Time (Burroughs book)


Time by William S. Burroughs, with illustrations by Brion Gysin, is a saddle stapled pamphlet described in its publisher's forward as "a book of words and pictures." It is an example of Burroughs' use of the cut-up technique, with which he began experimenting in the fall of 1959. It was published in New York in 1965 by "C" Press, a small publisher founded by the poet Ted Berrigan.
Burroughs took a dim view of newspapers and magazines generally, and Time magazine in particular. In an essay, "Ten Years and a Billion Dollars," he wrote:
In 1965, Burroughs put together his own rendition of Time, its cover a collage of the magazine's November 30, 1962 cover and an unidentified painting with Burroughs's name across its top. This was the issue that had anonymously reviewed Burroughs's novel Naked Lunch, published in the United States earlier that month. The review panned the book as "the grotesque diary of Burroughs’ years as an addict," along with a personal attack, including a libel that got Burroughs, then living in London, a small court settlement.
A few of the pages, as well as a color rendition of the cover, appear in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art catalog of their exhibit, Ports of Entry: William S. Burroughs and the Arts." The LACMA catalog describes Burroughs's Time as:
At 28 cm, the page size more or less reproduces that of Time. The saddle staples are in the middle, between #3 and #4 of the four Brion Gysin illustrations." Some of the text is in columns, while other parts are full width; portions are in full width stanzas.