The Soft Machine

by William S. Burroughs

  Once again, Burroughs made this chapter by recombining passages and fragments from a number of sections of the 1961 Soft Machine—in fact, more than a dozen different blocks drawn from nine separate sections. After pasting in a long opening passage drawn from a single section used verbatim (“carl descended”), the 1962 MS shows that Burroughs proceeded to retype, cut and paste, or annotate a series of shorter passages. He also wrote new material that makes up most of the final quarter of the chapter, whose titled he credited to Paul Bowles. For Dead Fingers Talk, Burroughs used the first two pages of the chapter to complete a section that began with “The Examination” from Naked Lunch—an appropriate combination since “The Examination” also featured the character, Carl. Making more connections back and forth across his oeuvre, Burroughs also used the last two pages of “Last Hints” to complete a section in Dead Fingers Talk that combined a page from “Trak Trak Trak” with half-a-dozen pages from The Ticket That Exploded. For the third edition, he made five short inserts, mostly of further first edition material, cut a small number of words, and altered the ending. Following the 1962 MS, two-dozen capitals have been restored.

  114“I wanna say further”: in one of a number of minor differences, SM1140 has “wanta.”

  115“ball peen hammers”: it was “ball-point” in SM1 142. SM3 72 has “ball-pen,” even though on the 1965 galleys Burroughs had confirmed the copy editor’s query, “do you mean ball peen?”

  115“Joselito, Paco, Enrique”: at this point SM3 72 has an extra short paragraph of SM1 material (from the “carl the traveller” section) that partly duplicates the following paragraph. After “always kept locked,” SM3 inserts a line of new material: “(‘The Van Allen Belt’ . . . barely audible click).”

  116“The Café de France”: like “end of the line,” the café derives from a cut-up of the ending of Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky.

  116“How many plots have been forestalled”: indicating how in early drafts Burroughs incorporated references to people in his circle, a rough typescript continues by naming one of his most important friends in Paris: “‘in a strange bed before they could take shape’—Shades—Stern and Michael—‘Jack, rotten with you i need a vacation’ Jack Stern sitting in boy haunted by the iron claws?” (Berg 5.4).

  116“Panama clung to our bodies” to “ceiling fan”: after this line, which does not appear in SM3, the 1962 MS continued with cancelled lines: “Forgotten in 1920 movie tracks broken, dead post card waiting a place forgotten coughing and spitting in 1920 movie—In the dominion of breathless spasm clung to fading soccer scores.”

  117“sputter of burning insect wings”: after this line, SM3 73 inserts 30 words of SM1 material and adds another line (“one boy naked in Panama dawn wind”) to replace the final line in SM2.

  Where The Awning Flaps

  For this chapter, whose title he credited to Paul Bowles, Burroughs used almost all of the “cut color flicks” section from the 1961 Soft Machine, making very few changes, and then added twice as much new material. The last two-thirds of the chapter overlap substantially with his 660-word cut-up text, “I Am Dying, Meester?” which in January 1963 he sent Lawrence Ferlinghetti to complete The Yage Letters.

  For the third edition, Burroughs made two very short insertions and two short cuts and then, in the most radical difference between editions, added almost 3,500 words of new writing. This material gave “Where The Awning Flaps” a very different identity and ending and also created a structural confusion. First, because the new structure incorporated and replaced the previous edition’s chapter entitled “1920 Movies.” Second, because Burroughs’ new material itself created a new Chapter XII entitled “The Streets of Chance” that in turn begins with material headed “Chapter I.” The 1968 insert is included as an Appendix in this edition.

  Apart from its use of capital letters, some fifty of which have been restored here, and new final lines inserted on the 1965 galleys, the second edition was identical to the 1962 MS.

  120“Idiot fuck you-me-Johnny”: the 1962 MS continues with a line cancelled on the 1965 galleys that appears in SM3 74: “Take.’ Leaves erect wood phallus on the Me and so on out into a Lemur People.” The cancellation of the line created a problem with speech marks in SM2 122, corrected here,

  120–121 “Citizen of the area” to “on the blue paint wall”: these lines were cancelled on the MS for SM3 (Lilly 66.1).

  121“Ran into my old friend Jones” to “Panama photo where the awning flaps” (123): these passages overlap “I Am Dying, Meester?” in The Yage Letters. Over two-thirds of that text is used here with a number of cuts but mainly verbatim.

