Burroughs, William S.

Dead Fingers Talk

ISBN: 0426050045
London, England, UK: Universal-Tandem Publishing Co. Ltd., 1970. First UK Softcover Edition Thus. Softcover. "No author in recent years has caused the same stormy controversy as William Burroughs, the Beat writer and former drug-addict who crashed into literary prominence some years ago when his "definitive hip book..." The Naked Lunch was first published. Is he, as Norman Mailer asserts, "the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius" or is his devastating and savage satire of present-day life akin, as Edith Sitwell says, to having "one's nose nailed to other people's lavatories." In Dead Fingers Talk, a new novel constructed out of his earlier writings, Burroughs, who was hooked for over fifteen years, writes not only of the tortured world of the addict but also combines fantasy with a complex style to portray the contemporary world in a satirical light." (from publisher's note, first leaf) First published during 1963, Dead Fingers Talk is William S. Burroughs' cut-up of excerpts from Naked Lunch & the cut-up novels that immediately followed it- The Soft Machine & The Ticket That Exploded- therefore being a cut-up of cut-ups, a cut-up-to-the-second if you will, a literary experiment daring even to WSB's standards. Many subsequent editions of this unique work in the WSB oeuvre have been published, culminating in 2020 with the Restored Text edited & with an introduction by Oliver Harris, Foremost Burroughsian Skuller & our most-esteemed colleague at the European Beat Studies Network (ebsn.eu), which he founded & leads. Offered here is a very rare & interesting softcover edition thus: The second 1970 version of the first Tandem UK softcover edition of 1966, distinguished by its cover graphics & photo-illustration of a hippie-era junky injecting himself in front of a gritty urban fire escape. Mass-market format softcover, with all points in Maynard & Miles, A7(c), pgs. 40-41; Shoaf, Section I, No. 7(a), pg. 28; & Schottlaender, A7(b), pg. 7 (ref.). While the copyright page refers to this edition as being "reprinted" by publisher from its 1966 edition, its single printing, unique points & entries/reference in the bibliographies per above indicate to us its status as a first edition thus. A quite rare & collectible version of this singular classic by the Founding Father of the Beat Generation-&-Beyond, among the greatest & most influential literary & cultural figures of all time, & the very Patron/Icon of our enterprise- for the real hard-core WSB completist collector. In relatively quite near-fine condition with mild-to-moderate rubbing, faint scratching & occasional short creasing to front, back covers & spine; light wear & some tiny bumps, creases at edges & corners of same; previous seller's small price sticker with price written in black felt-tip ink affixed to front cover at lower right area, slightly overlapping with & obscuring image of junky at clothed upper arm; mild rubbing, browning & spotting to edges of text block. Interior fine with mild-to-medium browning (inevitable with old mass-market softcover paper stock) to blank inner covers & page leaves, the latter chiefly at blank margins/edges; tiny bumps, creases at corners of some leaves; tiny chips with miniscule loss of paper at lower corners of a few leaves. Near Fine. [Item #6457]

Price: $60.00