NOVA
EXPRESS
Other Works by William S. Burroughs Published by Grove Press
Junky: The Definitive Text of “Junk”
Naked Lunch: The Restored Text
The Soft Machine: The Restored Text
The Ticket That Exploded: The Restored Text
The Adding Machine: Selected Essays
The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead
Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader
Last Words: The Final Journals of William Burroughs
NOVA EXPRESS
The Restored Text
William S. Burroughs
Edited and with an Introduction by
Oliver Harris
Grove Press
New York
Copyright © 1964 by William S. Burroughs
Copyright renewed © 1992 by William S. Burroughs
Copyright © 2013 by the Estate of William S. Burroughs
Introduction copyright © 2013 Oliver Harris
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First revised edition published by Grove Press in 2014.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2208-7
eBook ISBN: 978-0-8021-9722-1
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
Contents
NOVA EXPRESS
From a Land of Grass Without Mirrors
Acknowledgments
It is a privilege to edit works by William Burroughs, and a pleasure to thank James Grauerholz for making it possible and for all the support he has given. It’s also a pleasure to thank the following for their expert help: Jed Birmingham for assistance with little magazines; Barry Miles for his knowledge of Burroughs’ artwork; Jeffrey Miller for insights into the finer points of printing; Keith Seward for razor-sharp feedback; and above all, Véronique Lane, for working with me from start to finish, being by my side in the archival vaults, sharing ideas, reading every word I wrote, and living with the Fish Boys and the Vegetable People for two years.
* * *
For the great archival assistance they have provided, I also want to thank: John Bennett of the Rare Books and Manuscript Library at Ohio State University, Columbus; Rob Spindler of the Archives and Special Collections at Arizona State University, Tempe; Isaac Gewirtz, curator of the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library, and his staff; and Michael Ryan and all his staff at the Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. I would also like to acknowledge the support of the Research Institute for the Humanities at Keele University. Thanks finally to Jeff Posternak of the Wylie Agency, a great guy to have on your side, and to Peter Blackstock at Grove Press.
Introduction
“THE FUTURE LEAKS OUT”
“THIS IS A BURNING PLANET”
Nova Express begins with a chapter called “Last Words” in a messianic voice warning of End Times. It is a stunning overture to a terminal scenario that after fifty years has lost none of its ferocity. “Newsweek says I am basically an old fashioned fire and brimstone preacher,” Burroughs noted on the day the book was published; “The Reverend Lee rides again” (ROW, 170).1 Nova Express is actually a mixing deck of many voices—cutting from a hardboiled detective drawl to the comic rhythms of a picaresque villain, and from the convulsive beauty of a Surrealist poet to a tempo as hard and electrical as the clicking of a Geiger counter—but Burroughs would have been pleased to sound like a sulphurous Old Testament authority. For Nova Express is nothing if not an analysis of and tribute to the
