The Yage Letters: Redux

by William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg

A reprint of the momentous shlepping of William "Lee" Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, this tome expands one's understanding re: the letters of the saints.

If you still have that old copy of the Yage Letters--the one with a black cover and an inveterate drunk, liar and loafer shaking over a fire--you might be asking why you would want to buy this copy. Here is why you would want to do that:

Oliver Harris has performed extensive interviews in order to reconstruct the circumstances surrounding the creation, modification, and publishing of this collaborative work. He follows Burroughs and Ginsberg through South and North America using pictures, mementos, and notes from the authors--and those they met in their travels. Also included with the epistolaries are the sizable introns left behind in the metamorphoses of manuscript to letters; an invaluable prize. This work envelopes a turning point in the careers of both artists: "space time travel" for a pre-Naked-Lunch Burroughs and--ten years later--a "bliss now actualized" for Ginsberg.