Supervert Picks

 William S. Burroughs, Yage Letters Redux (City Lights)

It is an acknowledged paradox at the heart of William S. Burroughs' work that his greatest books called into question how much they were even his. Whereas Samuel Beckett tried to eviscerate the novel from within — to "naughten" it, to borrow a term from Heidegger — Burroughs seemed to do the same to authorship as such. Friends and chance helped to assemble his masterpiece, Naked Lunch, from fragments he claimed not to remember writing. In the 1960s he advocated mechanical procedures, the cut up and the fold in, for composing literary works. Throughout his career he liked to collaborate with other artists. (You imagine teachers writing "plays well with others" on the report cards of young Bill.) And of course many of his works wouldn't have seen the light of day without the early boosterism of Allen Ginsberg and the later support of James Grauerholz. It's as though Burroughs himself were rather like the drug yagé: a source of brilliant visions unable to be realized without an added ingredient to potentiate them...

Read Supervert's complete review of Yage Letters Redux...

Past Picks

 Queen Adreena, Fuck Me Doll (Rough Trade)

 William T. Vollmann, Rising Up and Rising Down (Ecco Press)

 J. Eric Miller, Animal Rights and Pornography (Soft Skull Press)

 Philip Kaufman (Director), Quills (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

 Susannah Breslin, You're a Bad Man, Aren't You? (Future Tense Books)

 The Cure, Join the Dots (Fiction Records)

 Céleste Albaret, Monsieur Proust (New York Review Books)

 David Cronenberg, Collected Screenplays 1 (Faber and Faber)

 Steven Shainberg (Director), Secretary (Lions Gate Films)

 Mr Swenson, The Sensuous Man (Cherry Red Records)

 William S. Burroughs, Junky and Naked Lunch (Penguin and Grove Press)

 Michel Chion, Eyes Wide Shut (BFI Modern Classics Monograph)

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