by Barry Miles
4. WSB, Early Routines, 34.
5. Felicity Mason, writing as Anne Cumming, The Love Quest, 16.
6. Brion Gysin, Brion Gysin Let the Mice In, 8.
7. Ibid., 10.
8. Brion Gysin interviewed by Terry Wilson in Here to Go: Planet R-101.
9. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, October 10, 1958.
10. Transcription of a 1959 conversation between Brion Gysin and WSB in Galerie Weiller catalog text for 1973 Brion Gysin show. Reprinted in 1976 in Soft Need, no. 9, and in the catalog to the Gysin show at the October Gallery, 1981.
11. Ibid.
12. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, October 10, 1958.
13. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, July 24, 1958.
14. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, October 10, 1958.
15. Brion Gysin interviewed by Terry Wilson in Here to Go: Planet R-101.
16. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, January 2, 1959.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. WSB, “The Algebra of Need,” in Naked Lunch: The Restored Text, 206.
20. WSB, The Naked Lunch (1959), 224.
21. Baird Bryant, “Souvenirs of the Beat Hotel,” http://www.kerouacfest.com/currentpage/souvenirs.htm (accessed January 2012).
22. Terry Wilson, “Brion Gysin: A Biography/Appreciation,” RE/Search 4/5 (1982) (San Francisco).
23. Morgan, tape 39.
24. Allen Ginsberg, “The Ugly Spirit,” WSB interviewed by Allen Ginsberg in San Francisco Review of Books and other places. Taped March 17–22, 1992, Lawrence, Kansas.
25. WSB, Queer, 133.
26. WSB, unpublished journal, January 2, 1984.
27. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, April 2, 1959. The suitcase and its contents are presumed lost. These were the early draft versions of the John and Mary hanging scenes in The Naked Lunch.
28. Morgan, tape 62 (labeled tape 61).
29. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, April 2, 1959.
30. As Néo-Codion.
31. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, May 18, 1959.
32. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, February 12, 1959.
33. Mack Thomas, Gumbo (New York: Grove, 1965).
34. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, May 18, 1959.
35. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, June 8, 1959.
36. Jacques Stern, The Fluke, Reality Studio, realitystudio.org/publications/jacques-stern/and-the-fluke/ (accessed February 2012).
Chapter Thirty-One
1. WSB, Last Words, 51.
2. Victor Bockris, “Information About the Operation: A Portrait of William Burroughs,” New Review 3, no. 25 (April 1976): 42–43; Brion Gysin interviewed by Rob LaFrenais and Graham Dawes, Performance magazine, no. 11 (1981) (London).
3. Quoted in Irving Rosenthal, “Editorial,” Big Table (Chicago), no. 1 (Spring 1959).
4. Albert N. Podell, “Censorship on the Campus: The Case of the Chicago Review,” San Francisco Review 1, no. 2 (1959): 73–74.
5. Ibid.
6. “Post Office Morals,” Nation 188 (May 30, 1959): 486–87.
7. Morgan, tape 19.
8. Morgan, tape 21.
9. “In Search of the Connection,” WSB interviewed by Nina Sutton, Guardian, July 5, 1964.
10. The latter not from The Naked Lunch but from “Fluck you, fluck you, fluck you,” a Tangier text dated March 31, 1964, Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts, no. 5, vol. 7 [sic] (September 1964): “A.J. arrives uninvited at the Countess di Vile’s bi-annual garden party in Civil War drag blue Union pants and Confederate grey tunic unsheathed his saber and with one stroke decapitated Dame Sitlong’s Afghan hound. The head bounces across the lawn snarling and snapping. A.J. lifts his bloody sword and the orchestra strikes up The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Cited by WSB as an example of A.J.’s outrageous behavior.
11. Alan Ansen to Allen Ginsberg, November 4, 1958.
12. Alan Ansen, “Anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death,” Big Table (Chicago), no. 2 (Summer 1959): 32–41.
13. Alan Ansen, untitled notes, in Ted Morgan papers, Arizona State University, Tempe.
14. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, late July 1959.
15. William Burroughs, “Témoignage à propos d’une maladie,” La Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 85 (January 1, 1960): 82–92.
16. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, September 11, 1959.
17. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, October 7, 1959.
18. A vest.
19. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, n.d. [late July 1958].
20. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, August 24, 1959.
21. Le Festin Nu was subject to a resolution issued by the minister of the interior on July 9, 1964, imposing three conditions on its sale: it could not be sold to minors under eighteen years old; it could not be displayed for sale; no posters or advertising publicity were to be displayed. As a consequence it could only be sold “under the counter.”
