I recently acquired an old 1962 copy of Naked Lunch and to be honest I prefer it over the restored text version we have now (I think the pacing of it all is a lot better) and I also really like the second edition version of The Soft Machine and I was just wondering if anyone else has preferences and if so, why do you prefer those editions over other ones?
This is from a relatively famous letter from Burroughs to Kerouac, in which Burroughs says much on the subject of Buddhism. When we think of Buddhism and the Beats, we tend to think of Ginsberg, Snyder, Kerouac, di Prima, Kandel, Kyger… but not so much Burroughs. He wrote to Kerouac to say he had studied it but that “Buddhism is only for the West to study as history, that is it is a subject for understanding and Yoga can profitably be practiced to that end. But it is not, for the West, an Answer, not a Solution.” Burroughs goes on to criticise any Buddhist attempt to “remove love” from life and calls it “a form of psychic junk.” He is particularly critical of Western Buddhists and concludes: “Buddhism is not for the West. We must evolve our own solutions.”
The letter is dated August 18, 1954. It can be found in “The Letters of William S. Burroughs: 1945-1959,” p.226-227.
Notice the similarity in sentiment to another great Burroughs quote, this one also from a letter to Kerouac, written a few months earlier, on May 24, 1954:
"I say we are here in human form to learn by the human hieroglyphs of love and suffering. There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve."
This one has been going around social media lately attributed to Allen Ginsberg, but it is definitely a Burroughs quote. It is from the same book, p.213.
Photo by Tony Bock
https://slndesignstudio.com/dreamachine/
I made a browser-based version of the Dreamachine.
The idea is simple: turn up the brightness of your screen or smartphone, darken the room, play it in front of your face, and close your eyes. After a while, the back of your eyelids begins to tingle, and something like geometric patterns starts to emerge.
Personally, I'd have to go with "Dr. Benway Operates" from the "Hospital" chapter of Naked Lunch. Or maybe "The County Clerk," but that one might be too long to count as a routine, I'm not sure.
Hi WSB friends — I'm a counterculture archivist who has worked for decades to keep underground literature alive, including working at Evergreen Review with Barney Rosset who published Naked Lunch, who fought for Burroughs' right to exist in court. A longtime friend of Burroughs was Terry Southern.
The Illustrated Life of Terry Southern is a five volume series in underground comics format that will follow Terry Southern's entire life, from birth until death. Future volumes will document his dense relationship with Burroughs, including the attempted but never realized film adaptation of Junkie, which Southern was scripting. Did you know Burroughs almost was the script writer on Barbarella? How weird would that have been? You'll find out about it!
Terry Southern is often known as "the lost beat" as he was writing from the same point in time and was close with the whole group. His work was more satirical, most successful as a co-writer of the script to Dr Strangelove with Stanley Kubrick. Southern's books are amazing.
Attached here as a slideshow is a short preview of Book One with Southern discussing Poe's influence on him at age twelve. The project page is here: https://www.ep.tc/terry-southern/
Peace, Ethan Persoff