [It''s] also fascinating for the insight it gives into Kerouac and Burroughs'' development ... A compelling read'' Sam Jordison, Guardian''Their efforts cohere into a spare existential narrative which races to a cruel denouement. Hippos stands the test of time; it is admirably hard-boiled'' Independent''Anyone interested in the making of the Beat generation will be fascinated by this survival from its beginnings'' Literary Review''Transfixingly readable ... It memorably evokes the demi-monde of New York at the war''s end, with its honky-tonk parlours, automats, bars and spaghetti joints. As a period piece, it can''t be beat'' Evening Standard

"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.

Escrita en 1952 pero no publicada hasta 1985 debido a su franca plasmación del deseo homosexual, Queer, obra temprana de William S. Burroughs, es al mismo tiempo un descarnado autorretrato narrativo, una historia de amor brutalmente realista, una grotesca fantasía tragicómica y una ingeniosa novela política. Un libro que proporciona muchas claves fundamentales para adentrarse en el arrollador universo literario del autor. Esta edición definitiva, editada con motivo del 25 aniversario de su primera publicación, incorpora una extensa y documentada introducción de Oliver Harris en la que se repasan las complejas circunstancias personales en las que la obra fue escrita y que marcarían la vida y la posterior trayectoria literaria de Burroughs. Y se incluye también, a modo de epílogo, el texto que el propio autor escribió como prólogo para la edición de 1985. Queer está ambientada en un inmenso suburbio, que Burroughs definiría más tarde como la «Interzona», y que abarca desde la Ciudad de México, capital mundial del delito, hasta Panamá. Un álter ego del escritor, Lee, teje su tela amorosa en torno a Allerton, un joven ambiguo, indiferente como un animal. Deambula por locales cada vez más sórdidos, en los que pulula una fauna en estado de descomposición, y en esas excursiones, como un pícaro alienado, nos regala astillas radiactivas de su negrísimo humor. Para resolver sus obsesiones mortíferas y sexuales, Lee parte con su amigo a la búsqueda de la ayahuasca, droga absoluta capaz de otorgar el control total sobre los cerebros, y por eso mismo codiciada por Rusia y Estados Unidos... y por todo adicto. Dispuesto a abismarse en todos los peligros, como un santo o un criminal con orden de búsqueda y captura, Lee no tiene nada que perder. En esta novela aflora por primera vez ese paisaje alucinado que hoy todo lector reconoce como el mundo particular de William S. Burroughs.

«È un viaggio lungo. A bordo ci siamo solo noi». Il viaggio cui allude William Burroughs nel "Biglietto che esplose", pannello finale della sua celebre tetralogia, non è solo quello interstellare del metamorfico protagonista Bradly. È anche il viaggio conclusivo di una specie – la nostra – giunta a una sorta di resa dei conti. Stretto tra invasioni venusiane volte a schiavizzarlo e una polizia segreta che vuole sottoporlo a un controllo onnipervasivo, il Sapiens si destruttura e trasforma definitivamente in un’intercapedine organico-tecnologica, con ragazze-orchidea e ragazzi-raganella fluorescenti – veicoli di agenti virali e droghe alienanti –, registratori e telescriventi che manipolano istinti e linguaggi. Unico elemento di resistenza sono gruppi clandestini come i partigiani diretti da Saturno. Intorno, uno scenario putrido e fantastico insieme: «città dalle consunte strade marmoree» sormontate da cupole di rame, immani terre verdi in cui ogni filo d’erba luccica «come incastonato nel cristallo», stagni e canali artificiali che riflettono «galleggianti ornati di fiori», il tutto avvolto e tiranneggiato da un «buio pesto da pellicola sottoesposta». Portando alle estreme conseguenze il suo radicale pessimismo, Burroughs non vede vie di fuga possibili: irreversibilmente corrotto, il genere umano sembra vittima del proprio «corpo» e della propria «parola», carceri che lo imprigionano e lo condannano a un meccanicismo cieco e insensato. La sola, paradossale apertura – sarebbe parodistico chiamarla speranza – consiste nella «liberazione» di cui lo scrittore stesso è interprete insieme letterale e metaforico: nel rifiuto di un linguaggio normativo e omologante; nell’esaltazione dell’anarchia e dell’invenzione letteraria contro l’opacità mortuaria dei gerghi mediatici e della «non-lingua» del Potere.

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.

