Burroughs Blurbs

A Compilation of Book-Jacket Blurbs by William S. Burroughs

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.”