  122“face eaten” to “New World”: the line was cancelled on the MS for SM3 (Lilly 66.1).

  122“Old photographer trick”: like other details, this first appears in “Mexico City Return,” the 1953 text originally written as part of “In Search of Yage” but published later as an epilogue to Queer.

  122“On the sea wall two of them” to “evening wind”: as well as a few lines in the following paragraph, Burroughs cited these lines verbatim in his letter of November 21, 1962 to Paul Bowles.

  123“Sad servant” to “out of focus”: the 1962 MS ends at “where the awning flaps,” and Burroughs scotch-taped these final lines onto the 1965 galleys. These lines do not appear in SM3, which instead continues the chapter with the 3,440-word newly written text, included in the Appendix section here.

  1920 Movies

  Burroughs created this chapter out of a dozen blocks of new writing and material from seven different sections of the first edition, some reproduced almost verbatim and others cut up into fragments and recombined. Not part of Burroughs’ 1962 MS were the very opening and closing lines and the “Salt Chunk Mary” material in the middle of the chapter. Developing a character from Jack Black’s You Can’t Win (1926), a book that profoundly influenced his view of criminal society when he read it as a teenager, the 1,000-word insert was probably written shortly before being scotch-taped into the Grove Press galleys in October 1965. “Salt Chunk Mary” also appeared in a version one third longer in the magazine Intrepid in 1966, and some of its many variants are given here.

  Because of its restructuring, in the third edition the material in this chapter appeared near the beginning of its new chapter, “The Streets of Chance.” Burroughs made some two-dozen small cuts to the opening passages that used first edition material, many cuts as short as a couple of words, seemingly at random. He then made a 1,900-word insert of new material, followed by another section of first edition passages subjected to a series of small cuts. Another equally long insert of new material was followed by another edited version of first edition text, before a final 1,500-word section of new material. In sum, for the 1968 text Burroughs added over 5,000 words in three blocks and removed about 750 words in a series of small cuts.

  Almost 180 capitals have been restored from the 1962 MS, which otherwise differs from the second edition in having about two-dozen lines of extra first edition material.

  125“Film Union sub” to “cigarette money”: not in the 1962 MS, these lines were a typed insert scotch-taped onto the 1965 galleys.

  125“infer his absence”: this line is the first of many lines, phrases, and individual words omitted for SM3.

  125“Iron cell wall painted flaking rust”: on the 1962 MS the opening line of this section from SM1 (“Mexico DF Penitentiaría Federál”) was cancelled. An early typescript is more explicit about the location, naming the prison where in September 1951 Burroughs had been held following the shooting of his wife: “Calle Lecumberri Mexico DF Penetentiaria Federale . . Iron cell walls painted whore house blue flake rust and bed bugs” (Berg 5.1).

  127“Mexico thighs”: changes SM2 129 (“Mexican”), undoing a correction made by the copyeditor on the 1965 galleys.

  130“Just hula hoop”: up until this
point the text drew on the “sex permutations” section of SM1; this line, taken from a different section, and the following line which doesn’t derive from SM1, were not in the 1962 MS but began the long typed insert scotch-taped into the 1965 galleys.

  130“She named a price”: the version published in Intrepid 6 (1966) has an extra second line that clarifies the scene’s autobiographical basis: “She ran a red brick rooming house East St. Louis Illinois.” Reference is to Hattie Murphy’s lodging house on the North Side of Chicago at 4144 North Kenmore Street, where Burroughs stayed in autumn 1942, during time he spent with Lucien Carr and Dave Kammerer.

  130“a load of 00”: SM3 86 adds “buckshot,” clarifying that this is a reference to the standard size shell for game hunting. The Intrepid version is more expansive, and has “righteous buck shot in your kisser.”

  131–132 “had all my teeth” to “each other’s lungs”: the 300 words here do not appear in Intrepid, but that version continues: “and something else this male charge crackling out of me. And of course all those ring tail fruit bats were after me hot and heavy.”

  131“red haired boy smoky rose sunset”: restores “boy,” omitted from SM2 133, although the word is in the 1965 galley insert and SM3.

  133“a Turner sunset”: the Intrepid version has “a Cezanne river” instead and, more intriguingly, a next sentence which works in a reference to Burroughs’ editor at Grove Press, probably from using cut-ups made with their correspondence: “So I settled for a smoky sunset waiting there with the blue laundry for kinda special payments from Rosset.”

