Thanks to Jed Birmingham’s piece about my book collection from his Burroughs Collectors series on RealityStudio, a member of Jeff Ball’s Burroughs & Associates group on Facebook, Marcus Gray, posted a picture of Burroughs’ bookshelf he had found in Chris Stein’s photo-memoir, Point of View: Me, New York City, and the Punk Scene. Stein states in the text that the picture was taken during a trip he took to see Burroughs in Lawrence, KS in 1976, but as Marcus Gray rightfully pointed out, 1986 is the year that Chris Stein visited Burroughs in Kansas. First, Burroughs wasn’t living in Kansas in 1976, and after careful analysis of the picture, it is obvious that these were the books from Burroughs’ Kansas library, and many of the books are from the 80s with the latest copyright date being 1986. 

I’ve compiled a list of 69 books with accurate bibliographic information down to edition at least, and I’m going to include that list here, but I did want to say a few things first. The day Marcus Gray posted this image, I ordered the book. I’m ashamed to admit how I did it, but I’m not ashamed to admit that I had it the very next day. I spent many hours poring over the picture and looking up images of different editions of books, but here’s what I came away with. It appears to me that there are 141 books on the shelves, and of those 141 books, 32 books are spine-in (pages-out) or are pamphlets that have no identifiable markings on the spine. Of the 109 books that are identifiable, I was able to correctly identify 69. That also means that there were 40 that I was unable to identify. Of the 69 titles, 35 were books that were already catalogued and included in The Road to Interzone, and 34 are entirely new entries. I will also update all of the entries that were already known, as being photographed here in 1986. There were a handful of books I thought were highlights or stoppers too that I wanted to say something about, and then I promise I’ll get to the list.

William Burroughs mentioned Shibumi by Trevanian in his 1980 Public Discourse Lecture, “It’s violently anti-American and it’s a bestseller, which is intriguing in itself. A very interesting book. I recommend it.” I found my copy of Shibumi next to most of Trevanian’s other books at a bookstore on Manchaca (pronounced “man check”) in Austin back in 2010 when I was transcribing the Naropa lectures looking for new additions for The Road to Interzone. It was my go-to store for paperbacks from the 70s and 80s; lots of former bestsellers, thrillers and horror books about killer ants, scorpions and rabid dogs, so it was almost always my first stop when I would discover a new entry. What got me thinking about Shibumi, was one of my latest discoveries, The Loo Sanction, which is also by Trevanian. Unfortunately, the bookstore I mentioned closed in 2013, but thanks to Burroughs’ interest in trashy bestsellers, that shouldn’t be a problem. I can just run over to the other paperback bookstore in Marble Falls that has the books that everyone read and disposed of thirty years ago too. Burroughs read a lot of bestsellers and what he called “airport reading,” so it wasn’t surprising to see a copy of Trevanian’s The Loo Sanction on his bookshelf in 1986. What was surprising was to see a photo of Burroughs’ bookshelf from 1986.

There’s a lot of overlap between this picture and the selection of the library catalogued in Road to Interzone, but even old familiar titles have new life when seen in a different context, and seeing the books as Burroughs shelved them is a real treat. Pride of Healers by Hirschborn is there and that’s interesting because Burroughs quotes from that book in the Caravan of Dreams reading he did on September 11, 1986 (Uncommon Quotes). It makes sense for it to be there, and if you look at the top book in the box on the floor next to the Explore magazine is something called Metal Woman. I can’t tell 100% and I can’t find it on the internet to confirm, but I’m positive it’s a program for the Johnny Dolphin play, Metal Woman. It has to be. Johnny Dolphin wrote a book of poetry called Wild, which Burroughs also had in his Lawrence library, and the play Metal Woman that I just mentioned was published in The Collected Works of the Caravan of Dreams Theater Vol. II (Synergetic Press, 1984). Another thing is Burroughs blurbed The Collected Works of the Caravan of Dreams Theater Vol. I (Synergetic Press, 1983), “Great!” (not as good as his blurb for The Erotic World of Peter De Rome: “gassy–a real rarity”). But that’s not all. A quick google search revealed that Johnny Dolphin is actually John P. Allen, and John P. Allen is one of the founders of Biosphere2. There’s a lot going on here, and that’s just in a box on the floor.

A title I’m already familiar with and have already catalogued is The Hounds of Tindalos, which was still in Burroughs’ library in Lawrence when he died. I have the Belmont edition, which I paid eight dollars for at Three Dog Books in Archer City, Texas back before I lived there. Burroughs had the 1975 Jove edition. He was probably familiar with the title story, before it was a book. The short story, “The Hounds of Tindalos” by Frank Belnap Long originally appeared in Weird Tales, and the creatures that appear in the story were appropriated by H. P. Lovecraft for his own story, “The Whisperer in the Darkness”, making Long’s story an official part of the Cthulhu Mythos. Burroughs stated several times that he read Weird Tales as a young man, and the magazine appears on Audrey Carson’s bookshelf in Cities of the Red Night, so Burroughs probably encountered this story as well as a fair share of Lovecraft from his days reading Weird Tales. The Necronomicon, though not directly written by Lovecraft, was of interest to Burroughs as well. He discussed the introduction he had written for the Barnes Graphics Ed. in his class on Creative Reading at Naropa. He mentioned Lovecraft once in that lecture. He also lists that same edition of The Necronomicon as a lesser-known great work in the Summer 1978, “Lesser Known Great Books: Reading List”, which Jeff Ball scored awhile back, and was generous enough to provide a copy. Burroughs’ involvement in the publication of the book was described in detail in Dead Names: The Dark History of the Necronomicon. There’s a Burroughs blurb on the paperback edition of the Simon Necronomicon too. Burroughs mentions Colin Wilson’s “The Return of the Lloigor” in a discussion reported by Matthew Levi Stevens and documented in the collection, Academy 23: “He likes Wilson, he says, jokes that ‘the Colonel’ with his cottage in Wales in Wilson’s ‘Return of the Lloigor’ and his own Colonel Sutton-Smith from “The Discipline of DE” are one and the same.” At the time of the writing of the Discipline of DE, the only available edition of that short story by Wilson was in the August Dereleth (Ed.) collection, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1969). Burroughs’ own Wind Die You Die We Die was also reprinted in the The Starry Wisdom collection, an anthology of Lovecraft/Cthulhu inspired fiction (The Starry Wisdom: A Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft. D. M. Mitchell, Ed. Creation Books, 1995). Anyway, it’s not really a very big deal, but it is definitely interesting and Frank Belnap Long’s The Hounds of Tindalos is at home where it’s at. It belongs there like everything else. I’ve added this particular edition to my list of titles to update, so once I get it, if you’re interested in the Belmont edition, I’ll have one for sale.

The book I’m happiest to have identified is David Lindsey’s Heat from Another Sun, not because it particularly matters, but because I was able to make it out. It’s the one under the pistol there on the second shelf down. This was an unfamiliar title to me, so it’s exciting to add to the Road to Interzone Addendum, and I know it won’t be too hard to find. 

Probably the biggest ringer of all in this picture is the book on the top shelf under the T. E. D. Klein book. What I saw when I saw it was Blood Meridian. I said it can’t be Blood Meridian. It looked like a trade paper because you can see the Images of Horror and Fantasy underneath, and that is an oversize hardback. Uptight: The Velvet Underground Story is an oversize trade, and Skeletons and the Klein book are both mass markets. Blood Meridian looked like a trade, so I looked it up, but I couldn’t find a trade paper available in 1986. I asked my oldest son because his eyes are better than mine and he said yeah it for sure says Blood Meridian, so I called a trusted authority and asked him. He said that’s 100% Blood Meridian, but it doesn’t look like a hardcover. I thought about it for a little bit and remembered that the only person I know who refers to Cormac McCarthy as CMcC is Jeff Taylor in Nashville, so I wrote him and asked, “Isn’t this Blood Meridian, and he said, “I think it is… the Ecco pbk.” I tried “Ecco”, “1986”, and “mccarthy” in the keyword field on Bookfinder, and though it’s not as expensive as the first edition, it appears to be rarer because only three copies came up for sale. There was only one trade paper available in 1986 and this was it. It didn’t take long to confirm either, because Jeff Taylor sent me a picture of his shelf when he got home that night, and sure enough the spines are identical. This is all good news and bad news. I’m not as big of a fan of Blood Meridian as everyone I know, but I’m excited to see it in Burroughs’ library the year after it was released. It’s completely unexpected, but not a surprise. The bad news is I can’t find the Ecco edition for less than $700. Jeff Taylor said he paid nine bucks for it three years ago though so there’s hope. In the meantime, I’ve moved my old Vintage edition from my shelves over to Burroughs’ shelves. 

