*Trying to get published by Ace Books.
(...)
INTERVIEWER
When did you come onto Burroughs’s work?
GINSBERG
Let’s see ... Well, first thing of Burroughs I ever read was in 1946 ... it was a skit later published and integrated in some other work of his, called So Proudly We Hail, describing the sinking of the Titanic and an orchestra playing, a spade orchestra playing, “The Star-Spangled Banner” while everybody rushed out to the lifeboats and the captain got up in woman’s dress and rushed into the purser’s office and shot the purser and stole all the money, and a spastic paretic jumped into a lifeboat with a machete and began chopping off people’s fingers that were trying to climb into the boat, saying, “Out of the way, you foolth ... Dirty thunthufbithes.” That was a thing he had written up at Harvard with a friend named Kells Elvins. Which is really the whole key of all his work, like the sinking of America, and everybody like frightened rats trying to get out, or that was his vision of the time.
Then he and Kerouac later in 1945—1945 or 1946—wrote a big detective book together, alternating chapters. I don’t know where that book is now—Kerouac has his chapters and Burroughs’s are somewhere in his papers. So I think in a sense it was Kerouac that encouraged Burroughs to write really, because Kerouac was so enthusiastic about prose, about writing, about lyricism, about the honor of writing ... the Thomas Wolfe–ian delights of it. So anyway he turned Burroughs on in a sense, because Burroughs found a companion who could write really interestingly, and Burroughs admired Kerouac’s perceptions. Kerouac could imitate Dashiell Hammett as well as Bill, which was Bill’s natural style: dry, bony, factual. At that time Burroughs was reading John O’Hara, simply for facts, not for any sublime stylistic thing, just because he was a hard-nosed reporter.
Then in Mexico around 1951 he started writing Junkie. I’ve forgotten what relation I had to that—I think I wound up as the agent for it, taking it around New York trying to get it published. I think he sent me portions of it at the time—I’ve forgotten how it worked out now. This was around 1949 or 1950. He was going through a personal crisis, his wife had died. It was in Mexico or South America ... but it was a very generous thing of him to do, to start writing all of a sudden. Burroughs was always a very tender sort of person, but very dignified and shy and withdrawn, and for him to commit himself to a big autobiographical thing like that was ... at the time struck me as like a piece of eternity is in love with the ... what is it, Eternity is in love with the productions of Time? So he was making a production of Time then.
Then I started taking that around. I’ve forgot who I took that to but I think maybe to Louis Simpson, who was then working at Bobbs-Merrill. I’m not sure whether I took it to him—I remember taking it to Jason Epstein, who was then working at Doubleday, I think. Epstein at the time was not as experienced as he is now. And his reaction to it, I remember when I went back to his office to pick it up, was, Well this is all very interesting, but it isn’t really interesting, on account of if it were an autobiography of a junkie written by Winston Churchill then it’d be interesting, but written by somebody he’d never heard of, well then it’s not interesting. And anyway I said what about the prose, the prose is interesting, and he says, Oh, a difference of opinion on that. Finally I wound up taking it to Carl Solomon who was then a reader for A. A. Wyn (Ace Books), who was his uncle, and they finally got it through there. But it was finally published as a cheap paperback. With a whole bunch of frightened footnotes; like Burroughs said that marijuana was non-habit-forming, which is now accepted as a fact, there’d be a footnote by the editor, “Reliable, er, responsible medical opinion does not confi�rm this.” Then they also had a little introduction ... literally they were afraid of the book being censored or seized at the time, is what they said. I’ve forgotten what the terms of censorship or seizure were that they were worried about. This was about 1952. They said that they were afraid to publish it straight for fear there would be a congressional investigation or something, I don’t know what. I think there was some noise about narcotics at the time. Newspaper noise ... I’ve forgotten exactly what the arguments were. But anyway they had to write a preface that hedged on the book a lot...
