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Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader
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About Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader
Product Description Featuring a wealth of biographical information embedded within chapter introductions, a compilation of the quixotic author's most prolific and complex works from his early writings to never-before-seen excerpts to The Cat Inside discusses his profound impact on society and literature. From Publishers Weekly The deadpan granddad of postmodernism is well represented in this bountiful collection of fiction, essays and collaborations from all stages of Burroughs's (1914-1997) long career. Burroughs's companion, longtime editor and literary executor Grauerholz, and Grove editor Silverberg include selections from the writer's better-known works, as well as sections of the experimental "cut-up" novels?complete enough to give readers a feel for the form without exhausting those unaccustomed to Burroughs's disjointed sharpness. Dark humor runs throughout the collection, from the 1938 collaboration "Twilight's Last Gleamings," in which the cross-dressing captain of a sinking ship murders his way onto a lifeboat, to a wry account of Burroughs's stint as a cockroach exterminator. What may prove most valuable to readers is the inclusion of Burroughs's commentary on his aims and intent. "Remembering Jack Kerouac" recalls the way the younger Kerouac prodded Burroughs to write. In the manifesto "Les Voleurs," Burroughs celebrates "stealing" words, a cure for "the fetish of originality." Perhaps most surprising are the passages both melancholic and elegiac, such as this, from The Western Lands: "A tree like black-lace against a gray sky. A flash of joy." In a selection from My Education, Burroughs provides an apt description for this collection: "Each page is a door to everything is permitted." Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal This judiciously edited collection contains representative excerpts from a lifetime's published work, ranging from Junkie (1953) to My Education: A Book of Dreams (1995). It also features the initial chapter of "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks," an unpublished novel coauthored with Jack Kerouac. The selections, tracing "recurring themes and characters in Burroughs's work," are arranged more or less chronologically in nine sections. Grauerholz, Burroughs's longtime friend and literary executor, opens each section with an essay that provides biographical, historical, and textual background. A CD sampler of Burroughs performing some of his most memorable routines accompanies the text, and the sound of Burroughs's voice is sure to enhance a new reader's appreciation of his prose. An excellent introduction to the man and his work, this carefully designed reader belongs in all literature collections.?William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From the Back Cover "William was a shootist. He shot like he wrote-with extreme precision and no fear."-Hunter S. Thompson With the publication of Naked Lunch in 1959, William Burroughs brought international letters into the postmodern age, but he had already begun to chart the course that would establish him as one of postwar America's most influential writers. Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader brings together selections of Burroughs' most important and challenging work-beginning with his very early writing (including a chapter from his and Jack Kerouac's never-before-seen collaborative novel, And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks) and following his trajectory through My Education: A Book of Dreams. Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader follows major themes in Burroughs' oeuvre while also serving up a sampling of his darkly hilarious "routines," and is edited to serve as a tool for the scholar as well as an overview of his entire body of work for the general reader. Important biographical information, contained in the chapter introductions, provide key links to understanding the work in the context of the life. Ann Douglas's introductory es
