Name: the yage letters redux
Price: 37.50 NZD
Availability: InStock
Author: Burroughs, William S. ; Ginsberg, Allen ; Harris, Oliver
ISBN: 9780872864481

Type

Physical Book

Author

Illustrated by

Publisher

Language

English

Pages

127

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

18.1 x 14.3 x 1.3 cm

Weight

0.18 kg.

ISBN

0872864480

ISBN13

9780872864481

Synopsis "the yage letters redux"

In January 1953, William Burroughs began a seven-month expedition into the jungles of South America, ostensibly to find yage, the fabled hallucinogen of the Amazon. But Burroughs also cast his anthropological-satiric eye over the local regimes to record trademark vignettes of political and psychic malaise. From the notebooks he kept and the letters he wrote home to Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs composed a narrative of his adventures that appeared ten years later as "In Search of Yage" within The Yage Letters.That book, published by City Lights in 1963, was completed by the addition of Ginsberg's account of his own experiences with yage as he traveled through South America in 1960, and by the addition of other Burroughs letters and texts.For this new edition, Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has gone back to the original manuscripts to untangle the history of the text, telling the fascinating story of its genesis and cultural importance in his wide-ranging introduction. Also included in this edition are extensive materials, never before published, by both Burroughs and Ginsberg that shed new light on their adventures in exploration and writing"A complete understanding of the literary legacy of William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg is impossible without reading this amazing collection of letters and documents centered on yage, the fabled hallucinogen of the Amazon. . . . These crucial texts go beyond simple curiosity about mind-changing drugs to set the foundation of what would later become a literary movement that changed American literature."--Bloomsbury ReviewBurroughs' book about his search for the 'ultimate fix', The Yage Letters, possesses an equally strange and secret history. Published in 1963 but written a decade earlier, it has long been seen as a fascinating curio in the Burroughs canon, yet a new edition of the book, edited by Oliver Harris, places it more centrally in the list of key Burroughs texts. . . . The Yage Letters marks the point when Burroughs moved full-time into his own, fully realised universe.--The Independent UKWilliam Burroughs is widely recognized as one of the most influential and innovative writers of the twentieth century. His books include: Junky, Naked Lunch, Queer, The Wild Boys and The Place of Dead Roads.Oliver Harris is a professor in literature and film in the School of American Studies at Keele University. He is the editor of The Letters of William S, Burroughs (Penguin) and the 50th anniversary edition of Junky (Penguin).

Allen Ginsberg

(Author)

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Irwin Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was one of the most emblematic figures of American alternative culture. The publication of the poem Howl (1956) was the trigger that consolidated beat poetry and gave it a concrete form. Soul of the Beat Generation, he gathered around him Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and even the elusive William S. Burroughs, and fought tirelessly for the writing and publishing of his works. A prominent figure of the so-called "Flower Revolution" and the hippie movement of the sixties, he fought against war and racism, spread rock, chemical and mystical alteration of states of consciousness as a cultural element, and was always at the forefront of social and literary scenes, promoting libertarian ideas and notions of spirituality and authenticity, which always kept him in the crosshairs of the authorities. He traveled the world reciting his poems.

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William S. Burroughs

(Author)

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William Seward Burroughs (1914-1997) is a legendary figure in American literature of this century, a writer compared to Villon, Rimbaud, and Genet. Both his life and work, characterized by total pessimism and a grim sense of humor, reflect an attitude of permanent rebellion against conventional society. Homosexual, drug addict for many years, friend and idol of Kerouac and Ginsberg, he is considered the great "guru" of the beat generation, despite his refusal to be included in it.

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