The Yage Letters: Redux

by William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Oliver Harris (Introduction)

William Burroughs closed his classic debut novel, Junky, by saying he had determined to search out a drug he called 'Yage' which he believed transmitted telepathic powers, a drug that could be 'the final fix'. In The Yage Letters - a mix of travel writing, satire, psychedelia and epistolary novel - he journeys through South America, writing to his friend Allen Ginsberg about his experiments with the strange drug, using it to travel through time and space, to derange his senses - the perfect drug for the author of the wild decentred books that followed. Years later, Ginsberg writes back as he follows in Burroughs' footsteps, and the drug worse and more profound than he had imagined.

ebook

Published August 2, 2012

About the author

William Seward Burroughs II, (also known by his pen name William Lee) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer.
A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century".
His influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays.
Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films.
He was born to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri, grandson of the inventor and founder of the Burroughs Corporation, William Seward Burroughs I, and nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee. Burroughs began writing essays and journals in early adolescence. He left home in 1932 to attend Harvard University, studied English, and anthropology as a postgraduate, and later attended medical school in Vienna. After being turned down by the Office of Strategic Services and U.S. Navy in 1942 to serve in World War II, he dropped out and became afflicted with the drug addiction that affected him for the rest of his life, while working a variety of jobs. In 1943 while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, the mutually influential foundation of what became the countercultural movement of the Beat Generation.
Much of Burroughs's work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict, as he lived throughout Mexico City, London, Paris, Berlin, the South American Amazon and Tangier in Morocco. Finding success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), Burroughs is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a controversy-fraught work that underwent a court case under the U.S. sodomy laws. With Brion Gysin, he also popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–64). In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1984 was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift", a reputation he owes to his "lifelong subversion" of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War", while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius".
Burroughs had one child, William Seward Burroughs III (1947-1981), with his second wife Joan Vollmer. Vollmer died in 1951 in Mexico City. Burroughs was convicted of manslaughter in Vollmer's death, an event that deeply permeated all of his writings. Burroughs died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, after suffering a heart attack in 1997.

Reviews

[giulia]

tipo ad un certo punto ti spiega pure come si prepara e Ginsberg inizia ad illustrare passo per passo il raggiungimento dell’ultimo chakra boh va be coooool

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It Burroughs.
You'll either love him or hate him

[Luis Löwenstein · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too base and hateful to experience the touch of the divine (Burroughs's interest in ayahuasca seems to arise primarily out of MK-ULTRA-style anti-communist conspiracy theories), The Yage Letters is a meandering racist diatribe so aimless and unfocused it had to be clumsily refashioned into an "epistolary novel" (novel my ass) to appear at all publishable. He actually finds yagé pretty soon and then sets out to try every local variant on the continent. Yet rather than trying to describe his experiences with the drug, he devotes many more words to repetitive descriptions of the racial inferiority, dirtiness and over-all degeneracy of the South American locals and their dwellings. But not to worry, you get the transcendence-ego-death-Great-Being stuff yet as there's some profoundly solipsistic hippie ramblings by everyone's favorite pederast poet, Allen Ginsberg, tacked on at the end. Burroughs, when he is not cutting up his hateful garbage, tossing it in the air and putting it back together, reveals himself as an extremely limited writer, making you wonder if his reputation wasn't built on an elaborate con, the antics of a rich enfant terrible of the type so beloved by twentieth-century critics and the sympathy of like-minded colleagues.

[Carlos Evenor · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was alright, I read it to follow up Junkie and Queer. I was expecting a bit more emotion but it was straightforward, the letters were pretty short but when it comes to the yagé experience, he is actually very descriptive and you get the point.

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

allen ginsberg an absolute hack

[Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

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