164“Bicycle races here at noon”: the October 1962 MS continues: “Sombre anger steaming to a room is far away—Faded this violence is a calm by some boy thighs—Sad look caught in throat—Whiffs of my Spain—Lost dog space of lontanza.” Burroughs’ redaction of these last lines (to “boy thighs—Sad—Lost dog”) is characteristic of how he canceled phrases in his cut-up texts to produce a new, more elliptical text. Like numerous other word combinations, the phrase “space of lontanza” occurred repeatedly in drafts for Nova Express, but all were edited out.
164“He had come a long way”: from here to “died during the night. . . .” is an insert made on the galleys in July 1964.
SMORBROT
The section’s title seems to have been a late revision, added in autograph onto the October 1962 MS, and Burroughs first refers to this section under its previous title in a letter to Rosset at the end of February 1962: “Do you feel that the section called Outskirts Of The City can be published as it stands?— If not I will provide you with an expurgated version” (ROW, 100). In fact, an erasure on the archival typescript of the letter shows a still earlier title, one that more clearly relates to the section’s content, which Burroughs canceled halfway through, typing: “Operation Se”—for “Operation Sense Withdrawal” (SU). Burroughs’ concern about expurgating the material reflects the fact that “Smorbrot” contains the only sexually explicit passages in Nova Express (and, unusually for Burroughs, describes both heterosexual and homosexual acts), which in turn reflected the hopes of writer and publisher that this book would make it easier for Grove to publish Naked Lunch without a censorship trial. This strategy also explains the appearance of “Outskirts of the City” in Evergreen Review 6.25 (July 1962), albeit in a redacted version (identical to the October 1962 MS, but with over 400 words cut—mainly of sexually explicit material, although much remained).
Aside from some early partial typescripts (ASU 7, Berg 9.11), the first draft proper shows a very large number of minor differences and about an extra page of material. This draft, identified as “Chapter 17” of the March 1962 MS (OSU 3.5), had the section’s original title: “Operation Sense Withdrawal.” Burroughs canceled 50 words at the final galley stage.
165“Doctor Lilly in Florida”: the draft of this footnote has: “Doctor Lilly in Miami and by Doctor [blank] in Oklahoma” (OSU 3.5). Lilly had worked on isolation tanks and sensory deprivation at the National Institutes of Health near Washington since the late 1950s. After the phrase “Science—Pure science,” which evokes Dr Benway from Naked Lunch, this draft has a canceled line: “And what sex is this body floating half in and half out?” The footnote is repeated verbatim in the “substitute flesh” section of The Ticket That Exploded, as is the following footnote regarding Reich’s orgone accumulators, although in reverse order.
170“one of them flicked my jacket”: the first draft alternates first- and third-person narration and, using a name recurrent in Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine, here has not “my” but “Carl’s jacket” (OSU 3.5).
171“white—red—white—”: Burroughs rewrote this passage across several drafts, and the earliest integrates color association with his special “coordinate” number: “Jack off red—8 red . . . two green 7 blue 6 black—Flash red 8 . . . green two . . . blue seven 6 black . . . In the underwater medium converse in flashes of color a system like Morse code—with two coordinates intensity and repetition—setting off immediately the appropriate response in the other nervous system color circuits . . .” (Berg 9.11).
171“Color-music-smell-feel”: the first draft has: “Color-music-smell-taste-kinaesthetic—You got it??—Now associate without words” (OSU 3.5).
171“from ferris wheels”: corrects NEX 161 (“wheel”), as per the first draft. Burroughs used the incorrect lower case for “Ferris” throughout the trilogy.
173“open shorts flapping”: “shorts” seems to be a typo, since in the first draft and elsewhere this is “open shirts”; however, the proximity of “genitals” to “shorts” warrants leaving the “error” alone.
ITS ACCOUNTS
A section made from cutting up other parts of Nova Express, literary sources and news items from daily papers, “Its Accounts” has a short archival prehistory in scattered pages of cut-up variants (OSU 2.2) and a final, two-page typescript (OSU 4.9). Since it recycles material from numerous sections including “There’s a Lot Ended” and “Are These Experiments Necessary?” and since these sections contain news items dating from March 1962, it is very likely that “Its Accounts” was written at the same time. In his “Section Heading And Layout of Nova Express” (Berg 36.7), Burroughs typed the title as “It’s Accounts,” but dropped the apostrophe in autograph on the final typescript.