William S. Burroughs was one of the twentieth century’s most iconoclastic literary and artistic figures, an inimitable writer whose groundbreaking work in novels such as Junky and Naked Lunch forever altered the shape of American culture. Now, in this long anticipated collection, editor Bill Morgan takes readers through Burroughs’ correspondence from the early sixties through the mid-seventies, in more than three hundred letters that document Burroughs’ steady drift away from the Beat circle and that witness an era in which he became the center of a new coterie of creative people who would establish his reputation as an influential artistic and cultural leader beyond the literary world, toward multimedia. Written to recipients such as Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, and Burroughs’ son, Billy Burroughs Jr., these letters shed new light on the writer’s controversial artistic process and literary experimentation, as well as his complex personal life. Here are letters to new friends in North Africa and Eur-ope—partners in Burroughs’ expatriate life—including Paul Bowles, Ian Sommerville, Michael Portman, Alex Trocchi, and the surrealist artist Brion Gysin, who became a close confidant and whose “cut-up method” would deeply influence Burroughs’ writing. An intimate glimpse into the private life of an often misunderstood artist, Rub Out the Words is also an unforgettable portrait of one of the twentieth century’s most uncompromising literary personalities.

An opium addict is lost in the jungle; young men wage war against an empire of mutants; a handsome young pirate faces his execution; and the world''s population is infected with a radioactive epidemic. These stories are woven together in a single tale of mayhem and chaos. In the first novel of the trilogy continued in The Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands, William Burroughs sharply satirizes modern society in a poetic and shocking story of sex, drugs, disease and adventure.

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.

In 1953, Burroughs began an expedition into the jungles of South America, ostensibly to find yage, the fabled hallucinogen of the Amazon. But Burroughs also cast his eye over the local regimes to record trademark vignettes of political and psychic malaise. The book was completed by the addition of Ginsberg''s experiences with yage.

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.

Being the son of counter-culture author William S. Burroughs is bound to be a trial. After all, the man who frequented lesbian dives and had a fascination with firearms couldn''t possibly make that great of a father. Perhaps inevitably, William Jr. (called Billy) referred to himself as "cursed from birth" and in the book of the same name editor David Ohle collects parts of Billy''s third and unfinished novel Prakriti Junction, his last journals and poems, and correspondence and conversations to recreate this tortured life. Endowed with the sufferings — but not the patience — of Job, Billy''s life was often characterized by tragedy and frustration, although there were also pockets of success and levity. More than just the memoir of a casualty of the Beat Generation, Cursed From Birth provides rare insight in Billy''s father, as well as his scene, friends, and times. It also provides an all-too-familiar story of familial difficulties that anyone with difficult parents can understand and appreciate.

El almuerzo desnudo, una de las novelas más míticas de la literatura norteamericana, es un descenso a los infiernos de la droga y una denuncia horrorizada y sardónica, onírica y alucinatoria de la sociedad actual, un mundo sin esperanza ni futuro. Burroughs dispara sus flechas contra las religiones, el ejército, la universidad, la sexualidad, la justicia corrupta, los traficantes tramposos, el colonialismo, la burocracia y la psiquiatría representada por el siniestro Dr. Benway, el gran manipulador de conciencias, el experto en control total.

An unnerving tale of an addict adrift in New York, Tangiers and a nightmarish wasteland known as Interzone. The novel has exerted its influence on many authors regarding the relationship of art and obscenity, and on the shape of music, film, and media. This restored text includes editorial corrections and incorporates Burroughs'' notes, and several essays he wrote over the years about the book.

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.

Although a rather shy, private man, William Burroughs gave a good many interviews during his lifetime, some in prominent publications, others in obscure forums. The interviews collected here provide an aperture into the philosophies, methods, and quirks of a man who wrote Queer, Junky, Naked Lunch, Nova Express, Cities of the Red Night, My Education, and many other works. When he died in 1997, Burroughs was likely one of the most widely recognizable figures in contemporary American literature. His image circulated on album jackets, in Nike commercials, and in films, as though proving his notion that pictures and words are viruses, invading any receptive host, taking hold, and replicating themselves. Not surprisingly, the topics Burroughs touches upon are wide-ranging: his relationships to the Beats, legends surrounding his personal life, drugs, gay liberation, collaboration, the cut-up technique, science fiction, politics, conspiracy theory, censorship, cats, guns, David Cronenberg''s movie adaptation of Naked Lunch, shotgun art, dreams, and life in Lawrence, Kansas, where he spent his last years. From these interviews emerges a full, undiluted portait of a writer who is difficult to capture in biography. Speaking of the Paris Review interview Alfred Kazin calls Burroughs "an engineer of the pen, a calmly interested specialist of the new processes. When Burroughs makes philosophic and scientific claims for his disorderly collections of data, we happily recognize under the externally calm surface of the interview, the kind of inner frenzy that is his genius--and which, in all of us, his books make an appeal." Kazin''s view applies as well for the other interviews in this collection. Allen Hibbard is an associate professor of English and the director of graduate studies at Middle Tennessee State University. He is the author of Paul Bowles: A Study of the Short Fiction and of many articles.

