Nova Express

  90 “Or feed in a thousand novels”: a miscellaneous draft has a longer variation: “Or another simple illustration—Put a thousand novels in the machine all of them good if there are a thousand good novels—Now let us look at the last pages of all these thousand novels—That is something of quality no? [. . .] Of course the old machine worked in the other way with bring down and degradation juxtaposition formulae—The machine can be reversed—” (Berg 48.17)

  91 “on the association line”: a miscellaneous draft continues with final lines that make explicit the connection Burroughs saw between his “association blocks” and Rimbaud’s poetics, citing fragments of several poems, including “Voyelles”: “correlating a certain smile an accent a way of holding a cigarette—The Color Alphabet is useful ­training—Take a name like IAN—Now assign colors to the letters [. . .] Associate to the poetry of RIMBAUD without words seeing the images in his work—Live ember raining in gust of frost—I embraced the Summer dawn—Corridors of black gauze—banner of raw meat—silk of seas—pensive drowned—a young man has grown up anywhere—perfumes of wine gas—etc.—Images free of word that shift and permutate improbably desertion on the suburban air—candor of vapors and tents—associate other image poets sad as the death of monkeys—” (Berg 48.19).

  EXTREMELY SMALL PARTICLES

  The date with which this section opens (“Dec. 17, 1961”) suggests both its time of composition and the provenance of the cut-up material that follows, as is confirmed by Burroughs’ identification of first draft material as “Newspaper cut ups — 2 pages with pages of source material” (OSU 2.2). The source pages in turn help identify some of the original news items cut up by Burroughs. This section was almost certainly composed in time to be a part of the March 1962 MS.

  91 “Time: The night before”: a variant that names Ahmed Yacoubi confirms that this, and following phrases, are a cut-up of Burroughs’ text, “Comments on ‘The Night Before Thinking’” in Evergreen Review 5.20 (September 1961): “(Recorded 1956 Past Time.) The Night Before Thinking came to Yacoubi under the influence of majoun a form of hashish jam” (OSU 2.2).

  92 “Might reach 500”: references in drafts to “Niteroi hospitals” identify this as the feared death toll of the Niterói circus fire in Brazil on December 17, 1961 (a tragedy that would have caught Burroughs’ eye, bearing in mind a circus fire had inspired the title of And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, the novella he co-authored with Jack Kerouac in 1945).

  93 “two Negro secret service men”: the date December 1961 identifies this phrase as taken from Washington newspaper reports that the first non-whites had been appointed to the presidential bodyguard.

  93 “Another Mineral American formed by meteorite impact”: references in drafts to “Stewart L Udall” identify the backstory to this phrase, which derives from a speech delivered in December 1961 by Udall, Secretary of the Interior in the Kennedy administration, about the discovery of stishovite, a rare form of silica, at Meteor Crater in northern Arizona.

  94 “Error in enemy strategy is switchboard”: the first draft lacks this final paragraph, but has instead further lines cutting up science news material: “Forgeries from the next years laying the ­Photostats—Spells out in chemical code the genetic instructions on rose wall paper—Ribonucleic acid or RNA—Blue Silence for short—The messengers are electrical flesh shifting his crotch—Each link of pleasure through cracked chain consists of an amino acid—Precise crucial question is what is the genitals electro-genetic code?” (OSU 2.2).

  From a Land of Grass Without Mirrors

  FROM A LAND OF GRASS WITHOUT MIRRORS

  Burroughs identified the first version in the March 1962 MS as “Chapter VIII,” so that the section remained in the middle of both his Nova Express manuscripts. The first full draft, however, an eleven-page typescript (OSU 2.3), underwent significant restructuring as well as rewriting by the time of the October 1962 MS. A thousand words longer than the published version, this early typescript is revealing formally, both for the lack of em dashes in its first five pages and for featuring a passage where words are spaced on the page (as in the “Uranian Willy” section). This typescript is also revealing in terms of content, featuring Burroughs himself and key friends in his circle as characters within the scenario. Although he redacted the material over several drafts, nearly a hundred words remained in the October 1962 MS that were canceled only at the galley stage in July 1964. The title reworks the phrase “a land of grass without memory” (which appears in The Soft Machine), taken from St.-John Perse’s poem Anabasis, in the T.S. Eliot translation.

