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.
The Naked Lunch
Paris: Olympia Press, 1959
(The Traveller’s
Companion
Series, No. 76)
Softbound in dustjacket
(no hardbound issued)
1ST
EDITION
1ST
PRINTING 2 ISSUES
The Naked LunchParis: Olympia Press, 1959
(The Traveller’s
Companion
Series, No. 76)
Softbound
(no hardbound issued)
1ST
EDITION
2ND
PRINTING
2nd
printing
[not to be confused with the “second issue”
of the first printing] was issued without dustjacket
or decorative border around title page,
and with price of “NF 18”
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 LunchNew 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 Introductionby Jennie Skerl.
Includes 500 numbered,signed copies issued without
dustjacket
in slipcase.
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 LunchWith 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]
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 (January−February
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 (January−February
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 …”
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.