The Yage Letters Redux by William S. Burroughs
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Everything Lost
Everything Lost Everything LosT THE LATIN AMERICAN NOTEBOOK OF WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS GENERAL EDITORS Geoffrey D. Smith and John M. Bennett VOLUME EDITOR Oliver Harris THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS / COLUMBUS Copyright © 2008 by the Estate of William S. Burroughs. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burroughs, William S., 1914–1997. Everything lost : the Latin American notebook of William S. Burroughs / general editors: Geoffrey D. Smith and John M. Bennett ; introduction by Oliver Harris. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-1080-2 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8142-1080-5 (alk. paper) 1. Burroughs, William S., 1914–1997—Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc. 2. Burroughs, William S., 1914–1997— Travel—Latin America. I. Smith, Geoffrey D. (Geoffrey Dayton), 1948– II. Bennett, John M. III. Title. PS3552.U75E63 2008 813’.54—dc22 2007025199 Cover design by Fulcrum Design Corps, Inc . Type set in Adobe Rotis. Text design and typesetting by Jennifer Shoffey Forsythe. Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanance of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.49-1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 coNtents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii INTRODUCTION BY OLIVER HARRIS ix COMMENTS ON THE TEXT BY GEOFFREY D. SMITH xxvii NOTEBOOK FACSIMILE 1 TRANSCRIPT AND FAIR COPY (with notes and variant readings) 105 ABOUT THE EDITORS 217 acknoWledgments First and foremost, the editors wish to thank James Grauerholz, literary execu- tor of the William S. Burroughs estate, for permission to publish this seminal holograph notebook. -
Religion and Spirituality in the Work of the Beat Generation
DOCTORAL THESIS Irrational Doorways: Religion and Spirituality in the Work of the Beat Generation Reynolds, Loni Sophia Award date: 2011 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 28. Sep. 2021 Irrational Doorways: Religion and Spirituality in the Work of the Beat Generation by Loni Sophia Reynolds BA, MA A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of English and Creative Writing University of Roehampton 2011 Reynolds i ABSTRACT My thesis explores the role of religion and spirituality in the work of the Beat Generation, a mid-twentieth century American literary movement. I focus on four major Beat authors: William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Gregory Corso. Through a close reading of their work, I identify the major religious and spiritual attitudes that shape their texts. All four authors’ religious and spiritual beliefs form a challenge to the Modern Western worldview of rationality, embracing systems of belief which allow for experiences that cannot be empirically explained. -
Everything Lost the Latin American Notebook of William S
Everything Lost The Latin American Notebook of William S. Burroughs William S. Burroughs Edited by Geoffrey D. Smith, John M. Bennett, and Oliver Harris In late summer 1953, as he returned to Mexico City after a seven-month expedition through the jungles of Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru, William S. Burroughs began a notebook 2007 240 pp. of final reflections on his four years in Latin America. His first novel, Junkie, had just been published and he would soon $59.95 cloth 978-0-842-080-2 be back in New York to meet Allen Ginsberg and together complete the manuscripts of what became The Yage Letters and Queer. Yet this notebook, the sole survivor from that period, reveals Burroughs not as a writer on the verge of success, but as a man staring down personal catastrophe and visions of looming cultural disaster. Losses that will not let go of him haunt Burroughs throughout the notebook: "Bits of it keep floating back to me like memories of a daytime nightmare." However, out of these dark reflections we see emerge vivid fragments of Burroughs's fiction and, even more tellingly, unique, primary evidence for the remarkable ways in which his early manuscripts evolved. Assembled in facsimile and transcribed by Geoffrey D. Smith, John M. Bennett, and Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris, the notebook forces us to change the way we see both Burroughs and his writing at a turning point in his literary biography. William S. Burroughs is recognized as one of the most innovative, politically trenchant, and influential artists of the twentieth century. -
William Burroughs: Sailor of the Soul. A.J. Lees Reta Lila Weston Institute
William Burroughs: Sailor of the Soul. A.J. Lees Reta Lila Weston Institute of Neurological Sciences, Institute of Neurology, University College London WC1 ([email protected]). Abstract In 1953 William Seward Burroughs made several important and largely unrecognised discoveries relating to the composition and clinical pharmacological effects of the hallucinogenic plant potion known as yagé or ayahuasca. Illustrations of Burroughs’ voucher sample of Psychotria viridis and his letter to the father of modern ethnobotany Richard Evans Schultes are published here for the very first time. Introduction. William Seward Burroughs (1914-1997) demonised by post-War American society eventually came to be regarded by many notable critics as one of the finest writers of the twentieth century. In my article entitled Hanging around with the Molecules and my book Mentored by a Madman; The William Burroughs Experiment I have described how as a young medical student I forged a Mephistolean pact with ‘the hard man of hip’ that allowed me to continue my medical studies. Many years later Burroughs was behind my determination to resurrect apomorphine for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease (Stibe, Lees, and Stern 1987) and employ the Dreamachine to better understand the neurobiology of visual hallucinations. Junkie helped me understand the dopamine dysregulation syndrome, far better than any learned paper. My patients craved, then wanted but never enjoyed their anti-Parkinson Ian medication (Giovannoni et al. 2000) . After reading the Yage Letters in 1978 I also came to see William Burroughs as a shady traveller in the grand tradition of the Victorian naturalists. In this article I reveal how his ethnobotanising in the Colombian and Peruvian Amazon contributed an important and largely unrecognised footnote to the unraveling of the phytochemistry of ayahuasca (yagé). -
