Hombre visible

The last decade has not been kind to William S. Burroughs. Since his death in 1997 at age 83, he has become something of a forgotten figure -- an “hombre invisible,” as he half-mockingly used to call himself. To be honest, that’s not entirely surprising; although he may have been the most innovative of the Beat writers, he spent his final years as a countercultural frontman, selling Nike sneakers, appearing on “Saturday Night Live,” making recordings (either alone or with musicians such as Bill Laswell and Kurt Cobain) in his gravelly Midwestern drawl. At times, it can be hard to remember that Burroughs was a literary artist first.

“Everything Lost: The Latin American Notebook of William S. Burroughs” (Ohio State University Press: 240 pp., $59.95), edited by Geoffrey D. Smith, John M. Bennett and Oliver Harris, is unlikely to change its author’s status; it’s too specialized, too geared for acolytes. But if nothing else, this nifty facsimile edition reminds us that, beneath all his pop culture notoriety, Burroughs could really write.

Composed in July and August 1953, as he was traveling through Latin America, “Everything Lost” offers a laconic narrative that has the immediacy of a poem. “It was like a main line shot of desolation,” Burroughs notes at one point, describing his failure to track down a former lover, “a cold misery that settles in the lungs and around the heart.” Later, in a passage that he ultimately excised, he addresses the limitations of self-expression: “As though it made thing[s] any better to write about them.”

“Everything Lost” was written during the same period as “Junky,” “Queer” and “The Yage Letters,” and it sheds light on all of them, as well as on Burroughs’ methods of composition, the way he worked his material out in letters or journal entries before incorporating it into his books. Here we have a portrait of the artist in the act of becoming, a glimpse beneath the icon and its aftermath.

-- David L. Ulin

david.ulin@latimes.com