BURROUGHS, Wiliam S. Naked Lunch: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition.

BURROUGHS, Wiliam S. Naked Lunch: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition.
New York: Grove Press, 1984

8vo (208 x 137 mm). [*], [i-iv], xix, [xxx], 235, [236] pp. Signed on the limitation statement, half-title, title. Quarter black cloth over black boards, spine lettered in red, red endpapers, no dustjacket as issued, in matching black cloth slipcase. Fine.

The limited, twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Burroughs’ seminal novel, number 147 of 500 hand-numbered copies signed by the author.

This copy comes from the collection of Ira Silverberg. Burroughs and Silverberg maintained an intense, intimate friendship from their first meeting until the Beat giant’s death in 1997. Silverberg encountered Burroughs’ work when someone “gave him a copy of Naked Lunch while [he] was on cocaine for the first time in the hallway of his Bronx high school,” but they first met when Silverberg began a relationship with James Grauerholz (Burroughs’ assistant). He woke up one morning in the Bunker at 222 Bowery, and before he knew it he was convinced to move to Lawrence, Kansas with the two of them. The “paterfamilias of [his] queer family” — made up of the likes of Grauerholz, John Giorno, Carl Apfelschnitt, and others — and his “maharishi,” Silverberg would go on to become literary agent and editor until the end of the end of the author’s life.

A rare and desirable edition, with an intimate association.

PROVENANCE: Ira Silverberg

REFERENCES: Schottlaender A2j; Shoaf 2u

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