From the blurb of this beautiful Moloko edition:
“…Making Naked Lunch: Two Appetisers serves up rewritten versions of two illustrated talks originally given at Columbia University in New York and previously published by Reality Studio, a website that has championed the crossover between academic and popular engagement with Burroughs’ work. Each essay re-examines the standard reception of Burroughs’ writing from the 1950s, revealing the secret centres of truth within the generally misleading myths we have all heard about his writing of Junky, Queer, The Yage Letters and Naked Lunch. These rich, tasty morsels of manuscript research should whet the appetite for anyone wanting to understand why the material backstories to Burroughs’ work are even more fascinating than the mythology.“
Oliver Harris’ life as a Burroughsian began in 1984 with a PhD at Oxford that nobody would supervise. He has since gone on to publish fifteen books about and by Burroughs, including ‘William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination’ and new editions of three Burroughs trilogies: Junky, Queer, The Yage Letters redux; restored editions of Nova Express, The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded; and Minutes to Go Redux, The Exterminator Redux and BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS – as well as Everything Lost: The Latin American Notebook of William S. Burroughs, Blade Runner: A Movie and Dead Fingers Talk: The Restored Text. He is Professor of American Literature at Keele University, President of the European Beat Studies Network and the proud father of Ella, Mia, Nina and Vivi.