Encyclopedia of Beat Literature
L i t erary Moven1ents..R"• ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BEAT LITERATURE THii ESSENTIAL GU I DE TO Tlil3 L l\' l~ S AND \VORK S 0" THE BEAT WRITERS-jA C ~ K EROUAC, ALLEN G I NSBURG, \VJLLIAM B URROUGH S. AND MANY MORE KLl l\.T H ENI NI ER. Encyclopedia of Beat Literature Edited by Kurt HEmmEr Foreword by Ann cHArtErs Afterword by tim Hunt Photographs by LArry KEEnAn Encyclopedia of Beat Literature Copyright © 2007 by Kurt Hemmer All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permis- sion in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Facts On File, Inc. An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York, NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Encyclopedia of beat literature / edited by Kurt Hemmer; foreword by Ann Charters; afterword by Tim Hunt. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8160-4297-7 (alk. paper) 1. American literature—20th century—Encyclopedias. 2. Authors, American—20th century—Biography—Encyclopedias. 3. Beat Generation— Encyclopedias. I. Hemmer, Kurt. PS228.B6E53 2006 810.9′11—dc22 2005032926 Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfile.com Text design by Joan M. -
Yage Letters Redux
RealityStudio A William S. Burroughs Community Bibliographic Bunker Yage Letters Redux Tags: Cut-Up, Drugs, Little Magazines, Oliver Harris, William Burroughs, Yage Letters RealityStudio Reviews the New Edition Prepared by Oliver Harris It is an acknowledged paradox at the heart of William S. Burroughs’ work that his greatest books called into question how much they were even his. Whereas Samuel Beckett tried to eviscerate the novel from within — to “naughten” it, to borrow a term from Heidegger — Burroughs seemed to do the same to authorship as such. Friends and chance helped to assemble his masterpiece, Naked Lunch, from fragments he claimed not to remember writing. In the 1960s he advocated mechanical procedures, the cut up and the fold in, for composing literary works. Throughout his career he liked to collaborate with other artists. (You imagine teachers writing “plays well with others” on the report cards of young Bill.) And of course many of his works wouldn’t have seen the light of day without the early boosterism of Allen Ginsberg and the later support of James Grauerholz. It’s as though Burroughs himself were rather like the drug yagé: a source of brilliant visions unable to be realized without an added ingredient to potentiate them. Burroughs might have achieved little without the literary catalysts in his life: Ginsberg, Gysin, and Grauerholz. The three Gs. Given that Burroughs established this approach — not the composition of books but the decomposition of authorship — early in his career, it is not alarming to see his books continuing to be revised since his death in 1997. -
Burroughs's Folios As an Archival Machine for Artistic Creation
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 18 (2016) Issue 5 Article 21 Burroughs's Folios as an Archival Machine for Artistic Creation Tomasz D. Stompor Martin-Luther-Universität Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the American Literature Commons, Art Practice Commons, and the Literature in English, North America Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Recommended Citation Stompor, Tomasz D. "Burroughs's Folios as an Archival Machine for Artistic Creation." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 18.5 (2016): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2958> This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field. -
The Theme of Suffering in • the Novels of Jack Kerouac , Leonard Cohen, and William Burroughs
THE THEME OF SUFFERING IN • THE NOVELS OF JACK KEROUAC , LEONARD COHEN, AND WILLIAM BURROUGHS by JEAN MARIE CLIFFORD B.A., University of British Columbia, 1968 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of. English We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September, 1970 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of {g'-v^&iAh The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada Date <_c_X. ±\ 1*1 70 ABSTRACT This thesis considers the theme of suffering and its reso• lution in the novels of Jack Kerouac, Leonard Cohen, and William Burroughs, three avant-garde contemporary'' writers. It discusses most of their work in a general way, with reference to the theme of suffering; and it also analyses in a much more detailed man• ner The Subterraneans by Kerouac, The Favorite Game and Beautiful Losers by Cohen, and Naked Lunch by Burroughs. Cohen envisions man as a suffering being who experiences his pain in many different ways. He criticizes the old ritual patterns in which suffering once took its form - the pattern of religion which teaches man that suffering is good, and. -
Becoming-Animal from Queer to Ghost of Chance