I won’t keep you any longer from looking at the books. I’m grateful to the Burroughs community for helping me come up with these new entries. Here’s the list of what I was able to identify. Let me know if you can make out something I was unable to see.

Chris Stein photograph of William S. Burroughs bookshelf

From Chris Stein’s Point of View: Me, New York City, and the Punk Scene (NY: Rizzoli, 2018) (shelves with books from top to bottom–left to right). Road to Interzone (RTI) and Road to Interzone: Addendum (RTI-A) page numbers listed if title has been catalogued before.

Shelf One

Marshall Goldberg. Skeletons. NY: Leisure, 1986. RTI, p. 253.

Klein, T. E. D. Title unknown. NY: Bantam, unknown date. The author’s name can be made out as well as the logo for Bantam books and the title is obviously a mass-market paperback. There were only two books by T. E. D. Klein available in paperback from Bantam in 1986, Dark Gods and The Ceremonies, but I am unable to determine which title it is.

Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West. Ecco Press, 1986. 

Gert Schiff. Images of Horror and Fantasy. NY: Abrams, 1978. RTI, p. 266.

Victor Bockris & Gerard Malanga. Uptight: The Velvet Underground Story. London: Omnibus Press, 1983. 

Shelf Two

David L. Lindsey. Heat from Another Sun. NY: Pocket Books, 1985.

Michael De-la-Noy. Denton Welch: The Making of a Writer. Viking, 1984. 

Everett F. Bleiler (Ed.) A Treasury of Victorian Ghost Stories. NY: Scribners, 1981. 

Herbert Pritzke. Bedouin Doctor. NY: E. P. Dutton, 1957.

Ted Morgan. Maugham: A Biography. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1980. RTI, p. 85. 

Tobias Schneebaum. Wild Man. NY: Viking, 1979. RTI, p. 267.

Tennessee Williams. Memoirs. NY: Knopf, 1975. RTI-A.

Ralph Louis Woods. The New World of Dreams. NY: MacMillan, 1974. RTI, p. 272.

Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker. Joy of Cooking. NY: Signet, 1973.

Isha Schwaller De Lubicz. Her-Bak: The Living Face of Ancient Egypt. NY: Inner Traditions, 1978.

Isha Schwaller De Lubicz. Her-Bak: Egyptian Initiate. NY: Inner Traditions, 1978.

W. B. Seabrook. The Magic Island. NY: Harcourt Brace, 1929. RTI, p. 266.

Terry Southern. Flash and Filigree. NY: Arbor House, 1984. RTI, pp. 158, 267-8, RTI-A.

Alasdair Gray. Unlikely Stories, Mostly. NY: Penguin, 1984. RTI, p. 253.

F. Bruce Lamb. The Wizard of the Upper Amazon: The Story of Manuel Cordova-Rios. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975. RTI, p. 258.

Trevanian. The Loo Sanction. NY: Ballantine, 1984.

Marshall Goldberg, M.D. Critical List. NY: Leisure Books, 1986. RTI, p. 253.

Basil Cooper. The Great White Space. London: Sphere, 1980.

Bennett Cerf (Ed.) Famous Ghost Stories. NY: Vintage, 1974. RTI, p. 16.

Doug Masters. TNT: Kingdom of Death. NY: Ace, 1986. RTI, p. 261.

E. M. Forster. A Room with a View. NY: Knopf, 1986. RTI, p. 251.

Frank Belknap Long. The Hounds of Tindalos. NY: Jove, 1975. RTI, p. 260.

Brian M. Stableford. Critical Threshold. NY: Daw, 1977. RTI, pp. 113, 268.

Michael Medved. Hospital. NY: Pocket, 1984.

Thomas De Quincey. Unknown title.

Anton Chekhov. The Tales of Chekhov Volume 2: The Duel and Other Stories. The Ecco Press, 1984.

P. E. I. Bonewits. Real Magic. NY: Berkley Medallion, 1971. RTI, pp. 13, 173, 242.

Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine (Eds). Short Story Masterpieces. NY: Dell, 1958. RTI-A.

Robin Cook. Mindbend. NY: Signet, 1985. 

Howard A. Olgin. The Doctor Game. NY: Dell, 1979.

Tony Hillerman. The Blessing Way. NY: Avon, 1978. RTI, p. 223.

Patricia Garfield. Creative Dreaming. NY: Ballantine, 1976. RTI, p. 252.

Gary Jennings. Aztec. NY: Avon, 1981.

Jack Henry Abbott. In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison. NY: Vintage, 1982.

David Leigh. High Time: The Shocking Life and Times of Howard Marks. Portsmouth, NH: William Heinemann Ltd., 1984. 

Terry Wilson. ‘D’ Train: A Novel. London: Grapheme Publications, 1985. RTI, pp. 202, 272.

Jane Bowles. Out in the World: Selected Letters of Jane Bowles 1935-1970. Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1982.

Shelf Three

Olaf Stapledon. Last and First Men and Star Maker. NY: Dover, 1968.

William McKee German. Doctors Anonymous: The Story of Laboratory Medicine. Garden City, NY: Blue Ribbon Books, 1944. RTI, p. 252. 

Delacorta (Daniel Odier). NANA. NY: Summit Books, 1984. RTI, p. 249.

Anton Chekhov. The Tales of Chekhov Volume 1: The Darling and Other Stories. The Ecco Press, 1984.

Philip Swindells. The Water Gardener’s Handbook. NY: Random House, 1984.

Rudolph Wurlitzer. Slow Fade. NY: Alfred A Knopf, 1984. RTI, p. 273.

Robin Cook. Godplayer. NY: Signet, 1984. RTI, p. 247.

Hamilton Cochran. Freebooters of the Red Sea: Pirates, Politicians and Pieces of Eight. Indianapoli: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965. RTI, p. 245.

Lawrence D. Stewart. Paul Bowles: The Illumination of North Africa. Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois University, 1974.

Richard Clark Hirschorn. A Pride of Healers. NY: Bantam, 1983. RTI, pp. 52, 255.

John Saul. Brain Child. NY: Bantam, 1985. 

Martin L. Gross. The Doctors. NY: Dell, 1967.

William Shakespeare. The Viking Portable Library: Shakespeare. NY: Penguin, 1977. 

Brian Garfield. The Paladin. NY: Bantam, 1981. 

Richard Frede. The Interns. NY: Bantam, 1962.

Arthur C. Clarke. 2001: A Space Odyssey. NY: Signet, 1968. RTI, pp. 21, 245.

Arthur Rimbaud. Illuminations. New Directions. RTI-A.

Russell Targ & Harold Puthoff. Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability. NY: Delta, 1977.

Ken Weaver. Texas Crude. R. Crumb (Ill.) NY: Plume, 1984. RTI, p. 247.

Rudy Rucker. The 57th Franz Kafka. NY: Ace, 1983. RTI, p. 265.

Thomas Chastain. 911. NY: Bantam, 1977. RTI, p. 245.

Harold Klawans. Informed Consent. NY: Signet, 1986.

Shelf Four

J. I. M. Stewart. The Bridge at Arta. NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 1981.

Books on the floor

Richard Patterson. Historical Atlas of the Outlaw West. Boulder, CO: Johnson Publishing Company, 1985. 

Blackie Collins and Chris McLoughlin. Personal Defense. 1977. RTI, p. 246.

Dudley Pope. Guns. NY: Delacorte, 1965. RTI, p. 264.

Metal Woman.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series on the The Greatest Burroughs Collectors. #5 is Michael Stevens.

Before the cats and the guns, before the novels, hell, before the drugs, Burroughs was known as a great reader. At least to Kerouac and Ginsberg he was. Burroughs’ wide-ranging knowledge of literature was what first drew Burroughs into the Beat circle. It was Burroughs’ quotation of Shakespeare in conversation that indicated to Ginsberg that he was somebody in the know and somebody to get to know better. You could learn something from this guy. Over the years this has been forgotten. As an outlaw and writer from the margins, he was viewed by many in the intellectual establishment of the 1950s as something of a rube, like the rest of the Beats. This carries over to some extent to the present day. When you think of Burroughs you think of many things but Burroughs the reader is far down on the list. That is a shame, and it is wrong.

Nobody has thought more about Burroughs the reader than Mike Stevens. Stevens has done something downright radical. When discussing and studying canonical writers, like Shakespeare and Joyce, it is not unusual to believe those writers have the Midas touch, that is, that anything they touched is intellectual gold. So, it is not unusual to compile lists and collections based on a great writer’s library and reading. I do not know that this approach has carried over into writers of the post-modern era. As I have written on RealityStudio before, Charles Olson was an exception. And the study of post-modern writers’ libraries seems to in a renaissance. Mary Catherine Kinniburgh, who now works with archives and rare books at Granary Books, wrote an award-winning dissertation on the libraries of Olson and Diane di Prima. For years Stevens has been collecting and recreating Burroughs’ library in relative obscurity. Maybe times they are a-changing. I hope so for Stevens’ sake; his collection deserves serious attention. It is one of the greatest book collections, Burroughs or otherwise, I have ever personally been in contact with.

