James Grauerholz Ordine dei libri (cronologico)

Uscito nel 1959, Il pasto nudo è forse la più cruda testimonianza letteraria, avvincente e disturbante al tempo stesso, prodotta dalla beat-generation americana. Più che un romanzo, può essere definito un vorticoso assemblaggio di frammenti di vita, vissuti spesso al di sotto della soglia della coscienza e dominati dallo scatenamento di istinti, pulsioni e perversioni, sotto il segno devastante della tossicodipendenza. Lo smarrimento esistenziale, che accomuna l’autore a tanti altri compagni di strada, si condensa nel libro in una irrevocabile condanna al vuoto d’essere e all’autodistruzione, giocata sul filo che distingue e insieme congiunge una realtà irreparabilmente degradata e una fantasia allucinata, distorta: ai “paradisi artificiali” di baudelairiana memoria si sostituisce quiun inferno altrettanto artificiale e ben più definitivo, nel quale l’individuo finisce con lo smarrire quasi del tutto la propria identità e la propria storia.

"Last Words" von Burroughs ist eine "Autobiographie in Bruchstücken", die wichtige Lebensstationen, Begegnungen und Werke thematisiert. Er gilt als Vater der Pop-Literatur und erfand das Cut-up-Verfahren. Das Buch kombiniert Tagebuch, Erinnerungen, Traumsequenzen und politische Kommentare.

William Burroughs died in August 1997, after a lifetime of notoriety. In his final years, he was writing only in his journals. The last nine months of his diaries are here, in Last Words, and they form a complex, rarely seen, personal portrait of Burroughs at the end of his life, coming to terms with aging and death.

With the publication of Naked Lunch in 1959, William Burroughs abruptly brought international letters into the postmodern age. Beginning with his very early writing (including a chapter from his and Jack Kerouac's never-before-seen collaborative novel), Word Virus follows the arc Burroughs's remarkable career, from his darkly hilarious "routines" to the experimental cut-up novels to Cities of the Red Night and The Cat Inside. Beautifully edited and complemented by James Grauerholz's illuminating biographical essays, Word Virus charts Burroughs's major themes and places the work in the context of the life. It is an excellent tool for the scholar and a delight for the general reader. Throughout a career that spanned half of the twentieth century, William S. Burroughs managed continually to be a visionary among writers. When he died in 1997, the world of letters lost its most elegant outsider.

GENERAL & LITERARY FICTION. "Interzone" portrays the development of Burroughs' mature writing style by presenting a selection of pieces from the mid-1950s. His outrageous tone of voice represents the exorcism of four decades of oppressive sexual and social conditioning. Burroughs' close observations of humanity - its ugliness and ignorance - invites the reader to dispense with their traditional notions of decorum, and taste the world as he sees it.