{"id":41196,"date":"2020-08-24T15:22:06","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T19:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=41196"},"modified":"2020-08-25T10:32:23","modified_gmt":"2020-08-25T14:32:23","slug":"is-this-a-never-before-published-masterpiece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2020\/08\/is-this-a-never-before-published-masterpiece.html","title":{"rendered":"Is This a Never-Before-Published Masterpiece
From the Most Dangerous Writer on the Planet?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Moloko Print [2020]<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When a review starts off like this ……………………………………………………………………………………… <\/p>\n\n\n\n

BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS<\/em> is the most important new publication by William S. Burroughs not only since the writer\u2019s death in 1997 but quite possibly since The Third Mind<\/em> made it into print in 1978 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..attention must be paid<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postscript:<\/strong> Aug; 25 — Per Richard Aaron’s complaint<\/a> that this blogpost did not include any quotations from the review, how about this one? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many readers will have had a premonition of BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS<\/em> in \u201cThe Last Words of Hassan Sabbah,\u201d known for the recordings of Burroughs incanting it in a hypnotically glowering voice. \u201cLast Words\u201d was the text that opened up the whole of BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS<\/em>  for Burroughs. He wrote it in May 1960, describing it as \u201cthe testament of Hassan i Sabbah which came to me under mescaline,\u201d and sent a draft to publisher Dave Haselwood. It was too late to include \u201cLast Words\u201d in The Exterminator<\/em>, which Haselwood was just about to put out under the auspices of his Auerhahn Press.  …<\/p>

Burroughs then included \u201cLast Words\u201d in a second manuscript which he sent to Haselwood on August 30, 1960, with the idea that Auerhahn would publish a follow-up called EXTERMINATOR II<\/em> or THE INITIATOR<\/em>. Never one to consider a text finished, Burroughs kept working on the material and added several further chapters. It is that never-published Auerhahn manuscript and the additional chapters which [Oliver] Harris has recovered from various archives to create BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS<\/em>, deriving the title from a phrase that recurs in the material.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And here’s a recording of Burroughs’s voice from the time when he was, as the review puts it, “arguably the riskiest, most relevant writer on the planet.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n