William Burroughs' Intro To Naked Lunch At $175,000

by Stephen J. Gertz

Calling Dr. Benway:

The first and final draft corrected typescripts of William S. Burroughs' Introduction to the first American edition (NY: Grove Press, 1962) of Naked Lunch (Paris: Olympia Press, 1959), his seminal, controversial work and one of the landmark publications in the history of American literature, have come to market. The asking price is $175,000.

From the collection of his friend and editor, Alan Ansen, they are being offered by Glenn Horowitz, Bookseller, the New York City dealer who has made a habit of pulling literary rabbits out of his hat. Within that context these typescripts may be fairly ranked as the rabbit who ate Cleveland.

The first, titled "Postscript" in Burroughs' penciled holograph, is comprised of five recto-only leaves corrected by Burroughs in black ink, with page numbers in same. It is unknown when, exactly, he wrote it but it appears to be c. 1960.

The heavily corrected typescript is Burroughs' first pass at his extended essay, Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness, that would serve as the introduction to the American edition of Naked Lunch. “Postscript” discursively explores the themes and sentiments which motivated Burroughs to write the introduction; it is the text upon which the polished, buffed, and published version was based. 

Bits and pieces of “Postscript” can be found throughout “Deposition,” as well as in its final post-postscript, and the relationship between “Postscript” and the published introduction is immediately obvious. For example, page one of the “Postscript” typescript includes the following notes:

"Hasheiesh [sic], Mescaline, LSD -- ? under the title what is? Who must have junk to live in the structure? When there are no addicts carriers will disintegrate - virus opium."

"Talk exact manner in which junk virus controls words in monkey considered sacred by those who purpose to keep the virus of numbers or remove the bottom number street to cover basic frequency."

The published introduction directly addresses the points noted above, concerning the difference between hallucinogens - hashish, mescaline, LSD  - and heroin. Burroughs writes in part, “There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence. The action of these drugs is physiologically opposite to the action of junk. A lamentable confusion between the two classes of drugs has arisen owing to the zeal of the U.S. and other Narcotic departments...” The introduction also sets forth upon “the exact manner in which the junk virus operates.” 

Within the five-page “Postscript” is a handful of dialogue and a paragraph referring to “Mr Bradly Mr Martin,” a character appearing in the novels of Burroughs' Nova Trilogy: Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket that Exploded (1962), and Nova Express (1964). In part, they read:

“Light in eyes and I saw the brains...no time to stop and eat switch fuzz behind me...I told him I'd do it I told him if I catch you on the West Side push you on the tracks...hustle your own mooch...”

"And he looked at me over the blade caught the tarnish black and white subway dawn..Old photo..Couldn't reach me with the knife and fell on the tracks I told him he would and he rushed for I – overcoat I held there teaching him the cloth in the turnstile and learned the cloth stuck there like star fish smoking and switch fuzz whistling down the iron stairs and I caught an uptown cold sore…"

"Mr Bradly Mr Martin teaching him the cloth in the junk hold saw the brains fuzz the rail…"

Neither the dialogue nor the narrative made it into the Introduction and appear to be unpublished.

The final draft appears in three typescripts:

• “Deposition. Testimony Concerning a Sickness,” (ca. 1960), a corrected ribbon typescript of thirteen recto-only leaves (including the one-page “PSS or PPS” noted below), with Burroughs’ holograph corrections in blue ink and copy-editing notes in red ink.

•“Deposition. Testimony Concerning a Sickness,” (ca. 1960), a corrected carbon typescript of eleven recto-only leaves (lacking final page) very neatly incorporating in another hand the changes to the ribbon typescript above, either by erasing the type and replacing it with the correct text or interlined with Burroughs’ text.

• “PSS or PPS.” (ca. 1960), a one-leaf corrected ribbon typescript with Burroughs’ holograph corrections in black ink. It is stapled to “Deposition” above. 