22. Harold Norse, Memoirs of a Bastard Angel, 344.
23. Burroughs denied the oft-quoted story that Ian, up a ladder tidying books, dropped a book on his shoulder at the Mistral to strike up a conversation. However, the archives of the Mistral—now Shakespeare and Co.—include a document from Sommerville which suggests that this is how it happened.
24. Harold Norse, Memoirs of a Bastard Angel, 345.
25. Ibid.
26. WSB with Brion Gysin, The Third Mind, 50.
27. Brion Gysin, 1982. Typewritten document in the archives of William Burroughs Communications, Lawrence, Kansas.
28. WSB in conversation with the author, 1972.
29. Morgan, tape 51.
30. WSB, Last Words, 48.
31. WSB, The Soft Machine (1961), 15.
Chapter Thirty-Two
1. Betty Bouthoul, Le vieux de la montagne.
2. Brion Gysin, “A Quick Trip to Alamut,” Ultraculture Journal One.
3. Joseph von Hammer, The History of the Assassins (London: Smith & Elder, 1835), 234–35.
4. Literally means “rising of the dead.”
5. Hashish appears to have been taken as a beverage rather than smoked at Alamut.
6. Henri Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy (London: Kegan Paul, 1993), 95.
7. Joseph von Hammer wrote, “ ‘Nothing is true and all is allowed,’ was the groundwork of the secret doctrine; which, however, being imparted to few, and concealed under the veil of the most austere religionism and piety, restrained the mind under the yoke of obedience.” The History of the Assassins, 55.
8. WSB, The Western Lands, 203.
9. Barry Miles, William S. Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible (2002 revision), 116.
10. Ibid., 116.
11. Morgan, tape 20.
12. WSB, Gregory Corso, Brion Gysin, and Sinclair Beiles, Minutes to Go, 63.
13. Ibid.
14. Beiles’s assertion in an interview that he took “all the pages and typed them up” is not true, as the original manuscript of Minutes to Go is in four different typefaces and paper stocks. In “Interview with Sinclair Beiles by David Malan, Yeoville, South Africa, January 1994,” collected in Gary Cummiskey and Eva Kowalska, eds., Who Was Sinclair Beiles?
15. “To settle a score with literature.”
16. WSB to David Haselwood, December 24, 1959, reproduced in A Bibliography of the Auerhahn Press and Its Successor Dave Haselwood Books Compiled by a Printer, 25.
17. WSB to David Haselwood, May 27, 1960, reproduced in ibid., 27.
18. Villiers, George, late Duke of Buckingham, The Rehearsal, 8th ed. (London: Richard Wellington, 1711).
19. WSB, The Job, 28.
20. Ibid., 29.
Chapter Thirty-Three
1. WSB to Brion Gysin, May 16, 1960.
2. Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: London vol. 2, 128.
3. WSB, unpublished journal entry for January 1, 1984.
4. John Howe interviewed by the author, London, November 9, 2011.
5. A British public school is what is known as a prep school or boarding school in the United States.
6. WSB to Jon Webb, August 21, 1960.
; 7. Author conversation with Michael Horovitz, October 2011.
8. Michael Horovitz, “Legend in His Own Lunchtime,” Times Saturday Review, May 23, 1992.
9. Hannah Gay, The History of Imperial College London, 1907–2007, 383; email correspondence with Dr. Hannah Gay, November 2011; email correspondence with Professor Bill Griffith, December 2011; conversation with Dick Pountain, November 2011; http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2011/July/TheEvansBalance.asp (accessed November 2011); M. L. H. Green, Dennis Frederick Evans. 27 March 1928–6 November 1990, Biographical Memoirs of the Fellows of the Royal Society, rsbm.royalsocietypublishing.org (accessed November 2011).
10. Christine Keeler, The Truth at Last, 231.
11. Sydney R. Davies, Walking the London Scene: Five Walks in the Footsteps of the Beat Generation, 33, and in conversation with Sydney Davies.
