DON’T HIDE THE MADNESS: William S Burroughs in conversation with Allen Ginsberg; Hardcover Book (2018)
$36.00
Beat Writers, Allen Ginsberg, Willian S Burroughs, Interview; Hardcover Book (336 pages)
DON’T HIDE THE MADNESS: William S. Burroughs in Conversation with Allen Ginsberg (978-1-941110-70-6, Three Rooms Press, Hardcover, 336 pages, October 16, 2018; $26) has been hailed as a “must-have resource for beat aficianados” by Publishers Weekly and “a beautiful book” by renowned film director Gus Van Sant. The book offers a fly-on-the-wall experience with the driving forces behind two of the 20th century’s literary counterculture masters. The conversation is interspersed with 17 photographs taken by Ginsberg revealing Burroughs’s daily activities from his painting studio to the shooting range. Renowned artist Robert Crumb created a rare new original image for the cover.
In the course of their dialogue in DON’T HIDE THE MADNESS, Burroughs and Ginsberg discuss:
• the force that drives all creative endeavors
• Native American approaches to creativity and imagination
• shamanic ritual and the creative process
• Burroughs’ cut-up approach to literature
• the magical qualities of cats
• and much more, including drugs, guns, punk rock, and lit-world gossip
The conversation, which occurred in conjunction with the release of David Cronenberg’s film adaption of Burroughs’ groundbreaking “cut-up” novel Naked Lunch, reveals intimate personal history and guiding philosophical dialectic in a magnification allowed by the decades of friendship between these two literary giants. DON’T HIDE THE MADNESS presents an important, hitherto-unpublished primary document of the Beat Generation.
