Naked Lunch Letters: [J:471/474]: Allen Ginsberg

Pp. 1-2, 4-9 of a letter dated October 20, 1955 to Allen Ginsberg written by Burroughs from the Hassan hospital, Tangiers, Morocco in 1955 while Burroughs was recovering from heroin addiction.

This famous MS contains passages which Ginsberg edited with Burroughs into the final version of the novel The Naked Lunch. Every page bears corrections and additions in Burroughs' holograph. Page 9 contains synopsis of The Naked Lunch, which at the time was tentatively titled Ignorant Armies. In this synopsis, which is very different from the arrangement of chapters in The Naked Lunch, Burroughs outlines the plot of the entire novel dividing it into 6 chapters. With the help of Ginsberg the novel was entirely restructured for publication by the Olympia Press four years later. In other parts of the letter Burroughs discusses his method of composition and his reasons for writing the novel:

I am trying, like Klee to create something that will have a life of its own, that can put me in real danger, a danger which I willingly take on myself. I find I cannot write without endless parenthesis. A parenthesis indicates the simulateaty [sic] of past, present and emergent future. I exist in the present moment. I can't and won't pretend I am dead. This novel is not posthumous. A novel is something finished, that is dead. On page 4 of letter Burroughs suggest several humorous alternate titles to the novel.

Also contained in this folder are the following: Page 1 numbered 2 with corrections in Burroughs' hand, from a letter to Ginsberg, about 1954, which appears to be a dream routine, later adopted into The Naked Lunch; single leaf typed on one side and written in holograph on the other, dated January 6, 1955, Tangier, discussing work-in progress, i.e., The Naked Lunch, and his problems writing the book; 2 pages discussing MS of The Naked Lunch, with corrections.

Since parts of the text of these letters lapse into quasi-hallucinatory narrative, and because the letters are present in this Burroughs archive, it is evident that Burroughs considered a number of passages contained in the letters to be too important to his novel to send the letters to Ginsberg. In fact, at the top of the first page, Burroughs has written in pencil Letter A, chapter II.

Preserved in the original red legal sized folder with the following note in Burroughs' hand in ink on the front cover: Letters to Allen Ginsberg dated 1954-55-56. Containing first drafts for Naked Lunch together with unpublished material.

A highly important collection. Unpublished in this form. Folio 1.