12. Kenneth Allsop, Scan, 21.
13. WSB to Brion Gysin, May 26, 1960.
14. Morgan, tape 24.
15. WSB, unpublished ms., April 30, 1983.
16. WSB, The Western Lands, 252.
17. Morgan, tape 62 (labeled tape 61).
18. Morgan, tape 34.
19. WSB to Brion Gysin, September 14, 1960.
20. WSB to Brion Gysin, August 4, 1960.
21. In conversation, 1972.
22. Brion Gysin, “Dream Machine,” Olympia, no. 2 (1962): 31.
23. John Geiger, Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted, 160.
24. Ian Sommerville to Brion Gysin, February 15, 1960, quoted in Gysin, “Dream Machine,” 31.
25. Brevet number P.V. 868,281.
26. Author interview with Christopher Gibbs, June 6, 2011, Tangier.
27. Michael Wishart, High Diver, 167–68.
28. WSB to Brion Gysin, October 21, 1960.
29. WSB, My Education, 32.
30. Steve Boggan and Paul Lashmar, “The Great and Not-So-Goodman,” Independent, January 18, 1999.
31. Christopher Gibbs interviewed by the author, Tangier, June 6, 2011.
32. WSB to Brion Gysin, October 21, 1960.
33. WSB, My Education, 151.
34. Ibid.
35. This is not true; there are many mountains in between.
36. Alan Govenar, The Beat Hotel, Documentary Arts (film documentary), 2011.
37. Jenni Ferrari-Adler, ed., Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, 219.
38. Felicity Mason, writing as Anne Cumming, Love Quest, 117.
39. John Gilmore, Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip, 148.
40. Ibid.
41. Daevid Allen interview, Scotsman, November 19, 2009.
42. “Daevid Allen: Magical Mystery Tour,” Magnet, http://www.magnetmagazine.com/1999/10/01/daevid-allen-magical-history-tour (accessed December 2012).
43. WSB to Allen Ginsberg, March 12, 1961.
Chapter Thirty-Four
1. Arthur Rimbaud, “Alchemy of the Word,” section II of “Delirium,” in A Season in Hell, 1873.
2. Unattributed front cover flap, The Soft Machine (Olympia edition). The ellipsis is in the original.
3. Allen Ginsberg to Lucien Carr, July 28, 1961 (misdated as June).
4. Entry for January 17, 1963, in Allen Ginsberg, Indian Journals, 155.
5. WSB, The Soft Machine (1961), 87.
6. Ibid., 89–90.
7. WSB to Brion Gysin, May 8, 1961.
8. WSB to Brion Gysin, May 13, 1961.
9. WSB, The Adding Machine, 12.
10. Historical precedents include the work of Piet Zwart between 1929 and 1934, who photographed close-ups of carefully arranged objects such as a pair of spectacles and a fallen leaf on an open newspaper (1934), or a coil of copper wire on a pile of business cards (1931). His pictures of lead typeface letters on a newspaper (1931) use strong shadow and are, at least superficially, very similar to Burroughs’s Tangier-period reversals and superimpositions. Possibly the earliest recorded example of the photographic record of a fugitive assemblage is “Unhappy Readymade”: in 1919 Marcel Duchamp, who was in Buenos Aires, instructed his sister Suzanne to attach a geometry book to the balcony of her Paris apartment to allow “the wind to examine it.” The elements turned the pages and tore some of them loose. The progress of its disintegration was recorded in photographs and in a painting by Suzanne Duchamp.
11. WSB to Brion Gysin, May 16, 1961.
12. WSB to Brion Gysin, May 28, 1961.
13. WSB to Brion Gysin, June 14, 1961.
14. Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno, Invisible Spectator, 356.
15. John Hopkins, The Tangier Diaries, 1962–1979, April 1, 1963, 36.
16. Ted Morgan, Rowing Toward Eden, 98–99.
17. Author conversations with Burroughs, 1972–73; Morgan, tape 32.
18. Ned Rorem, Diaries, June 22, 1967.
19. WSB to Timothy Leary, May 6, 1961.
20. WSB, “Comments on the Night Before Thinking,” Evergreen Review vol. 5, no. 20 (September 1961): 31.
21. Author notes, taken from a published interview with Leary but source unknown.
Chapter Thirty-Five
1. Morgan, tape 61.
2. Allen Ginsberg in conversation with the author, ca. 1970 and 1984, for whole section.
3. Allen Ginsberg, “Literary History of the Beat Generation,” lecture number 18.
4. Rupert Croft-Cooke, The Caves of Hercules, 135.
5. Allen Ginsberg to Lucien Carr, July 28, 1961 (misdated as June).
6. Morgan, tape 20.
7. Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, Straight Hearts’ Delight, 104–5. Transcribed July 12 and July 16, 1961. Transcript uses spelling corrected by Ginsberg.
8. Allen Ginsberg to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, n.d. [1961].
9. Timothy Leary, High Priest, 215.
10. WSB to Timothy Leary, May 6, 1961; Timothy Leary, High Priest, 214–15; Timothy Leary, Flashbacks, 95.
11. Leary, High Priest, 215.
12. Ibid., 215.
13. Leary, Flashbacks, 96–97.
14. Leary, High Priest, 216–22.
15. Ibid., 223.
16. Morgan, tape 43.
17. Ibid.
18. Leary, Flashbacks, 100.
19. Ibid.
20. Leary, High Priest, 228.
21. Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion, 82–83.
