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It's even more odd because on the next couple of pages he signs letters to Ginsberg and Paul Carroll, the Big Table guy, 'love.' But I guess they're both guys who did stuff for his literary career. Which is not to try and say he had no feelings for his boy, he does ask him to please send a reply soon in the aforementioned letter, but still, you know. He does use the word 'amigo' to describe his adult friends too just after that, so that could have been his word of describing people he loved, but I would have expected a bit more of a personal signature to his son. Shrug.

Man, I just had a truly weird real experience. On P43 WSB is writing to Gysin and mentions Exterminator at the start of a paragraph, and Sidewalk at the end of it. Sidewalk was a mag that ran for two issues in 1960 put out by a fellow Scotsman, Alex Neish, whom I interviewed for this site a few years ago. Just as I finished reading the paragraph a fucking insect runs across the book, which I manage to keep on the pages until I can drop it in the toilet! A total Repo Man 'plate of shrimp' moment! I am absolutely not the superstitious type, but I've genuinely had a number of these weird wee WSB synchronicity moments over the last few years and sometimes you think, shit, if I was to believe in that sort of stuff and read too much into it...

...truly strange.

Shaking my head here. Need to shoot up some bug powder and go breathing in the corners of the apartment to avoid a repeat of this weirdness...

Just got my copy today. A few people spoke of a strange cover and it really is pretty naff to put it kindly. Doesn't look like any letters to Kerouac. Maybe holding out for a special volume?

Kerouac and Burroughs pretty much stopped corresponding in the 1960s so that special volume would be about thirty pages of introduction and two pages of letters.

If they wanted to, they could recycle ones from Jack's Selected Letter's and Bill's Volume 1, like the Ginsberg-Kerouac collection. Maybe pad it out with some Jack journals mentioning Bill, some Bill interviews mentioning Jack and earlier drafts/manuscript facismiles of Hippos and cityCityCITY.

Then toss off some introductory essays by Charters et al. I could see them making a mint off it.

On P200 now, and there have been a few more letters to his parents and Billy. These are the letters I am most fascinated by; a lot of the stuff to Gysin seems very repetitive and uninteresting to me, as if they are talking a private language that only they were truly plugged into at the time, and which seems useful in retrospect only as literary experimental history and curiosity. Interesting to see WSB address his letters to his parents with 'Dear Mother and Dad,' in that 'Mother' is a much more formal word than 'Dad' (both capitalized - quite traditional) and betrays the power and respect dynamic there.

Also fascinating to see him trying to connect with Billy (with stuff much warmer than the first letter between them) through writing, encouraging his poetry and folding in some of his son's work with his own to make a new composite with somebody who was literally part of him. Kudos to him for trying to have Billy stay a few months in Morocco, but it was obviously an endeavor doomed to failure; sad to read of the young man (in a letter to WSB's parents) already experiencing troubles at 15 or 16. Cursed From Birth elaborates on that tragic stuff.

Also. Couple of pure comedy quotes here and there...

In a letter of Feb 1965 to Ian Sommerville, who was planning to visit him in NY from England, enclosed as a postscript:

"P.S. In process of applying for visa and entering the U.S. the less said about me the better."

And also, from a letter to somebody named 'Mr. Gunsburg' from July 1965:

"I have never admitted to being a practicing homosexual..."

I am laughing out loud here, at one of the premier gay icons of the 20th century dissembling on the question of his 'veiled' sexuality (though of course he did come from a time when being gay was not discussed openly); quite pointlessly, it would seem, as a lot of the material in his books would very easily tell you anything you needed to know about what turned him on. Amusing.

WRITTEN FROM ANTARCTICA. I don't know that the US cover is so inaccurate by resembling an avid player of putt-putt or grandmaster of High School Reunions, Lord of the Punchbowl. Look now, this man has a nose that would impeach the pride of an elephant and destroy the years of research and forays into contact with their kind as common. WSB was easily a goddamned crank during these letters, no I don't think an "assassin" but I hope for a Volume 3 despite this one. Such a disappointment! Phew, whee.

