My Education: A Book of Dreams

Description

In My Education, William Burroughs - possessor of one of the sharpest, strangest minds in all of fiction, the writer of visceral, nightmarish prose - gives an autobiography of his singular subconscious. In dreams he travels to the Land of the Dead, mourns and resurrects lost friends, is sentenced to be hanged and walks on water - he dreams of drugs, and sex, and travelling, while places and creatures move both between his books and his sleep. Exploring and embodying Burroughs' provocative ideas on writing, painting, consciousness and creativity, My Education is intense, vivid, wry and laconic - and a revealing journey into the mind of a great writer. 'A whirlwind valedictory of Burroughs' own unconscious. An intensely personal book.' The New York Times Book Review

William S. Burroughs was born in 1914. His first published novel was the largely autobiographical Junky, which remains a classic depiction of the constant cycle of drug dependency, cures and relapses he was victim to for most of his life. In 1951, in a drunken William Tell stunt, he accidentally shot and killed his common-law wife. He is most famous for his use of the 'cut-up' technique of writing and the novel Naked Lunch. His other major works included Queer, Exterminator! The 'Nova Trilogy' (The Soft Machine, Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded) and the 'Red Night Trilogy' (Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands). He died in 1997.