Series I: Archival Boxes

The core of the Burroughs collection is the 12 linear feet of manuscripts, dating from 1938, including several drafts of a number of Burroughs' major works including The Soft Machine, Ah Pook Is Here, and The Wild Boys. Also included are drafts of unpublished works such as Numero Uno Nu, The Revised Boy Scout Manual, and The Unspeakable Mr. Hart, each of which had portions significantly revised by Burroughs before their inclusion in his published oeuvre. Additionally, there are clippings and source materials (used by Burroughs in his text manipulations) dating from his tenure at the unnamed Beat Hotel at 9 rue Git-le-Coeur in Paris during the late 1950s-early 1960s. It was at the Beat Hotel that Brion Gysin stumbled across the text manipulation technique called cut-up, which Burroughs has used extensively. It was also Brion Gysin who wrote the first screenplay adaptation of Burroughs' Naked Lunch, present in this collection in Gysin's holograph. There are also over seventy other small manuscripts and fragments in this collection as well as two volumes of dream notes.

Arizona State University continues to expand the collection, primarily by adding to Burroughs' copies of over 100 magazines containing his work, as well as books by Burroughs, not to mention translations of same. Further expansions have been made in the audio and video medias with the collection of Burroughs recorded appearances. Notable among these expansions are Call Me Burroughs, his first album (released in 1965) Ali's Smile, a companion disc to the 1971 limited edition book, and the Howard Brookner documentary Burroughs.

An additional concern addressed by this collection is the immediate circle of writers around Burroughs such as the aforementioned Gysin, Jack Kerouac, Jeff Nuttall, Paul Bowles, Alan Ansen, William S. Burroughs Jr., Carl Weissner, and Mary Beach. Each of the above authors is represented, either in the Burroughs ephemeral section or in the Special Collection stacks.

This archive is the largest Burroughs collection publicly available. It continues to grow as ASU's commitment to Burroughs, not to mention Burroughs' own proclivity, brings in dozens of items annually.

Series I: Archival Boxes is the centerpoint of the Burroughs archives and houses a number of Burrough's own working files, down to his handwritten titles and cover collages. Within the files are manuscript pages (published and unpublished), photographs, cut-ups, drawings, correspondence from fans, publishers, family and collaborators, as well as film scripts and other associated materials. A note regarding the identification of manuscript pages: William Burroughs has achieved great renown for his advocacy and use of various text manipulation methods, including cut-ups and fold-ins. Additionally, one aspect of Burroughs' style is the repetition of words and phrases, recontextualized and slightly altered. These factors render the identification of unlabeled manuscript pages problematic at best. Identification is further complicated by Burroughs' penchant for using his own text as well as others' in these manipulations. Thus, specific identification, including whether a piece has been published, should not be thought of as definitive.