William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century

1. This volume includes original pieces by the most respected scholars, artists, and archivists working on William S. Burroughs today, as well as an interview with Burroughs' biographer.

2. This book is distinct from other volumes in its focus on Burroughs' cut-up method - a specific method of collage that he used in the composition of several of his novels and most of his graphic work.

3. The collection reflects new information that has surfaced since a major collection of the author's archive was made public by the New York Public Library in 2010. Archival materials, typescripts and collages by Burroughs, are interspersed throughout the collection.

4. The editors Joan Hawkins and Alex Wermer-Colan are both well-known experts on Burroughs. Each organized conference events in honor of 100th anniversary of William S. Burroughs' birth

William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century is the definitive book on Burroughs' overarching cut-up project and its relevance to the American twentieth century. Burroughs's Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine, Nova Express, and The Ticket That Exploded) remains the best-known of his textual cut-up creations, but he committed more than a decade of his life to searching out multimedia for use in works of collage. By cutting up, folding in, and splicing together newspapers, magazines, letters, book reviews, classical literature, audio recordings, photographs, and films, Burroughs created an eclectic and wide-ranging countercultural archive. This collection includes previously unpublished work by Burroughs such as cut-ups of work written by his son, cut-ups of critical responses to his own work, collages on the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, excerpts from his dream journals, and some of the few diary entries that Burroughs wrote about his wife, Joan.

William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century also features original essays, interviews, and discussions by established Burroughs scholars, respected artists, and people who encountered Burroughs. The essays consider Burroughs from a range of starting points—literary studies, media studies, popular culture, gender studies, post-colonialism, history, and geography. Ultimately, the collection situates Burroughs as a central artist and thinker of his time and considers his insights on political and social problems that have become even more dire in ours.

Acknowledgments

Collage of Time Harvard Lampoon Parody, William S. Burroughs, facsimile, 1965

Introduction: Cutting Up the Century / Alex Wermer-Colan and Joan Hawkins

Biographical Timeline

1. Cutting Up the Century / Oliver Harris

SECTION I: ICON/VIRAL

Deposition of the Ugly Spirit, William S. Burroughs, typescript, Villa Muniria, Summer 1961

2. Burroughs and Biography: An Interview with Barry Miles / Oliver Harris

Cutting Up the Critics, typescripts, 1962–64

3. The Nova Convention: Celebrating the Burroughs of Downtown New York / Kristen Galvin

Nova Convention Poster, Sylvere Lotringer, facsimile, 1978

4. The Disembodied Fry: William S. Burroughs and Vocal Performance / Landon Palmer

Cut-up with Limericks, William S. Burroughs, typescript, 1971

5. William S. Burroughs' Spirit of Collaboration / Allen Hibbard

SECTION II: SPACE/TIME

6. Burroughs and the Biosphere, 1974–1997 / Kathelin Gray

The Permissive Society, William S. Burroughs, typescript, 1971

7. Beat Regionalism: Burroughs in Mexico, Burroughs in Women's Studies / Aaron Nyerges

Collage of Newsclippings, William S. Burroughs, facsimile, 1970

8. Interference Zones: William Burroughs in the Interstices of Globalization / Timothy S. Murphy

9. Cut-Up City: William S. Burroughs' "St. Louis Return" / Eric Sandweiss

SECTION III: WORD/IMAGE

10. William S. Burroughs' Imperial Decadence: Subversive Literature in the Cynical Age of the American Century / Alex Wermer-Colan

Opium Collage, William S. Burroughs, typescript, Dream Rat Calendar, Monday Bellevue 4, 1970

11. Naked Lunch and the Art of Incompleteness: The Use of Genre in Burroughs' Book and Cronenberg's Film / Joshua Vasquez

12. Queer Outlaws Losing: The Betrayal of the Outlaw Underground in The Place of Dead Roads / Kurt Hemmer

13. Rimbaud and Genet, Burroughs' Favorite Mirrors / Véronique Lane

SECTION IV: CUT/FOLD

14. Cross the Wounded Galaxies: A Conversation about the Cut-Up Trilogy / Davis Schneiderman and Oliver Harris

15. "Word FallingPhoto Falling": William S. Burroughs and the Word as Written Image / Blake Stricklin

16. Mutable Forms: The Proto-Ecology of William Burroughs' Early Cut-Ups / Chad Weidner

SECTION V: BODY/SPIRIT

17. William S. Burroughs, Transcendence Porn, and The Ticket That Exploded / Katharine Streip

Dream Note on Indictment for Murdering Joan, William S. Burroughs

18. Gender Trouble: A Critical Roundtable on Burroughs and Gender / Ann Douglas, Anne Waldman, and Regina Weinreich

19. The Burroughs Effect / Anne Waldman

Root Face, William S. Burroughs, facsimile, 1987

Index