humanities Article Baboons, Centipedes, and Lemurs: Becoming-Animal from Queer to Ghost of Chance Alexander Greiffenstern Independent Scholar, Lehener Straße 59, 79106 Freiburg, Germany; [email protected] Abstract: The paper establishes a connection between the becoming-writer of Burroughs, who found his calling and style during the 1950s and his signature characteristic of becoming-animal. This can first be observed in Queer, where Burroughs develops his so-called routine; a short sketch-like text that often involves instances of metamorphosis or transformation. The theoretical background for this short form and the term becoming-animal is taken from Deleuze’s and Guattari’s book on Kafka, who also worked best in short texts and frequently wrote about animals. “The Composite City” may be the central text to understanding Burroughs’ work. It is the text where Burroughs found his style and his identity as a writer. Becoming-animal is a logical consequence that further develops Burroughs’ aesthetic ideal. Over the following decades, he experimented with it in different forms, and toward the end of his career, it became part of an environmental turn. In Ghost of Chance, one can find the same aesthetic ideal that starts Burroughs’ writing in 1953, but the political implications have turned toward saving the lemurs of Madagascar. Keywords: William S. Burroughs; Queer; Ghost of Chance; Yage Letters; Naked Lunch; Madagascar “As a child I had been a great dreamer, bordering on hallucinations which often involved animals. After years of trying to discover who and what I was, I Citation: Greiffenstern, Alexander. suddenly awoke one morning and realized I didn’t care. -
Arabic Music and Burroughs's the Ticket That Exploded
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 18 (2016) Issue 5 Article 10 Arabic Music and Burroughs's The Ticket That Exploded David M. Holzer Independent Scholar Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the American Studies Commons, and the Comparative Literature Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Recommended Citation Holzer, David M. "Arabic Music and Burroughs's The Ticket That Exploded." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 18.5 (2016): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2922> This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field. The above text, published by Purdue University Press ©Purdue University, has been downloaded 112 times as of 11/ 07/19. -
A Selectively Annotated Bibliography of William S
ANYTHING BUT ROUTINE: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography of William S. Burroughs v. 1.0 by Brian E. C. Schottlaender The Audrey Geisel University Librarian UC SAN DIEGO LIBRARIES 2008 ii INTRODUCTION The bibliography of William S. Burroughs is as challenging as the man was himself. He wrote voluminously and kaleidoscopically. He rearranged, recycled, and reiterated obsessively. He produced across five decades and four continents. He was a novelist, a poet, an essayist, and a correspondent at home in all media. He never met a ―little magazine‖ or an interviewer he wouldn‘t share with. There have been a few attempts at documenting the range of Burroughs‘ prodigious output over the years—some better than others. I initially conceived of this bibliography as an update of Joe Maynard‘s and Barry Miles‘ definitive William S. Burroughs: A Bibliography, 195373: Unlocking Inspector Lee‘s Word Hoard (University of Virginia, 1978). Readers familiar with Maynard and Miles (referred to herein as M&M) will know that this bibliography differs somewhat from that in scope, as it does in organization and in the kind and quantity of detail in- or excluded. These differences notwithstanding, my hope is that the two will be found to complement one another, to which end I have made a systematic effort to explicitly link the entries in Maynard and Miles to those in my own bibliography when such entries appear in both. For verification purposes, I have personally examined the great majority of items described in the bibliography. In a few instances, I have gotten by with a little help from my friends: booksellers, collectors, and librarians. -
Howl and Other Poems
© 1956, 1059 by Allen Ginsberg All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 56-8587 ISBN 10: 0-87286-017-5 ISBN 13: 978-0-87286-017-9 With this printing in 2006, on the 50th anniversary of its original publication, HOWL & OTHER POEMS has reached the milestone of one million copies in print. Visit our website: http://www.citylights.com CITY LIGHTS BOOKS are edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Nancy J. Peters and published at the City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133. DEDICATION To— Jack Kerouac, new Buddha of American prose, who spit forth intelligence into eleven books written in half the number of years (1951-1956)—On the Road, Visions of Neal, Dr. Sax, Springtime Mary, The Subterraneans, San Francisco Blues, Some of the Dharma, Book of Dreams, Wake Up, Mexico City Blues, and Visions of Gerard— creating a spontaneous bop prosody and original classic literature. Several phrases and the title of Howl are taken from him. William Seward Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, an endless novel which will drive everybody mad. Neal Cassady, author of The First Third, an autobiography (1949) which enlightened Buddha. All these books are published in Heaven. CONTENTS Howl for Carl Solomon Introduction by William Carlos Williams Howl Footnote to Howl A Supermarket in California Transcription of Organ Music Sunflower Sutra America In the Baggage Room at Greyhound Earlier Poems: An Asphodel Song Wild Orphan In Back of the Real HOWL FOR CARL SOLOMON When he was younger, and I was younger, I used to know Allen Ginsberg, a young poet living in Paterson, New Jersey, where he, son of a well-known poet, had been born and grew up.