In terms of his reading, it is thought that Burroughs was addicted to junk. And he was to a certain extent, but he turned that dross into gold in his writing. Scientology anyone? Yet as Stevens and Ginsberg will tell you, Burroughs knew his way around the classics too. Burroughs was a voracious reader, and it is Stevens’ goal to document and collect every single book Burroughs ever encountered. It is an impossible task, but Stevens is making a serious run at it. Stevens estimates he has tracked down 1,152 books connected to Burroughs’ reading. What makes Stevens’ collection remarkable is that it is not enough to get a copy of Yeats’ A Vision from the local bookstore. No, in an imperfect world Stevens wants the same edition that Burroughs read; in a perfect world Stevens would have Burroughs’ own copies. That said, Stevens tries to recreate Burroughs’ library as faithfully as he can. Stevens’ shelf mirrors Burroughs’ own shelves at various times in his life. If Stevens has seen a picture of Burroughs’ bookshelf (and he has in person), Stevens replicates the order of the books on his own shelves. It goes beyond books as Stevens has managed to adorn the shelves of his collection with a few of the same items Burroughs had on his shelves in Lawrence: an Audubon bird call, a Dr. Steele action figure from the Big Jim series of GI Joe knock-offs from the Seventies, Spiritual Sky incense (Nag Champa), a postcard with a photo of Samuel Beckett, an encased scorpion with the felt on the bottom, and, of course, a Kubotan keychain.

It is this level of obsession that sets Stevens apart and makes him special. He is a pioneer and an explorer. Like Barry Miles, Stevens had a career in books that dovetails with his collecting life. All booksellers are in essence book collectors. Booksellers are not a necessary evil, that is too harsh and unjust, but they are book collectors corrupted. Disciples selling the relics, or the aura as soul, for pieces of silver. Richard Aaron is a case in point. He amassed a considerable Burroughs collection before his finances collapsed and he was forced into the world of bookselling as a means to make a living. One wonders if the greatest Burroughs bookseller of all time would have gotten into the business if not for financial demands. If not for the money, would any bookseller rather remain a book collector? Does any book dealer really want to part with their books? Is not bookselling a curse, an exile from the Eden of collecting?

For years Stevens was a book scout. But that is being modest. He was the personal book scout for Larry McMurtry, one of the most famous and well-known bookmen of the 20th century. McMurtry was also not too shabby as an author. Stevens travelled every inch of Texas looking for books for McMurtry. Such adventures honed Stevens’ skills in finding books. Most book scouts have a list of the books they are looking for. It is not easy charting an unexplored territory. Most Burroughs collectors have a map, in the form of a bibliography, to work from. Stevens created his own map, his own world, which he called The Road to Interzone. The bulk of the entries in his bibliography of that title came from Burroughs’ own writing on his reading practices, but it is remarkable the lengths Stevens will go to track down a book that Burroughs has read. Stevens has listened to hours of Burroughs’ lectures (Burroughs’ lectures on Creative Reading alone led to at least 60 entries); he has looked at all the Burroughs photographs with a magnifying glass (there’s the classic picture of Burroughs with Kurt Cobain looking at books and magazines, Jon Blumb’s picture of Burroughs reading Triggernometry, and the picture of Burroughs reading Rigor Mortis). Stevens sees cliched photographs with fresh eyes. How many times have we seen the photograph of Burroughs and Patti Smith? But have you ever really studied that photograph? Stevens on what he sees: 

There are a couple of pictures of Burroughs with Patti Smith that float around all the time. One shows her sitting next to him on the floor. The picture was taken at the Bunker. I’m not sure about the photographer, but there’s one book that caught my eye on the shelf in the background. I recognized it as one of those Crime and Punishment books from that series that came out back in the 70s. Colin Wilson was on the editorial advisory board. You used to see them all the time. I had to do some searching, but I found out that it was Vol. 6 in the series. That tells me he might have had them all, but I can’t confirm it. So, in a situation like this I’ll mention it in the addendum, but only list the one volume, because it’s the only one I know he had.  

Stevens goes over every video of Burroughs like a conspiracy theorist watching the Zapruder film. For example, in the deleted scenes from Burroughs: A Movie, made available through Criterion, Burroughs paces around the Bunker showing off a sword. Most people would be transfixed by this act of showmanship, but Stevens noticed a table with magazines and a book. He paused the movie and took a picture of the TV, then looked up close at the picture and was able to make out a copy of Living at the Movies by Jim Carroll. The book was already in Stevens’ library and his bibliography, but the detail that it was in the Brookner film is now duly noted in his addendum. In short Stevens looks at the world through the lens of Burroughs’ library in the process of reconstructing Burroughs’ worldview.  

Like many pioneers, Stevens’ strength is in exploration not explication. The Road to Intezone is like an explorer’s journal, but the history, the full implications of what Stevens’ has found remains to be fully processed and explicated. On Instagram, Stevens posts pictures of his adventures in Burroughs collecting, but this isn’t mere book porn. These images are in the interests of science. Stevens on Instagram:  

I started thinking it might be interesting to show Burroughs’ library in a way that would illustrate his use of the books if that was possible, or at least present my collection of his reading in such a way that it would be interesting and possibly even informative. I’ve tried to group books on shelves, in stacks, or arranged to show a connection. For example, I’ve put all of the books he mentions, quotes, or has stated as an influence on a particular work along with the other books that influenced that work, or for the non-fiction, all books cited in that book shelved together or stacked together. I’ve recreated some of the shelves from his Lawrence, KS library from pictures by Patricia Elliot. I thought that would be a more interesting way for people to look at it than just a picture of the cover of every book. That way you are seeing his collection as he shelved it. 

Other ways I’ve photographed the collection for social media, include a picture of the books I remember seeing on his shelves when I met him as well as the books we discussed. The books he names in the Naropa lectures, and the Neglected Works lists he made at the time make up three shelves! The medical thrillers, the cat books, UFO books, books about weapons, obvious sections of books I put up there in stacks or shelves. I’m proud to have recreated a photo of three books by John Bennett at the Ohio State University included in the American Avant-Garde catalogue of the OSU WSB holdings. All the same editions. It looks great too. I took a picture for Instagram of the books Burroughs reviewed in Mayfair (The Farm by Clarence Cooper, Bloodworld by Lawrence Janifer, and The Mind Parasites by Colin Wilson).

In essence on Instagram Stevens has laid out an outline for a book along the lines of Ralph Maud’s book on Olson’s reading. Somebody should take him up on it; oh, the places you will go!

Stevens’ Road to Interzone began with a single step:  

I began collecting Burroughs’ reading in 1991, though I didn’t know it. I was at one of those bookstores in a residential neighborhood that’s a bookstore during the day and someone’s house at night. There were stacks of science fiction on the floor, which of course had shaggy carpet. I spotted a book that rang a bell, but I didn’t know why. I remember I didn’t read much science fiction at the time, so I was probably looking for Philip K. Dick. The book I picked up was The High Destiny by Dan Morgan. I was reading The Adding Machine and Burroughs had mentioned it. I remembered what it was as soon as I started reading again. So, the next thing I did was to seek out the rest of the books he talked about in that essay. I didn’t intend on starting a collection, I was just looking for something to read.

Collecting Burroughs’ reading has become Stevens’ life’s work and as such it is a work in progress. For the last decade Stevens has been working on an addendum that attempts to lay out the entire universe of Burroughs reading. This will be a life-long task: “There hasn’t been a time in the last thirty years, and I can’t imagine a time in the next thirty years, that I won’t be actively searching for new additions to The Road to Interzone and my own collection of Burroughs’ reading.” Again, as with My Eric Shoaf, Stevens proves that Burroughs collecting is not a kick, but a way of life. My Eric Shoaf may or may not be fiction; Mike Stevens is most definitely real and he is spectacular. Quite simply, Mike Stevens is the greatest living Burroughs collector I know. In fact, I think he is the greatest book collector period. I wish more people knew, appreciated, and, most importantly, utilized his Burroughs collection. But like all true pioneers, Stevens is ahead of his time and sometimes you must blaze a path in this world alone.

RealityStudio is proud to present this digital edition of a key Burroughs reference work, Michael Stevens’ The Road to Interzone: Reading William S. Burroughs Reading. Published by Suicide Press in 2009, Road to Interzone is a bibliography of Burroughs’ reading — an index to the books known to have been read, blurbed, or cut up by the author of Naked Lunch. Road to Interzone is currently out of print, although Stevens has been preparing a third edition for future publication. Indeed the PDF which you can download here at RealityStudio contains an appendix, “Select Additions for a Third Edition of The Road to Interzone (2010-2012).”

