
Título: The Yage Letters Redux
Autor: William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg
Sinopse: In January 1953, William Burroughs began a seven-month expedition into the jungles of South America, ostensibly to find yage, the fabled hallucinogen of the Amazon. But Burroughs also cast his anthropological-satiric eye over the local regimes to record trademark vignettes of political and psychic malaise. From the notebooks he kept and the letters he wrote home to Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs composed a narrative of his adventures that appeared ten years later as “In Search of Yage” within The Yage Letters.
That book, published by City Lights in 1963, was completed by the addition of Ginsberg’s account of his own experiences with yage as he traveled through South America in 1960, and by the addition of other Burroughs letters and texts.
For this new edition, Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has gone back to the original manuscripts to untangle the history of the text, telling the fascinating story of its genesis and cultural importance in his wide-ranging introduction. Also included in this edition are extensive materials, never before published, by both Burroughs and Ginsberg that shed new light on their adventures in exploration and writing
“A complete understanding of the literary legacy of William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg is impossible without reading this amazing collection of letters and documents centered on yage, the fabled hallucinogen of the Amazon. . . . These crucial texts go beyond simple curiosity about mind-changing drugs to set the foundation of what would later become a literary movement that changed American literature.”—Bloomsbury Review
"Burroughs' book about his search for the 'ultimate fix', The Yage Letters, possesses an equally strange and secret history. Published in 1963 but written a decade earlier, it has long been seen as a fascinating curio in the Burroughs canon, yet a new edition of the book, edited by Oliver Harris, places it more centrally in the list of key Burroughs texts. . . . The Yage Letters marks the point when Burroughs moved full-time into his own, fully realised universe."—The Independent UK
William Burroughs is widely recognized as one of the most influential and innovative writers of the twentieth century. His books include: Junky, Naked Lunch, Queer, The Wild Boys and The Place of Dead Roads.
Oliver Harris is a professor in literature and film in the School of American Studies at Keele University. He is the editor of The Letters of William S, Burroughs (Penguin) and the 50th anniversary edition of Junky (Penguin).
Contexto da obra
Como livro em inglês, esta obra costuma ganhar também uma camada própria de interesse editorial e linguístico. “The Yage Letters Redux”, de William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, publicado pela editora City Lights Publishers, em 2006 e com 180 páginas, integra a categoria Livros em Inglês. Por isso, o interesse da obra tende a se ampliar quando o leitor considera também a relação com a língua em que ela circula.
Editora: City Lights Publishers
Páginas: 180
Ano: 2006-01-01
Edição: 4th
Linguagem: en
ISBN: 0872864480
ISBN13: 9780872864481
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora City Lights Publishers trazem uma experiência de leitura marcada por uma forte presença da contracultura e da experimentação literária, frequentemente ambientada em contextos históricos ou urbanos densos, como a Los Angeles pós-guerra ou as florestas da América do Sul. O catálogo revela obras que transitam entre narrativas pessoais, memórias, e reflexões políticas ou sociais, com um tom que pode variar do lírico e poético ao crítico e satírico. Muitas obras exploram temas como identidade, marginalidade e resistência, com uma linguagem que ora é direta e contundente, ora mais fragmentada e associativa, remetendo a movimentos literários como a geração Beat. City Lights Publishers também publica textos que investigam questões raciais, ambientais e culturais, com ritmo que pode ser tanto meditativo quanto urgente.
