I Was A Man Of The Earth,

I'm Stuck Struggling In The Cold Water, And All I Can Do Is Grieve, Grieve, In The Hoar Necessitous Horror Of The Morning, Bitterly I Hate Myself, Bitterly It's Too Late Yet While I Feel Better I Still Feel Ephemeral And Unreal And Unable To Straighten My Thoughts Or Even Really Grieve, In Fact I Feel Too Stupid To Be Really Bitter, In Short I Don't Know What I'm Doing And I'm Being Told What To Do.

Burroughs Is The Greatest Satirical Writer Since Jonathan Swift. . . . The Net Result Of Naked Lunch Will Be To Make People Shudder At Their Own Lies, Will Be To Make Them Open Up And Be Straight With One Another. Swift And Rabelais And Sterne Accomplished A Step In That Direction, And Burroughs Another.

You Don't Realize What A Strain It Is On The Nerves To Write Or Think-of-writing All Day Long, And To Sleep Full Of Nervous Dreams, And To Wake Up Not Knowing Who One Is: This All Stems From Anxiety About Finishing The Book, About Time 'growing Short', Etc., And The Perpetual Strain Of Invention.

La Is The Loneliest And Most Brutal Of American Cities; Ny Gets God-awful Cold In The Winter But There's A Feeling Of Wacky Comradeship Somewhere In Some Streets. La Is A Jungle.

It Ain't Whatcha Write, It's The Way Atcha Write It.