“Michael Stevens’s The Road to Interzone,” Davis Schneiderman writes, “offers an outstanding contribution to the newest work on Burroughs.” Jed Birmingham adds that, “Like Oliver Harris’ The Secret of Fascination and Robert Sobieszek’s Ports of Entry before it, The Road to Interzone is an indispensable addition to the canon of Burroughs Studies.”

• Michael Steven’s Road to Interzone (PDF)
• Michael Steven’s Road to Interzone – 2022 Addendum (PDF)
• Chris Stein’s Photograph of William S. Burroughs’ Bookshelf

Two Deleted Entries from The Road To Interzone and the Origin of an Investigation into the Influence, Use, and Appropriation of Other Authors’ Works in the writing of William S. Burroughs

I

I was in Oklahoma for what was the hot, dry and dusty summer of 1990. It was the summer I read Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Mickey Spillane, Sartre and Glendon Swarthout. The high temperatures, which have a tendency to drive more stable men and women to madness and mayhem, had driven me inside an air-conditioned house with a bunch of books. After suffering through Nietzsche, falling in love with Prince Myshkin and Mike Hammer, and feeling nauseated by Sartre and his self-absorbed prevarications, I picked up a western book called The Shootist by Glendon Swarthout that I’d seen mentioned in William Burroughs’ The Adding Machine. Unbeknownst to me, The Shootist had been filmed under the same name in 1978 and featured John Wayne, as J. B. Books, “the shootist,” in his final role before dying of cancer in 1979.

A few pages into this almost entertaining yarn I was struck with a strange sense of déjà vu. Another few chapters and I was assaulted with full blown recognition, no longer an awkward and misunderstood sense of confusion. It was the encounter between Doctor Hostetler and Books, the “shootist” of the title, that set my mind reeling. First, let me state that upon my arrival in Oklahoma I had ordered a copy of Burroughs’ Tornado Alley from a bookstore in San Francisco. It was a handsome little production and also my first exposure to Charles Plymell‘s publishing company, Cherry Valley Editions. Most famous for the short piece, “A Thanksgiving Prayer”, Tornado Alley had another offering that would reveal to me a new understanding of William Burroughs, the author and master appropriator. By sheer “accident,” a word I will never use again in a piece about Burroughs, I had read Tornado Alley mere days or weeks before I read The Shootist. When I came to an exchange in Swarthout’s novel between the cancer-stricken Books and his doctor, I became aware of a segment of Burroughs’ creative process that I had previously been oblivious to — his appropriation of other writer’s work.

Holed up in a refrigerated room I came upon the following exchange from The Shootist, by Glendon Swarthout:

“Well?”

The doctor cleared his throat. “Books, every few days I have to tell a man or a woman something I don’t want to. I’m not very good at it. I have practiced medicine for twenty-nine years, and I still don’t know how to do it well.”

“Call a spade a spade.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifty-one.”

“All right.” Hostetler crossed his legs. “You have carcinoma of the prostate.”

“Carcinoma?”

“Cancer…”

Now the story of The Shootist is one of a man who comes to realize he is going to die young. He then spends his final days seeking a way to die in a dignified and respectful manner. The Burroughs book Tornado Alley is a collection of short pieces. One of them is a four-page story called “Book of Shadows,” in which a man (Lee Ice) finds out he is going to die and subsequently consults his little black book, or his “book of shadows”: “A few calls to make, a few scores to settle…. Nobody ever did him a favor or an injury without being fully repaid.” The following interlaced exchanges are between Lee and his doctor in “Book of Shadows” and Books and his doctor in The Shootist: 

“Book of Shadows”:

“You don’t have to beat around the sagebrush with me, Doc. It’s cancer, isn’t it? (…) After all, Doctor, we have known each other for a long time.”

The Shootist:

“Can’t you cut it out?”

“It’s too far advanced, I’d have to gut you like a fish.'”

“Book of Shadows”:

“Yes, it’s cancer. Of course, it might be operable… have to go in to make sure, but–” (…)

“Well, how much time would you say? I mean, how much time in which I can get around?

A spasm of pain twisted the man’s body, and he leaned forward onto his cane.

The doctor shrugged. “A month, perhaps two… I’ll give you a prescription. You know how to use a hypodermic?”

The Shootist:

“How long have I got?”

“There’s no way to tell. You must be in a lot of pain already.” (…)

“Now.” On the table he set a twelve-ounce bottle filled with purplish liquid.

“Here you are. Your medicine.”

“What is it?”

“Laudanum. A solution of opium in alcohol.”

“Opium? Can”t that get to be a habit?”

“It can. An addiction in fact. But in your case–“

The doctor shrugged.

Books scowled. “Yes. What’s it taste like?”

“Terrible. But there’s a consolation. You’ll likely have dreams.”

“Amazing dreams. Perhaps you’ll even have visions. Are you much of a reader?”

“No.” (…)

Books was looking at the laudanum. “The milk of Paradise — at least there’s alcohol in it. What’s the stuff for?”

“It’s the most potent painkiller we have.”

“Book of Shadows”:

The doctor knew that Lee Ice was well-read — in fact, a learned man.

Yes he knew how to use a syringe.

These two scenes are not identical and every day across the world men are diagnosed with cancer of the prostate. What is striking though is how similar these two scenes are and the purpose of each of the character’s lives following their diagnosis. Both men proceed to seek a dignified death. Burroughs adds his own flavor to the scene and removes a significant amount. Swarthout’s book is a full-length novel and Burroughs’ story is just that, a four-page short story which consists simply of the exchange between Lee and his doctor.

In reference to laudanum in The Shootist, the Doctor quotes Samuel Taylor Coleridge and explains to Books how to use laudanum. In Burroughs, Lee already knows how to use a syringe as a result of his use of opium. In Swarthout, Books is not a reader but, in Burroughs, Lee is a well-read man. Clearly this is not a case of plagiarism. It is, though, a clear-cut example of the creative process and a perfect illustration of what John Livingston Lowes referred to as “the deep well” — the place of the unconscious where influence and bits of reading, pieces of overheard conversation and segments of unrelated information coalesce into what we read as the great literature of our time. The hunting and collecting energy of consciousness has dragged the depths of submerged cuts and fragments only to resurface as a completely new construct. The mind of genius is an assimilating force and could exist but cease to be artistically productive in isolation. In case after case, as we shall see soon with The Bladerunner, vivid segments of what Burroughs read are discarded into this deep well and reappear as texts only Burroughs could have written.

The only mention of Swarthout’s The Shootist in Burroughs’ work is a brief mention in “Light Reading,” an essay included in The Adding Machine. Burroughs’ character Audrey Carsons picks some books to read in space and one of them is the Swarthout novel. Many years later, after I started the work for what was to become The Road to Interzone, I was informed by James Grauerholz that Burroughs had created a list of his favorite books, passages of which were to be published in a collection called Granta 52: Granta Anthology of Deathless Prose. Guess what book was on that list. Yes, The Shootist… and take a shot at what year this project was conceived. You got it, 1990. And, as promised, I will use the word synchronous. Mr. Grauerholz provided me the table of contents for this projected, but never published, anthology in 2003 and the books on this list are included in The Road to Interzone. Further research could flush out an even clearer picture of Burroughs’ appropriation of other writers’ work and the extent to which his literary input influenced his writing.

II

Ten years later (2000), I thought it would be interesting to read Blade Runner: A Movie by William S. Burroughs alongside the original science-fiction novel on which it was based, The Bladeruner by Alan E. Nourse.

Before proceeding I must clarify for and inform the reader about the history and sometimes confusing use of the title Blade Runner. Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner takes its name from a book by William S. Burroughs called Blade Runner: A Movie. And as you can see from the copyright page of Burroughs’ screen treatment — “The author wishes to thank Alan E. Nourse, upon whose book The Blade Runner, characters and situations in this book are based.” — he took the name for his work from the science-fiction novel by Alan E. Nourse.

The Ridley Scott film Blade Runner, which starred Harrison Ford and has nothing at all to do with the Burroughs or the Nourse books, is actually based on the classic science-fiction novel by Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Rudolph Wurlitzer and Hampton Fancher (who were involved with the film in the early stages) were responsible for getting the title to Ridley Scott. Philip K. Dick, Burroughs, and Nourse are all thanked in the end credits of the Director’s Cut of the film.

Burroughs stated in a lecture delivered at the Naropa Institute and published in Disembodied Poetics, “I turned this into a filmscript, and Kubrick made it into a spectacular that would be filmed in the ruins of Manhattan devastated by health act riots. (Filming those riots alone would cost five million dollars.) On Rudy Wurlitzer’s advice, I dropped the idea of producing this lavish and impractical film. He said, ‘You’ve got twenty million dollars to spend already — and you’ll have to tear down New York for this film.’ So I’m now turning the script into a novel with another name.”

