Nova Express (23 page)

52 “PLAN DRUG ADDICTION”: Burroughs' manuscript page identified as the
“original cut up made in 1959”
(OSU 2.3) has a few unused words in the opening paragraph
(“Protect the disease from its crime”
) and in the penultimate paragraph (
“only sick people understand that menace
[
. . .
]
direct dreaming of Narcotics Commissioner”
).

54 “remain in present time form”: one very early draft continues with an illustration of stupid life forms, and concludes:
“The Novia Guard has turned loose on the world the terrible weapon of mass stupidity”
(OSU 2.4).

55
“
‘Iron Claws
'
”: the clue to the identity of this member of the Nova Mob is given in “Simple as a Hiccup,” where the phrase occurs followed by a reference to the drug dimethyltryptamine. In “Overdose of Synthesized Prestonia,” a typescript enclosed in a letter to Gysin, Burroughs refers to
“Souls torn into insect fragments by the Iron Claws of chess masters—Who Synthesized Dim-N”
(Burroughs to Gysin, April 27, 1961; Berg 85.4). A separate text, which calls DMT
“the oven drug,”
refers to using it in experiments on prisoners prior to their being hung:
“The technician who performed the experiments is known as Iron Claws—(Actually he has no hands as result of a birth injury—He exists in a speed up film and was himself an experiment in film technique)”
(Berg 16.32). DMT-inspired imagery appears directly in
Nova Express
, for example
in “Chinese Laundry,” where the sensation of “white hot bees swarming in the body” is taken from an April 1961 letter describing Prestonia, the “nightmare hallucinogen” (
ROW
, 70).

56 “casualties and fuck ups”: one early draft has an alternative illustration:
“As a result the agent was captured by The Novia Mob and barely escaped death in their ovens. However we were able to turn this goof to our advantage since the enemy is basically a stupid organism like all criminals and never more stupid than when they think they are being clever. [
. . .
] You can hear the prisoners screaming two galaxies away. Such noise. Such people”
(Berg 11.6).

57 “the criminal escapes to other coordinates”: a very early typescript continues:
“Now a word about Madame D herself—We have never been able to touch her—
In fact she may not be Madame D
Unlike other members of the mob she is without vices, can occupy
innumerable
any coordinate points, and
there is no way
it is difficult to follow her colorless trail—”
(Berg 11.47).

58 “Get that writer”: Burroughs wrote several different versions of this paragraph, including:
“Get that writer—He is too close—Bribe him—Scare him with the ovens—Give him the orgasm drug—”
(Berg 11.22).

59 “contacted our Tangier agent”: one typescript continues:
“Shuddering from The Ovens he asked for biologic transfer in any direction. He volunteered for any assignment he cared to name. He gave us all the information he had which was considerable. After a short training period he was absorbed into the department. As it turned out this was not in all respects a fortunate decision. Willy had an uncontrollable temper and no patience. He immediately aroused the local partisans, seized an enemy installation, set up TOWERS and opened fire armed only with a transistor radio and a few photo collages. The resulting melee narrowly skirted total disaster”
(Berg 11.27).

URANIAN WILLY

Under its former title, “THE NOVIA EXPRESS,” this was the first section Burroughs wrote, and he identified the original three-page typescript as “Chapter I 1st Version” of his March 1962 MS (OSU 2.3). Writing from Tangier, Burroughs quotes from this section when describing his new novel for the first time to Gysin: “Describes military action against imaginary invader: ‘Area mined—Guards everywhere—can't quite get through'” (Burroughs to Gysin, August 18, 1961; Berg 85.5).

