Burroughs, William S. The Ticket That Exploded.. The Olympia Press, London, 1962.

Price: US$850.00 + shipping

Description: First edition, first printing. Octavo, original green wrappers. Signed by William Burroughs on the title page. In fine condition. A superior example. “It is in books like The Ticket that Exploded that Burroughs seems to revel in a new medium for its own sakeâ€"a medium totally fantastic, spaceless, timeless, in which the normal sentence is fractured, the cosmic tries to push its way through bawdry, and the author shakes the reader as a dog shakes a rat" (Anthony Burgess).

Seller: Raptis Rare Books, Palm Beach, FL, U.S.A.

BURROUGHS, William S.. The Ticket That Exploded.. Paris: The Olympia Press, 1962, 1962.

Price: US$3230.43 + shipping

Description: First edition, first printing, inscribed by the author on the title page, "For David Snell, William Burroughs". Snell (1921-87) was one of two reporters for Life magazine, the other Loomis Dean (1917-2005), who were present when Burroughs and Brion Gysin invented the cut-up technique on 1 October 1959, and whose subsequent interview outed Burroughs as a heroin user to Life readers, among them Burroughs's own mother. Snell's opening line upon meeting his interviewee was "Have an Old Gold, Mr Burroughs", a direct reference to Naked Lunch, in which two cops, O'Brien and Hauser, let themselves into Bill's flat; Snell's reference draws an excellent and knowing parallel between the two Life reporters and the cops, positioning himself as O'Brien: "they weren't bad as laws go. At least O'Brien wasn't. O'Brien was the con man, and Hauser the tough guy. A vaudeville team. Hauser had a way of hitting you before he said anything just to break the ice. Then O'Brien gives you an Old Gold - just like a cop to smoke Old Golds somehow. and starts putting down a cop con that was really bottled in bond. Not a bad guy" (Burroughs, p. 190). Burroughs valued Snell's reference, writing to Allen Ginsberg that Snell and Dean were "2 far out cats with real appreciation for my work that can't be faked" (quoted in Roach, p. 164). Burroughs had no love for Life magazine, but he liked Snell and Dean, and exonerated them for their parts in the final piece, a vitriolic repudiation of the Beats penned by a staff writer. The Life article, a long list of character assassinations that targets Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, and various others, characterizes "The bulk of Beat writers [as] undisciplined and slovenly amateurs who have deluded themselves into believing their lugubrious absurdities are art simply because they have rejected the form, style, and attitudes of previous generations and have seized upon obscenity as an expression of 'total personality'". Burroughs is painted with broad brush strokes: "for sheer horror no member of the Beat Generation has achieved effects to compare with William S. Burroughs. a pale, cadaverous and bespectacled being who has devoted most of his adult life to a lonely pursuit of drugs and debauchery. He has, first in Mexico and then in Tangier, dosed himself with alcohol, heroin, marijuana, kif, majoun and a hashish candy". Burroughs's mother was understandably horrified by the piece, while his response was more dismissive: "In order to earn my reputation I may have to start drinking my tea from a skull since this is the only vice remaining to me. I hope I am not ludicrously miscast as the wickedest man alive, a title vacated by the late Aleister Crowley" (quoted Roach, p. 24). This title, number 91 in The Traveller's Companion series, contains two pieces written in collaboration with Michael Portman; "In a Strange Bed" and "The Black Fruit". Together with The Soft Machine (1961) and Nova Express (1964), The Ticket That Exploded forms part of the Nova trilogy. It describes Burroughs's idea of language as a virus and lays the groundwork for many of the ideas detailed in The Electronic Revolution (1970). Kearney 166; Maynard and Miles A6. William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch, 1992; Paul O'Neil, "The Only Rebellion Around", Life Magazine, 30 November 1959; Rebecca Roach, Literature and the Rise of the Interview, 2018. Octavo. Original green and white wrappers, printed in black. With Ian Sommerville dust jacket. Green border on title page, monochrome design on p. 183 by Brion Gysin. Trivial creases to front wrapper and spine, light offsetting to rear pastedown. A fine copy in jacket, a few marks to panels, folds lightly rubbed, crease to head of front panel, a few nicks to head of spine, two short closed tears to head of front panel and one to front flap, a very sharp example.

Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom