There's a story behind the creation of this patchwork novel, which editor and Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris recounts in a detailed introductory essay. The short version is as follows: British publisher John Calder asked Burroughs to assemble a sort of primer to introduce Brit readers to his work prior to the publication of Naked Lunch in full. WSB responded with Dead Fingers Talk (1963), featuring selections from Lunch as well as Burroughs's first two cut-up novels, The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded. The material was partially bowdlerized, yet still explicit enough to cause a prolonged outrage in the British literary world. Harris notes the book's significance as a "precursor to remix and mash-up forms in art and music," and emphasizes the fact that Burroughs himself considered it a creatively valid work ("By rearranging the material and adding some new sections I have endeavored to create a new novel rather than miscellaneous selections," WSB wrote to his friend Alan Ansen).

Which is all well and good, but is it readable? About as readable as Naked Lunch itself, I'd say, and more so than the unadulterated cut-up novels. If you're acquainted with all three books from which it was compiled, there's not much point in reading Dead Fingers Talk, but I enjoyed the sections from The Ticket That Exploded (one of the very few Burroughs novels I've never read). Any way you slice it, the book will feel exceedingly familiar to WSB fans, filled as it is with diseased genitalia, Mayan codices and the magic lantern imagery of junk addiction. Naturally, no claims to narrative coherence are made; Burroughs drifts from one routine to the next without any semblance of continuity, though certain characters (like Dr. Benway) and themes do recur. One can write this type of "novel" just so many times before the law of diminishing returns sets in. (Yes, that's the outline of Burroughs's hand on the cover. You can read about how he cut off the first joint of his left pinkie in the early, disquieting short story "The Finger," available in his 1989 collection Interzone.) ( )