Allen Ginsberg in Context, edited by Erik Mortenson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026)
William Burroughs in Context, edited by Oliver Harris, Davis Schneiderman, Alex Wermer-Colan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026)
OH: 2026 is the centenary of Ginsberg’s birth, so the timing of your book puts it right in the mix of the many events around the world and other publications marking the occasion. You begin your introduction by describing the “staggering” output of his “exceptional career”: can you say something about the challenges of rising to the occasion—both of the centenary and of trying to contextualise Ginsberg’s life and oeuvre?
EM: Ginsberg, much like Burroughs, lived an extraordinary life. They both travelled extensively, knew a wide variety of artists and thinkers, and were involved in some of the touchstone events of the postwar counterculture. If that weren’t enough, they both ceaselessly experimented with their writing while exploring a host of genres and media. Providing the context needed to understand a figure like Ginsberg is indeed a daunting task. Fortunately, my contributors are a veritable “who’s who” of Ginsberg scholarship, and many knew Allen personally, and thus have a unique insight. The trick as an editor is finding that delicate balance between letting contributors explore their insights and making sure everything fits together for the reader. I hope I was able to achieve that!
Ginsberg’s centenary provided both an opportunity and a challenge. All the attention being paid to Ginsberg helps raise awareness of the book, but it also created the stress of strict deadlines. I also wanted to be sure that the volume did Ginsberg’s legacy justice as we pause to consider his accomplishments and continued relevance. Of course, it helped that many involved in events surrounding his centenary are also in the book, and those continuing to support his estate, like the wonderful Peter Hale, were there to offer me support.
OH: I’m so glad you mentioned Peter, as he helped with the cover image of Burroughs in Context—a great picture Ginsberg took in 1992—and, talking of estates, it’s such a shame that our book appeared after James Grauerholz passed away, at the turn of the year. Until his health failed, James was a great friend, a tireless supporter, and unique in the range of his knowledge.
Now, your book has 31 chapters, so how did you decide what aspects needed to be covered, as well as who might best do it: were there other areas you wished you could have covered? And how did it work out in practice, bearing in mind that in any edited volume, there are bound to be contributors who drop out along the way or who don’t deliver exactly what you expected…
EM: It is interesting to go back to the book’s proposal to see how the finished product differs from the conception. You are certainly correct that things change as the book progresses, and authors tend to shift focus as they write. I proposed a chapter on censorship and surveillance to Steven Gould Axelrod, but he wanted to write on Ginsberg’s domesticity. The result was a wonderful chapter on a topic I hadn’t considered! Such openness almost always strengthens the book, I’ve found.
The hardest part for me was balancing a chronological with a thematic approach. Given that the book tracks Ginsberg’s life and career, it makes sense to start at the start. But I didn’t want it to read like a biography (which it isn’t). Certain themes reoccur, and when you have over thirty different authors writing, it is difficult to get a “bird’s eye” view of what is going on. But I’d like to think the book does a good job of providing a sense of Ginsberg’s development across time while examining key themes, issues, and preoccupations that continually inform his life and work.
It is interesting how William Burroughs in Context takes something of a different tack. The focus is more on Burroughs’ numerous modes and identities, which makes sense to me given that Burroughs’ work is more about the disintegration of borders and the exploration of different types of being. Ginsberg is more of the Romantic poet, writing from a fixed center, even if he is constantly disrupting that self through drugs, sex, travel, or visions. What was your rationale for organizing the book, and what sort of experience did you want for your readers?
OH: Because there were three of us, the rationale was quite flexible. We began by drawing up lists of topics—long lists!—and tried to match them with prospective writers. That sounds a bit mechanical, but it was pragmatic, because we just had so many potential chapters, far more than CUP would allow. And we also didn’t want to fit in more chapters by making them each shorter, because from the start we thought in terms of both “coverage” of a topic and some original, detailed focus; it’s hard to do both in 4,000 words, impossible in less! But many topics fell on the cutting room floor… For example, we wanted chapters on Burroughs’ small press publications—because his contributions, especially in the 1960s, were so extensive and unusual—and chapters on the influence of French literature, on his use of scrapbooks, on the occult, and so on. And, as you found, chapters changed between commission and delivery: we wanted a broad chapter on Burroughs, music, and collaboration, and it ended up all about Laurie Anderson—and was undoubtedly the better for it! And as three Anglo-American Burroughs experts, we also wanted as much demographic diversity in our line-up as possible. So, we tried to go beyond the Usual Suspects to include writers from outside “Burroughs Studies” and the anglophone world. For example, we have Burroughsians like Benoît Delaune and Clémentine Hougue who normally publish in French. You can only force the issue so much, but we did what we could.