173“Ewyork, Onolulu, Aris, Ome, Oston”: like several other phrases in the section, this derives verbatim from Brion Gysin’s “First Cut-ups” in Minutes to Go. Burroughs also experimented with variations on the phrasing, adding “Lgiers, Ran” (Algiers, Oran) and “Adrid” (Madrid) to the list in one draft (OSU 2.2).
174“Venus Vigar choked to passionate weakness”: on Vigar, see under “There’s a Lot Ended.”
SIMPLE AS A HICCUP
Like “Its Accounts,” the history of this short section consists of scattered pages of cut-up variants (OSU 2.2) and a final, two-page typescript (OSU 4.9), where the spelling “novia” dates its composition as pre-October 1962. On the final typescript, Burroughs wrote in the title after canceling its original heading: “Notes on Distinction between Sedative and Hallucigen [sic] Drugs.” In 1961, he had delivered a controversial paper entitled “Points of Distinction between Sedative and Consciousness-Expanding Drugs” to the American Psychological Association, later published in Evergreen Review 8.34 (December 1964). When Burroughs sent Rosset the March 1962 MS of Nova Express he had suggested that a transcript of his talk “might serve as appendix” (ROW, 102), but he seems to have changed his mind. For three days later he mailed Rosset what sounds like “Simple as a Hiccup”: “a cut up from the talk given to The American Psychological Symposium Sept 6, 1961 Points of Distinction Between Sedative And Hallucigen [sic] Drugs—” (Burroughs to Rosset, April 2, 1962; SU). A few fragments from the talk (“classified as narcotic drugs,” “Morphine is actually,” “Dimethyltryptamine,” “cortex”) are recognizable.
176“blue sky writing of Hassan i Sabbah”: draft cut-up pages for this section include alternatives such as “Glyphs of Hassan i Sabbah” (OSU 2.2).
THERE’S A LOT ENDED
Burroughs opens this section with a dateline (“New York, Saturday March 17, Present Time”) that announces the provenance of its material in daily newspaper items, while the date is clarified by the complementary opening to the later section “Are These Experiments Necessary?”: “Saturday March 17, 1962, Present Time Of Knowledge.” The final two-page typescript (OSU 4.9) drew from a large number of variant cut-up pages, which include many other references to items in the news that spring, some clarifying the sources of enigmatic details in the published text, others suggesting the range of Burroughs’ interests and the precision with which he made selections.
177“Great Gold Cup—Revived peat victory hopes of Fortria”: Fortria achieved fame in 1962 by winning the Mackeson Gold Cup for the second time. The other horse named here, Sheila’s Cottage, won the Grand National in 1948. “Maharani” refers to the Indian Princess, celebrity, politician and horsewoman, Gayatri Devi, “one of the world’s most glamorous wealthy,” as a source draft page describes her (OSU 2.2).
178“already watched Identikit”: in a source draft this line follows a reference to the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to Peru in February 1962: “Lima Wednesday Prince Philip—Wore a Peruvian sombrero of a man seen—‘Why, we all take satisfaction—Rode a dancing horse on Sugar Avenue—Well publicized visit to Peru’s capital—’” (OSU 2.2).
178“The capsule was warm”: in
a source draft the “capsule” is clearly identified even as its referent is scrambled with other elements in news items that competed for headlines in February and March 1962: “On the heels of Colonel John Glenn Rickard’s body—Triple orbit of the earth failed with another—There are many similarities—between the two killings and Colonel Glen’s wife—Think it possible that children and parent of the same man may be Colonel and Mrs Glen—” (OSU 2.2). John Glenn had become the first American to orbit the earth on February 20, 1962, his flight watched by a live television audience of up to 100 million. Burroughs mixes the historical milestone in space exploration and the cold war with a crime story in London: the “two killings” refer to the case of the “wardrobe killer” (the same draft page has the phrase “wardrobe victim”), whose victims were both homosexual men, Norman Rickard and then, in a “carbon copy” killing, Alan John Vigar, murdered in west London not far from where Burroughs was living that spring. These cases were linked at the time to the recent killing of two other homosexual men in Derbyshire, known as “the Carbon Copy Murders.” This last phrase appears several times in one draft page that includes verbatim the references to Vigar used in Nova Express. While newspapers brought to lurid light the generally hidden world of gay men in early 1960s England—in contrast to “well publicized” royal visits and ticker tape parades—Burroughs also drew on murder cases where the key issue was not sexual identity but capital punishment. Hence, the reference in this section to “[James] Hanratty,” who was hanged amid much controversy on April 4, 1962: “Portman Clinic” was where Hanratty had received psychiatric treatment. Other draft source pages cite the British press coverage itself, one naming the Daily Mail, another suggesting disagreements between papers (“But one newspaper—The Observer [which is named in this section and in “Are These Experiments Necessary?”] Another newspaper The Express”) (OSU 2.2).
