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Originally written in 1952 but not published till 1985, Queer is an enigma-both an unflinching autobiographical self-portrait and a coruscatingly political novel, Burroughs' only realist love story and a montage of comic-grotesque fantasies that paved the way for his masterpiece, Naked Lunch. Set in Mexico City during the early fifties, Queer follows William Lee's hopeless pursuit of desire from bar to bar in the American expatriate scene. As Lee breaks down, the trademark Burroughsian voice emerges, a maniacal mix of self- lacerating humor and the ugly American at his ugliest.
A haunting tale of possession and exorcism, Queer is also a novel with a history of secrets, as this new edition reveals.
About the Author
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS was born into a prominent St. Louis family in 1914 and would go on to be one of the most innovative and controversial writers of the twentieth century. He was a founding father of the Beat Generation alongside Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Jack Kerouac.
Praise for William S. Burroughs: "A creator of grim fairy tales for adults, Burroughs spoke to our nightmare fears and, still worse, to our nightmare longings . . . More than any other postwar wordsmith, he bridged generations; popularity in the youth culture is greater now than during the heady days of the Beats."--Los Angeles Times Book Review"Of all the Beat Generation writers, William S. Burroughs was the most dangerous . . . He was anarchy's double agent, an implacable enemy of conformity and of all agencies of control-from government to opiates."--Rolling Stone"Burroughs's voice is hard, derisive, inventive, free, funny, serious, poetic, indelibly American."--Joan Didion"William was a Shootist. He shot like he wrote--with extreme precision and no fear."--Hunter S. Thompson"The most important writer to emerge since World War II . . . For his sheer visionary power, and for his humor, I admire Burroughs more than any living writer, and most of those who are dead."--J. G. Ballard"Burroughs seems to revel in a new medium . . . A medium totally fantastic, spaceless, timeless, in which the normal sentence is fractured, the cosmic tries to push its way through the bawdry, and the author shakes the reader as a dog shakes a rat."--Anthony Burgess
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