The Bladerunner (1974) by Alan E. Nourse is set in 2017 in a New York City where medical treatment has gone underground as a result of the Health Riots of 1994. Based on the research of two scientists, Heinz and Lafferty, the government restricts public healthcare to a select few people. If someone visits a hospital for any reason they are forced to be sterilized as a result of hereditary findings that suggest diseases and conditions such as diabetes are being found in more and more of the population. Professor Heinz discovers that modern medicine, by breaking down natural immunity, is causing more, not less, illness. 

The underground doctors have helpers called bladerunners that run errands and carry their supplies. This ominous future is also inhabited by groups of people called naturists, who refuse medical treatment in opposition to sterilization. With religious vigor, they protest the medical establishment, the government, and a violent police state. The naturists pose almost as big a threat to the bladerunners and underground doctors as the government. 

The main character in this novel is a boy named Billy Gimp, who was in and out of foster homes, orphanages, etc., and doesn’t know his real last name. He is called Billy Gimp because of a lame leg. Billy is a bladerunner and works for Doc, a skilled and well respected surgeon who is a government-employed medical doctor by day and an underground surgeon by night. 

The Nourse novel opens with Billy Gimp waking from a dream to find a bug in his room:

He had been dreaming, as usual, and the dream had been unpleasant, as usual. Someone had been chasing him through a strange and unfamiliar wooded countryside, relentlessly closing the gap on him as he had limped down brush-filled gullies and scrambled over windfallen logs, dragging his bad foot painfully as he went. He remembered vividly climbing up a ridge and down into a logging camp where chainsaws had just fallen silent and piles of fragrant pine sawdust were lying about… Sawdust.

In the Burroughs treatment we find the dream:

Flash of nude boy with Mercury sandals and a doctor’s satchel. A boy is seen running through the streets of Lower Manhattan, dodging from one doorway to another as the credits come on. Blowing snow… dogs bark from the windows of derelict buildings. The boy is leaning into the wind, snow in his face. He collapses for a moment, leaning against a tree. He passes a vacant lot with frozen corn shucks. As he runs, the weather gets milder. Frogs jump into a pothole, weeds and bushes grow up through undergrowth and gulleys full of branches. He is clearly running from something now. Sound of a chain-saw behind him. He stumbles and falls and turns screaming as a tree falls on him in a cloud of sawdust.

From Nourse:

a short metallic stalk emerging like a periscope from the floorboards, with a tiny pile of sawdust beside it. At the end of the stalk, like the head on a kitchen match, there was a glistening crystal bead.

Burroughs: 

a short metallic stalk emerging like a periscope from the floorboards. At the end of the stalk, a glistening crystal bead. There is a little pile of sawdust beside the device. Flash of erect penis with a glistening bead of lubricant.

This is a screen treatment of the Nourse novel so of course there are obvious similarities, and much is going to be left out. What we see here is an amalgamated of Nourse’s fiction with the Burroughs’ mythology. The boy (typical of Burroughs’ heroes) Billy Gimp is seen nude in a dream running from some ominous presence. When awakened, the dream is not too different from the reality. The presence of the bug is parallel to an erect penis. In the Nourse novel, Billy is alone in the apartment. In the Burroughs treatment, he is with his lover, Roberts. Roberts is also a character in the Nourse novel, but is not Billy’s lover and does not appear until the end section.

In the Burroughs treatment, Roberts is seen as a fellow bladerunner and a companion. He helps Billy kick drugs, which Burroughs has given Billy as an imperfection, in exchange for the Nourse defect, a gimp leg. There is a warm exchange where Billy and Roberts flip a coin to see who will fix dinner. This companionship is much deeper than the one between Billy and the token female, Molly Barret, who appears in the Nourse novel as the Doc’s assistant. At the end of the novel there is an exchange between Molly and Billy which implies a tension that was noticed nowhere in the novel until that moment. Billy seems happy about the prospect of furthering his relationship with a female who had previously only been a coworker. Molly is suspiciously absent from the Burroughs treatment, as is Katie Durham, the other female character from the Nourse novel.

Nourse:

The nurse is okay. The anesthetist is drunk about half the time, so Doc and I have to pinch hit sometimes.

Burroughs:

Where’s that fucking anesthetist? The anesthetist reels in dead drunk. “He’s shit drunk. You’ll have to take over Billy.”

In his treatment, Burroughs has portrayed Doc from the Nourse story as a sort of Doctor Benway.

I am surprised that Burroughs ignored another passage from the Nourse book:

— but that was not all that was bothering Doc. Deep in his mind there was another worry. Far more ominous, yet strangely undefined, chipping away stubbornly at his subconscious. It was something quite aside from Billy Gimp or the Hardy Boy — a cold, relentless sense of impending disaster that Doc could neither shake aside or identify.

Compare this to Burroughs’ description of the “Ugly Spirit” from Queer:

a feeling of loss and sadness that had weighed on me all day so I could hardly breathe intensified to such an extent that I found tears streaming down my face… This heavy depression and a feeling of doom occurs again and again in the text… the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out.

Another character occurring in both the Nourse novel and the Burroughs screenplay is Professor Heinz. In Nourse’s novel, Rupert Heinz is led to the “frightening hypothesis: that the miracles of medical progress in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries might in some cases, have ultimately led to more human illness, rather than less.” And in Burroughs’ version:

Professor Heinz addressing a class: “…The conclusion seems unmistakable. The medical miracles of the 20th Century, by destroying natural immunity, result in more illness rather than less… deadly outbreak of adult diphtheria in the early 1990s… And still more alarming the incidence of hereditary degenerative diseases… Where can this proliferation of recessive genes end? (…) In plain English, sterilization is now the price for any medical care.” 

The penultimate scene in Nourse, the action scene, is set in a tavern (Burroughs calls it the Silver Dollar Bar). Billy makes contact with Roberts, his first appearance in the novel, who is at the tavern. He is with some companions, fellow bladerunners, and comes across as a bit hardened. After Roberts contacts one of his suppliers regarding Billy’s story he is confronted by a group of Naturists. “‘Hold it, Bud,’ he rumbled, ‘What’s in the package?’ ‘That’s my business,’ Roberts said, ‘And any lousy bladerunner with bootleg medical supplies is my business,’ the big man said, ‘hand it over'”. Burroughs cuts back on the dialogue here. After a big fight scene, Doc comes in and saves the day in both stories. 

In the novel, Doctor Long takes Billy from the tavern and gets him to the hospital with little exchange. In the Burroughs treatment, Billy asks, “‘Doc, what’s the date?'” The doctor’s response: “‘January 18th.’ ‘The whole date Doc.’ ‘January 18, 1914.'”

In Nourse this end sequence is a hallucination induced by illness, but in Burroughs it is a dream. It can be seen as a cyclical sequence that returns to the beginning of the actual on-screen treatment, where Billy is seen running through the city nude with Mercury sandals. Compare the two ending sequences.

Nourse:

“– you’re the Boy Heroes of the Plague City, and Health Control knows it.” He tossed a pile of newspapers on the bed. “Take a look.” Billy blinked at the banner headlines, ILLEGAL MEDICS HEROES IN FLU CRISIS

Burroughs:

Snow blurs into confetti, streamers, cheering crowds in Times Square. Advertisement shows animated figure in lights running across the Manhattan skyline.

Billy is seen to have blown a hole in time. Both books end with Billy staring out of a hospital room window at the Manhattan skyline. 

Burroughs had expressed interest in J.W. Dunne’s books and theories multiple times throughout his career, so we know that this idea isn’t remote.

(J. W. Dunne’s time theory, documented in his books An Experiment with Time and The Serial Universe, was the result of self-experimentation through close observation of his dreams and subsequent events that seemed to indicate a trend of precognition. Dunne concluded that time is not linear, as is commonly thought, but is instead a series of events taking place simultaneously. Past, present and future are happening all at once. In dreams we are less bound by conventions of thought, and therefore we are able to see past, present, and future as coexisting layers.)

In Blade Runner: A Movie Burroughs appropriates not just one author or idea but multiple sources. Consequently, it is not a surprise to discover not only J. W. Dunne but L. Ron Hubbard and Wilhelm Reich. Look at the scene where Burroughs assigns Benwayesque attributes to the Doctor Long character, “‘Shut up, you’ll give my patient an engram…’ Doc screams back.” And in regards to Virus B-23, the “virus of biologic mutation” Doktor Unruh von Steinplatz

calls it Unruh’s Disease. U.D. is characterized by an itching burning erogenous rash in the genitals and surrounding areas, accompanied by an uncontrollable sexual frenzy. U.D. victims undergo bizarre changes in pigmentation during intercourse, and these changes are genetically conveyed. U.D. was extracted by the Herr Doktor by exposing the crystal skulls to D.O.R.-Deadly Orgone Radiation- in a highly magnetized pyramid.