179“He plays Mark even Anthony with Liz”: one of the few news stories that could compete with Glenn’s orbiting of the Earth in spring 1962 was the scandal caused by the Taylor-Burton affair, which started during the filming of Anthony and Cleopatra. The affair made the April 13, 1962 cover of Life, and the film nearly bankrupted the studio, which Burroughs names in one of the section’s source pages: “Twentieth Century Fox trying to eat my breakfast” (OSU 2.2).
179“Sir, I am delighted to see”: clearly taken from a Letters to the Editor column, in the source typescript this line is preceded by references that mix up anticolonial uprisings, cold war conflict, and the celebrity marriage of film stars: “Today’s killing as curtain raiser for Linda Christian and Romina and Taryn—See daughter by her marriage let loose the seven year old Algerian war to the late Tyrone Power—Both murdered men is Edmund Purdom 33—he and Linda terrorists of the European secret 37 have said they will marry next month—Opening national rumors about Castro—” (OSU 2.2). In March and February 1962, the U.S. Secretary of Defense received CIA plans for “false flag” covert ops designed to justify invading Cuba; although no “rumors” leaked out, the plans included proposals to blame Fidel Castro should Glenn’s space flight end in disaster.
ONE MORE CHANCE?
The manuscript history comprises a one-page untitled rough typescript (OSU 2.2), which has numerous minor differences compared with the published opening of the section, and a verbatim one-page neat typescript with the title in Burroughs’ hand in the October 1962 MS. The last three-quarters of the section, over 1,200 words, were added only at the final galley stage in July 1964, a distinction made visible on the page through the difference in punctuation (ellipses replacing em dashes).
180“Told me to sit by Hubbard guide”: L. Ron Hubbard had previously been named in Minutes to Go, already establishing the connection between cut-up methods and Scientology.
181“hotel room in London—”: from here until the end of the section was inserted onto the long galleys in July 1964 (OSU 5.12).
184“It has a 3D effect sir”: corrects NEX 173 (“third effect”), an error introduced by the copyeditor, who misinterpreted “3d” in Burroughs’ typed insert. Needless to say, the error is peculiarly serendipitous, since the copyeditor’s “collaboration” had the effect of creating the very third defined by Burroughs and Gysin’s “third mind.”
ARE THESE EXPERIMENTS NECESSARY?
Composed by cutting up a good deal of the previous two sections, this section exists as an untitled two-page typescript with a number of small differences and about 175 extra words compared with the published version (OSU 2.2), and the final verbatim typescript (OSU 4.9). Most of the unused material comprises phrases used in the previous two sections.
185“Saturday March 17, 1962”: the early draft begins: “New York Saturday March 17 present time of knowledge—” (OSU 2.2).
186“creating and aggravating conflict”: the early draft continues with a phrase not used elsewhere: “The game of life demands total war of the past—” (OSU 2.2).
MELTED INTO AIR
On March 15, 1962 Burroughs mailed Kerouac a four-page typescript to illustrate the new fold-in technique he had used in his current novel: “Page I was made by folding your letter and placing it on a section i had just written entitled The Carbonic Caper—Page 2 i copied out of the ending section of The Subterraneans—Then I folded page two and laid it on the end of Naked Lunch and some other texts including the end of The Soft Machine—Result was page 3 which i consider not only contains some beautiful prose but is most meaningful to me” (Burroughs to Kerouac, March 15, 1962; CU, Kerouac Collection). Page 3 is, absolutely verbatim, the “Melted Into Air” section as published in Nova Express. The result was exactly “half Kerouac half Burroughs” in terms of word length, while almost every word not deriving from The Subterraneans appears in the earlier section “A Bad Move.” Burroughs’ choices were highly calculated: by using a phrase that names the title of Kerouac’s novel, for example, he invited the reader to recognize the source text, while he chose the openly self-reflexive last words of The Subterraneans (“this book”) for the last words of his section (the penultimate section of his own book).
187“Mr. Beiles Mr. Corso Mr. Burroughs”: Gregory Corso appears in Kerouac’s The Subterraneans (as Yuri), while he and Sinclair Beiles were, together with Brion Gysin, Burroughs’ collaborators on Minutes to Go (1960).
