A collection of writings by the sardonic William Burroughs, author of "Naked Lunch". These malefic and mordant reports on life are mostly gathered from scatter-shot publications in obscure places, foreign and domestic. Including complete texts from "White Subway", "Cobblestone Gardens" and "The Retreat Diaries", this collection delineates Burroughs' comprehensive world-view and his "insurrectionary sense of America's underside". Also included are essays on Burroughs by Alan Ansen and Paul Bowles, and facsimile pages from the cut-up scrapbooks of the mid-century: "The Book of Hours", "John Brady's Book" and "The Old Farmer's Almanac".