were British editions.
16. Rub Out the Words: The Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1959–1974, edited by Bill Morgan (New York: Ecco, 2012), 106. After, abbreviated to ROW.
17. Burroughs to Bowles, May 20, 1962 (Paul Bowles Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin; 8.10). After, abbreviated to HRC.
18. Burroughs, “Note on Vaudeville Voices” in The Moderns: An Anthology of New Writing in America, edited by LeRoi Jones (New York: Citadel, 1963), 345.
19. John Willett, “UGH,” reprinted in Burroughs at the Front: Critical Reception, 1959–1989 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1991), edited by Jennie Skerl and Robin Lydenberg, 43.
20. “King of the YADS,” Time (November 30, 1962), 96–97.
21. Since its purpose was to head off censorship of Naked Lunch in Britain, Dead Fingers Talk unsurprisingly cut down explicit sexual content. Almost all The Ticket material is in the second half of the book and, unlike the Soft Machine, which is often mixed with passages from Naked Lunch, appears mainly on its own, so that seven of the last ten sections derive exclusively from The Ticket.
22. Undated half-page typescript, circa 1963 (Berg 37.2).
23. Burroughs, “The Cut-up Method of Brion Gysin,” in The Third Mind (New York: Viking, 1978), 32.
24. Rosset’s autograph comment appears on the archival original of the letter published in Rub Out the Words (Grove Press Records, Special Collections, Syracuse University; after, abbreviated to SU).
25. Burroughs to Ansen, July 2, 1962 (Ted Morgan Papers, Arizona State University; Box 1). After, abbreviated to ASU.
26. Burroughs to Gysin, August 15, 1962 (Berg 85.6). Gysin’s contribution to Burroughs’ book had a precedent: in 1960 four pages of his calligraphs had completed their coauthored cut-up pamphlet, The Exterminator. That same year Burroughs tried to incorporate drawings in Grove’s edition of Naked Lunch, having already included some with episodes published in Big Table magazine the year before.
27. The phrase “the ticket that exploded” first appeared in “Twilight’s Last Gleamings” in Evergreen Review 6.22 (January 1962), as an episode of Novia Express (sic). Grant Roman offered $150 for “your original manuscript and/or typescript, together with final version and galley sheets, of your new novel entitled Words—Falling—Photo Falling” (Roman to Burroughs, September 6, 1962; Berg 80.16).
28. Burroughs to Bowles, November 21, 1962 (HRC).
29. Burroughs to Ansen, January 23, 1963 (Ted Morgan Papers, ASU).
30. The Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1945–1959 (New York: Viking, 1993), 414.
31. Burroughs to Ansen, January 23, 1963 (Ted Morgan Papers, ASU).
32. Lotringer, 77.
33. Burroughs to Seaver, July 14, 1966 (SU).
34. Burroughs to Seaver, October 25, 1966 (SU).
35. Burroughs to Seaver, November 29, 1966 (SU).
36. Burroughs to Meeker, November 10, 1966 (SU).
37. For his ironic eulogy to the ellipsis (“the gimmick of the ‘metro-all-nerve-magic-rails-with-three-dot-ties’ is more important than the atom!”), see Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Conversations with Professor Y, translated by Stanford Luce (Champaign, Ill: Dalkey Archive, 2006) 107.
38. The phrase appears on an archival typescript following “the liquid medium of his body” in the “black fruit” section of The Ticket (Berg 10.3).
39. Olympia Press page proofs (William S. Burroughs Papers, Ohio State University SPEC.CMS.85; after, abbreviated to OSU).
40. Burroughs’ own verdict on the design was lukewarm: “Received the covers everything O.K.” (Burroughs to Seaver, April 3, 1967; SU).
41. Olympia page proofs (OSU 3.8).
42. The essay is printed in full in Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader (New York: Grove, 2000), edited by James Grauerholz and Ira Silverberg.
43. Burroughs, The Yage Letters Redux (San Francisco: City Lights, 2006), 53. Burroughs repeats the phrase in Naked Lunch (91).
Foreword Note
The sections entitled in a strange bed and the black fruit were written in collaboration with Mr. Michael Portman of London. Mr. Ian Sommerville of London pointed out the use and significance of spliced tape and all the other tape recorder experiments suggested in this book. The film experiments suggested I owe to Mr. Anthony Balch of Balch Films, London. The closing message is by Brion Gysin.
THE
TICKET
THAT
EXPLODED
posed little time
so I’ll say
“good night”
“see the
action, B.J.?”
It is a long trip. We are the only riders. So that is how we have come to know each other so well that the sound of his voice and his image flickering over the tape recorder are as familiar to me as the movement of my intestines the sound of my breathing the beating of my heart. Not that we love or even like each other. In fact murder is never out of my eyes when I look at him. And murder is never out of his eyes when he looks at me. Murder under a carbide lamp in Puyo rain outside it’s a mighty wet place drinking aguardiente with tea and canella to cut that kerosene taste he called me a drunken son of a bitch and there it was across the table raw and bloody as a fresh used knife . . sitting torpid and quiescent in a canvas chair after reading last month’s Sunday comics “the jokes” he called them and read every word it sometimes took him a full hour by a tidal river in Mexico slow murder in his eyes maybe ten fifteen years later I see the move he made then he was a good amateur chess player it took up most of his time actually but he had plenty of that. I offered to play him once he looked at me and smiled and said: “You wouldn’t stand a chance with me.”
His smile was the most unattractive thing about him or at least it was one of the unattractive things about him it split his face open and something quite alien like a predatory mollusk looked out different well I took his queen in the first few minutes of play by making completely random moves. He won the game without his queen. I had made my point and lost interest. Panama under the ceiling fans, on the cold winds of Chimborazo, across the rubble of Lima, steaming up from the mud streets of Esmeraldas that flat synthetic vulgar CIA voice of his . . basically he was completely hard and self-seeking and thought entirely in terms of position and advantage an effective but severely limited intelligence. Thinking on any other level simply did not interest him. He was by the way very cruel but not addicted to the practice of cruelty. He was cruel if the opportunity presented itself. Then he smiled his eyes narrowed and his sharp little ferret teeth showed between his thin lips which were a blue purple color in a smooth yellow face. But then who am I to be critical few things in my own past I’d just as soon forget . .
What I am getting at is we do not like each other we simply find ourselves on the same ship sharing the same cabin and often the same bed welded together by a million shared meals and belches by the movement of intestines and the sound of breathing (he snored abominably. I turn him on his side or stomach to shut him up. He wakes and smiles in the dark room muttering “Don’t get ideas”) by the beating of our hearts. In fact his voice has been spliced in 24 times per second with the sound of my breathing and the beating of my heart so that my body is convinced that my breathing and heart will stop if his voice stops.
“Well,” he would say with his winsome smile, “it does give a certain position of advantage.”