188“Yas, he heard your”; corrects NEX 177 (“Yes”), confirmed by the recurrence of this apparent typo in other drafts; also later used in The Ticket That Exploded.
188“And I go home having lost—”: what is lost at the end of Kerouac’s novel is itself lost in Burroughs’ cut-up of his last lines: “And I go home having lost her love. And write this book” (The Subterraneans [London: Penguin, 2001), 93).
CLOM FLIDAY
Taken from the last words of Naked Lunch, the section title certainly seems like a gesture of finality, but “Clom Fliday” was not the final section of either the March or October 1962 manuscripts. The first rough draft of this section (OSU 2.2), which was a fifth longer, and the final draft lack the last half-dozen lines, including the date and signature after “You are yourself Mr Bradly Mr Martin—” (OSU 4.9). The existence of a different ending to Nova Express is confirmed in a letter Burroughs wrote to Rosset just after mailing the first draft, which he admitted was “not in as good order as I would like”: “The last section I forgot to put in the chapter head which is: Punishment And Reward, What?—Never Existed At All—” (Burroughs to Rosset, April 2, 1962; SU). In fact, as the October manuscript and the galleys reveal, “Clom Fliday” was followed not only by the ninth chapter to which Burroughs refers here (which consisted of a single section entitled “Never Existed At All”) but also by another short section at the end of Chapter Eight, entitled “Wind Hand Thy Father.”
Some 250 words long, the text of “Wind Hand Thy Father” in Burroughs’ manuscript is almost identical to that published in 1962 in the German magazine Rhinozeros 7 as �
��Be Cheerful, Sir, Our Revels Touching Circumstance,” a title taken from the opening words of the piece. The text recycles familiar elements, including valedictory phrases from Shakespeare’s “final” texts (both The Tempest and the playwright’s epitaph, which had already been used in Minutes to Go) and from Joyce’s “The Dead,” including a direct reference to the character Michael Furey. In July 1964, Burroughs canceled all but the very last line of this section on the galleys (leaving only: “all the living and the dead—You are yourself—There be—”), and then pasted in the ending as published.
As for the ninth chapter, it was probably composed just before Burroughs submitted his March 1962 MS, based on the occurrence of the date “Saturday March 17, 1962 Past Time” in the five-page typescript titled “PUNISHMENT AND REWARD, WHAT?—NEVER EXISTED AT ALL” (Berg 9.21). The title on this typescript was a typed addition, suggesting it is the manuscript to which Burroughs referred in his April 2 letter to Rosset. After recycling material from “Melted Into Air,” the typescript ends: “Good bye to ‘William’—You are yourself ‘Mr Bradly Mr Martin’ who never existed at all—’” Burroughs later redacted this highly repetitious material, and the October 1962 MS has a much shorter (590-word) version that also includes such new phrases as “Rings of Saturn in the morning sky” which would appear in The Ticket That Exploded. Under the handwritten title “Never Existed At All,” this two-page typescript ends with Burroughs’ autograph signature and the dateline: “Paris, Oct 24, 1962.”
However, Burroughs continued to revise the ending, and a year later he sent Grove a one-page text on legal-sized paper which he recommended “as a much more powerful end to Nova Express than the one we now have following right on from the present end” (Burroughs to Seaver, October 10, 1963; SU). Starting, “telling me/dead birds falling/lacer guns ‘washing’/’’’’’’’’’ ‘Annie Laurie’ had no luck,” this 350-word typescript concludes: “A distant soldier officer from uh special police never returns. He made an arrest. . . . ‘September 17, 1899 over New York’ (a silent Sunday to the post.),” after which the copyeditor added the signature and 1962 dateline. Whether this had, as he put it to Seaver, “much more impact and surprise than the present ending” is debatable; it was certainly different. But Burroughs was still not done revising the ending. In July 1964, he sent a 180-word insert to add onto the beginning of “Never Existed At All”; the insert was sent but may not actually have been made, since it does not appear on the galleys. Burroughs’ indecision is reflected in the copyeditor’s instruction on the galleys: “delete to end / But do not kill. Hold until we tell you to kill” (OSU 5.11). In the end, he changed his mind and indeed killed the entire ninth chapter along with the “Wind Hand” section of the previous one. At the last minute, Burroughs recognized that the solution to a highly repetitious ending was neither to redact it nor to add anomalous new material, but to just cut it.
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