William Burroughs is both an object of widespread cultural fascination and one of America's great writers. In this study, Oliver Harris elucidates the complex play of secrecy and revelation that defines the allure of fascination. Unraveling the mystifications of Burroughs the writer, Harris discovers what it means to be fascinated by a figure of major cultural influence and unearths a secret history behind the received story of one of America's great original writers. In ""William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination"", Harris examines the major works Burroughs produced in the 1950s - ""Junky"", ""Queer"", ""The Yage Letters"", and ""Naked Lunch"" - to piece together an accurate, material record of his creative history during his germinal decade as a writer. Refuting the ""junk paradigm"" of addiction that has been used to categorize and characterize much of Burroughs' oeuvre, Harris instead focuses on the significance of Burroughs' letter writing and his remarkable and unsuspected use of the epistolary for his fiction As Burroughs said to Allen Ginsberg about ""Naked Lunch"", ""the real nove is letters to you."" Drawing on rare access to manuscripts, the book suggests new ways of comprehending Burroughs' unique politics and aesthetics and offers the first accurate account of the writing of ""Naked Lunch"".

About the Author
Oliver Harris is a professor in the School of American Studies at Keele University in Staffordshire, England. He is the editor of The Selected Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1945-1959 and the editor of the fiftieth-anniversary edition of Burroughs' Junky. Harris is also the author of numerous scholarly articles on Burroughs, the Beat Generation, film noir, and the epistolary form.

Reviews
William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination sets a new standard for Burroughs criticism. The book combines close textual readings, astute analysis and detailed research into the original letters and manuscripts, while drawing on more or less every other critical work on Burroughs published to date.... Focusing upon Burroughs' earliest and best-known texts, Harris does an excellent job of clarifying their tangled provenance. - Sandy Starr, Times Literary Supplement



Book Information
ISBN 9780809327317
Author Oliver Harris
Format Paperback
Page Count 304
Imprint Southern Illinois University Press
Publisher Southern Illinois University Press
Weight(grams) 435g