  133“fading streets a distant sky?”: at this point SM3 has a 1,865-word long insert, before continuing, with some minor differences, like the 1962 MS and SM2.

  133“Figures of the world”: the phrase in SM1 133 used here echoes and recycles part of a significant passage from earlier in the text (SM1 21) that was cut for SM2: “The Board Of The Winner lights up with all The Stern Right Figures Of The World: Uncle Sam Mao Tse Tung Krushchev Churchill De Gaulle.” Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the Soviet Union 1953–1964, also appeared in early drafts of the “Last Words” material used in Nova Express.

  134“helmet of photo goggles”: the 1962 MS and SM3 93 have “lens goggles.”

  135“They clicked in through a squat toilet”: before this line, the 1962 MS has a phrase cancelled on the 1965 galleys but in SM3 94; “Blue Cubicle Guide had transparent ass.”

  136“i me you cut”: changes SM2 138 (“I me you cut”), to restore a lower case that SM2 revised to upper, here and in two following instances.

  138“Street boys of the green gathered”: this and following lines were part of the SM1 material published in the fall 1961 issue of Nul magazine as “Take That Business to Wallgreen’s.” In the 1961 typesetting MS, this material was an insert on different paper and set in all block capitals, drawing the copyeditor’s instruction: “composer normalement en bas de casse” (CU 2.3).

  138“a land of grass without memory”: the phrase, which recurs three times in SM1, is taken from the T. S. Eliot translation of St.-John Perse’s poem, Anabasis, a major influence on Burroughs.

  139“impersonal screen eyes swept by color”: restores “eyes,” omitted from SM2 140 and SM3 96.

  140“Panhandle cyclone”: SM1 has “Kansas,” but Panhandle was rewritten on the 1962 MS. On the SM3 manuscript, Burroughs made the change in the opposite direction, cancelling “Panhandle” and writing in “Kansas.” At this point Burroughs inserted a ten-page typescript into his 1965 MS for SM3, made up of nearly 2,000-words of new material followed by a shorter version of the “Color Unit” material taken from SM1, before ending the chapter with another 1,500 words of new material.

  140“The young faces sharp”: exemplifying how Burroughs redacted material from his original manuscript for SM1 and then for SM2, the 1961 typesetting draft had: “The young faces sharp and timeless in the flash bulb of urgency fade out in state restaurants empty of hunger” (CU 2.3). The version in SM1 and SM2 is far more elliptical, and in SM2 what seems to be a typo has appeared—“stale” for “state”: however, the 1965 galleys show that Burroughs deliberately made this substitution.

  142“1920 movies”: altered by Burroughs on the 1962 MS from “1910” in SM1, prompting a copyeditor’s marginal query beside a following reference to “1910,” but this was left unchanged.

  143“lights a blue flame”: corrects SM2 144 (“fights”).

  144“flesh diseased” to “radioactive garbage”: these lines are not on the 1962 MS but were a typed insert scotch-taped into the 1965 galleys.

  Where You Belong

  Apart from a few phrases that recycled material from the first edition, this short chapter was written from scratch, and Burroughs composed at least two full drafts before his 1962 MS. There are also unused cut-up versions and, most revealingly, several partial drafts of the opening passages. The drafts show significant variations, the very earliest echoing the final section of The Ticket That Exploded, which Burroughs finished at about the same time he began writing new material for The Soft Machine. The third edition is identical to the second except for very minor differences in spelling and punctuation while, apart from a couple of small but significant erasures, so too is the 1962 MS.

  145“My trouble began”: the very earliest draft of the opening paragraph begins quite differently and has a distinctive range of reference: “Now this citizen was not with the oil company but worked for an outfit called Life Time Change—‘We don’t report events we write them’ he said. And they sent me to school I am learning how this is done—Right away I sus it is the old Mayan crab gimmick all over Caper with an IBM machine figuring out the thought units and rotating the units and I don’t want to know remembering where that caper can wind up—But they were controlling my thoughts feelings and apparent sensory impressions—‘No one walks out on Life Time Change’ he said chewing his cigar—‘There’s no place to go—We have it all sewed up tight as a junkie’s ass hole’—So I wangle a transfer to the Near East where I hear about this Hassan I Sabbah lives on a rock surrounded by a desert of silence—And I put in a line to the home office somebody should cover Alamout and got the job—Well I see it isn’t going to be easy because all around the edges of this desert are the thing police and trak guards—of the border city—so Iam rigged up a vibrating camera gun and we blasted our way through—into the silence—Silence outside and it seeped down in and all the word dust fell off you KLUNK—Silence to say good bye—” (Berg 11.28). Here Burroughs is much more direct in identifying Henry Luce’s trilogy of magazine titles (“Life Time Change” for Life, Time and Fortune), and this phrasing recurs twice more in the same draft. On the 1962 MS, Burroughs cancelled the original phrase and wrote in by hand the change to “Trak.”

