- Paperback: 512 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Australia (30 Jun 1994)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140094520
- ISBN-13: 978-0140094527
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,118,708 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The letters in this book- written mostly to Allen Ginsberg with letters to other notable recipients like Kerouac and Gysin scattered among them- are amongst some of the most entertaining and well written by any writer that I've come across.
They cover a key period in Burroughs's life, commencing in the mid 40s when he was trying to make a go of being a family man and a farmer. Odd to think of the latter day scourge of authority and conservatism worrying about how much his carrot and cotton crops will fetch, but he did all the same. Then comes the move to Mexico, the fatal 'William Tell routine' gone wrong when he shot his wife Joan, and the years of addiction and wandering. All of this is fully documented here.
If you want to learn more about what made Burroughs the man and the writer he was, and how his later world view developed, I think a lot of the answers are in these letters. Certainly without the letters I don't think he could have been the writer he was. They were his lifeline- at one stage he comments on how much he needs an audience, and for a long time Ginsberg and Kerouac fulfilled this role- at a time when he was effectively serving his writing apprenticeship, looking for things to write and still without an audience. The letters effectively kept him going and gave him a chance to develop. Also, we see his world view change and mature and by the end of this book we've seen him come to terms with his status as an outsider.
From would-be farmer worrying about how much his crops will yield, to a fully-fledged avant-garde artist in 15 years is pretty good going, Along the way there's a lot of hardship, a lot of moaning about his lot and above all some genuinely funny passages. You can gain a lot from these letters in their own right, and if you've always been left cold by Burroughs or put off him, these letters will help you understand a lot more about why he wrote as he did and where his particular sardonic take on the world came from.
They cover a key period in Burroughs's life, commencing in the mid 40s when he was trying to make a go of being a family man and a farmer. Odd to think of the latter day scourge of authority and conservatism worrying about how much his carrot and cotton crops will fetch, but he did all the same. Then comes the move to Mexico, the fatal 'William Tell routine' gone wrong when he shot his wife Joan, and the years of addiction and wandering. All of this is fully documented here.
If you want to learn more about what made Burroughs the man and the writer he was, and how his later world view developed, I think a lot of the answers are in these letters. Certainly without the letters I don't think he could have been the writer he was. They were his lifeline- at one stage he comments on how much he needs an audience, and for a long time Ginsberg and Kerouac fulfilled this role- at a time when he was effectively serving his writing apprenticeship, looking for things to write and still without an audience. The letters effectively kept him going and gave him a chance to develop. Also, we see his world view change and mature and by the end of this book we've seen him come to terms with his status as an outsider.
From would-be farmer worrying about how much his crops will yield, to a fully-fledged avant-garde artist in 15 years is pretty good going, Along the way there's a lot of hardship, a lot of moaning about his lot and above all some genuinely funny passages. You can gain a lot from these letters in their own right, and if you've always been left cold by Burroughs or put off him, these letters will help you understand a lot more about why he wrote as he did and where his particular sardonic take on the world came from.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
9 reviews
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Burroughs as a man, not as a legend
25 Sep 1998
Format:Paperback
That Kirkus review is cheap, trite and obvious. "Godfather of Grunge"? "MTV generations' idea of a literay outlaw"? What's that mean? They were right when they said he didn't come off as a literary "fella"--why? because Literature is phony and an obstruction to truth--"All that is literature has fallen from me, thank God," wrote Henry Miller, and Burroughs exemplifies that. He was interested in Life, and escaping oppression. Little is made of him shooting his wife? Sorry. His heroin cures? Sorry. Save that for all the lame Hollywood hacks who succumb to addiction only because they know their "life story" will sell. I think this is a great book, one that shows the human, caring, funny, straightforward man Burroughs was in a time of even greater hypocrisy and corruption than today. I think he was dead on the mark in the fifties about America becoming a police state.... Burroughs still upsets conventional literary categories, and the only way the "establishment" can deal with him is to joke and condescend and offer him up as caricature, as Kirkus did. Did anyone read the pathetic obituaries of him? They had no clue what he really did. As he said: "We intend to destroy all dogmatic verbal systems." No glot....c'lom Fliday....
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Burroughs revealed
29 May 2000
Format:Paperback
I've read a fair amount of Burroughs, and this book is the best of all, the volume that lets you see into the soul of the man. Many of the letters are to Ginsberg, some to Kerouac and others. The stories he tells are funny and scary, sometimes heartbreaking. From these letters you can see where the more imposing material came from, the genesis of the work that came out in the sixties.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
A Piece in the Burroughs Puzzle
14 Jun 2006
Format:Paperback
Burroughs and his writings are complex and problematic. The various characters that express themselves in his personality evoke so many contradictory reactions that it's hard to get the author himself into focus. And reading his novels outside the context of the man himself is particularly unsatisfying. That's why this book of letters is so welcome. Along with recordings of his routines (that fascinating voice conveying such dry, ironic malice - "The Best of William Burroughs, from Giorno Poetry Systems" has some of the best I've heard), these letters give us a useful perspective on Burroughs to better appraise his work.
The Burroughs who emerges in these letters stands in sharp contrast to the persona he cultivated. The cool, world-wise narrator/character of his novels is shown here to have been self-deluded, weak-willed, prone to bouts of love-sickness, and particularly susceptible to being hoodwinked. But it's like the complementary hidden side of any real person. There is wit and humanity here in the titanic struggle he waged to integrate a powerful evil he felt deep in his soul. While the struggle often manifested as a battle with addiction, the evil wasn't junk: It was a pure bloody-mindedness that we all have inside. "Likely a survival mechanism inherited from our simian forebears," Burroughs might have opined.
How much of these letters is lies? The editor helps with some fact-checking footnotes, but many key facts can never be checked. A tantalizing psychological dimension is opened when Burroughs writes about his stunted heterosexual alter-ego, but Burroughs wasn't above subverting facts to manipulate people. Whatever the truth is we'll never know for sure, but these writings are entertaining and thought-provoking. They detail the inner workings of a special mind shaped by unique circumstances. Publication of these letters proves that for all his bloody-minded self-sabotage, Burroughs' output refuses to be marginalized.
The Burroughs who emerges in these letters stands in sharp contrast to the persona he cultivated. The cool, world-wise narrator/character of his novels is shown here to have been self-deluded, weak-willed, prone to bouts of love-sickness, and particularly susceptible to being hoodwinked. But it's like the complementary hidden side of any real person. There is wit and humanity here in the titanic struggle he waged to integrate a powerful evil he felt deep in his soul. While the struggle often manifested as a battle with addiction, the evil wasn't junk: It was a pure bloody-mindedness that we all have inside. "Likely a survival mechanism inherited from our simian forebears," Burroughs might have opined.
How much of these letters is lies? The editor helps with some fact-checking footnotes, but many key facts can never be checked. A tantalizing psychological dimension is opened when Burroughs writes about his stunted heterosexual alter-ego, but Burroughs wasn't above subverting facts to manipulate people. Whatever the truth is we'll never know for sure, but these writings are entertaining and thought-provoking. They detail the inner workings of a special mind shaped by unique circumstances. Publication of these letters proves that for all his bloody-minded self-sabotage, Burroughs' output refuses to be marginalized.
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