Small 8vo. Publisher's green wrappers titled in black, title with green border; fore-edges with slight rubbing and soiling. Original dust-jacket with motifs after Brion Gysin; closed tear at head of spine panel and a minor crease.

John Sparrow (small book label on front wrapper verso).

Maynard & Miles A2a

fore-edges with slight rubbing and soiling. Original dust-jacket with motifs after Brion Gysin; closed tear at head of spine panel and a minor crease.
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first edition, an important presentation copy, inscribed to fellow beat gregory corso, burroughs' neighbor in paris at the time of publication, "... with best wishes and friendship / William Burroughs".

collaborators in a new mythology. Beat poet Gergory Corso was living upstairs from Burroughs in the infamous Beat Hotel in Paris when The Naked Lunch was published. It was at this low rent flea bag (Ginsberg also lived there at the time he was lobbying Olympia Press to publish this work) that Burroughs and Gysin enlisted Corso to help slice lines of text from newspapers and magazines. By rearranging the word order and incorporating this found and manipulated text into more conventionally created prose, they broke with the idea of linear na𒐪rrative and traditional composition completely. This resulting lite🃏rary collage would become the genesis of the experimental  "cut-up" technique Burroughs used to write the famous Nova Trilogy of works. Though the present inscription is undated, it would certainly make sense that Burroughs would present his new novel to Corso at the time of publication, as they worked together to  create  a radical new form of "mythology for the space age."