Blade Runner, A Movie is an important work for studying Burroughs’ fiction and his use of appropriation. It serves as a guideline for understanding not only the structure of his novels to come but also provides the reader a clear vision of the methods Burroughs used, borrowing from other writers’ works and making them his own. The book is presented as a film treatment, yet we see all of the Burroughs methodology, mythology, and use of language — from packs of wild boys and anti-government naturists to deadly orgone radiation, serial time skips, and virus theory. 

III

From that hot summer in 1990 stumbling upon Book of Shadows as a Burroughsian rewrite of a western novel to my later parallel reading of Bladerunner and Blade Runner: A Movie, I have come some distance in developing a basic understanding of some of Burroughs’ methods. Still I am in the dark, but now with a match I can see isolated images, pieces of the puzzle that with enough exposure will form an elaborate depiction of a web of associations.

For many years my research library formed an imitation of Burroughs’ library. This was not necessarily intentional but resulted from the massive collection of books used to research the work that became The Road to Interzone. That dream started in 1990 and culminated in 2000 after eleven years of reading. Unfortunately, in 2004 I discovered that a bibliography was inevitable. My parallel readings and side-by-side comparisons could fill multiple volumes of speculative criticism that would cost thousands of dollars and years and years of time. I settled for what I consider a pretty all-inclusive bibliography of Burroughs’ reading. What I succeeded in doing there was to create a document of sources, a sort of Q, or the lost gospel of William S. Burroughs.

My hope is that The Road to Interzone will get Burroughs fans studying his reading and a thousand eyes will see what two cannot. There will be more hot, dusty, and soul-blistering Oklahoma days, and there will be a near infinite number of curiosity seekers, so with this essay and the upcoming release of the second edition of The Road to Interzone I wait anxiously to read the studies and observations of future William Burroughs scholars. I hope to revel at the excitement of others’ discoveries and know that maybe I had a hand in getting the ball rolling. And as for what Oliver Harris called the “secret of fascination,” let it come down and let us enjoy the fruits of future revelation and until next time, as Burroughs was fond of saying, Via con Dios.

It’s always hard to know exactly what to make of the blurbs that authors contribute to the jackets of books written by other authors. Are they sincere endorsements of the quality of a book? Are they fragments of sham praise extorted from friends? Are they recommendations or favors? Are they criticism or advertising?

If it’s impossible to know whether a book-jacket blurb is sincere or not, one thing is certain: it maps out a relation between one writer and another. Blurbs are the literary equivalent of “six degrees of separation.” They draw a line between authors that you might not otherwise think to connect.

This collection of blurbs by William S. Burroughs thus forms a sort of topography. The basic triviality of the blurbs themselves is offset by the eclectic range of books to which Burroughs lent his name. Then again, Burroughs always did have a wide range of intellectual interests, so perhaps the sheer variety of these blurbs provides just one further expression of his panoramic intellect.

NOTE: This updated list of blurbs was provided by Michael Stevens, who first collected them in A Distant Book Lifted, a bibliography of Burroughs blurbs, forewards, afterwards, introductions, and prefaces. Stevens’ A Distant Book Lifted and Road to Interzone are essential reference works for anyone interested in William S. Burroughs. For more information, see the website of Stevens’ Suicide Press.

Abbot, Steve. Holy Terror

“Holy Terror is good reading, well written and extremely knowledgeable about the subject of magic black and white. In fact, all magic is both.”

Acker, Kathy. Bodies of Work & Great Expectations

“Acker is a postmodern Colette with echoes of Cleland’s Fanny Hill.”

Acker, Kathy. Eurydice in the Underworld

“Acker gives her work the power to mirror the reader’s soul.”

Acker, Kathy. My Mother: Demonology

“A writer’s ‘I’ is often the least interesting aspect of his artistic consciousness, and Kathy Acker beautifully resolves this problem by having no ‘I’, and having many ‘I’s… her author moves and shifts before you can know who ‘you’ are, and that gives her work the power to mirror the reader’s soul.”

Ansen, Alan. Contact Highs: Selected Poems 1957-1987

“Alan Ansen occupies a specialized evolutionary niche in twentieth-century letters, and his poetry has unjustly been too long obscured by its unfashionable classicism and its author’s self-effacing stance towards a poetic career. His writings achieve the scarcely possible transmuting existence into life. No one who knows Ansen can call him to mind without seeing his irrepressible grin and perhaps, thinking of the Chinamen of Yeats’s ‘Lapis Lazuli’—Their ancient, glittering eyes are gay.’ This gaiety and love of life finds ample expression in these extraordinary poems.”

Ballard, J. G. Crash

“Ballard’s insight into the 20th-century Fetish of the Machine places him head and shoulders above his fellow writers, and his command of the modern language ensures him an enduring place in that pantheon.”

Barker, Clive. Imajica

“A book in the picaresque tradition that moves with tidal force and power.”

Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood

“I read Nightwood back in the 1930s and was very taken with it. I consider it one of the great books of the twentieth century.”

Beattie, Owen and John Geiger. Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition

“A cautionary tale of scholarly merit.”

Beiles, Sinclair. A South African Abroad

“The poetry of Sinclair Beiles is distinguished and long-distilled; its unexpected, striking images bring a flash of surprised recognition. These poems open slowly in your mind, like Japanese paper flowers in water.”

Bernstein, Steven J. Hermione and I Am Secretly an Important Man

“The work is deeply felt and carefully transcribed. Bernstein has been there and brought it back. Bernstein is a writer.

Bey, Hakim. T. A. Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism

“Fascinating…”

Breger, Udo. Identity Express

“And his writing seems, to me, among the best done in Europe today.”

Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange

“One of the few books I have been able to read in years. I do not know of any other writer who has done as much with language as Mr. Burgess has done here… The fact that this is a very funny book may pass unnoticed.”

Carroll, Jim. The Basketball Diaries

“With an eye for detail & ear for narrative, Jim Carroll brings us through a world of youthful crime and streetplay, where drugs are as much a commonplace as sasparilla was when I was a boy. He must be a born writer.”

Carroll, Jim. Forced Entries

“Forced Entries captures the early-seventies period in New York better than anything I’ve read in a long time.”

Catullus, Gaius Valerius. Complete Poetical Works. Tr. Jacob Rabinowitz

“Beautifully translated… trivial, frivolous, profound, obscene. Read the fossils of lust.”

Charnas, Suzy McKee. Walk to the End of the World

“To my mind, only one science fiction book in hundreds manages to convince the reader that it ever could have happened anywhere, and at least that few are worth reading at all. In Walk to the End of the World [Charnas has] created a future that is at once believable and fascinating.”

Same blurb, in praise of Walk to the End of the World, used on three other books: The Slave and the Free, The Conqueror’s Child, and The Furies.

Choukri, Mohamed. For Bread Alone

“For Bread Alone is in the classic picaresque tradition of the Satyricon and The Unfortunate Traveller: one god-damned thing after another. Choukri’s life has been a journey of discovery in a part of the world where beneath what is hidden, is hidden yet something more.”

Choukri, Mohamed. Jean Genet in Tangier

“As I read Choukri’s notes I saw and heard Jean Genet as clearly as if I had been watching a film of him. It is a full-length portrait….Anyone who reads it will see Genet as clearly as I saw him in Chicago.”

Codrescu, Andrei. The Blood Countess

“The Blood Countess is a wonderful and accurate re-creation of history by a very knowledgeable author. A page turner!”

Cohen, Ira. Poems From the Akashic Record

“Ira Cohen, the wizard of Tangier and the sage of Kathmandu.”

Cooper, Dennis. Try

“Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer.”

Same blurb used on Cooper’s My Loose Thread and Cooper and Keith Mayerson’s Horror Hospital Unplugged.

Corso, Gregory. Gasoline & The Vestal Lady of Brattle

“Gregory is a gambler. He suffers reverses, like every man who takes chances, but his vitality and resilience always shine through, with a light that is more than human: the immortal light of his muse.”

Cumming, Anne (Felicity Mason). The Love Habit

“Anne Cumming is the forerunner of the truly emancipated woman of the future”

Cumming, Anne (Felicity Mason). The Love Quest

“Anne Cumming is the last of the intrepid lady travellers.”

Curran, Douglas. In Advance of the Landing: Folk Concepts of Outer Space

In Advance of the Landing is a fascinating book that shows with compassionate insight how deeply man’s longing for extraplanetary contact is felt. If this is the Space Age, as I have written, and we are ‘here to go,’ these eccentric individuals may be tuning in, with faulty radios, to a universal message: we must be ready at any time to make the leap into Space.”

Disend, Michael. Stomping the Goyim

“A brilliant novel which also has the virtue of being highly readable.”

