[Item #5458] The Burroughs File. William S. Burroughs.
The Burroughs File
The Burroughs File

The Burroughs File

San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1984. First Trade Softcover Edition. Softcover. (Schoaf Section 1, No. 61a, pg. 53; Schottlaender A54, pg. 28). “Trenchant writings by that sardonic ‘hombre invisible,’ William Seward Burroughs, perpetrator of Naked Lunch and other shockers. These malefic and beatific, mordant and hilarious straight-face reports on life are mostly from scattershot publications in obscure places, foreign and domestic. Including complete texts from White Subway, Cobblestone Gardens, and The Retreat Diaries, this collection delineates Burroughs’ comprehensive world view and his ‘insurrectionary sense of America’s underside,’ as Tom Carson epitomized it in The Village Voice” (from Back Cover). As the above-quoted blurb on the book’s back cover enumerates, “The Burroughs File” is a sort of compendium which made accessible earlier unknown, obscure, or otherwise unattainable classics of the [William S.] Burroughs (1914-1997) oeuvre. These include (perhaps most importantly—at least to Your Devoted Managing Curator)—1973’s “White Subway,” published in the UK by Dear Friend of the Store, Jim Pennington, of Aloes Books. In this way, the work is something of a First Edition Thus—a compendium of First Edition Thuses, really—but for our purposes here should really be considered a First Trade Softcover Edition, as it is the First City Lights Edition (of 1984) and has more or less uninterruptedly remained in print (in an updated Trade Format edition) ever since. [ISBN: 0-87286-152-X]. First Trade Softcover Edition: First Printing, although not explicated as such on copyright page; First Printing, with no reference to further printings at same. In strong fine condition with only moderate shelf-wear, rubbing, age-toning & light bumping to fine-edges & corners of front, back covers & spine-edge, else pristine. Near Fine. [Item #5458]

Price: $30.00