In terms of the reader’s experience, that’s an interesting question. When it comes to form, the CUP series is not a good match for a Burroughsian experience; but, for example, we were relaxed about leaving in the recurrence of specific details across chapters, because the repetition organically created the aesthetic that Burroughs called “points of intersection,” where the permutation of material generates an uncanny sensation. We would have liked to challenge the conventional look of the book, most obviously by emphasising the rich visual creativity of the Burroughs oeuvre, but that just wasn’t possible. In terms of content, we all felt that this should not be backward-looking, that even “historical” chapters should look for what in Burroughs has contemporary relevance. Burroughs speaks to the present moment in startling ways. Davis has a great chapter on AI and Fake news, for example. We also wanted to cover new topics: like Burroughs’ screenwriting, which Alex researched extensively for his chapter, or, my own favourite, Miles writing about Burroughs’ fedora hats!
The centenary timing is a self-evident upside for Ginsberg. But did you ever consider the possible downside—which is the risk of a celebratory approach compromising the critical aim of scholarly writing? Or to put it another way, were there aspects of Ginsberg’s life and work that you worried about? Are you happy with the balance?
EM: There is, of course, a rift between the scholarly reception of Beat writers and the response of more general readers and enthusiasts. As an editor, I wanted to reach both markets, which is always a balancing act! As its name implies, the series is about providing context, so I advised contributors to make chapters accessible, which I feel they did. But for me, scholarly also implies the willingness to deal with problems and concerns that an author and their work raises, either consciously or unconsciously. I didn’t want my authors to shy away from controversy either, and I’d like to think the book takes on issues of misogyny and sexual impropriety that do come up in Ginsberg.
I can well imagine that the same concerns are an issue in Burroughs as well. Burroughs enjoys a strong following outside of the academy, and many fans are, well, a bit fanatical about his work. How did you negotiate this sometimes-difficult reception within and without the academy? And what should we do with some of the troubling aspects of the Burroughs persona? I’m thinking not just about misogyny, but about the conspiratorial nature of his work and how it might get distorted in far-right-wing circles?
OH: I’ve always felt it did Burroughs no favours to airbrush out or sugarcoat what is most “challenging” about his life and work. My own chapter in the book is called simply, “The Monster” and deals head-on with how he embraced his own monstrosity as a way to understand it and put it to use. In effect, rather than repressing or denying it, he channelled what you might call his “inner Trump”—all the malignant heritage of WASP America. Other chapters also work through the issues and come out the other side, such as those focused on conspiracy thinking (by Chris Fleming) and on Burroughs’ adoption by some on the alt.right of US politics (by Florian Zappe)—which is preposterous on one level, and yet also enabled by the deliberate indeterminacy of his work. Burroughs never gets a free pass, for sure. There’s no hagiography here!
When you and I participated in a Cambridge UP video talk [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxzxGqxOfHU] last summer (together with Steve Belletto and Ann Charters), I joked that, whereas it took only one editor to do Ginsberg in Context, for Burroughs it needed three. One of the issues for me and Davis and Alex was the sheer scale of the work involved, not least because the Burroughs book is a hundred pages longer than the Ginsberg, which is itself a big book at 390 pages. All three of us had previous experience editing volumes of Burroughs essays: I had co-edited Naked Lunch@50: Anniversary Essays with Ian MacFadyen (2009), Davis had co-edited Retaking the Universe with Philip Walsh (2004), as well as several other collections, and Alex had co-edited Cutting Up the Century with Joan Hawkins (2019). And I know you previously co-edited volumes about the Beats, The Beats and the Academy: A Renegotiation (2023), with Tony Trigilio, and Rethinking Kerouac: Afterlives, Continuities, Reappraisals (2024), with Tomasz Sawczuk. So, between us, we know what’s involved, and it is a ton of work, often lasting 3 or 4 years. Why do we do it, and is it worth the effort?
EM: I’ll be honest—when I found out you had two other co-editors, I was jealous! It is a lot of work. My previous edited volumes had fewer chapters, so working with thirty contributors was daunting. The amount of email correspondence alone is staggering. But I do firmly believe it is well worth the effort. My first three books were monographs written in dark, dusty libraries. One of the many things I like about edited volumes is that it gives you a chance to collaborate with others interested in a similar topic. Working with Tony and Tomasz was a wonderful experience, and getting to know a host of contributors has really broadened both my understanding as well as my life. So, it is worth it on a personal and professional level. I also feel that Ginsberg deserves the academic recognition that a Cambridge imprint affords. Like Burroughs, he certainly has a following and is probably even more integrated into university reading lists. But while strong scholarship on Ginsberg exists, there is a lot more to be said about his work. My hope is that Allen Ginsberg in Context helps bring more attention to a poet and activist who is perhaps even more relevant given the myriad issues that plague our globe today.
