Don't Hide the Madness
William S. Burroughs in Conversation with Allen Ginsberg
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Two seminal figures of the Beat movement, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, discuss literary influences and personal history in a never-before-published three-day conversation following the release of the David Cronenberg film adaptation of Burroughs’ revolutionary novel Naked Lunch. The visit coincided with the shamanic exorcism of the demon that Burroughs believed had caused him to fatally shoot his common law wife, Joan Vollmer Burroughs, in 1951—the event that Burroughs believed had driven his work as a writer. The conversation is interspersed with 17 photographs taken by Ginsberg revealing Burroughs’s daily activities from his painting studio to the shooting range. DON'T HIDE THE MADNESS presents and important, hitherto unpublished primary document of the Beat Generation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet and musician Taylor (False Prophet) shares a fascinating and heretofore unpublished transcription of two famous beat authors in conversation. On the occasion of the 1992 U.K. premiere of David Cronenberg's film adaptation of Naked Lunch, Allen Ginsberg spent several days with the novel's inimitable author, William S. Burroughs, for a write-up in the London Observer Magazine. Their talk took place at Burroughs's Lawrence, Kans., home and coincided with an exorcism conducted by Navajo shaman Melvin Betsellie to rid Burroughs of a lifelong demonic presence the writer called the Ugly Spirit. In addition to a detailed run-down of the exorcism, there's banter about health, diet, and Burroughs's many beloved cats; serious discussion of his literary influences and cut-up method of composition; and gossip about their eclectic social circles in London, Mexico City, and Tangier. The result is a relaxed, wide-ranging confab, by turns erudite and charmingly down-to-earth, and with plentiful contributions from others, including Betsellie and especially longtime Burroughs associate and bibliographer James Grauerholz. Lightly but helpfully annotated and peppered with Ginsberg's own snapshots of Burroughs in repose, this must-have resource for beat aficionados will stimulate more casual readers as well with its sense of being in the same room, and thoroughly in tune, with two legendary literary iconoclasts.