I agree with Juggular. I am about 70% of the way through this book and have not been much impressed at all. So many letters to Gysin about tripe, so few to his own family and Billy about real stuff. The tape recorder experiments and suchlike are just headshakemaker nonsense, incredibly uninteresting to read about (I have read about them elsewhere anyway), and the stuff about Scientology and engrams and clears and such shite is just intolerably stupid and boring.

WSB always complains about having no money, and even makes melodramatic reference to nearly starving on the street, yet always seems to be hopping between London and Paris and Tangier and New York, so his finances really couldn't have been that dire - suppose what your concept of dire finances is, I suppose. Some interesting stuff here and there I intend to research, but I personally think the first volume of letters was way more interesting.

Odd, too, how the language in this new book is very linear and boring for the most part, with the odd cut-up here or there to relieve the tedious wranglings over payments (reminding me of the letters of Hunter S Thompson) in that way. There is really only one letter in the whole book so far, to 'Mr. Rubin' (P199 of the American edition) asking him about Nova Express, that has actually been interesting to read as a work of Writing. It's mostly cranky and staid and prosaic, a series of financial bulletins with the occasional nugget of interesting information that holds no real interest to anybody but the most obsessive completist or epistolary fetishist.

What also never ceases to amaze me is that he seems to think his more esoteric stuff will make money, or when he says hilariously bizarre naive stuff like (about The Wild Boys): "Anthony (Balch) swears it will be a best seller. It might in fact have the same success as Peter Pan." I don't think he's joking or being ironic at all here, with the thread of being tantalized by big money running constantly through the letters, but you'd have to say that the above quote, and others about his books being like 'children's books'(!) that 'can be read by any 12-year-old'(!!) show somewhat of of a disconnect from the real world, putting it mildly. Makes for vaguely entertaining reading, mind you.

Just my opinion. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views...blah blah blah...

Graham,

As much as I hate to admit it I feel the same way. There is such a difference between the 2 volumes that it's almost like they were letters from 2 different people.

The cut-ups are my least favorite of all Burroughs' writing and to have page after page describing the cut-ups with examples is quite boring, to the extent that I find myself doing what I hate to do when I'm reading a book, just scanning the page and moving on.

Burroughs constant talk about being broke in Paris, London and Tangiers is kind of silly. The biggest surprise to me is the extent that Girodias went ito n screwing WB out of his royalties and as broke that it made Burroughs he jet sets to and from England, France and Morroco.

I'm up to page 180 and Mikey Portman and Ian pop up every now and then but without much explanation regarding about them. Frustrating.

Still somewhat enjoyable in that it shows the lengths that WB went to to perfect his craft and I always hope that my complaints don't hinder a third volume.

I agree with Graham Rae. Yes, taste changes over time. But I don't think I would have found these letters very wonderful when I was the age I was when I read volume 1. I'm glad they put this collection out. I hope for a volume 3 but my guess would be there's probably very little material for a volume 3. Perhaps I'm wrong, and there's a huge cache full of correspondence to the NY kids Haring and Basquiat, to that pissartist Warhol, to various small publishers and larger papers, to Jimmy Carter, to the National Enquirer and the Zodiac killer, to Gordon Liddy and Rod Carew, to Hunter Thompson, Ginsberg, Kesey, to Muhammad Ali and George Dickel and the entire pitching staff of the Philadelphia Athletics, to Tennessee Williams, to Bowles, to Terry Southern, not to mention a continuing series of curses to Capote, some letters of resolve and reason and emotion to James G. away in Kansas later on, and finally a few surprises . . . like a secret farewell telegram to Groucho or a longterm exchange of Southern recipes with a young Richard Hell; wouldn't it be nice.

My favorite letters are the two to the woman who wanted to marry him. WSB was very kind, encouraging and decent.