Collaborating has also offered me new perspectives, as contributors went in interesting directions I hadn’t anticipated. You are certainly the premier authority on all things Burroughs. Was it difficult to work as one of three editors? I imagine that it helped when distributing the work, but it also meant more coordination. Can you speak a bit about your collaborative editorial method?
OH: One reason why three of us shared the editing for Burroughs in Context was that we knew it would be fun to work together, whereas none of us individually really wanted to take it on! As Alex put it to me in one of our very earliest emails about the project (back in May 2022), the book was “a good opportunity to edit Burroughs in a prestigious, mainstream context”; but we all had reservations about a “mainstream context” for Burroughs, the mixed blessing of bestowing on his name the respectability that goes together with the CUP imprint. For some writers, the prestigious publication might be an unambiguous seal of approval. For me, the risk was that it might look like declaring Burroughs safe at last, not dangerous or difficult but just plain dead. I didn’t want that or think he would want that: I had visions of Uma Thurman buried alive in Kill Bill 2 cutting her way out of a coffin…
But it was fun to work together as a team. We had regular video conferences that cemented the personal relationships we’ve built up over the years (going back to 2006, when I first met Davis at a Burroughs conference in Mexico City; Alex a couple of years later in NYC). We brought different skill sets, so we complemented each other. Alex and I let Davis take on the task-setting, for example, because he’s just great at herding cats and keeping things on track. Of course, we had different approaches to editing. Although I drive myself pretty hard and like to be meticulous in my writing, as an editor I tended to be the most cautious about intervening. I disliked rewriting anyone else’s words, even when I could see it needed doing, so some of “my” chapters went through a lot of iterations… But with a few bumps along the road, we got there in the end, and we all feel happy with the result. In fact, I’d say Burroughs in Context has three dozen truly excellent chapters, and while the UP academic format does inevitably standardise style and set limits to content, I don’t think you could expect more from such a volume.
I also think that the format forced authors to think about Burroughs in terms of his material context in ways that would both reach a wide readership in other disciplines and situate his work in his lived experience and environment. Despite the problems of such an academic framing, the CUP In Context series was needed in the field of Beat studies, where this sort of comprehensive context has been a bit lacking. Did you feel that was an issue for Ginsberg in Context?
EM: Ginsberg has always had an interesting relationship to the academy. Despite his outsider status, like many Beat writers, I think he also wanted the respectability that goes along with academic recognition. He was also a teacher himself, and even helped found a university program at Naropa. To me, that tension between social and literary transgression and the desire to build a readership both within and outside the academy is productive, and Ginsberg’s career raises interesting questions about how to make dissent effective. I’d like to think that Ginsberg is out there pleased that his work is garnering serious academic attention and, hopefully, helping us to better understand how his countercultural message is still useful today.
In terms of standardization, it is true that these sorts of studies necessarily limit and contain, perhaps in ways inimical to the sort of boundary-pushing that writers like Ginsberg and Burroughs promoted. As editor, I tried my best to allow my contributors free reign to explore the material in ways that were engaging and novel, while still providing the context that the series title purports. I’d imagine for a writer like Burroughs, this need to satisfy publishing demands might have been even more chafing. Were there particular ways you found for negotiating this tension?
OH: The Big Picture isn’t necessarily about meeting particular demands or getting round them, it’s more about knowing your priorities. We feel that Burroughs in Context shows how peculiarly relevant his work remains, that it has a capacity to speak to the present, rather than just invite endless critical interpretation. And what makes this so is not just Burroughs’ prophetic warnings about technology or viruses or the nova criminal billionaire class who are running the earth—and ruining it—but also the uncomfortable ambiguity of his work, which keeps you on edge. He’s never going to appeal to a mainstream audience, but that combination of prescience and inscrutability seems likely to ensure Burroughs remains alive, and his work open to new responses. In the case of Ginsberg, what would you say are the qualities or dimensions of his work that outlive the 20th century context in which he lived?
EM: As I mention in my introduction to the volume, Ginsberg was more than a poet. He was a countercultural icon who was instantly recognizable not just to his readers but indeed to a large part of the population, both in the US and abroad, in the 1960s and 1970s. Ginsberg’s interest in how poetics might be used to successfully intervene in political and cultural life seems especially important today. Many of us are fed up with a lurch to the right, and issues like environmental degradation, the loss of privacy, and the never-ending struggle for equality are still with us. While Ginsberg’s poetry will always have a place in the study of 20th century poetics, his desire to address the social is as important today as it was in his own time. I think that is true with Burroughs as well, as your volume amply attests. Both these writers directly address issues that are still very much of concern today, and thus both repay closer attention.
OH: That seems like the perfect note to end on. Thanks, Erik!