  99 “Lee was not surprised to see”: the first full draft has a much longer version naming various friends of Burroughs (“Jerry G” references Jerry Gorsaline, “Miguel” Michael Portman, “Roger” Roger Knoebber, etc.): “Lee was not surprised or pleased to see many people he knew. ‘I brought them with me,’ he decided, ‘so there is no doubt at this point who gives the orders.’

  ‘No doubt about that Bill,’ said Jerry G. sycophantically. ‘All right where are the women? None of them about you notice. This is ominous under the circumstances. You are all extensions of me so I know what you all can and can not do and there is no question of any one doing anything else except what he can do. You Kiki my aide and body guard. You P.G. chief of staff. Now I need six of you for a patrol. There must be other survivors.’ [. . .] He picked a cop who once arrested him in New Orleans, Jimmy C, Kiki, Tex, and a Spade drummer he knew slightly from Paris on the junk together. ‘All right we will keep in touch with staff by walky talky.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me how, Burroughs,’ said PG sourly.

  ‘You KE are in charge here’ . . he indicated Phipps-Stern—Gregory—Miguel. ‘Watching them. If they give trouble proceed at once with the only remedy.’

  ‘Roger.’ [. . .]

  Where was Brion? Lee had not seen him and yet his presence was there but not like the others who were there like bodies. He could feel Brion somewhere over his head and to one side of him but could not contact directly like he could the others. He concluded that this was because Brion was not part of himself in the same way as the others were” (OSU 2.3).

  100 “In this area the only reason”: the first draft (OSU 2.3) has an extra paragraph here, with six lines of phrases unevenly spaced on the page:

  “In this area total conditions hideous Novia Express

  of shadow empires move on electric

  faces of scarred metal the Venusian front the agents

  the Ovens of back from orgasm drug on needs

  addicts Minraud heavy metal cool blue

  of Uranus”

  102 “Heavy scar tissue”: first draft continues with longer final lines: “Nothing here but scar tissue—will arrange accident—­Suggest overdose of junk or sleeping pills—Transfer ­impractical—Damage irreversible—Workmanship poor—Roger

  Arrange accident—Suggest overdose of sleeping pills or junk—Alternatively call ‘Mack The Knife’—

  Original equipment faulty—Hidden miles—Basic engineering flaws—Damage probably irreversible—” (OSU 2.3).

  TOO FAR DOWN THE ROAD

  The first draft of this very short section was a two-page typescript nearly 500 words long, and Burroughs canceled over 350 words using his thick black marker pen at the galley stage in July 1964. At the same time, he added just over 100 words pasted onto the final long galleys (OSU 5.12), and this insert, which forms the last lines of the section, is clearly distinguished in its use of punctuation (its dozen ellipses contrasting with the em dashes in the first half of the section). The canceled material is especially important for its use of the book’s original title, The Novia Express (which suggests the section dates from late 1961 or early 1962).

  102 “—The Boy”: the em dash with which the section begins is the result and sign of cancellations made on th
e galleys. The galley version is identical to the October 1962 MS except for revisions in spelling (e.g., “nova” for “novia”) and one canceled sentence: “He projected concepts towards his aim—The Boy flickering with silent motion, driven too far down the road in his switch—Stared out through half face, fear urgent and quivering—With obscure cemetery hands pointing enemy personnel and installations to readers of The Daily Express—Face of novia conditions seared by flash blasts he shrank in this area of total pain and panic—As if moved by some hideous electric hand out of any existence—Back from The Ovens into zero—I don’t know—Venusian Front in the war—Perhaps the boy never existed—All thought and word from the past—Twenty-five years flash a frightened face—Danger all around the familiar station—The music they played was 1920 Spanish villa—

  ‘What’s up with you?—I sed old photo couldn’t reach flesh—’