The relationship between WSB and his son was one of a maintained remove and as complicated a man as WSB was he appears here very obviously, if not deliberately, interested in a degree of non-involvement. He shot his son's mother and killed her. WSB for all his efforts at detachment was a human being; the use of the adjective is not regrettable; he was an artist and a vulnerable and sensitive one. You can't be a writer otherwise. Their relationship was a sad one but to say there was a solution as easy as a long hug seems unrealistic. Ivan The Terrible drove a sword right through the guts of his own son and killed him in response to some slight but you couldn't say that as a father he was indifferent . . . and the books he wrote afterwards are hilarious.

P.s. It's a bit unfair, probably, to be "disappointed" in this collection. I think he earned his downtime. The Wild Boys is a good book. He wrote much. He sounds lonely and uninspired too often in these letters, though. It's the voice of a self-involved person. It's nice to know the old man came home and got the reception he deserved and then some. Thank goodness for punk rock.

December 22, 1969 London Del Dono Court to Minneapolis Twins Stadium, Minnesota


Dear Mr Carew,

Thank you for your letter. The cut-up is not my invention but was discovered by a Mr Brion Gysin in Paris accidentally if there are any accidents. This discovery as I say resulted in several years of experimental process which may or may not have resulted in ascribable "success" which is a dubious term in the humble opinion of your reporter. I am unaware of any byproduct from our research being evident in the so-called sports world. Any side effects were I assure you unintended. If your average is up as a result of listening to my broadcasts recorded by Mr Sommerville then I lay no claim to compensation. You cite your award of Rookie of the Year but Rookie of what exactly? What is baseball? When you say you stole home for a run one must ask Mr Carew who are you running to and to whose home does it belong?

Cut baselines . . . shift shortstop . . . STOP . . . steal anything in sight . . . I have told no one to wait. The words of L Ron Hubbard ring true in any medium. Place a trained Clear as baseman coach. The message was ready before the hit, before the pitch was thrown. Cut up the signals. There never was a curve ball a fast ball a slider. This is the dominion of the Reactive Mind and a small dominion it is. Mr Comiskey Mr Landis come out behind your tell-all books, come out behind your Brooklyn deals, your billboards for Coca-Cola. Whose grass did you sell beneath cleated feet? "No, don't show them the Clemens deal, don't let them see Canseco sucking on the juices of a withered A-Rod. Don't show them that."

Feller say I crowd my plate for a reason. And my bat besides. Cork anyhoo.



William S. Burroughs

P.s. Please sign the enclosed cards to my son Billy and add the "Jr." optional as I wish a few for my records thanks.

I've only read Vol. 1 of the letters, but I've also made the observation that the Burroughs who produced Junky and Naked Lunch inhabited a completely different psychological and social universe than the Burroughs who gave us the cut-ups, and particularly the works that followed, e.g. The Wild Boys and the Red Night trilogy. I'm sure this frameshift is reflected in Vol. 2 of the letters.

A lot of it has to do with the overwhelming intellectual and social influence of Gysin. Burroughs clearly saw Gysin as his intellectual superior and wound up repeating all of his mantras. Some of the influence was positive, leading Burroughs' work into new directions with he cut-ups (some of the end results were interesting, others less so), but Gysin also filled his head with a lot of nonsense. And Burroughs' early attraction to the ridiculous Scientology cult (the "intellectual" contents of which, e.g. thetans and engrams, are clearly designed to attract people at the far lower end of the Bell curve) still boggles my mind.

you're right Edward. In volume one his main man was Ginsburg and in volume two it was Gysin. Good point.

Furthermore, Ginsberg and Kerouac saw Burroughs as a mentor. Burroughs saw Gysin as an intellectual superior. So 1940's and 50's Burroughs was mostly expressing his own ideas, 1960's and 70's Burroughs was often repeating Gysin's diatribes and theories.

Interesting point about Gysin. Frustrated writer?

And yeah. Gysin and WSB. Purely platonic relationship? Was always a bit confused about that.

Whatever happened to the MOB (My Own Business) mag? It ever come out?

How much of London ignoring WSB by not reviewing him in the 60s and 70s was straight wondering what the fuck he was doing, as opposed to shady conspiracy theory mission-omission?