These are a ribbon typescript and carbon copy of Burroughs’ introduction, "Deposition,” as published by Grove Press. The thirteen-page typescript is corrected by Burroughs and his changes are incorporated into the carbon copy as well as the final text as published. Burroughs’ holograph annotations include clarifications to language, e.g., “these notes” becomes “the notes which have now been published,” “measurable” becomes “accurately measurable,” etc., and include corrections to spelling and changes in emphasis with the addition of underlining.

The one-page “PSS or PPS” was not included in the book but did appear with “Deposition” in Grove Press' Evergreen Review (Volume 4, Issues 11-12). It was introduced “as a late post-postscript - a newspeak précis.”

Alan Ansen ("Rollo Greb" in Kerouac's On the Road) was a poet, playwright, and close friend of many Beat Generation writers. Living in Tangier, he spent time with Paul Bowles, Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and others. He lived in Greece during the last forty or so years of his life

Considered to be the only man capable of shaping the hundreds of random pages generated by Burroughs into publishable form, Ansen was brought in by Ginsberg to help edit Naked Lunch. He later preserved the Ginsberg-Burroughs correspondence along with many of the photographs from the period.

To have fresh Burroughs autograph/typescript material enter the marketplace (ABPC records no Burroughs typescript/manuscript material coming to auction within the last thirty-six years) at this late date is somewhat miraculous; all that could be found had, it seemed, been unearthed. But that was before The Amazing Horowitz waved his magic wand, said "abracadabra," and conjured this material out of nowhere and into and out of his hat.

• • •

And now, a treat: Burroughs recites passages concerning Dr. Benway - the Marcus Welby, M.D. from Hell who "performs appendectomies with a rusty sardine can" - from Naked Lunch in his deadpan nasal monotone mashed-up with footage from an episode of Dr. Kildare, and behold! Burroughs' voice coming out of Richard Chamberlain's mouth. Oh, to hear Burroughs croon Three Stars Will Shine Tonight, the 1961 TV show's hit theme song.


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All images courtesy of Glenn Horowitz Bookseller with our thanks.

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Books, Drugs, and Wallpaper

by Stephen J. Gertz

Struggling booksellers seeking new ways to broaden their client base and increase profits may wish to follow the model of F.W. Richter, who, in 1907, advertised in Tried and True: a Collection of Approved Recipes, a cookbook by the Trinity Church of Niles, Michigan issued by the Mennonite Publishing Co. of Elkhart, Indiana.

Like a wise investor, he held a diversified portfolio of inventory just shy of you name it. When book sales were down he could leverage the loss against sales of drugs, art, stationary, wallpaper, spices and extracts.

He even had promotional glass bottles made, a masterstroke as bookmarks are throwaways but bottles are forever and useful, particularly for storing pure extract of book while broadening brand awareness.

In 1907, nostrums containing heroin, morphine, and cocaine were readily available (though by then regulated) in drug stores. Considering that many of us believe that books produce a euphoric altered-state the retailing of drugs and books in concert, though cross-addiction a distinct possibility, makes perfect sense.

Not sure about the wallpaper, though.

Stacked paperback wallpaper from Anthropologie.

Unless it's book-oriented. Then, like Daniel, you can read the writing on the wall in the comfort of a den, "Mene, Mene, Tekel, u-Pharsin," y'know what I mean? Probably best, though, to keep the lions on a short leash, fed and sated.

• • • 

Mennonite Publishing Company, 1886.

The Mennonite Publishing Company existed from 1875-1925. "The Mennonite Publishing Company did an outstanding service in its book and periodical publications both in German and English, serving not only the Mennonites and Amish Mennonites but also a large block of the Russian Mennonite immigrants, particularly in Manitoba. For the latter group it published the Mennonitische Rundschau and hymnals, catechisms, and confessions of faith" (Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, p. 634).

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Bottle image courtesy of Bibliophemera, with our thanks.

Image of Mennonite Publishing Company courtesy of Gameo, with our thanks.
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Sisters In Opium: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Louisa May Alcott

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, radiant opium addict.

