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With the publication of Naked Lunch in 1959, William Burroughs brought international letters into the postmodern age, but he had already begun to chart the course that would establish him as one of postwar America’s most influential writers.
Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader brings together selections of Burroughs’ most important and challenging work—beginning with his very early writing (including a chapter from his and Jack Kerouac’s never-before-seen collaborative novel, And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks) and following his trajectory through My Education: A Book of Dreams.
Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader follows major themes in Burroughs’ oeuvre while also serving up a sampling of his darkly hilarious “routines,” and is edited to serve as a tool for the scholar as well as an overview of his entire body of work for the general reader. Important biographical information, contained in the chapter introductions, provide key links to understanding the work in the context of the life. Ann Douglas’s introductory essay provides further background on Burroughs in the context of American letters and his Beat contemporaries.
Throughout a life that spanned the better part of the twentieth century, William Burroughs managed to be a visionary among writers: he imagined the Internet decades before its appearance and peered into the future of other technologies, kept the pace of world affairs and cultural trends, and, with each of his books, introduced new possibilities for the form. When he died in the summer of 1997, the world of letters lost its most elegant outsider.
Praise for Word Virus
“The best of the late gentleman junkie’s literary arsenal . . . For Burroughs virgins and devotees alike.” –Details
“Word Virus: The Williams S. Burroughs Reader finally brings the author’s actual writing back to the forefront. In their selections, editors James Grauerholz and Ira Silverberg highlight the many faces of Burroughs: the narrative pioneer, the sardonic stand-up, the asexual Tiresias-like seer, and, in what may be a surprise to many, the humanist. . . . Apocalyptic, carnal and raw, Burroughs’ work bridges the epiphanies of modernism with the Foucaultian cool of postmodernism. He stretches modernist forms and grammar like narrative silly putty, prefiguring the sly mischief of postmodern writers such as Thomas Pynchon and William Gibson. . . . Through it all Burroughs eludes easy literary classifications; by turns he is poststructuralist Dashiell Hammett, T.S. Eliot on the nod, Mark Twain with a gun . . . . Word Virus [is] a fantastic, weird, disturbing and intriguing tribute to an inimitable American voice.” —Mark Luce, Salon
“This well-edited collection of Burroughs’ work reminds us of his restless, savage intelligence and complicated insider-outsider perspective on human society.” —Out
“The deadpan granddad of postmodernism is well represented in this bountiful collection of fiction, essays and collaborations from all stages of Burroughs’s (1913-1997) career. . . . Dark humor runs through this collection.” —Publishers Weekly
“A stringent modernist, a spiritual child of Joyce . . . The reader of this volume will find the anarchy of Burroughs’ finely tuned mind well represented . . . Editors Grauerholz and Silverberg show sensitivity in their choice of selections from Burroughs’ long and productive career; their dedication to his legacy is evident. There is a very informative and compassionate introduction by Ann Douglas.” —Raúl Niño, Booklist
“This judiciously edited collection contains representative excerpts from a lifetime’s published work . . . An excellent introduction to the man and his work, this carefully designed reader belongs in all literature collections.” —William Gargan, Library Journal
“William S. Burroughs, who died last year, was the American master of the post-modernist novel . . . the prophet of the dark streak in the American soul. . . . Now, two of Burroughs’ editors have compiled an anthology from his many works that gives the reader a remarkable picture of the writer’s depth and versatility. . . . On display are the varying styles Burroughs used during a long career of writing, and examples of the power, the strangeness, the wit and the occasional beauty of his writing.” —Roger Harris, Newark Star Ledger
Born into a prominent St. Louis family, in 1914, William S. Burroughs would go on to be one of the most innovative and controversial writers of the twentieth century. He was a founding father of the Beat Generation, whose companions included Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Jack Kerouac.