Manifestations, Multiple Versions, and Showstoppers: Collecting the Various Guises of

Naked Lunch

A BIO-BIBLIOGRAPHIC NARRATIVE

Brian E. C. SchottlaenderThe Audrey Geisel University Librarian

UC San Diego Libraries9 October 2009

The bibliography of William S. Burroughs

is as challenging as the man was himself.

He wrote voluminously and kaleidoscopically.

He rearranged, recycled, and reiterated obsessively.

He produced across five decades and four continents.

He was a novelist, a poet, an essayist, and a

correspondent

at home in all media. He never met a “little

magazine”

or an interviewer he wouldn’t share with.

1973 . . .

Armadillo World Headquarters

Shiva’s Headband

Jim Franklin

AUSTIN, TEXAS

In the Beginning . . . Was the Wolf Brother

BOOKS

The Naked Lunch

Paris: Olympia Press, 1959(The Traveller’s Companion

Series, No. 76)Softbound in dustjacket (no hardbound issued)

1ST EDITION1ST PRINTING

2 ISSUES

HOW ARE THEY THE SAME?

HOW ARE THEY DIFFERENT?

The Naked Lunch

Paris: Olympia Press, 1959(The Traveller’s Companion

Series, No. 76)Softbound

(no hardbound issued)

1ST EDITION2ND PRINTING

•Not to be confused with the “second issue” of the

first printing.

•Issued without dustjacket or decorative border

around title page, and with price of “18 francs”

printed on back cover.

Naked Lunch

New York: Grove Press, [1962], ©1959

Hardbound in dustjacket(no softbound issued)

1ST EDITION

Includes:• “Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness” (originally published in

Evergreen Review)•“Letter from a Master

Addict to Dangerous Drugs”

(originally published in The British Journal of

Addiction)

1st Printing

•No zip code on rear panel of dustjacket

•No Roman numerals on rear panel of dustjacket,

near lower spine

Naked Lunch

New York: Grove Press, 1966, ©1959

(An Evergreen Black Cat Book, BC-115)

Softbound (no hardbound issued)

1ST EVERGREEN BLACK CAT ED.

Includes:• “Naked Lunch on Trial:

The Massachusetts Supreme Court Decision and Excerpts

from the Boston Trial”(an expansion of “The Boston

Trial of Naked Lunch,” originally published in

Evergreen Review)

• “Deposition: TestimonyConcerning a Sickness”

• “Letter from a Master Addictto Dangerous Drugs”

Naked Lunch

New York: Grove Press, 1984, ©1959.

Hardbound in dustjacket.

25TH ANNIVERSARY ED.

With an Introduction by Jennie Skerl.

Includes 500 numbered, signed copies issued without dustjacket in

slipcase.

25TH ANNIVERSARY LTD. ED.

Naked Lunch:

The Restored Text

New York: Grove Press, [2003?], ©2001.

Hardbound in dustjacket, and softbound.

1ST EDITION Edited by James Grauerholz

and Barry Miles.

Includes:•“Original Introductions

and Additions by the Author”

•“Burroughs Texts Annexed by the Editors”

Dead Fingers Talk

London: John Calder in association with

Olympia Press, 1963. Hardbound in dustjacket (no softbound issued).

“Dead Fingers Talk is not a book of selections but a

new novel constructed out of these three earlier books

[The Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine, and The

Ticket That Exploded] together with some new

material.”

Dustjacket reproduces an Ian Sommerville photo-collage of Burroughs’

Olympia Press editions.

Cobble Stone Gardens

Cherry Valley, N.Y.: Cherry Valley Editions,

1976.Hardbound (issued without dustjacket), and softbound.

A mixture of autobiographical fiction about the author’s youth

and family in St. Louis and material drawn from Naked

Lunch and The Wild Boys.

Doctor Benway: A [Variant]

Passage from The Naked Lunch

With a new introduction by Burroughs.

Santa Barbara, Calif.: Bradford Morrow, 1979.

Hardbound in dustjacket, and softbound.

“. . . published on the 20th anniversary of the original appearance of The Naked

Lunch . . .”

“… the first publication of the earliest known version

of the Doctor Benway chapter from

… The Naked Lunch …” [Publisher’s prospectus]

PERIODICALS

The Black Mountain Review, [No.] 7 (Autumn 1957)

“From Naked Lunch, Book III: In Search of Yage”

Published under the pseudonym William Lee

Chicago Review, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring 1958)

“Excerpt: Naked Lunch”

Chicago Review, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Autumn 1958)

“Chapter 2 of Naked Lunch”

Yugen, [No.] 3 (1958)

“Have You Seen Pantapon [sic] Rose?”

Excerpt from Naked Lunch

Big Table, No. 1 (Spring 1959)

“Ten Episodes from Naked Lunch”

Episodes 2 and 5 “reprinted from Chicago Review, Spring 1958”

Jabberwock, [No. 1] (1959)

“And Start West”Excerpt from Naked Lunch

New Departures, No. 1 (Summer 1959)

“The Exterminator Does a Good Job”

“Coke Bugs”Excerpts from Naked Lunch

 

Semina, No. 4 (1959)

“Excerpt from ‘[Have You Seen] Pantapon [sic] Rose[?]’”

Excerpt from Naked Lunch

Kulchur, [No. 1] (Spring 1960)

“The Conspiracy”“… a section from the original manuscript of

Naked Lunch. It was not available and does not appear in the otherwise complete

edition of Naked Lunch, published by Olympia Press, Paris, 1959.”

  

Evergreen Review, Vol. 5, No. 16 (JanuaryFebruary

1961)

“From Naked Lunch”

Swank, Vol. 8, No. 3 (July 1961)

“The Word.“ . . . first draft of a section of . . . [Naked

Lunch] . . . ”  

Evergreen Review, Vol. 6, No. 22 (JanuaryFebruary 1962)

Also includes “The Cannibal Feast: [Review of] Naked Lunch by William

Burroughs” by E. S. Seldon.

“Introduction to Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine, Novia [sic; i.e.,

Nova] Express”

Avec, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1988)

“An Excerpt from ‘Word,’ the Lost Chapter of Naked

Lunch”

 

New Letters, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Fall 1988)

“From ‘WORD’”Excerpted from Interzone.

Includes “On Interzone by William S. Burroughs” by James Grauerholz.,

according to which “Word” “… is the direct precursor of Naked Lunch,

[although] very little of this text was used in that novel …”

MEDIA

Naked Lunch

Read by William S. Burroughs; produced by Hal Wilner and James Grauerholz; abridged by Nelson Lyon.

Original Score by Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, and Eyvind Kang. Los Angeles: Warner Brothers Records, ©1995.

Two cassette tapes in cardboard box Three compact discs

Naked Lunch

Produced by Jeremy Thomas.

Written and directed by David Cronenberg.

(The Criterion Collection; 220) [N.p.]:

The Criterion Collection, 2003.

Two digital video discs with accompanying

booklet.

Originally released as a motion picture in 1991.