Burroughs, William S. (1914-1997) The Soft Machine, Signed First Edition, Second Revision.
New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1966.
First edition, stated first printing, octavo, signed by Burroughs in black ink directly below the title; bound in red publisher's cloth, spine lettered in silver; with unclipped illustrated jacket, (jacket very lightly rubbed with a few small nicks to top edge); 8 x 5 1/4 in.
The first book in Burroughs's Nova Trilogy, The Soft Machine, was published in four different editions in 1961, 1966 [the present lot], 1968, and finally in 2014. The work was composed using the cutting technique described by Burroughs & Gysin in The Third Mind, which the author drew from his personal collection of words and phrases called The Word Hoard. The revisions are no different. In this particular edition, the second revision, Burroughs removed 82 pages, added 82 new pages, and rearranged the material that occupied the remaining 100 pages. The first edition was divided into color-coded units and has been characterized as disorganized when compared to the 1966 Grove edition. Calder published the 1968 edition, which featured more changes in further pursuit of clarity, but the 2014 Grove Press version seeks scholarly inclusivity. It pulls from Burroughs's original manuscript, the first edition published by Olympia in Paris, and includes footnotes, appendices, and an introduction.
