Junk Mail
L
ast year having been a slap-up one for Burroughsians, it was almost too much to hope that the publication of the Letters 1945Âą1959 would put any more flesh on the junk-atrophied bones of the notorious `Hombre Invisible'. Besides, in the wake of media brouhaha surrounding David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch and Ted Morgan's exhaustive biography Literary Outlaw, how much more weight could the Burroughs myth really bear? Fortunately, the answer is: a lot. The letters collected here by Oliver Harris have been reedited from an expurgated edition long out of print. They are written principally to Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs's tireless friend, amanuensis, literary agent and all-round bum-chum, with short culs-de-sac heading off towards Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, the other corners of the Beat hotting circuit. Harris has assembled these, together with a somewhat gee-whiz introduction and comprehensive notes, to form what may conceivably be Burroughs's best work of all. Burroughs was aware at the time of the centrality of his correspondence to his literary endeavour: `Maybe,' he remarks to Allen Ginsberg at the core of this volume, `the real novel is in letters to you.' It is. The letters display all the sassiness, the marriage of 3