Rub Out the Words: The Letters of William S. Burroughs

Edited by Bill Morgan

Thank goodness this king of the Beat generation was alive and exuded influence on his late 20th-century literary contemporaries prior to the introduction of Twitter, Facebook, and the like. Here we are treated to a first-person glimpse of the private life of the famed Naked Lunch author via his communications with friends and family, via a now vastly underused tool of correspondence. According to Bill Morgan, the book’s editor, Burroughs was “unapologetically gay.” Ecco (eccobooks.com). —Preview: Nancy Ford