“I am writing such poems - allegorical - philosophical - poetical - ethical - synthetically arranged! I am in a fit of writing - could write all day & night - and long to live by myself for three months in a forest of chestnuts & cedars, in an hourly succession of poetical paragraphs & morphine draughts.” - Elizabeth Barrett Browning, to her brother, 1843.

“Opium - opium - night after night!” - Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

“Heaven bless hashish, if dreams end like this!” - Louisa May Alcott, Perilous Play (1869).

Of delicate constitution to begin with, Elizabeth Barrett Browning began using opium when she was fifteen to treat the pain from a spinal injury complicated by “nervous hysteria.”

According to Althea Hayter, EBB’s poem, A True Dream (1833), “it is almost a case-book list of opium-inspired imagery, with its slimy, glittering snakes, its stoney face, its poisonous kisses, its rainbow smoke, its breaths of icy cold.”

EBB’s second major illness occurred in 1837, enduring for ten years. It affected her heart and lungs, and required more of the era’s standard medication for everything; By the time she began corresponding with Robert Browning in 1845, she was using forty drops of laudanum a day, a massive, advanced dosage for an addict.

Browning was not happy about her opium habit. She defended her use of it to him in a letter.

“My opium comes in to keep the pulse from fluttering and fainting...to give the right composure and point of balance to the nervous system. I don’t take it for ‘my spirits’ in the usual sense; you must not think such a thing.”

Browning’s concern, apparently, deepened; she wrote to him a few months later with great intensity.

“And that you should care so much about the opium! Then I must care, and get to do with less - at least. On the other side of your goodness and indulgence (a very little way on the other side) it might strike you as strange that I who have had no pain - no acute suffering to keep down from its angles - should need opium in any shape. But I have had restlessness till it made me almost mad: at one time I lost the power f sleeping quite - and even in the day, the continual aching sense of weakness has been intolerable - besides palpitation - as if one’s life, instead of giving movement to the body, were imprisoned undiminished within it, and beating and fluttering impotently to get out, at all the doors and windows. So the medical people gave me opium - a preparation of it, called morphine, and ether - and ever since I have been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixer - because the tranquilizing power has been wonderful. Such a nervous system I have - so irritable naturally, and so shattered by various causes, that the need has continued in a degree until now, and it would be dangerous to leave off the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says, except very slowly and gradually. But slowly and gradually something may be done - and you are to understand that I never increased upon the prescribed quantity...prescribed in the first instance - no!”

She protests too much; “I don’t take it for ‘my spirits’ in the usual sense; you must not think such a thing.” No, she doesn’t take it to get high, merely to forestall withdrawal symptoms. Unlikely. She lies about her increasing tolerance and necessary dose: Forty drops of laudanum a day is enough to kill a horse; a doctor would never, under any circumstances, prescribe such a huge quantity of the drug to someone just beginning its use.

This is someone who clearly loves her drug.

EBB’s opium addiction was not well known to her contemporaries. Or , as Palmer and Horowitz suggest, it “was not considered remarkable enough to warrant their attention.” It did attract the attention of Julia Ward Howe, who, in 1857, asserted that Mrs. Browning’s poetic imagination was dependent upon opium.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, post-addiction.
The thrill is gone.

•••

Louisa May Alcott began using morphine to ease the after-effects of typhoid fever contracted during service as a nurse during the Civil War. She cannot have been happy about it: The Alcotts followed the Beecher's condemnation of alcohol, opium preparations, and tobacco.

Indeed, Alcott and Catherine Beecher, in The American Women’s Home (1869), a revision of A Treatise on Domestic Economy originally written solely by Beecher in 1841, state that

“The use of opium, especially by women, is usually caused by at first by medical prescriptions containing it. All that has been stated as to the effect of alcohol in the brain is true of opium; while to break a habit thus is almost hopeless. Every woman who takes or who administers this drug, is dealing as with poisoned arrows, whose wounds are without cure.”

