The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1945-1959

Rating:
Summary: Burroughs revealed
Review: I've read a fair amount of Burroughs, and this book is the best of all, the volume that lets you see into the soul of the man. Many of the letters are to Ginsberg, some to Kerouac and others. The stories he tells are funny and scary, sometimes heartbreaking. From these letters you can see where the more imposing material came from, the genesis of the work that came out in the sixties.

Rating:
Summary: Burroughs revealed
Review: I've read a fair amount of Burroughs, and this book is the best of all, the volume that lets you see into the soul of the man. Many of the letters are to Ginsberg, some to Kerouac and others. The stories he tells are funny and scary, sometimes heartbreaking. From these letters you can see where the more imposing material came from, the genesis of the work that came out in the sixties.

Rating:
Summary: An Insight Into Who He Really Was
Review: If you are a fan of Burrough's cut-up texts and really want to come to understand this engimatic figure, this collection will provide a treasure trove of information regarding his personal life. Although I find it inappropriate to draw any conclusions when I read his words (I respect the Man too much), these private letters cast a different shade from which you can gather some concrete material about what his life, and hence his writing, is really about. Provocative, a clean read, and after reading this, I think anyone will have to reconsider many of their "wacked-out" thought regarding Burroughs, be they good or bad thoughts. He was a complex man, a more complex writer, and just when you think you understand... That's when you realize he's been playing with you all along.

Rating:
Summary: Burroughs as a man, not as a legend
Review: That Kirkus review is cheap, trite and obvious. "Godfather of Grunge"? "MTV generations' idea of a literay outlaw"? What's that mean? They were right when they said he didn't come off as a literary "fella"--why? because Literature is phony and an obstruction to truth--"All that is literature has fallen from me, thank God," wrote Henry Miller, and Burroughs exemplifies that. He was interested in Life, and escaping oppression. Little is made of him shooting his wife? Sorry. His heroin cures? Sorry. Save that for all the lame Hollywood hacks who succumb to addiction only because they know their "life story" will sell. I think this is a great book, one that shows the human, caring, funny, straightforward man Burroughs was in a time of even greater hypocrisy and corruption than today. I think he was dead on the mark in the fifties about America becoming a police state.... Burroughs still upsets conventional literary categories, and the only way the "establishment" can deal with him is to joke and condescend and offer him up as caricature, as Kirkus did. Did anyone read the pathetic obituaries of him? They had no clue what he really did. As he said: "We intend to destroy all dogmatic verbal systems." No glot....c'lom Fliday....

Rating:
Summary: Burroughs as a man, not as a legend
Review: That Kirkus review is cheap, trite and obvious. "Godfather of Grunge"? "MTV generations' idea of a literay outlaw"? What's that mean? They were right when they said he didn't come off as a literary "fella"--why? because Literature is phony and an obstruction to truth--"All that is literature has fallen from me, thank God," wrote Henry Miller, and Burroughs exemplifies that. He was interested in Life, and escaping oppression. Little is made of him shooting his wife? Sorry. His heroin cures? Sorry. Save that for all the lame Hollywood hacks who succumb to addiction only because they know their "life story" will sell. I think this is a great book, one that shows the human, caring, funny, straightforward man Burroughs was in a time of even greater hypocrisy and corruption than today. I think he was dead on the mark in the fifties about America becoming a police state.... Burroughs still upsets conventional literary categories, and the only way the "establishment" can deal with him is to joke and condescend and offer him up as caricature, as Kirkus did. Did anyone read the pathetic obituaries of him? They had no clue what he really did. As he said: "We intend to destroy all dogmatic verbal systems." No glot....c'lom Fliday....