William S. Burroughs - Rub Out the Words: The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1959-1974

The Letters of William S. Burroughs 19591974

FOR IAN

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First published in the United States of America by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 2012
First published in Great Britain by Penguin Classics 2012

Copyright William S. Burroughs Trust, 2012
Cover design: YES
Cover photograph Nicolas Tikhomiroff /Magnum Photos
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author and introducer has been asserted

All interior photos courtesy of the William S. Burroughs papers, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations, with the exception of:
WSB in the Grand Socco market. Tangier, 1957. Allen Ginsberg LLC, used with permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.
On the beach in Tangier, 1957. Jack Kerouac, Peter Orlovsky, and WSB. Allen Ginsberg LLC, used with permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.
WSB in his garden at Hotel Muniria. Tangier, 1957. Allen Ginsberg LLC, used with permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.
Allen Ginsberg in the Socco Chico. Tangier, circa 1957. Allen Ginsberg LLC, used with permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.
Hotel Muniria, Tangier, 1961. Gregory Corso, Paul Bowles, Ian Sommerville, WSB, Michael Portman. Allen Ginsberg LLC, used with permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

ISBN: 978-0-14-139255-4

ALSO BY BILL MORGAN

The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete,
Uncensored History of the Beat Generation

Beat Atlas: A State by State Guide to the Beat Generation in America

I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg

The Beat Generation in San Francisco: A Literary Tour

Burrough is the greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift.

JACK KEROUAC

Bill Morgan thanks me too generously, and I certainly appreciate it. But as an aspiring bone feed mast-fed Razor Back Factualist, I want the record to show thatcompared to BillI did very little of the vast work that has brought this book to fruition. Initially, I gave him my global listing of archival repositories known to hold Burroughs-related letters and my analyses of the key holdings. Everything else between these covers was accomplished by Bill Morgan.

These letters were written during the fifteen years of Burroughs life immediately before he and I came into each others lives. They are a moving-picture window where we may see and feel the Burroughs who wrote Naked Lunch becoming the Burroughs whom I first met in New York in early 1974, one week after his sixtieth birthday and six weeks after my twenty-first.

Reading these letters carries me back to my early twenties; I am stunned by my forgotten memories of who I was then and who I thought William was then. Because, now, I shall turn sixty next year.

And at last, in my own late middle age, I can begin to imagine how it really felt to be William Burroughs in those long-ago, late-winter streets and lofts of New York City: behind him, a long and storied past; before him, an unknown and unknowable future.

Read this book, with Bill Morgans thorough, accurate, helpful notes and writings, and you will find that same William Burroughs coming to life in your heart.

James Grauerholz

One of the pleasures of editing correspondence comes from the fact that it is always a group effort. Collecting letters requires the cooperation and support of a great many people. In putting together the letters written by William S. Burroughs, one person stands head and shoulders above all others. In fact, James Grauerholz has been the lynchpin for the entire project. He worked with Burroughs as his right hand, his personal secretary, his agent, his collaborator, his strongest advocate, and his best friend during the last twenty-five years of the writers life. His efforts on behalf of Burroughs enabled the writer to create and live comfortably even through his final days. It was James who asked me to undertake this collection, and for that alone I owe him a debt of gratitude. His knowledge and editorial advice have been a treasured resource that I have come to rely upon.

Although Oliver Harris, the editor of The Letters of William S. Burroughs 19451959 (Viking, 1993), was unable to participate in this book owing to other commitments, his influence and hand are clearly visible in the current volume. Early in the work, this editor decided that following the format set by Harris book made sense. That earlier collection was faultless, so there is no need to change. I only hope that I have been able to approximate his learned hand in editorial decisions.

A host of people and institutions provided help along the way, offering information and support at every turn. In particular, the American Philosophical Society granted financial aid when I most needed it to track down letters in far-flung libraries. I am exceedingly grateful to them for that assistance.

The staffs of many university libraries were most helpful in allowing me access to their collections. Isaac Gewirtz and Anne Garner, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library, who maintain the William S. Burroughs archive, were most helpful. Smaller collections of Burroughs letters were found at the following libraries, which I would like to thank for their assistance: Arizona State University (Katherine Krzys); Bennington College (Joe Tucker); Brown University (Mark Brown); Columbia University (Gerald Cloud, Michael Ryan); Cornell University; Duke University (Elizabeth Dunn); Florida Atlantic University (Z. Cael); Indiana University (James Canary); Library of Congress; Morgan Library (Declan Kiely); New York University (Marvin Taylor); North-western University (Sigrid Perry); Ohio State University (John Bennett, Rebecca Jewett, Geoffrey Smith); Stanford University (Polly Armstrong, Annette Keogh, Mattie Taormina); SUNY Buffalo (Michael Basinski); Syracuse University (Amanda Baker); Temple University; University of California at Berkeley (Anthony Bliss); University of California at Davis (Daryl Morrison); UCLA (Lilace Hatayama, Mauricio Hermosillo, Robert Montoya); University of California at San Diego (Robert Melton); University of Chicago (David Pavelich); University of Connecticut (Melissa Watterworth); University of Delaware (Timothy Murray); University of Iowa (Kathryn Hodson); University of Kansas (Tara Wenger); University of Michigan; University of North Carolina (Libby Chenault); University of Reading (Nancy Fulford); University of Texas at Austin (Cathy Henderson, Richard Oram, Molly Schwartzburg, Thomas Staley, Richard Workman); University of Virginia (Margaret Hrabe); Washington University; and Yale University (Nancy Kuhl, Graham Sherriff).