  145“And friend looks me over”: in one early draft the friend is identified as “the Madison Avenue man” (Berg 5.4).

  146“they have trapped a grey flannel suit on me”: this is “strapped” in draft (Berg 5.4) but “trapped” on the 1962 MS.

  146“I sus it is the Mayan Caper”: the early typescript indicates how Burroughs rewrote his material: “So right away I dig this I sus it is the Mayan Caper with an IBM machine but by now they are controlling my thoughts feelings and apparent sensory impressions with encephalographic brain waves So i am fucked again but Iam says the answer is simple as usual—The machine is so big no one person can run it or know in a thousand years what data is being processed—It’s the Mayan bit all over—Just feed anything into the machine and the machine will process it—All done with technical sergeants—these officers who go around chewing cigars don’t even know what button to push” (Berg 5.4).

  146“A fat cigar and a long white nightie”: a rough cut-up page, which has the characteristic underlining of phrases to show which ones Burroughs considered selecting, continues by naming names: “Past crimes high lighte
d Luce—he boasted of a rigged thousand years” (Berg 5.4).

  Uranian Willy

  At the foot of the last page of the “Where You Belong” chapter in the 1962 MS Burroughs typed “Insert Combat Section” and then added in hand, “and war of the sexes”—which is what he did by creating this and the following chapter. To make “Uranian Willy,” Burroughs drew on a few lines of the 1961 Soft Machine to do with “Pilot K9,” and on two chapters of Nova Express, taking two thirds from its chapter also titled “Uranian Willy” and one third from “Towers Open Fire.” For the 1968 edition, Burroughs added some 250 more words taken from the 1961 text, plus a new 100-word footnote. Apart from two cancelled lines and a few more capitals, restored here, the 1962 MS is identical to the second edition.

  149“Uranian Willy”: the 1962 MS starts with a canceled line: “Cross the wounded galaxies he was wanted for nova in three solar systems—” A draft of the “Uranian Willy” chapter in Nova Express, and the version of it published in the magazine Second Coming, begin with a similar preceding first line: “His larval flesh shuddering from The Ovens Of Minraud, metal scars on his face cross the wounded galaxies he was wanted for Novia in three solar systems” (OSU 2.3).

  150“Use partisans of all nation”: corrects SM2 152 (“nations”). Although the “Uranian Willy” chapter in Nova Express has the plural “nations,” Burroughs often preferred the singular, and did so on the 1962 MS both here and again in the final line of the chapter.

  150“Smell of burning metal in his head”: up until this point the paragraph derives from SM1 15, and the 1962 MS continues with another line that Burroughs then cancelled; “Enemy flak hit him a grey wall of paralyzing jelly.”

  Gongs Of Violence

  One of the most confusing and richly complicated chapters in terms of its textual and publication histories, “Gongs Of Violence” begins with what were the opening lines of “the war,” the long first section of the 1961 Soft Machine. The origins of the material go back as far as summer and fall 1957, when Burroughs referred to writing up a “final War of the Sexes” (Letters, 369). For the second edition, Burroughs re-used some of the 1961 text verbatim while re-sequencing or making small cuts to other parts, and then added just under half of “life scripts,” which expanded the first section even though it appeared a hundred pages later in the book. Much of this material was published a year before The Soft Machine in the Scottish magazine Sidewalk, where it appeared, combined with material from other sections, under the title “Have You Seen Slotless City?” (and was reprinted two years later as “Take It to Cut City-USA” in the New Orleans magazine The Outsider). After more first edition material, Burroughs ended “Gongs Of Violence” with a last quarter of new material—“new” in the sense that it did not derive from the first edition, although the penultimate paragraph was written in spring 1961, just after The Soft Machine had been completed, as part of his abortive sequel, The Ugly Spirit.