"William S. Burroughs At the Front: Critical Reception, 1959-1989" (1991)

Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press (book, 1st, anthology), 1991.
9.5" x 6.5" x 1.125", 276 pages, hardcover with dust-jacket, ISBN: 0-8093-1585-8.

William S. Burroughs At the Front: Critical Reception, 1959-1989, edited by Jennie Skerl and Robin Lydenberg, published by Southern Illinois University Press in 1991. Designed by Katherine E. Swanson, with production supervised by Natalia Nadraga. This is largely an anthology of reviews and critical essays on Burroughs and his writing from 1959 through 1989, marking several important points in his career. As noted on the front flap: "This collection of 25 essays is the only overview of the critical reception of William S. Burroughs' work from the 1950s through 1989. The essays are representative of the best of Burroughs criticism, both positive and negative, by his most important critics."

This includes essays by Alan Ansen, Mary McCarthy, Marshall McLuhan, Tony Tanner, John Tytell, Eric Mottram, Oliver Harris, and more.

This was released in hardcover and softcover editions [the hardcover is shown here]. This copy was formerly in the collection of Lon Stacks (Detroit, Michigan), and was acquired through his estate.

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Contents: 

• Introduction:
• Robin Lydenberg and Jennie Skerl: "Points of Intersection: An Overview of William S. Burroughs and His Critics"
• 1950s:
• John Ciardi: "The Book Burners and Sweet Sixteen" [from Saturday Review, 27 June 1959]
• Alan Ansen: "Anyone Who Can Pick Up a Frying Pan Owns Death" [from Big Table, issue 2, Summer 1959]
• 1960s:
• Mary McCarthy: "Burroughs' Naked Lunch" [from Encounter, issue 115, April 1963]
• John Willett: "UGH ..." [from Times Literary Supplement, issue 3220, 14 November 1963]
• John Calder, Michael Moorcock, Edith Sitwell, Victor Gollancz, Eric Mottram, and William S. Burroughs: "Responses to 'UGH ...'"[from Times Literary Supplement]
• Ihab Hassan: "The Subtracting Machine: The Work of William S. Burroughs" [from Critique, volume 6, number 1, Spring 1963]
• Marshall McLuhan: "Notes on Burroughs" [from Nation, 28 December 1964]
• David Lodge: "Objections to William Burroughs" [from Critical Quarterly, volume 8, number 3, Autumn 1966]
• Theodore Solotaroff: "The Algebra of Need" [from New Republic, 5 August 1967]
• Frank D. McConnell: "William Burroughs and the Literature of Addiction" [from Massachusetts Review, volume 8, number 4, Autumn 1967]
• 1970s:
• Tony Tanner: "Rub Out the Word" [from City of Words, 1971]
• Alfred Kazin: "He's Just Wild About Writing" [from New York Times Book Review, 12 December 1971]
• Cary Nelson: "The End of the Body: Radical Space in Burroughs" [from The Incarnate Word: Literature and Verbal Space, 1973]
• Neal Oxenhandler: "Listening to Burroughs' Voice" [from Surfiction: Fiction Now ... and Tomorrow, 1975 and 1981]
• John Tytell: "The Broken Circuit" [from Naked Angels: The Lives and Literature of the Beat Generation, 1976 and 1986]
• Eric Mottram: "On The Last Words of Dutch Schultz" [from The Algebra of Need, 1977]
• Anne Friedberg: "'Cut-Ups': A Synema of the Text" [from Downtown Review, issue 1, 1979]
• 1980s: 
• Nicholas Zurbrugg: "Beckett, Proust, and Burroughs and the Perils of 'Image Warfare'" [from Samuel Beckett: Humanistic Perspectives, 1983]
• Jennie Skerl: "Freedom through Fantasy in the Recent Novels" [from Review of Contemporary Fiction, volume 4, number 1, Spring 1984]
• Steven Shaviro: "Burroughs' Theater of Illusion: Cities of the Red Night" [from Review of Contemporary Fiction, volume 4, number 1, Spring 1984]
• David Glover: "Burroughs' Western" [from Over Here: An American Studies Journal, volume 6, number 2, 1986]
• Wayne Pounds: "The Postmodern Anus: Parody and Utopia in Two Recent Novels by William Burroughs" [from Poetics Today, volume 8, number 3–4, 1987]
• Robin Lydenberg: "'El Hombre Invisible'" [from Nation, 19 March 1988]
  
• James Grauerholz: "On Burroughs' Art" [from Casa Sin Nombre catalog, 1988]
• Oliver C. G. Harris: "Cut-Up Closure: The Return to Narrative" [source not stated]
• Afterword: 
• William S. Burroughs: "My Purpose Is to Write for the Space Age" [source not stated]
• Selected Bibliography