Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting #9: The Soft Machine. Olympia Press (1961). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. Desert island books versus deathbed books. Which do you think of in moments of reverie? One book is for reading when…
Tag: Soft Machine
The Soft Machines
By Dave Teeuwen William Burroughs had the unusual habit of rewriting and rereleasing his novels during the 1960s and 1970s. He is not the only author to have undertaken a revision of a previously published work. Henry James famously revised and added to his novels in the early years of the 20th century for the…
Three Novels
New York: Grove Press/Black Cat 1980, first printing, includes Soft Machine, Nova Express, and The Wild Boys bound in pictorial wraps. New York: Evergreen 1988, a larger-size edition of the Black Cat printing, bound in wraps. This bibliography of A-List publications by William S. Burroughs derives from Eric C. Shoaf’s Collecting William S. Burroughs in…
The Soft Machine
[M&M A5] Paris: Olympia Press 1961, stiff olive-green wraps, with decorated dust jacket, one of 5,000 copies. Maynard & Miles A5a. The second publication of Burroughs’ work by Olympia Press. Dust jacket design by Brion Gysin. New York: Grove Press 1966, first US printing, one of 18,000 copies, hardbound in dust jacket. Maynard & Miles…
Transitional Period vs Gongs of Violence
Two Burroughs Cut-Ups Compared A few months ago Professor Oliver Harris was kind enough to share with RealityStudio one of his working documents for Yage Redux. It is an incredible Microsoft Word palimpsest comparing Burroughs’ various yage publications and manuscripts. RealityStudio couldn’t publish it (for obvious copyright reasons), but we did add a few images…
Wired for Shock Treatments
A Review of The Soft Machine By Joan Didion There sometimes seems a peculiar irrelevance about what is claimed for William S. Burroughs, both by those who admire him and those who do not; the insistent amorphousness of his books encourages the reader to take from them pretty much exactly what he brought to them….
The Mayan Caper
(Excerpt from The Soft Machine) William S. Burroughs Joe Brundige brings you the shocking story of the Mayan Caper exclusive to The Evening News — A Russian scientist has said: “We will travel not only in space but in time as well” — I have just returned from a thousand-year time trip and I am…