Parts would appear in two little magazines: “One Chapter from
The Novia Express
” in
The Second Coming
1.3 (March 1962), a short-lived avant-garde magazine from New York, and “Novia ­Express” in
Rhinozeros
6 (July 1962), a German magazine that made striking use of typography and to which Burroughs made several contributions. Using one passage from near the beginning and another from the end of the section published in
Nova Express
, nearly a third of “Uranian Willy” appears in
Rhinozeros
with very few differences. The case of
The Second Coming
is more complicated: its “One Chapter” turns out to be Chapter One of Burroughs' manuscript combined with a version of its then Chapter Three (“Towers Open Fire”; see below); a line divides the two parts. Comparing the magazine version with Burroughs' archival typescripts, it is clear how he progressively edited down his material: the earliest source (OSU 2.3) has almost 250 words more than “Uranian Willy” in
Nova Express
; the
Second Coming
version restructured the entire section and cut nearly 150 words of this extra material; the final typescript, on which Burroughs canceled the original title and wrote in “Uranian Willy” (OSU 4.9), cut a further 50 words. Comparing the first manuscript with the published text clarifies the extent of Burroughs' redrafting: sixteen separate cuts, six substitutions of single words, seven small inserts, seven punctuation changes that made one sentence out of two and seven structural relocations. Under the same title Burroughs used much of this section in
The
Soft Machine
(1966 and 1968 editions).

59 “Uranian Willy The Heavy Metal Kid”: both the March 1962 MS and
Second Coming
begin with a preceding first line:
“His larval flesh shuddering from The Ovens Of Minraud, metal scars on his face cross the wounded galaxies he was wanted for Novia in three solar systems:”
(OSU 2.3).

59 “chance on a crash out”: both the March 1962 MS and
Second Coming
continue:
“He would not be falling for any more sweet Venusian con. A heavy narcotic effluvia they spin from green disk mouths. Cruel idiot smiles. Camp followers of The Green Octopus. The colorless vampire creatures from a land of grass without mirrors. From the sewage deltas of Venus. He had been there prisoner for forty years. The memory sickened his flesh”
(OSU 2.3).

59 “One hope left in the universe: Plan D”: the March 1962 MS, which refers to Plan D elsewhere, has here:
“ESCAPE”
(OSU 2.3).

60 “THIS IS WAR TO EXTERMINATION”: although not part of a draft for
Nova Express
, a two-page typescript overlaps this section precisely and continues with references to a key concept in Scientology that Burroughs would edit out:
“The planet earth has been invaded—This is war to ­extermination—The entire planet is infected by virus weapons of the enemy—The enemy is in you controlling thought feeling and
apparent
sensory ­impressions—Fight cell by cell through bodies and mind screens of the earth
[…]
Who and what is the enemy?—Even told with symbols it sickens—They are known as Thetans—They run on Theta brain waves which are the brain waves of pain and deprivation—They eat pain—Your pain—Organism is precisely anti-human—it is also completely parasitic”
(Berg 15.51).

60 “Life-Time-Fortune”: present in the
Second Coming
version, this is one of the few phrases not in the earlier manuscript (OSU 2.3).

60 “Release Silence Virus—”: the March 1962 MS continues with two more paragraphs, which did not appear in
Second Coming
:
“He switched off the screen and listened to a brief technical report on Bone Writing. Control gimmick of The Limestone God. Venusian Virus occupying the spinal column.

Uranian Willy picked up his old grey hat and cursed for the Nth time his body prison. A little present from The Venusians. ‘Stupid assed, three dimensional people. A body yet!
'
”
(OSU 2.3).

61 “mirror streets and shadow pools”: the March 1962 MS continues:
“Old photo crinkling cracking—‘Far shudder of space shaking an iron tree'”
(OSU 2.3). Burroughs here quotes from Canto VI of St.-John Perse's
Anabasis
in the T.S. Eliot translation.

WILL HOLLYWOOD NEVER LEARN?

The section goes back to 1960 in recycling several phrases from
Minutes to Go
, including the one that gives the section its title, and it was almost certainly part of the March 1962 MS. The earliest draft (Berg 36.3) is much shorter and reveals how extensively Burroughs moved material around within the section. His restructuring is further shown in a heavily annotated three-page typescript (OSU 3.5), which also has numerous variant and unused lines. The final typescript (OSU 4.9) includes a longer title which Burroughs canceled: “WILL HOLLYWOOD NEVER LEARN?—
UNIMAGINABLE DISASTER
.”