22. Leary, High Priest, 231.
23. Pataphysics, October 17, 1989.
24. WSB, “Prisoners, Come Out” section of Nova Express, 10–11.
Chapter Thirty-Six
1. WSB, Nova Express, 18.
2. “To Write for the Space Age,” Michael Moorcock interviewed by Mark P. Williams, Reality Studio, December 8, 2008, www.realitystudio.org/interviews/michael-moorcock-on-william-s-burroughs (accessed July 2011).
3. Norman Mailer interviewed by Eve Auchincloss and Nancy Lynch, Mademoiselle, February 1961, 52.
4. Norman Mailer interviewed by Winston Bode, Texas Observer, December 15, 1961.
5. Alexander Trocchi in debate with David Daiches, August 21, 1962: “Scottish Writers’ Day,” Edinburgh Writers’ Conference, 1962.
6. Peter Manso, Mailer: His Life and Times, 351.
7. John Calder, Pursuit: The Uncensored Memoirs of John Calder, 207.
8. Morgan, tape 41.
9. Morgan, tape 49.
10. Brion Gysin interviewed by Jason Weiss, Paris, August 21, 1980, in Reality Studios vol. 4, 1982.
11. “Burroughs After Lunch,” WSB interviewed by Joseph Barry, New York Post, March 10, 1963.
12. The Ticket That Exploded (Olympia edition), 41; the same passage repeats in Nova Express, 50.
13. The Ticket That Exploded (Olympia edition), 81.
14. WSB in conversation with the author, London, 1972.
15. “Dressed for Tea,” WSB interviewed by W. J. Weatherby, Guardian, March 22, 1963.
16. Miles, Catalogue of the WSB Archive; Anthony Burgess, You’ve Had Your Time, 70.
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br /> 17. Burgess, You’ve Had Your Time, 85.
18. Author interview with Christopher Gibbs, Tangier, 2012.
19. The Ticket That Exploded (Olympia edition), 102–3.
20. Typically, Antony Balch and Towers Open Fire receive no mention in Stephen Dwoskin’s Film Is: The International Free Cinema (1975); Sheldon Renan’s An Introduction to the American Underground Film (1967); Jonas Mekas’s Movie Journal: The Rise of a New American Cinema, 1959–1971 (1972); David E. James’s To Free the Cinema (1992); or P. Adams Sitney’s Film Culture anthology, despite the fact that Balch and Towers (and The Cut-Ups) anticipated many of the techniques of the new cinema and was far more avant-garde than most of the filmmakers discussed in those books. Perhaps future film scholars will correct the lapse and place Balch and Burroughs where they belong in the forefront of postwar avant-garde filmmaking.
21. WSB taped by Bill Rich, May 15, 1991.
22. Ibid.
23. “Burroughs After Lunch,” WSB interviewed by Joseph Barry, New York Post, March 10, 1963.
24. Evening Standard, March 29, 1963.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
1. Jeff Nuttall, Bomb Culture, 157.
2. WSB, The Third Mind, 107–8.
3. Morgan, tape 26.
4. William S. Burroughs Jr., Cursed from Birth, 12.
5. Ibid., 13.
6. Morgan, tape 26.
7. Steven Watson, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties (New York: Pantheon, 2003), 141.
8. William S. Burroughs Jr., Cursed from Birth, 15.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., 17.
11. The photograph, taken on November 9, 1963, appeared in the “Literary Tangier” feature in the September 1964 issue of Esquire.
12. Morgan, tape 26.
13. Ibid.
14. Morgan Bowles tape 19.
15. John Hopkins, Tangier Diaries, 43, 44.
16. WSB, The Third Mind, 107–8.
17. Morgan, tape 18.
18. Conversations with Ian Sommerville, London, 1968–69; conversations with Brion Gysin, London, 1972, 1974; conversation with Alan Ansen and Allen Ginsberg, New York, 1984.
19. The Floating Bear, no. 27 (1962). Burroughs had nothing in this issue.
20. WSB to Brion Gysin, February 4, 1964.
21. Chicago Review, issue 54 (vol. 17, no. 1) (1964), 130.
22. WSB, Last Words, 185; Burroughs is probably referring to Graham Wallace.
23. Nuttall, Bomb Culture, 157.
24. Ibid., 156.
25. Ibid., 153.
