Nova Express. William S. Burroughs

      NOVA

      EXPRESS

      Other Works by William S. Burroughs Published by Grove Press

      Junky: The Definitive Text of “Junk”

      Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

      The Soft Machine: The Restored Text

      The Ticket That Exploded: The Restored Text

      The Adding Machine: Selected Essays

      The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead

      Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

      Last Words: The Final Journals of William Burroughs

      NOVA EXPRESS

      The Restored Text

      William S. Burroughs

      Edited and with an Introduction by

      Oliver Harris

      Grove Press

      New York

      Copyright © 1964 by William S. Burroughs

      Copyright renewed © 1992 by William S. Burroughs

      Copyright © 2013 by the Estate of William S. Burroughs

      Introduction copyright © 2013 Oliver Harris

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only author­ized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copy­righted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].

      First revised edition published by Grove Press in 2014.

      Published simultaneously in Canada

      Printed in the United States of America

      ISBN: 978-0-8021-2208-7

      eBook ISBN: 978-0-8021-9722-1

      Grove Press

      an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

      154 West 14th Street

      New York, NY 10011

      Distributed by Publishers Group West

       www.groveatlantic.com

      Contents

       Acknowledgments

       Introduction

      NOVA EXPRESS

       Last Words

       So Pack Your Ermines

       Chinese Laundry

       Crab Nebula

       From a Land of Grass Without Mirrors

       Gave Proof Through the Night

       This Horrible Case

       Pay Color

       Notes

      Acknowledgments

      It is a privilege to edit works by William Burroughs, and a pleasure to thank James Grauerholz for making it possible and for all the support he has given. It’s also a pleasure to thank the following for their expert help: Jed Birmingham for assistance with little magazines; Barry Miles for his knowledge of Burroughs’ artwork; Jeffrey Miller for insights into the finer points of printing; Keith Seward for razor-sharp feedback; and above all, Véronique Lane, for working with me from start to finish, being by my side in the archival vaults, sharing ideas, reading every word I wrote, and living with the Fish Boys and the Vegetable People for two years.

      * * *

      For the great archival assistance they have provided, I also want to thank: John Bennett of the Rare Books and Manuscript Library at Ohio State University, Columbus; Rob Spindler of the Archives and Special Collections at Arizona State University, Tempe; Isaac Gewirtz, curator of the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library, and his staff; and Michael Ryan and all his staff at the Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. I would also like to acknowledge the support of the Research Institute for the Humanities at Keele University. Thanks finally to Jeff Posternak of the Wylie Agency, a great guy to have on your side, and to Peter Blackstock at Grove Press.

      Introduction

      “THE FUTURE LEAKS OUT”

      “THIS IS A BURNING PLANET”

      Nova Express begins with a chapter called “Last Words” in a messianic voice warning of End Times. It is a stunning overture to a terminal scenario that after fifty years has lost none of its ferocity. “Newsweek says I am basically an old fashioned fire and brimstone preacher,” Burroughs noted on the day the book was published; “The Reverend Lee rides again” (ROW, 170).1 Nova Express is actually a mixing deck of many voices—cutting from a hardboiled detective drawl to the comic rhythms of a picaresque villain, and from the convulsive beauty of a Surrealist poet to a tempo as hard and electrical as the clicking of a Geiger counter—but Burroughs would have been pleased to sound like a sulphurous Old Testament authority. For Nova Express is nothing if not an analysis of and tribute to the apocalyptic power of The Word.

      Marshall McLuhan, whose own classic Understanding Media appeared the same year, got both the medium—“an endless succession of impressions and snatches of narrative”—and the eschatological message: “It is amusing to read reviews of Burroughs that try to classify his books as nonbooks or as failed science fiction,” he concluded his own review for The Nation in December 1964; “It is a little like trying to criticize the sartorial and verbal manifestations of a man who is knocking on the door to explain that flames are leaping from the roof of our home.”2 Nova Express appeared at the height of the Cold War and the Space Race, when Armageddon was rarely out of the news or off the screens. 1964 had opened with the release of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and would climax the week Nova Express was published with a U.S. presidential election over which mushroom clouds had hung, Lyndon Johnson’s famous “Daisy Girl” TV advert linking the prospect of a Barry Goldwater victory with the countdown to nuclear annihilation. In short: “This is a burning planet—Any minute now