63 “liquidated the Commissar”: an early draft has the extra line, canceled:
“But you can't hang me—I'm the Home Secretary” (
OSU 3.5). Variations on this theme in other typescripts include one with a pointed political allusion:
“ZUT ALORS I SAID ELIMINATE LES ALGERIENS PAS LES ALSATIANS”
(Berg 48.22).

64 “blats of Morse Code”: corrects
NEX
63 (“blasts”): the
apparent
error was corrected by the copyeditor on the final typescript, but OSU 3.5 confirms that, as elsewhere (p. 85;
NEX
82), this is not a typo for “blasts.” One instance, “color blats” (p. 100), was not corrected in the galleys and remained in the 1964 edition (
NEX
95).

64 “speed-up movie”: the early typescript continues:
“Enemy advance we retreat—Move back what?—Shadow mirrors and doorways—”
(OSU 3.5). In this unused line, Burroughs cites part of Mao's “sixteen character” formula of guerrilla war tactics (“Enemy advance we retreat”), which he used in other texts, including
The Ticket That Exploded
.

66 “Calling partisans of all nation”: corrects
NEX
65 (“nations”), restoring an
apparent
error that was corrected by the copyeditor on the
October 1962 MS; other manuscripts confirm that the ungrammatical singular was sometimes intentional, and other instances here (pp.
68, 94, 175) have been uncorrected when supported by manuscript witnesses. The phrase is decisively associated with
Nova Express
and in one related page is followed by
“Enfants de la Patrie,”
from “La Marseillaise” (Berg 36.8).

66 “Room— . —”: corrects
NEX
65 (“— — — . —”); the Morse code (which only appears on OSU 4.9) spells out “Word falling photo falling,” but Burroughs appears to have first typed the letter “K” (“— . —”), which was misread by the typesetter, who incorporated the double dash he typed after “Room.” Burroughs twice refers to learning Morse code in letters to Gysin (May 16, 1960 and February 20, 1962;
ROW
, 28, 99).

TOWERS OPEN FIRE

One of the earliest sections written for
Nova Express
, “Towers Open Fire” was identified by Burroughs as “Chapter III” of the March 1962 MS. He quotes several lines, including one of the most recurrent phrases in early drafts (“Bleep Blop Splat”), in a letter from early September 1961, the night after watching the film
Hiroshima Mon Amour
with Timothy Leary (Burroughs to Gysin, nd; Berg 85.5). The section was partially published in
Evergreen Review
(January 1962) and in
The Second Coming
magazine, although in different forms:
Evergreen
published what Burroughs identified as “Ch III abbreviated version,” a one-page redacted typescript (OSU 2.3) that includes a variant final paragraph; in
The Second Coming
, the whole section appeared, almost verbatim, but as the second half of “Chapter One,” following what would become the “Uranian Willy” section. Two very similar four-page typescripts (Berg 12.7 and a later draft, OSU 2.3) are substantially longer and include variant passages.

66 “Lens googles”: an
apparent
error for “goggles,” but confirmed in all manuscript witnesses.

67 “Coordinates 8 2 7 6”: these “coordinates” would recur in numerous texts; that they add up to Burroughs' special number, 23, is not coincidental.

67 “Operation Total Disposal”: in one quite early draft, K9 has an extra piece of equipment:
“Pilot K9 examined the bottles with his eye torch—”
(ASU 7).

68 “
Return to base immediately
”: a late draft continues with a variant paragraph that again uses Mao's guerrilla formula (see “Will Hollywood Never Learn?”), concluding:
“All pilots—Stay away from that Time Flak—Return to base—Enemy advance we retreat—Return to base”
(OSU 2.3).

68 “The Technician mixed”: the one-page “abbreviated version” has an alternative final paragraph discussing military tactics, which appears near verbatim in
Evergreen Review
:
“This operation destroyed enemy installations in the area of Gothenburg. And served a useful purpose in alerting the partisans and organizing partisan activity. However, the risk
s
involved in such total attack was considered disproportionate to the gains realized. Remember that total war is precisely what we have been called in to prevent. Willy was sharply reprimanded in The School of Total Responsibility and transferred to paper work in another area—­Fadeout—”
(OSU 2.3).