Burroughs Unbound

S. E. Gontarski is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University, USA. He is the author or editor of 29 books and, with Paul Ardoin and Laci Mattison, he is series editor of the Bloomsbury series, Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism. The serie editors were also volume editors for the initial books in that series: Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2013) and the follow-up, Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2014). Gontarski’s recent books are: Beckett’s “Happy Day”: A Manuscript Study (2017) and Revisioning Beckett: Samuel Beckett’s Decadent Turn (Bloomsbury, 2018).

• Acknowledgments ContributorsBurroughs Unbound: An Atrophied IntroductionS. E. Gontarski, Florida State University, USAPart 1: Theory 1. Weaponized Aesthetics and Dystopian Modernism: Cut-ups, Playbacks, Pick-ups and the “Limits of Control” from Burroughs to DeleuzeS. E. Gontarski, Florida State University, USA2. Pay It All Back: Writing Paranoia-Paranoid Writing Nathan Moore, School of Law, Birkbeck College, London, UK3. The Tension of Possibility: Reading Closure in Ah Pook through the Sum of the MultiframeAsh Connell-Gonzalez, University of Oregon, USA4. Fluidity and Fixity in William S. Burroughs’ WritingAllen Hibbard, Middle Tennessee State University, USAPart 2: Texts5. Making Dead Fingers TalkOliver Harris, Keele University, UK6. *Whale Drek: The Lost Footnotes of the Olympia Press Naked LunchJed Birmingham, Contributing Editor, Reality Studio7. "There are no typographical errors in this edition": Burroughs's Textual Infection of the New York SchoolNick Sturm, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA8. “I spent months in the morgue”: William S. Burroughs’ appropriation of TIME magazine Tomasz Stompor, Göttingen State and University Library, Germany9. Digitizing the Word Hoard: Remediating Counter-Cultural Archives after the American CenturyAlex Wermer-Colan, Temple University (Digital Scholarship Center), USA10. Mess, Taste, and Gastric Criticism: Digesting Naked LunchRona Cran, University of Birmingham, UKPart 3: Performance11. Performance in the Work of William S. Burroughs John M. Bennett, The Ohio State University, USA12. Burroughs, Bowie, and the Reshaping of the CountercultureBarry Faulk, Florida State University, USA 13. The Alternative Press is NewsBlake Stricklin, University of Houston, Victoria, USAAppendix A: Evergreen on the Air: Barney Rosset on Censorship and Publishing Naked Lunch [Transcript of 1962, WNYC radio broadcast], Barney Rosset, Publisher, Grove Press, 1951-1986Appendix B: “Lectures on the Virus,” selections from Burroughs’s lectures at CCNY, 1974Appendix C: Burroughs Manifest, the “lost, found and lost again” Burroughs Archive at Florida State University, 12 September 1980 purchaseAppendix D: Supplemental Bucher purchases, 12 December, 1990Appendix E: Burroughs and Bucher, letters and notes 1978-9, 1984Appendix F: “A 30-year wait. A 16-mile journey.” The story of the “lost” Burroughs Archive at Florida State UniversityIndex

[F]or the general Burroughs/Beat enthusiast, the book is a welcome and valuable addition to the rapidly expanding number of studies placing Burroughs at the leading edge of contemporary literary, social and political theory.