WILLIAM SEWARD BURROUGHS - TYPESCRIPT SIGNED - HFSID 50233

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS. Typescript signed: "William S. Burroughs", 1p, 8½x11. Headed: "The Soft Machine/Dead on Arrival". Opening paragraphs of his 1961 novel, The Soft Machine. Excerpts from this novel, along with excerpts from Naked Lunch (1959) and The Ticket That Exploded (1962), were combined to create a new novel, Dead Fingers Talk, published in 1963. American novelist, essayist, social critic, painter and spoken word performer William Seward Burroughs II (1914-1997) was an avant-garde author and prominent member of the Beat Generation who sometimes wrote under the pen name of William Lee. The grandson of William Seward Burroughs I, who founded the Burroughs Adding Machine Company (later the Burroughs Corporation), is most noted for his semi-autobiographical works drawn from his experiences as an opiate addict, his lifestyle for the last 50 years of his life. His novels and other long fiction are generally divided into four categories: Early Work (early 1950s), which included such works as Junkie (1953) and Queer (written between 1951-1953 but not published until 1985), which were written in Mexico City and South America; The Cut-Up Period (mid-1950s to mid-1960s), which produced many of his best known works, including Naked Lunch (1959), The Soft Machine (1961), Nova Express (1964) and The Ticket That Exploded (1962); Experimentation & Subversion (mid-1960s to mid-1970s), during which Burroughs branched out into political content as well as multimedia, writing only one major novel, The Wild Boys; and, The Red Night Trilogy (mid-1970s to mid-1980s), during which time Burroughs wrote Cities of the Red Night (1981), The Place of Dead Roads (1983) and The Western Lands (1987). Slightly creased. Stray ink mark at mid-left margin. Fine condition.