(Alcott believed, as did the entire Beecher family, that pure water cured all).

Alcott likely experimented with hashish; it did not bear the stigma of opium.

The Alcott-Beecher collaboration was written at the time, or very close to it, that Alcott began to use opium. She was convinced her post-typhoid ailments were the result of treatment with calomel, the mercury-based, highly toxic anodyne in routine use at the time; opium eased the discomfort of its side-effects. Alcott knew the evils of the opium habit (addiction was a concept unknown in the 19th century), and her stance on the subject made it a moral issue.

That she continued to use it intermittently for the rest of her life is documented. She surely must have felt moral guilt. I suspect that she was actually a full-blown addict as we understand addiction today, her ongoing ailments having less to do with pathology than with withdrawal sickness and the difficulty of ever getting off the drug once and for all and feeling %100 right.

Alcott was a strong woman. She was the primary breadwinner for her family, a work horse, the family’s strength and caregiver. Who cares for the caregiver? She was a successful writer who disdained the works that brought her fame and prosperity, the lurid writing she loved was not commercially successful, and her private self and public image were radically dissonant. She carried the caregiver's enormous burden, exacerbated by ongoing, profound grief over the death of her parents, brother and two sisters. She, to a large degree, put her own needs second to others. She was not a complainer; she held frustrations inside. The one romantic relationship in her life ended poorly. She enjoyed mental stimulation where she found it, was a rebellious spirit, willful, and independent. She experienced a long period of profound depression; some have suggested that she may have been bi-polar. She experienced profound mental and physical pain.

She, in short, fit the profile for a potential drug abuser.

Louisa May Alcott in later life.

She surely would have gone to great lengths to hide her opium use, particularly as she grew older and her health began to break down (the result of long-term addiction?). In every early portrait or photograph of her she is not smiling, her eyes are open and dull. In a photo of her in her later years, her eyes are sunken and hooded, and her features are drawn. Yet her eyes gleam and she bears a Mona Lisa smile. It is the portrait of an opiate addict.

Louisa May Alcott died of intestinal cancer; she was undoubtedly using morphine - which by then had supplanted laudanum as the preferred opiate - in massive doses to ease her discomfort.

While there is little doubt that EBB’s work through 1848 was influenced by her use of opium, it was not overwhelmed by it. There is also little doubt that LMA’s writing was most certainly not.

These two sisters in opium were successful writers in spite of their addiction to opiates, not because of of their use of them. Talent, will, and strong work ethic triumph over the drug - until addiction completely takes over everything. That has been the case with every celebrated artist-addict.

It is unfortunate that every generation has to learn this lesson. Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and William S. Burroughs have, in their fashion, been the bane of artist-writers, who, seeking to emulate their literary heroes, presume that if they use drugs, too, then they shall be similarly gifted, have the doors of perception open up to them and allow expression of the ineffable.

The only thing unspeakable is that too many continue to believe this fantasy.
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References:

The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1945-1846. Edited by Elvan Kinter. (Harvard University Press, 1969).

Hayter, Althea. Opium and the Romantic Imagination. (University of California Press, 1968.

Palmer, Cynthia and Michael Horowitz. eds. Shaman Woman, Mainline Lady: Women’s Writings on the Drug Experience. (William Morrow, 1982).

Stern, Madeleine B. L.M. Alcott: Signature of Reform. (Northeastern University Press, 2002).

O. Henry's Morphine Overdose, Pay-Scale, and Advice to Writers

Recently, while on recon for Book Patrol, I discovered Fog in Santone, a short story by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter, 1862-1910) set in San Antonio Texas and loaded with morphine. In it, O. Henry limns the nexus of tuberculosis, desperate sufferers, and drug addiction amongst the sick and “sporting class" with lighthearted morbidity.

In contrast to Fog in Santone, At Arms With Morpheus takes place in turn-of the-century New York City boarding house. From clues in the narrative, it is the boarding house located off Madison Square where Porter lived.

