Everything Lost: The Latin American Notebook of William S. Burroughs

by William S. Burroughs

In late summer 1953, as he returned to Mexico City after a seven-month expedition through the jungles of Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru, William Burroughs began a notebook of final reflections on his four years in Latin America. His first novel, Junkie, had just been published and he would soon be back in New York to meet Allen Ginsberg and together complete the manuscripts of what became The Yage Letters and Queer. Yet this notebook, the sole survivor from that period, reveals Burroughs not as a writer on the verge of success, but as a man staring down personal catastrophe and visions of looming cultural disaster.

Losses that will not let go of him haunt Burroughs throughout the notebook: “Bits of it keep floating back to me like memories of a daytime nightmare.” However, out of these dark reflections we see emerge vivid fragments of Burroughs’ fiction and, even more tellingly, unique, primary evidence for the remarkable ways in which his early manuscripts evolved. Assembled in facsimile and transcribed by Geoffrey D. Smith, John M. Bennett, and Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris, the notebook forces us to change the way we see both Burroughs and his writing at a turning point in his literary biography.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published December 17, 2007

About the author

William Seward Burroughs II, (also known by his pen name William Lee) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer.
A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century".
His influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays.
Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films.
He was born to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri, grandson of the inventor and founder of the Burroughs Corporation, William Seward Burroughs I, and nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee. Burroughs began writing essays and journals in early adolescence. He left home in 1932 to attend Harvard University, studied English, and anthropology as a postgraduate, and later attended medical school in Vienna. After being turned down by the Office of Strategic Services and U.S. Navy in 1942 to serve in World War II, he dropped out and became afflicted with the drug addiction that affected him for the rest of his life, while working a variety of jobs. In 1943 while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, the mutually influential foundation of what became the countercultural movement of the Beat Generation.
Much of Burroughs's work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict, as he lived throughout Mexico City, London, Paris, Berlin, the South American Amazon and Tangier in Morocco. Finding success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), Burroughs is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a controversy-fraught work that underwent a court case under the U.S. sodomy laws. With Brion Gysin, he also popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–64). In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1984 was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift", a reputation he owes to his "lifelong subversion" of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War", while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius".
Burroughs had one child, William Seward Burroughs III (1947-1981), with his second wife Joan Vollmer. Vollmer died in 1951 in Mexico City. Burroughs was convicted of manslaughter in Vollmer's death, an event that deeply permeated all of his writings. Burroughs died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, after suffering a heart attack in 1997.

Reviews

[Translator Monkey · Rating 2 out of 5]

More unchallenging than unsettling, this is little more than a "diary" of bits and pieces of story ideas that Burroughs kept in 1953, arguably reflecting on his four years in Latin America from the relative safety of Mexico City. The 240 pages includes a nice introduction for context, photos of the notebook pages, and two transcripts of Burroughs words - one for the letter-for-letter writing (when it can be discerned, otherwise it is assigned to the trash heap of empty pages noted as asemic writing), and one cleaned up version, erasing the lined out portions and placing words of afterthought into their right location. What you have is a look into a troubled mind, clearly wandering, probably heavily medicated (under the counter or harvested from the local peyote or ayahuasca dealers).

I'm glad I found this in a library and didn't have to pay for it; if I had picked this up sight unseen through an online bookseller, I would have been rather crabby to receive this in the mail.

Overall disappointment. I actually changed this from three to two stars while writing this because the memory burns.

[Mason Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

It should be made clear that this is for Burroughs completists only. It's a fascinating artifact, but that's really what it is: an artifact, not a book. This is a facsimile reprint of a 1953 notebook from Burroughs that was, rather miraculously, not lost over time. Written during his time in South America, it includes journal entries and snippets of text that are echoed in later books of his. The introduction is heavily academic, but interesting; the facsimile pages are most of the book, and perhaps serve mainly as a reminder of how bad Bill's handwriting was! The "fair copy" is the readable version, followed by a more "accurate" transcription with footnotes. Overall, since I am a completist when it comes to WSB, I was happy to get a copy of this, but if you're more of a happy reader of his work, this is definitely not a necessary purchase.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

The problem is that the transcript of the journal runs to only 25 pages. The rest of the book consists of an introduction, facsimile and a fair copy. While it is interesting to see how some of Burrough's ideas make it from here into his books, it's slim pickings for anyone looking for much more than that.

[Rex Hurst · Rating 3 out of 5]

I honestly expected more of this work. I didn't realize that of the 160 pages close to 90 are made up of photostatic images of the actual notebook, written in a spiral notebook in pencil, most of which is illegible. Thirty more pages are given over to introduction to the "material", the anal-retentive transcribing of the material, and obsessing over every stray doodle like they were part of the Lost Sea Scrolls. The words are written down twice, one as what is literally on each page and the second as a sort of translation - giving us just twenty pages of material.

Some of it is interesting, but its so little to make the entire exercise a little pointless. Fun book if you don't have to pay for it. If you do, 3 stars.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting read, but much more for the supplemental material supplied by the editorial team than the actual text. Interesting nonetheless.

[Texv Velis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only about 25 pages of writing with a reproduction of William's Burroughs journal. But what a out pouring of emotion. Worth the reading.

[Nativeabuse · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really psyched to check this out, I am a huge Burroughs fan, but this fell way short of my expectations. I also spent way to much money on this, the amazon price is outrageous.

Basically it is a notebook of his, scanned alongside a transcript since the actual pages are unreadable. Really not very interesting and I can't really see anything from any of his works in this, or any of his activities. It is mostly just random stuff.

Not very good, don't waste your money on this.