My Education is William S. Burroughs''s final collection, first published two years before his death in 1997. It is a book of dreams, written over several decades and as personal and close to a memoir as we will see. The dreams cover themes from the mundane and ordinary -- conversations with his friends Allen Ginsberg or Ian Sommerville, feeding his cats, procuring drugs or sex -- to the erotic, bizarre, and visionary. Always a rich source of imagery in Burroughs''s own fiction, in this book, dreams become a direct and powerful force in themselves. "Mr. Burroughs has lost none of his irreverence or wit, but in recent years he has acquired an elegant, elegiac tone." – The New York Times

"En las manos de William Burroughs, escribir se convierte en un acto de magia, como si estuviera componiendo alguna enorme enciclopedia infernal de aquellos actos e impulsos oscuros que una vez llevados a cabo cerraran el paso y para siempre a todos los demonios." The New York Times"Una critica absolutamente devastadora de todo lo que es falso, primitivo y vicioso en la vida norteamericana de hoy: los abusos de poder, el culto al heroe, la violencia sin motivo, la obsesion materialista, la intolerancia y toda forma de hipocresia..." Terry Southern

"These funny, filthy, and terrifically smart letters reveal him in a way that no biographer can." -- New York Newsday Guru of the Beat generation, éminence grise of the international avant-garde, dark prophet, and blackest of satirists, William S. Burroughs has had a range of influence rivaled by few living writers. This volume of his correspondence from 1945 to 1959 vividly documents the personal and cultural history through which Burroughs developed, revealing clues to illuminate his life and keys to open up his texts. More than that, it shows how letter-writing was itself integral to his life and to his fiction. Beginning as surprisingly formal notes from the road to his friends Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, the letters deepen in substance and style. Then, in Tangier, comes a dramatic shift in voice and vision and the explosive, distinctive letters that will become Naked Lunch. Letters were lifelines for Burroughs, the outcast; and works-in-progress for Burroughs, the writer; and, they track his turbulent journey across two decades and three continents. To read them as they were written is to experience a unique merging of life and letters, the extraordinary story of Williams S. Burroughs homme de lettres. "Unrelenting impact." -- Los Angeles Reader

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. "

In 1954 William Burroughs settled in Tangiers, finding a sanctuary of sorts in its shadowy streets, blind alleys, and lowlife decadence. It was this city that served as a catalyst for Burroughs as a writer, the backdrop for one of the most radical transformations of style in literary history. Burroughs''s life during this period is limned in a startling collection of short stories, autobiographical sketches, letters, and diary entries, all of which showcase his trademark mordant humor, while delineating the addictions to drugs and sex that are the central metaphors of his work. But it is the extraordinary "WORD," a long, sexually wild and deliberately offensive tirade, that blends confession, routine, and fantasy and marks the true turning point of Burroughs as a writer-the breakthrough of his own characteristic voice that will find its full realization in Naked Lunch. James Grauerholz''s incisive introduction sets the scene for this series of pieces, guiding the reader through Burroughs''s literary evolution from the precise, laconic, and deadpan writer of Junky and Queer to the radical, uncompromising seer of Naked Lunch. Interzone is an indispensable addition to the canon of his works.

From the legendary author of Naked Lunch, the conclusion of his trilogy that includes Cities of the Red Night and Palace of Dead Roads The Western Land is legendary Beat writer William S. Burrough’s profound, revealing, and often astonishing meditation on morality, loneliness, life, and death -- a Book of the Dead for the nuclear age. "Burrough''s visionary power, his comic genius, and his unerring ability to crack the codes that make up the life of this century are undimished." -- J.G. Ballard, Washington Post Book World