In At Arms With Morpheus, which first appeared in the October, 1903 issue of Ainslee's Magazine under the pseudonym S.H. Peters and in book form in the posthumously published collection, Sixes and Sevens (1911), O. Henry, who was a registered druggist at age nineteen, tells a story about a morphine overdose. It appears to be the first literary treatment of a narcotic OD in American literature; it is certainly the first time that a drug overdose is played for laughs.

"’Oh, Billy, I'm going to take about four grains of quinine, if you don't mind -- I'm feeling all blue and shivery. Guess I'm taking cold.’

"’All right,’ I called back. ‘The bottle is on the second shelf. Take it in a spoonful of that elixir of eucalyptus. It knocks the bitter out.’

“After I came back we sat by the fire and got our briars going. In about eight minutes Tom sank back into a gentle collapse.

“I went straight to the medicine cabinet and looked.

"’You unmitigated hayseed!’ I growled. ‘See what money will do for a man's brains!’

“There stood the morphine bottle with the stopple out, just as Tom had left it.”

And from there, Billy narrates the amusing trials of keeping the dimwitted, wealthy Southern gent, Tom, alive with the help of citrate of caffeine, coffee, walking him around, and keeping him awake. The amateur therapy hasn’t changed much in a hundred years.

Now, another literary gem is added to the corpus of drug literature in English.

* * *

On April 4, 1909, an interview with O. Henry appeared in the New York Times that provides insight in the writing profession and the author’s working habits. Current writers may rush to the needle when they learn what O. Henry earned and how facile a writer he was.

"After drifting about the country I finally came to New York about eight years ago. I have Gilman Hall, now one of the editors of Everybody's Magazine, to thank for this fortunate step. Mr. Hall, then the editor of Ainslee's Magazine, wrote me saying that if I would come to New York he would agree to take $1,200 worth of stories annually at the rate of $100 a story. This was at a time when my name had no market value.Yes, since I came to New York my prices have gone up. I now get $750 for a story that I would have been glad to get $75 for in my Pittsburgh days.

[We pause here to contemplate in a swoon the fact that $750 in 1911 is worth approximately $16,000 in 2009, an opium pipe-dream for most writers of any era].

"Editors are just like other merchants--they want to buy at lowest prices. A few years ago I was selling stories to a certain magazine at the rate of 5 cents a word. I thought there was a chance that I might get more, so I boldly asked the editor for 10 cents a word. 'All right,' said he, 'I'll pay it.' He was just waiting to be asked.

[Who knew that's all it took to get a pay raise? Readers who write or edit may now ROTFL].

"I’ll give you the whole secret of short story writing. Here it is. Rule I: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule II. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself you’ll never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

"I get a story thoroughly in mind before I sit down at my writing table. Then I write it out quickly; and, without revising it mail it to the editor. In this way I am able to judge my stories as the public judges them. I've seen stories in print that I wouldn't recognize as my own.

[Submitting first drafts that are accepted as is. Holy mackerel!]

"Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can't turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk wtth people, and feel the rush and throb of real life--that's the stimulant for a story writer.”

Amen.
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O. Henry. Sixes and Sevens. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page, and Company, 1911. BAL 16298. 

 

An O. Henry Story Loaded With Morphine

“The drug clerk looks sharply at the white face half concealed by the high-turned overcoat collar.

"’I would rather not supply you,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I sold you a dozen morphine tablets less than an hour ago.’

“The customer smiles wanly. ‘The fault is in your crooked streets. I didn't intend to call upon you twice, but I guess I got tangled up. Excuse me."

Thus begins Fog in Santone by American short story master O. Henry (1862-1910). Those who know O. Henry only as the author of the classic tale of loving sacrifice, The Gift of the Magi, with its typically O.Henry ironic and surprise end, may be shocked to learn that the same author wrote a story soaked in morphine.