  Looking through Time—The other travel only for a certain lavatory window—Hate fear and suspicion quivering emotions washed at his brain in color blats—He felt through pocket and loaded it—Down dark streets swept by enemy patrols he moved like an electric dog sniffing marble installations through what one called ‘The World’—Appalling agony—His burning metal eyes Uranian born into a school boy—

  Past or present whipped away on The Novia ­Express—It was in the war—Hideous electric need—I am not sure—The Boy was still conversing with some reflection of the wisdom game must have given him but saw only fear urgent and quivering—Huge darkness pressed the silent fish city—Closed like a store shuttered in a riot—Revolver pointing obscure phosphorescent hands of novia conditions—Brain seared in this area of flames he shrank in hideous electric pain and panic—Ovens of Minraud in the war—You can not know the appalling Venusian Front—The cool blue boy had never existed at all in this June sunlight—He still circulates in strata of hustlers—attempts to shift the package game must have given him—Saw only goof ball bum in 1910 Panama—Lee shuttered like a store in a riot—Both parties driven too far down the road wanted other identity for hidden miles—He stared out through faulty equipment in human contacts—Took the revolver out, intercepted other people’s agent—Obscure hand tapping all messages in and out—To readers of The Daily Express loud and clear now—Last human contacts—Obscure hand cross the wounded galaxies removed Mr Bradly Mr—into zero—Wind hand caught in school boy flesh—Stale overcoat suddenly withdrawn—The Boy had never existed at all—A wet mouth against the pane—muttering of marble ape—Appalling agony to neon—” (OSU 4.9).

  103 “Never happened is my name”: this phrase, which is not canceled on the long galleys and yet was left out of NEX 98, has been restored, and is the only line restored for this edition.

  NO GOOD AT THIS RATE

  Burroughs produced numerous drafts of the cut-up material that would feed into this section (OSU 2.2), but the only surviving manuscript seems to be the near-verbatim two-page typescript in the October 1962 MS, written some time before (with its spelling of “Novia”).

  104 “walk with the Dib”: corrects NEX 99 (“with Dib”), an error in the galleys. As a character, “the Dib” reappears in The Wild Boys and Exterminator!

  105 “The Controller at the exits”: the October 1962 MS continues: “Don’t go to Paris—The typewriter—Shine boy, collapse it.”

  WIND HAND TO THE HILT

  Burroughs redacted his first draft of this section, a four-page typescript of uncertain date, and in the course of cutting out a good deal of repetition he also omitted some of the political and further literary allusions in the source material. However, together with fragments of Shakespeare and Joyce, the principal source remains visible, and Burroughs would identify it in “Intersection Reading”: “1962, Nova Express, I made a fold-in with the last pages of Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” (The Third Mind [New York: Viking, 1978], 138). Fragments of Sillitoe’s novel appear from the phrase “If you or any of your pals” onward, and almost entirely in the sequence in which they appear in the original novel.

  105 “any locks over the Chinese”: the first draft has: “any locks over Stalin and the Chinese—Accusations of bacteriological war of the past igniting the present like a gambit—instead of bringing you up fair—Changed places of years in the end is just the same—” (OSU 2.2).

  106 “On the night shift working with blind”: the first draft continues, with lines that mix phrases from Sillitoe’s novel with a reference to James Joyce’s “The Dead,” other phrases of which would be used in Nova Express: “One more chance he said touching circumstance—Spanish i come back to the bait its curtains—Thin air the meet café and there it’ll be fighting every day until Gabriel’s eyes faded—Dreams of us when we are fighting up to hand they father the last electrician—Slung into khaki at eighteen wracked and answer Mr Of The Account—Again in a factory grabbing for us through the hole in thin air—” (OSU 2.2).

  A DISTANT THANK YOU

  Burroughs identified the first version of this long section as “Chapter X” of his March 1962 MS. This nine-page typescript shows a large number of minor differences from the published version, evidence of how carefully Burroughs reworked his manuscript: “Gothic Cathedrals” became “Greek temples,” “we are all scheming” became “we are all intriguing,” “terrible doom” became “terrible fate,” and so on. Burroughs was equally attentive to punctuation and, before the final typescript (OSU 4.9) was tidied up by a typesetter, he used an em dash system made up of two or sometimes three dashes, ellipses using two or three dots and both single and double colons.

