Joan Hawkins (editor) - William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century

William S. Burroughs

Cutting Up the Century

William S. Burroughs

Cutting Up the Century

Edited by

Joan Hawkins

and

Alex Wermer-Colan

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Charles Cannon, Tony Brewer, and Landon Palmer

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

2019 by Indiana University Press

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hawkins, Joan, [date] editor. | Wermer-Colan, Alex, editor. | Harris, Oliver (Oliver C. G.)

Title: William S. Burroughs cutting up the century / edited by Joan Hawkins and Alex Wermer-Colan ; contributing editors: Charles Cannon, Tony Brewer, and Landon Palmer.

Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018023308 (print) | LCCN 2018026007 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253041364 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253041326 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253041333 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Burroughs, William S., 19141997Criticism and interpretation. | Cut-ups (Literary form)

Classification: LCC PS3552.U75 (ebook) | LCC PS3552.U75 Z933 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.54dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023308

12345242322212019

CONTENTS

/ ALEX WERMER-COLAN AND JOAN HAWKINS

/ OLIVER HARRIS

/ OLIVER HARRIS

/ KRISTEN GALVIN

/ LANDON PALMER

/ ALLEN HIBBARD

/ KATHELIN GRAY

/ AARON NYERGES

/ TIMOTHY S. MURPHY

/ ERIC SANDWEISS

/ ALEX WERMER-COLAN

/ JOSHUA VASQUEZ

/ KURT HEMMER

/ VRONIQUE LANE

/ DAVIS SCHNEIDERMAN AND OLIVER HARRIS

/ BLAKE STRICKLIN

/ CHAD WEIDNER

/ KATHARINE STREIP

/ ANN DOUGLAS, ANNE WALDMAN, AND REGINA WEINREICH

/ ANNE WALDMAN

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank James Grauerholz and Yuri Zupancic of the Burroughs Estate and Jeffrey Posternak of the Wylie Agency for their help and support for this volume, and for permission to publish a selection of archival materials. Without James Grauerholzs long-term friendship with Burroughs in the last third of his life, and without his continued stewardship over Burroughs oeuvre, the vast majority of scholarship represented by this anthology would never have been possible. Special thanks also go to Oliver Harris, not only for his contributions to the volume, but for his help, support, and guidance throughout.

We would like to thank the librarians, archivists, and staff, especially Isaac Gewirtz, Lyndsi Barnes, and Joshua McKeon, at the New York Public Librarys Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Special Collections, for their assistance over many years of research. Our gratitude for further archival reproductions extends to Robert Spindler and his staff at Arizona State University Hayden Librarys Rare Books and Manuscripts, and Marvin Taylor and his staff at the Fales Downtown Special Collections of New York University Library, as well as librarians and staff at the History Colorados Stephen H. Hart Library. We are also grateful for permission to publish photographs from Chris Kraus at Semiotext(e), Anne Waldman, H. R. Hegnauer, Barry Miles, Peter Hale at the Allen Ginsberg Estate, and Henry Holt and Company.

It would have been impossible to compile the collection without financial and institutional support from Indiana University. We would like to thank the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, especially Ed Comentale, for the two grants we received: the Grant-in-Aid of Research and the Emergency Grant-in-Aid of Research. We would also like to thank the Media School for research funds and institutional support, our editorial assistants Landon Palmer and Zeynep Yasar, and the College Arts and Humanities Institute. The Media School and the Cinema and Media Studies Unit also gave generous grants that enabled us to include color prints. Finally, to Paige Rasmussen, our editor at Indiana University Press, we owe a huge debt of thanks.

The idea for this collection grew out of two conferences, held in 2014, to commemorate the centennial of Burroughs birth. We would like to thank the organizers of the Burroughs Century Conference at Indiana University and the members of the Burroughs Century Boardespecially Tony Brewer, Charles Cannon, Joan Hawkins, Laura Ivins, Peter LoPilato, James Paasche, and Jon Vickers for their continued support and interest in this volume. We would also like to thank Alex Wermer-Colan, as well as staff at the Center for Humanities, especially Aoibheann Sweeney, Kendra Sullivan, Sampson Starkweather, and Sheala Finch, for organizing the William S. Burroughs Centennial Conference at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. To the writers who participated in the conferences, and/or contributed essays for this volume, thank you for your work and for your patience as we compiled the volume. This anthology owes a huge debt to all the scholars who have helped to open the field of Burroughs scholarship: we could not have created this anthology without, among many others, James Grauerholz, Barry Miles, Oliver Harris, Jed Birmingham, Timothy Murphy, Jamie Russell, Davis Schneiderman, Jenny Skerl, Robin Lydenberg, Keith Seward, Michael Stevens, and Ian MacFadyen.

And finally, our indebtedness to William S. Burroughs. As Lou Reed once famously said, Without William, there is nothing. Everything would have stayed the same. The genius to move things beyondto improve the subjectrequires strength. Burroughs made us pay attention to the realities of contemporary life and gave us the energy to explore the psyche without a filter. Welcome Dr. Benway.

BIOGRAPHICAL TIMELINE

We have included the biographical details important to this volume, but this is not a comprehensive overview of Burroughs life. Similarly, we have listed the most well-known Burroughs works, along with their revisions and subsequent editions. This is not an exhaustive list of Burroughs publications. For a complete account of his sixty-eight published books, see the Bibliography in Barry Miles, Call Me Burroughs: A Life (2014). There are two good biographies: Ted Morgan, Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs (W. W. Norton, 2012; first published 1988) and Barry Miles, Call Me Burroughs: A Life (Twelve, 2014).