British edition of The Soft Machine, so that the trilogy’s first title had now become its final text, and then to cap it all, in 1980 Grove unwisely brought out in one volume a “trilogy” comprising The Soft Machine, Nova Express, and The Wild Boys.
In light of this confusion’s masterpiece, it’s less surprising that the history of Nova Express, the one “unrevised” edition, turns out to be more complicated than assumed. Constructing the history of its composition clarifies its position within Burroughs’ oeuvre, but the initial clues to its status as part of a trilogy are given in the opening pages of the text itself.
One way that Nova Express distinguishes itself from the rest of the trilogy is by naming other books by Burroughs, and in its second section it refers to Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine twice—in surprising terms: “The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals. In Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine and Nova Express I show who they are.” Burroughs identifies Nova Express as the third of three books, but this is a trilogy beginning with Naked Lunch and excluding The Ticket—an omission that turns out to be crucial for understanding the “trilogy.”15
Contrary to the history of publication—in which Nova Express appeared in November 1964, almost two years after The Ticket—Burroughs had in fact written almost all of Nova Express, including this passage, months before he even began The Ticket. Had it not been for delays at Grove Press and the speed with which Burroughs wrote The Ticket That Exploded for Olympia, Nova Express would have followed The Soft Machine, so that The Ticket would have been the third book of the trilogy. As much a composite text as the others, Nova Express was written and rewritten over a three-year period and, time-traveling back and forth within the trilogy’s history, it would be entirely plausible to place it first, second, and third in different trilogies of composition and publication. Perhaps the most meaningful paradox is that Burroughs began Nova Express as a sequel to The Soft Machine and completed it as a sequel to The Ticket That Exploded. Burroughs’ own view was certainly paradoxical: hearing in 1963 that Grove Press had been offered contracts for The Soft Machine and The Ticket, he wrote confirming to Barney Rosset that Grove was “the only American publisher for this work but I certainly think Nova Express should be published first as a measure of logical sequence.”16 The logic is hard to see, but Burroughs wrote Nova Express hoping that Grove would publish it before Naked Lunch, as a way to strengthen their case against censorship, which is why for this book he cut down the sex.
Finally, it’s astonishing to realize that throughout the 1960s Burroughs never once refers to “the cut-up trilogy” in any correspondence, manuscripts or interviews. In fact his only use of the term “trilogy” in this period, in a typescript from early 1962, alludes to the trilogy surprisingly given in Nova Express: “My present work is Novia Express [sic]—reference is to an exploding star or planet it could happen here—This is the last book of a trilogy—Naked Lunch The Soft Machine—The work I am writing now should make it clearer to the reader exactly what I was doing in The Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine.”17 What’s clear is that “the trilogy” is not what we thought it was, and that our readings need to be based on a more accurate history of the writing and rewriting of texts that are both multiple and composite.
“A REWRITE JOB”
In August 1961 Burroughs was living in Tangier at the Villa Muniria, where he had written most of Naked Lunch five years before. After completing The Soft Machine, that April he had made a false start on a novel called The Ugly Spirit, which was intended to be a “joint operation for Painter and Writer,” and spent the summer drawing, painting, making photo-collages and listening to static on transistor radios. At the end of July, Timothy Leary came to visit, bearing hallucinogenic drugs. Leary would later write in vivid detail about that psychedelic summer in Tangier with Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Ian Sommerville, and Alan Ansen. As well as describing “When the Celestial Messenger Comes Wearing a Fedora,” Leary reported Burroughs’ decision to write a new kind of cut-up novel, one that would be less “difficult” than The Soft Machine.18 It was in this context that in August Burroughs announced to Brion Gysin: “I am writing a straight action novel that can be read by any twelve year old entitled The Novia Express” (ROW, 83). A week later, still apparently serious that his new work was suitable for teenage boys, he clarified that this was a “science fiction adventure story.”19 Burroughs would drop one word and then change the spelling of another so that the title has its own trilogy of forms—The Novia Express, Novia Express, Nova Express—but, for reasons I will return to, it’s significant that he began with a definite title in mind. Having decided the title, identified the genre, and made a start with what became the “Uranian Willy” section—which in places does read like a space invader video game—in mid-August Burroughs left Tangier for a three-month trip to the United States.
Leary had invited Burroughs to Massachusetts to research psilocybin mushrooms, and although the trip turned out very badly, it was important for Nova Express at this early stage in its writing. The impact shows in the text’s categorical warning about hallucinogens—revising Burroughs’ earlier enthusiasm and running against the grain of 1960s counterculture—in favor of promoting nonchemical means of consciousness expansion, which implicitly included his own writing. As he had told Leary at the start of the year, “I have achieved pure cut-up highs” (ROW, 64). Based in Brooklyn and with little to do but write—“No pot no sex no money” (91)—from September to November 1961 Burroughs concentrated on the book, leaving New York for the Beat Hotel in Paris as soon as he received an advance from Grove.
At the start and end of December 1961, Burroughs sent early chapters to Barney Rosset at Grove Press. More surprisingly, he also mailed them to Henry Wenning, a manuscript dealer in Connecticut. The fact that Burroughs was now selling typescripts of a work-in-progress made Nova Express a symbolic landmark in his career. This was not a financially lucrative deal, but the sale separated Nova Express both from Burroughs’ previous novels and from the many short texts he sent to “no-paying far-out experimental magazines” (ROW, 59). The sales helped sustain Burroughs through times when he needed to pawn the tools of his trade: his typewriter, camera, and tape recorder.
From December 1961 to the end of February 1962, writing first in Paris and then London, Burroughs mailed Rosset more material at least four times, and then on March 30, mailed the first complete manuscript—only to admit three days later that it was “not in as good order as I would like,” enclosing more corrections, suggestions and material.20 Since there’s no more “plot” progression than there is “character” development, any structure would have been provisional because multiple permutations were possible. Burroughs’ constant shifts in location were also connected, practically as well as figuratively, to the material he produced and the difficulties he had finding the right order for it. The international geography of Nova Express’ writing history is as revealing as its chronology: as Burroughs explained to Wenning, “my methods of work and constant change of residence traveling with one suitcase makes for difficulty assembling complete typescripts.”21 Barney Rosset encouraged Burroughs to send sections as he wrote them, and several times Burroughs had to ask Rosset to send copies back, having either lost or lost track of what he had written. At least by selling his manuscripts Burroughs preserved them, because his working methods and need to keep moving ensured the casual destruction of much of it.
During the next six months Burroughs started and finished The Ticket That Exploded for Olympia Press, assembled Dead Fingers Talk for John Calder and began revising The Soft Machine—but nothing happened on Nova Express. The last two projects suggest he had an agenda in mind when asking Rosset at the start