  117 “Oh yes and whose doing it?”: one draft continues (with what is presumably a reference to the Mesoamerican god Quetzacoatl): “Not Garibaldi Qetequatal again? Such a ham—I tell you nobody can scream like Juan Chapultepec—Where is he now?” (OSU 2.3).

  117 “he fades out with a train whistle”: another line regarding Willy The Rube appears in the draft: “He’ll come here and eat all our exquisite food and smoke all the Pakistan Berries lay all our life forms and fade out in word dust of a distant thank you note—” (OSU 2.3).

  REMEMBER I WAS CARBON DIOXIDE

  It’s not clear when Burroughs wrote this section, but it changed significantly at the galley stage in July 1964 through major cuts and insertions. The earliest rough draft, a four-page typescript (OSU 2.2) and the final three-page version (OSU 4.9), have just over 450 words which Burroughs canceled in the galleys, at the same time as he made three separate inserts adding up to 250 words, the new material standing out formally in its use of ellipses.

  The section is particularly dense with literary source material, from Conrad’s novel Lord Jim to Joyce’s short story “The Dead” and Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. It is revealing that the first draft is headed in autograph “Weilest Du?” which abbreviates the phrase “Wo weilest du?” (“Where do you linger?”) from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde as cited by Eliot in the first part of his poem. Burroughs’ typescripts reveal the extent of his use of The Waste Land, and indeed other poems by Eliot: not only “Portrait of a Lady” (whose citation of Marlowe’s play The Jew of Malta remains in the text as the phrase fragments “in another country” and “committed fornication”), but also “Burbank with a Baedecker: Blestein with a Cigar” (one phrase from the poem, “The boatman smiles,” appears twice in the typescripts, and would be used in The Ticket That Exploded). Redacting his manuscript from rough to final draft, Burroughs made the largest cuts when revising the galleys and did so in his characteristic way, canceling odd words or entire lines while retaining the original structure and sequence. It is revealing that in 1964 Burroughs made new cut-ups of The Waste Land to add onto those made in 1962, and the next year he used a vertical bisection of one such page, entitled “Selections from T.S. Eliot—From The Waste Land and other poems” (Berg 36.8 and 44.41), for a collage (in The Third Mind, 102).

  120 “in another country—”: corre
cts NEX 114 (“country.”), restoring the em dash that the copyeditor replaced with a period when Burroughs redacted these opening lines. Appearing twice in the “Trak Trak Trak” section of the revised Soft Machine, the phrase from Marlowe’s play is also used by Dr Benway and the Professor of Interzone University in Naked Lunch. For Burroughs, the unspoken words of Barabas that complete the phrase—“the wench is dead”— referred to his wife, Joan.

  120 “Going to give some riot noises”: from here to “long time in inquisition . . .” was an insert made in July 1964.

  122 “I’d ask alterations”: the October 1962 MS begins this paragraph by citing the last line of “Au lecteur,” Baudelaire’s preface to Les Fleurs du mal, via its use as the last line of the first part of The Waste Land: “Mon semblable mon frère to neon—Departed have left no address.” The second phrase, which also derives from Eliot’s poem (third part: “Departed have left no addresses”), appears cut up in this section as “departed file . . . Mrs. Murphy’s rooming house left no address.”

  122 “Will you let me tell you”: from here to “dim jerky far away” was an insert made in July 1964.

  123 “Fading smiles”: the October 1962 MS shows that Burroughs redacted material between these two words, thus obscuring the citation of Eliot’s “Burbank with a Baedecker”: “Fading in the violet light—Brief moments i could describe—Damp gusts bringing rain—The boatman smiles.”

  123 “Piece of a toy”: from here to “blue kite” was an insert made in July 1964. Burroughs cites the final line in a June 1964 letter to illustrate the precise intersection points he was finding between word and image (ROW, 163).