Advance proof copy
BURROUGHS, William. Nova Express. London: Jonathan Cape. 1966.
8vo. Red card covers with repeat design of publisher's devices in white; Jonathan Cape note pasted to upper cover; pp. [11] 12-187, [i]; spine faded and creased; very good.
Advance Proof copy of the first UK edition.
William Burroughs wrote Nova Express using what he called the 'fold-in method', otherwise known as the 'cut up' method, a practice which Burroughs had developed with painter and performance artist Brion Gyson. This involved including fragments of different works into one main collaged body. Burroughs considered Nova Express to be a "mathematical" sequel to his masterpiece Naked Lunch and the novel operates as a social commentary investigating the ways and extent to which language can dismantle the control of culture; Nova Criminals represent culture and government while Inspector Lee and the rest of the Nova Police act as Burrough's counteracting mouthpiece. Considered one of his most daring experiments in disrupting conventional linear narrative form, the New York Tribune interpreted Nova Express as "an absolutely devastating ridicule of all that is false, primitive and vicious in current American life: the abuses of power, hero worship, aimless violence, materialistic obsession…and every form of hypocrisy" in a mission to "update Joyce".
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