Finlayson, Iain. Tangier: City of the Dream

“A Dream congealed in stone… sky supersonic, orgone blue, warm wind…Such beauty, but more than that it’s like that the dream is breaking through.”

Gibson, William. Neuromancer

“William Gibson’s Neuromancer is about many of the ideas that I’ve been writing about for years. Excellent.”

Gilmore, John. Fetish Blonde

“A psycho-sexual crash. A personal crash of one poaching past the limit… You’re going to a Valentine’s Day party with a .41 caliber Smith & Wesson. What’s here, what’s crawling out is held in madness and frenzy.”

Gilmour, David. Back on Tuesday

“Back on Tuesday is an up-to-the minute psychological novel. It projects a special type of modern madness that I equate with the end of the human line…this portrait of Jamaica with its strange, uprooted expatriates is truly amazing.”

Same blurb on Gilmour’s How Boys See Girls in praise of Back on Tuesday.

John Giorno. You Got to Burn to Shine

“John Giorno raises questions to an almost unbearable pitch, to a scream of surprised recognition. His litanies from the underworld of the mind reverberate in your head and ventriloquize your own thoughts.” (This is from WSB’s introduction.)

Gluck, Robert. Jack the Modernist

“Gluck says everything in a fresh way—he makes the blind alleyways of love interesting and moving. And real sex at last. Gluck reminds one of Genet and the transmutation of sex into something beyond sex. Not since Genet have we seen such pure love of the body and soul—seen as one palpable flesh.”

Gluck, Robert. Margery Kempe

“Gluck reminds one of Genet and the transmutation of sex into something beyond sex. Not since Genet have we seen such pure love of the body and soul—seen as one palpable flesh.”

Grogan, Emmett. Final Score

“A fascinating story. Readable and knowledgeable.”

Gysin, Brion. The Process

“This is a book you will want to read and re-read. It will tell you what is happening in Present Time. How things are made to happen or not to happen. In Present Time. It is also first-class entertainment. Start to read it and you will find that it reads itself.

Hale, Keith. Cody

“A haunting vision of young friendship shattered by an outrageously cruel world. Keith Hale’s novel aches with adolescent first love. It is tender, funny, and true.”

Haring, Keith. Journals

“Knowing that he was infected with AIDS, Keith continued to travel extensively and work constantly. Much of his work was directed toward nurturing artistic talent in children. Chapeau for his courage and vitality in the face of death.”

Heim, Scott. Mysterious Skin

“This book explores new frontiers of sexuality in unexpected areas—like Western Kansas. Insightful and beautifully written.”

Blurb also printed on In Awe in praise of Mysterious Skin.

Herr, Michael. Dispatches

“Having read Dispatches, it is difficult to convey the impact of total experience as all the facades of patriotism, heroism and the whole colossal fraud of American intervention fall away to the bare bones of fear, war and death.”

Hine, Phil. Condensed Chaos

“Phil Hine’s book is the most concise statement… of the logic of modern magic. Magic, in the light of modern physics, quantum theory and probability theory is now approaching science. We hope that a result of this will be a synthesis so that science will become more magical and magic more scientific.”

Hopkins, John. The Attempt

“I have rarely read a book that so definitely transports the reader, through the eyes of a disembodied observer, to another country.”

Hopkins, John. The Flight of the Pelican

“[John Hopkins has] really caught the comic, deadly madness of South America.”

Hopkins, John. The Tangier Diaries

“Every page drips with memories.”

Gary Indiana. Horse Crazy

“An archetypical story, expertly told. Fascinating to everyman, no matter what his sexual tastes—like the characters in Genet.”

Kerouac-Parker, Edie. You’ll Be Okay: My Life with Jack Kerouac

“You have a unique viewpoint from which to write about Jack as no one else has or could write. I feel very deeply that this book must be written. And no one else, I repeat, can write it.”

Lauria, Frank. Blue Limbo and Raga Six

“Hypnotically readable… Frank Lauria has written the most believable vampire and werewolf stories I have ever read.”

Leary, Timothy. Psychedelic Prayers & Other Meditations & High Priest

“A true visionary of the potential of the human mind and spirit.”

Lee, Martin A. and Bruce Shlain. Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD, The CIA, The Sixties, and Beyond

“An engrossing account of a period…when a tiny psychoactive molecule affected almost every aspect of Western life.”

Leyba, Rev. Steven Johnson. Coyote Satan Amerika

“Johnson sees a subject as it is, sees an asshole or a cock as is without a stroke of simpering prurience, or irrelevant repugnance.”

Litton, Melvin. Geminga: Sword of the Shining Path

“Very interesting.”

Lottringer, Sylvere. Overexposed: Treating Sexual Perversion in America

“The sexualization of postwar American culture has produced results that would astonish Freud, Reich, or even Kinsey. Modern techniques of behavior modification now cast doubt on the sources of individual eroticism. Overexposed is an engrossing description of sexual conditioning condoned by the state. A fascinating book.”

McConnell, Malcolm. Matata

“Vividly pictorial and hypnotically readable this book reminds us that novels are after all meant to be read. From beginning to end the nightmare haze of Matata, the mess that European colonists leave behind them is unsparingly shown. Mr. McConnell has a rare feeling for mood and background and for sharp economic character portraits…George White the CIA man with a touch of the priest about him who tries to talk some sense into young Steve Sherman who is trying to make sense out of a senseless mess he doesn’t understand that this mess is one of mysteries. Charlie the pot smoking Vietnam veteran who has lived longer than his  years, Schneider the German mercenary, Dubois the old colonne, Liz Sherman Steve’s promiscuous drunken wife, Pierre the Congolese lieutenant fighting a losing battle for survival, the pilots and flight engineers army and civilian doing a job and getting paid and not caring. The Congo in fact is simply a mirror of a planet so hopelessly confused that no one can care any more or reasonably think that anything more can be done than simply looking after ones immediate interests.”

McNeil, Legs and Gilllian McCain. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

“This book tells it like it was.. It is the very first book to do so.”

Manrique, Jaime. Colombian Gold

“Colombian Gold is studded with unforgettable characterizations, in a portrait of a rotten society with the bare bones of corruption poking through.”

Manson, Charles (as told to Nuel Emmons). Manson In His Own Words: The Shocking Confessions of ‘The Most Dangerous Man Alive’

“Compulsively readable…Manson can’t ever succeed in being paroled out of that cell, not as long as people with any sense at all can read this book.”

March, Joseph Moncure. The Wild Party

“The Wild Party… It’s the book that made me want to be a writer.”

Meyer, Stewart. The Lotus Crew

“Stewart Meyer’s first novel, The Lotus Crew, is set in Alphabet City, New York, 1982; a freemarket microcosm where brand-name bags of dope are touted on the streets by steerers, and sold from bricked-up store fronts to a new breed of junkies, kids from the suburbs shoulder to shoulder with Puerto Rican toughs; where a dealer’s word is worth his life and a stoolie’s life isn’t worth a taco. Meyer has a keen ear for the language of these streets and he has been down there to watch and listen: he brings us a vivid picture of the new junk underworld. The Lotus Crew is a superbly crafted novel that says the most basic things about power, corruption, loyalty, and the total need of heroin addiction. Stewart Meyer is a writer to watch; The Lotus Crew is better than a movie.”

Miles, Barry. Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats

“What are writers…trying to do? They are trying to create a universe in which they have lived or would like to live. To write they must go there and submit to conditions which they may not have bargained for. Sometimes as in the case of …Kerouac, the effect produced by a writer is immediate, as if a generation were waiting to be written.”

Miller, Henry. Under the Roofs of Paris

“Miller at his buoyant bawdy rollicking best—a spicy whiff from the 1920s”

Miller, Richard. Snail

“Richard Miller’s Snail is a novel at once delirious and serious. Cast in the form of a traditional picaresque novel, a series of incredible adventures and misadventures, it addresses itself to basic themes of immortality, death, reincarnation, and the future of the species.”

Morgan, Ted. On Becoming American

“Ted Morgan is funny and informative on the subject of becoming an American citizen. He has some profound things to say about America and the differences between the old world and the new.”

Morrison, Robert. The English Opium-Eater: A Biography of Thomas De Quincey

“De Quincey wrote the first, and still the best, book about drug addiction.”

Morrow, Bradford. Come Sunday

“Come Sunday resists classification. There are affinities with Kafka and with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. This is far from the usual semi-autobiographical first novel, groping for moaning and identity, though there are profound insights into identity and the ultimate impasse of control and authority. Morrow draws on an astonishingly wide knowledge and experience of people, places, and history, and puts a rich command of language at the service of his lapidary and mysterious plot. A very engrossing story.”

Mottram, Eric. Blood on the Nash Ambassador

“Eric Mottram is a fine critic and essayist. He is truly an intellectual citizen of the twentieth-century world.”

