What else must a white man do but study that which he does not know? What else must a white man do but learn, educate, experiment? As a woman of color I do not see this book from a narrow lens. I see it as the research it was, the need to educate themselves on culture, psychoactive plants, the world. And what for? For the revolution of the consciousness that was necessary to bring into fruition in America, as they left seeds of their exposure in different sects of the world. The Beats were a con...

Funny how Oliver Harris in his introduction tries to "rehabilitate" Burroughs. He claims that the attitudes shift in the letters in accordance with the signatory nom de plumes: racist, right-wing, ugly American attitudes emit from the "persona" Wm. Lee and more politically correct liberalism comes from the real WSB. He even interprets a mention of Wells' "Country of the Blind" as a coded anti-imperialist message. It's all nonsense. Burroughs doesn't need rehabilitation to make him safe for femin...

I spent my teenage years trailing through Naked Lunch, Junkie, and I later devoured Word Virus: A Burroughs Reader. I loved and continue to love those particular works. I remember reading The Yage Letters for the first time (2002?) and finding it engaging, but upon my second recent reading I am struck with major concerns: 1) Burroughs' effed up characterizations of indigenous peoples; 2) Burroughs participation in what we now call "sex tourism" and the many issues of privilege and dominance that...

I'd been looking for this book for quite some time when my roommate surprised me with a copy for my birthday. Quite interested, I read it immediately and in one sitting.Although Oliver Harris is only listed as the editor of this edition, his actual contribution, his introduction, constitutes almost a third of the text and is well worth reading. Most of the material, however, is by Burroughs.Excepting the introduction, the texts in this collection were composed in the fifties and sixties, when re...

Dear Al,I'm detoxing. I can't find any little boys to pay for sex. Corruption, whine whine whine. Third world, whine whine whine.Low points: Cultural observation skips along the path to racism. Whining. Craptacular "routine" play thing, possibly more enjoyable if one knows about the politics of the time, possibly not. Disgusted tone gets me down.Highlights: Good writing. Good cultural observations. Stubborn scientific approach to looking to score. Bad trips. A freakout at the end. Epistolary. Wo...

Pulled this off my shelf for a friend interested in ayahuasca and decided to reread before I gave it to her. Eesh. Mostly Burroughs being racist and horny (in that order), though the descriptions of his hallucinations and Ginsberg's letter regarding his own experiences with the drug are interesting to read.

"Meh" is pretty much all I thought about this. White junkie dude traipses through the Amazon and whines about it a whole bunch and is pretty much a jerk to everyone he meets. Whatever. (The Ginsberg part at the end was ok, though.)

As a Colombian and as person who is initiating herself in the world of ayahuasca, I find this book extremely offensive. This man comes to this land looking for nothing more than a drug that makes him hallucinate and disrespects not only what is considered a sacred plant but refers to shamans as ''brujos'', when they call themselves taitas, which is a name that has a deep meaning and respect. Burroughs came knowing nothing and left knowing nothing as well. If you read this book and know nothing a...

This was a good 'un. Can be summed up as William Burroughs travelling through jungles and getting misled by various locals as he looks for Ayahuasca so he can be even more out of his mind. It's the kind of thing you hear about trust fund hipsters doing these days, except these days it's all sanctioned and done in hostels and retreats. By the end he gets what he's looking for and it serves as a nice prelude into his mindset for Naked Lunch.

I read this book hesitantly about Burroughs's search for the perfect high in the jungles of the Amazon wondering if I could at all relate to it since, apart from a couple of all too brief experiences in the 1970s and 1980s, I've shied away from drugs almost entirely. Basically, drugs just never appealed to me. Even marijuana never did anything for me. I was just blasé about the whole thing. But, trust Burroughs, he renders the whole experience vividly here in bright colors including even the vul...

William S. Burroughs the ultimate adventure. Going for the perfect high. Writing to Allen. Will he come out of the jungle? No, not really.

This is probably my third favourite book by William S. Burroughs after 'Junky' and 'Cities of the Red Night'.This book is not only a first-hand account of his experiences taking the South American drug 'yage' (through the Putumayo Kofan and Vauges methods), but it also showcases Burroughs’ dry, tongue-in-cheek, ‘scientific’ humour. One of my favourite parts which really made me laugh and which is still very relevant in today’s society was, “You can not contact a civil servant on the level of int...

Dear Al,Sex tourist in search of final fix is no good, no bueno. Full of holes, full of holes. Use that last bit in summarizing new "epistolary novel" I'm writing. With letter, you're now part of novel. Mindfuck using old typewriter instead of Brion's Dream Machine. Annual meeting of society of book reviewers: "Are we to gulp down this slim edition of horseshit? Are we to spend hard-earned money on book ostensibly about yage and presumably visionary experience only instead to endure dry grating

I got a lot out of Allen Ginsberg's contribution which was spiritual, compassionate, and thoughtful. Personally I wasn't crazy about William Burroughs' narrative since it was mostly him paying boys for sex. Not really my thing. If I were to read it again I would probably just skip to Ginsberg's section. I lent this to a person I don't think I'll ever see again so I think I'll have to buy another copy at some point.

Not yet quite Burroughs'... as Russians say - "neither fish, nor fowl" :)

Well done research on "letters" that are not really letters at all, but constructed piece of autofiction. Included are also some real letters of Ginsberg, as he was on his own separate journey to find the "vine of the soul" and some of Allen's journal writing of that time. It becomes clear that Ginsberg went in fact much farther into yage tripping than Burroughs, but Burroughs' prose contains more humorous elements. If you have only read the original Yage Letters I recommend reading this also. A...

Burroughs' search for a telepathy-inducing drug is yet-another indicator of just how serious an explorer of expanded consciousness he was. This bk even includes Ginsberg's drawings of Yage-induced visions. An important bk up there w/ Artaud's "The Peyote Dance", the works of R. Gordon Wasson on mushrooms, & many other works of the same ilk.

i borrowed this from a friend in a great pile of books given to me, and to be completely honest, i probably would not have read it had i not been in the mood for a quick read.i've never been much of a fan of burroughs' writing style, but the fact that the bulk of the book is in the form of him writing letters to ginsberg makes it much easier to bear.i didn't care much for his overall quest for yage in the letters, but rather found enjoyment in his personal descriptions of 1950s south america. he...

Bill goes to the jungle and alternately hunts Yage experiences and tricks with uncouth overexperienced native boys, one of whom steals his underpants.

"I met some old time American residents who said the country was in a hell of a shape.'They hate the sight of a foreigner down here. You know why? It's all this Point four and good nabor crap and financial aid. If you give these people anything they think "oh so he needs me." And the more you give the bastards the nastier they get.'I heard this line from old timers all over S.A. It does not occur to them that something more basic is involved here than the activities of Point four. Like the U.S.