Cobble Stone Gardens

VERY GOOD FIRST EDITION softcover, clean NEW text, solid binding, NO remainders NOT ex-library slight shelfwear / storage-wear; back-cover+ corner creasing; some age browning WE SHIP FAST. Carefully packed and quickly sent. 201602503 As a child growing up in St. Louis, William S. Burroughs had ideas of what it would be like to be a writer. A writer, thought the young Burroughs, was rich and famous and possessed a powerful appetite for both debauchery and adventure. "They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee suit," wrote Burroughs in a 1985 essay. "They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle." It's unclear if Burroughs ever accomplished the latter — owning an antelope. But as for the drugs, fame and adventure? He had those in spades. The Beat writer spent nearly two decades as a heroin addict, traveling the world on his parents' dime while filling notebooks with what would become his controversial 1959 masterpiece, Naked Lunch, in which Burroughs ripped apart the conventions of linear narrative and dared to write openly — disturbingly so, at times — about his fantasies and homosexuality. From there he would go to stand alongside the likes of fellow Beat luminaries Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, influencing generations of disillusioned outcasts, hippies and punks alike. Burroughs is that guy in a tie sandwiched between Marilyn Monroe and the guru Sri Mahavatar Babaji on the cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Decades later the author would collaborate on spoken-word projects with Kurt Cobain, Tom Waits and many other musicians. We recommend selecting Priority Mail wherever available. (No shipping to Mexico, Brazil or Italy.)