Nicosia, Gerald. Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac

“It is by far the best of the many books published about Jack Kerouac’s life and work, accurately and clearly written, with a sure feeling for Jacks own prose.”

Norse, Harold. Memoirs of a Bastard Angel

“Magically evocative and visual…Every page breathes with the writer’s presence. Bravo!”

In praise of Memoirs of a Bastard Angel from In the Hub of the Fiery Force:

“Magically evocative and visual…fascinating! [Memoirs of a Bastard Angel] can be read like a picaresque novel, horrific and hilarious. It’s like an epic film. Every page breathes with the writer’s presence.”

Nuttall, Jeff. Pig

“Jeff Nuttal is one of the few writers today who actually handles his medium. He moves pieces of it from here to there using the repetition techniques of recurring themes in music. His structures are essentially musical as is his prose… A beautiful and unique structure. Jeff Nuttall touches his words.”

O’Connor, Philip. Memoirs of a Public Baby

“Philip O’Connor’s insightful early impressions of growing up in Europe bear the imprint of a unique personality.”

Pelieu, Claude. Kali Yug Express

“Claude Pelieu and I have exchanged letters and manuscripts for some years. I am frequently struck by precise though seemingly coincidental references in his work to what I am writing right now writing which nobody but myself has directly seen. I feel that we are sharing a common source of literary material and a common source of thought that perhaps all serious writers are in a very real sense so united. By serious writers I mean those who have left the concept of art for art’s sake behind and see writing as a weapon with revolvers aimed voici le temps de l’assassin.”

Same blurb in praise of Kali Yug Express on Coca Neon/Polaroid Rainbow.

Plymell, Charles. Last of the Moccasins

“From the first paragraph the reader is drawn into the writer’s space. Plymell has as much in depth to say about death as Hemingway did and a lot more to say about it in terms of the present generation stillborn into a world that can offer nothing… death from an OD… Death from a plane crash… Computerized death… He is saying a lot about life which has become the chewed over leftovers of death… ‘A manifesto of ashes’… A very readable manifesto.”

Pop, Iggy. I Need More

“Fresh, courageous, and evocative. I Need More is the story of a man who stands up to tell the truth in a house full of lies… bridging the schizophrenic gap between fact and public image”

Richard Price. The Wanderers

“A deeply moving account of confused and spiritually underprivileged youth. Not since Last Exit to Brooklyn has dialogue been so accurately reproduced in artistic format.”

(Penguin 1985 edition ends with “youth..” Longer blurb on ffe of 1999 Mariner Books edition. Same blurb in praise of The Wanderers also on Bloodbrothers.)

Robbins, Maria Polushkin. Puss in Books

“A cat’s rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.”

Rosenthal, Irving. Sheeper

“Rosenthal has brought back to writing the almost forgotten element of style. On each sentence he imposes his seal. Each word is transmuted by the alchemy of arrangement. Brightly colored beetles move and shift in a glittering mosaic of Mandarin complexity. A brilliant and specialized performance.”

Sanders, Ed. Tales of Beatnik Glory

“This irresistible book’s droll charm leads the reader through a generation’s coming-of-age.”

Santini, Rosemarie. The Secret Fire

“Certainly breaks new ground. And Probably for the reason that women only tell these things to other women.”

Schultz, John. The Chicago Conspiracy Trial

“A beautiful, compelling, tear-jerking, mind-boggling book.”

Scott, Andrew Murray. Alexader Trocchi: The Making of a Monster

“A unique and pivotal figure in the literary world of the 1950s and 60s.”

Selby, Jr., Hubert. The Demon

“A freight train of a novel with a climax like a kick in the stomach.”

Sewall-Ruskin, Yvonne. High on Rebellion: Inside the Underground at Max’s Kansas City

“Max’s was at the intersection of everything.”

Simon. The Necronomicon

“Let the secrets of the ages be revealed. The publication of The Necronomicon may well be a landmark in the liberation of the human spirit.”

Smith, Patti. Patti Smith: Complete Lyrics, Notes and Reflections

“Patti Smith is not only a great performer, she is a shaman—that is, someone in touch with other levels of reality. Her effect on the audience is electric, comparable to voodoo or Umbanda rituals, where the audience members become participants and are literally lifted out of themselves.”

Smith, Patti. The Coral Sea

“Through these poems, a singular, glowing vision of Robert Mapplethorpe develops and emerges. In The Coral Sea, Patti Smith (in the words of Tennessee Williams) ‘rings the bells of pure poetry.’”

David Solomon (Ed.). The Marijuana Papers

“A Key to the creative process… A Guide to the psychic areas which can then be entered without it.”

Southern, Terry. Flash and Filigree

“In this world, nothing is true and censure or outrage is simple irrelevant.”

Southern, Terry. Red-Dirt Marijuana

“’The Blood of the Wig’ is one of the funniest stories I have read in a long time and what with all this moving of hearts and brains from one place to another it could happen anywhere… All in all a witty and profound collection.”

Spike, Paul. Bad News

“I have read Bad News and consider it at once a beautiful and disquieting book, in which seemingly commonplace happenings suddenly open into other planetary perspectives.

Strieber, Whitley. Billy

“A superb tour-de-force of suspense.”

Strieber, Whitley. The Forbidden Zone

In praise of Unholy Fire: “A gripping novel which explores the basics of good and evil.”

Johnny Strike. Ports of Hell

“These are real maps of real places. That is what marks the artist, he has been there and brought it back.”

Sugarman, Danny. Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and Excess

“Danny Sugarman spent his youth in Hollywood’s rock ‘n’ roll fast lane, following the example of his mentor and idol, Jim Morrison. Although he crash at age twenty-one, Sugarman ultimately survived and has given us this savagely engrossing account of his wild misadventures. Wonderland Avenue shatters the myth of the glamour of hard drugs and hard living. A most entertaining and informative book.”

Thompson, Hunter S. The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“A careening, chaotic, rollercoaster ride through time. Crackling electrical charged fused from the Fires of Hell. Direction. Purpose. Energy.”

Trocchi, Alexander. Cain’s Book

“Cain’s Book is the classic late-1950s account of heroin addiction… An un-self-forgiving existentialism, rendered with writerly exactness and muscularity, set this novel apart from all others of the genre.”

Trocchi, Alexander. Thongs

“Alex Trocchi has the courage so essential to a writer. He writes about spirit, flesh, and death and the vision that comes through the flesh… he has been there and brought it back.”

Trocchi, Alexander. Young Adam

“He was an individual… That’s it. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.”

Waters, John. Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters

“John Waters is the Pope of Trash and his taste in tacky is unexcelled…Ladies and gentleman, a very funny man.”

Waters, John. Shock Value

“Shock Value is shocking. Any honest account of human experience must be shocking. For it is the function of art to make the reader or viewer aware of what he knows and in most cases doesn’t know that he knows and doesn’t want to know.”

Weinreich, Regina. Kerouac’s Spontaneous Poetics: A Study of the Fiction

“Regina Weinreich draws together the threads of artistic influences that ultimately define Jack’s writing more than any ‘Beat Credo’ or other input from Allen Ginsberg, myself, and other associates.”

White, Edmund. States of Desire

“In Edmund White we may have found our gay de Tocqueville.”

Wilson, Peter Lamborn. Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy

“Fascinating material on the Ismalii sect and on Hassan I Sabbah…the only spiritual leader who has anything significant to say in the Space Age.”

Wilson, Terry. ‘D’ Train

“’D’ Train routes the reader through the Land of the Dead. In this perilous passage, the only one a man can trust, the only one who can guide him through the Land of the Dead, is his Ka, his Psychic Double. And the Ka needs the mas as much as the man needs his Ka. A tragic impasse blocks all but a very few from the Ka. ‘D’ Train is a significant and timely book since it expresses this basic spiritual alienation in modern terms. It isn’t forgone like salvation. It’s a desperate quest for psychic integration. ‘D” Train is a book concerned with spiritual basics. Young boys need it special. They may even listen.”

Wilson, Terry. Dreams of Green Base

“Accurate and honest…Publication may present considerable difficulties.”

David Wojnarawicz. Close to the Knives

“David Wojnarawicz has caught the age-old voice of the road, the voice of the traveler, the outcast, the thief, the whore, the same voice that was heard in Villon’s Paris, in the Rome of Petronius. Pick up his book and listen.”

Rudolph Wurlitzer. Hard Travel to Sacred Places

“Every scene, every word is underlined and meaningful, from the point of view of grief. Like morphine withdrawal, grief sanitizes the observer, since it cannot be denied. He is held right there. And like the Ancient Mariner, Wurlitzer holds his reader right there by his account.”

Yacoubi, Ahmed. The Alchemist’s Cookbook

“Yacoubi the chef is mapping timeless areas of magic.”