After ‘Lunch’ - The Letters William S. Burroughs Wrote at the Height of His Success

In 1959, as this collection begins, William S. Burroughs was living in Paris at 9, rue Git-le-Coeur, the address that would come to be known as “the Beat Hotel.” “Naked Lunch” had just been published by the Olympia Press; because of censorship it would not be published in the United States for another three years. He was collaborating with the British artist and writer Brion Gysin on a variety of experimental procedures. Gysin had just accidentally discovered the cut-up method, in which pages of different texts are cut into sections and combined and re­arranged to form new meanings. The two were also making tape-recorder mon­tages and tinkering with a stroboscopic device called the dream machine. Burroughs was then at the height of his literary activity, working on many of his most important books, from “The Soft Machine” to “The Wild Boys,” within the following few years. Consequently, “Rub Out the Words,” unlike its predecessor (“The Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1945-1959,” edited by Oliver Harris, 1993), is longer on argument than on incident...

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Luc Sante @'NYTimes'