Fog in Santone, posthumously published in the October 1912 issue of The Cosmopolitan (Yes, that Cosmopolitan, which began in 1886 as a family periodical, morphed into a literary magazine, then, in the 1960s, transmogrified into Helen Gurley Brown's Cosmo) but likely written c. 1904, is one of a handful of stories that O. Henry set in San Antonio, Texas, where the author lived at some point during the early 1880s – 1896.

At the time of his residence, San Antonio, with its warm (some – me, for instance – would say unbearably hot), dry, and sunny climate and clean air, was a destination for tuberculosis sufferers. Within the story we are informed that San Antonio had 3,000 “tubercules” living within the city limits. Many were in the final stages of the disease and liberally dosed themselves with whiskey and/or morphine, at the time freely available over-the-counter without prescription, as palliative or final exit strategy.

Readers of O. Henry will be further stunned to learn that in this story a prostitute plays a major role. She, in fact, is the plot twist providing the ironic surprise ending. This is a very morbid story and O. Henry is having a lot of fun telling it in stereoscopic vision with one eye on the melancholy, the other one on the jolly with a wink and raised eyebrow.

I will not blow the ending (or beginning and middle) for you. The link above provides the full text to the story, and it will only take five minutes or so to read.

It offers a colorful view of drug use and cultural attitudes about opiates in the American Southwest during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the period of America’s first drug epidemic. It is to be taken seriously for that reason alone. That it was written by O. Henry makes it important.

This story has heretofore been unknown to scholars and collectors of drug literature. It is now a major catalogue contribution to the literature of drugs, and adds to our understanding of the continuum of drugs and drug use in American culture.
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Previously on Book Patrol:
The Story of O. Henry House

An O. Henry Story Loaded With Morphine

“The drug clerk looks sharply at the white face half concealed by the high-turned overcoat collar.

"’I would rather not supply you,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I sold you a dozen morphine tablets less than an hour ago.’

“The customer smiles wanly. ‘The fault is in your crooked streets. I didn't intend to call upon you twice, but I guess I got tangled up. Excuse me."

Thus begins Fog in Santone by American short story master O. Henry (1862-1910). Those who know O. Henry only as the author of the classic tale of loving sacrifice, The Gift of the Magi, with its typically O.Henry ironic and surprise end, may be shocked to learn that the same author wrote a story soaked in morphine.

Fog in Santone, posthumously published in the October 1912 issue of The Cosmopolitan (Yes, that Cosmopolitan, which began in 1886 as a family periodical, morphed into a literary magazine, then, in the 1960s, transmogrified into Helen Gurley Brown's Cosmo) but likely written c. 1904, is one of a handful of stories that O. Henry set in San Antonio, Texas, where the author lived at some point during the early 1880s – 1896.

At the time of his residence, San Antonio, with its warm (some – me, for instance – would say unbearably hot), dry, and sunny climate and clean air, was a destination for tuberculosis sufferers. Within the story we are informed that San Antonio had 3,000 “tubercules” living within the city limits. Many were in the final stages of the disease and liberally dosed themselves with whiskey and/or morphine, at the time freely available over-the-counter without prescription, as palliative or final exit strategy.

Readers of O. Henry will be further stunned to learn that in this story a prostitute plays a major role. She, in fact, is the plot twist providing the ironic surprise ending. This is a very morbid story and O. Henry is having a lot of fun telling it in stereoscopic vision with one eye on the melancholy, the other one on the jolly with a wink and raised eyebrow.

I will not blow the ending (or beginning and middle) for you. The link above provides the full text to the story, and it will only take five minutes or so to read.

It offers a colorful view of drug use and cultural attitudes about opiates in the American Southwest during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the period of America’s first drug epidemic. It is to be taken seriously for that reason alone. That it was written by O. Henry makes it important.

This story has heretofore been unknown to scholars and collectors of drug literature. It is now a major catalogue contribution to the literature of drugs, and adds to our understanding of the continuum of drugs and drug use in American culture.
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