JUNKIE / NARCOTIC AGENT - INSCRIBED TO TED BERRIGAN

New York: Ace Books, Inc, 1953. First Edition. Burroughs's first book, a semi-autobiographical field report from the seedy underbelly of post-war America, chronicling his experiences using and selling drugs and vacillating between addiction and recovery. While undated, this copy was inscribed in 1964, the year Burroughs made contact with Ted Berrigan, "the bearded, overweight father figure of the Lower East Side poetry scene. He was the editor of C: A Journal of Poetry, and had published one of Bill's experimental texts, "Giver of Winds Is My Name," in the summer of 1964, the first of his texts to use Egyptian glyphs. Berrigan was enthusiastic about his work so Bill gave him another text, "Fits of Nerves with a Fix," which he published that February. Berrigan arranged to publish Bill's own thirty-two-page version of Time magazine, a three-column collaged text using the cover and title page of the November 30, 1962 issue of Time, which had contained the libelous review of Naked Lunch called "King of the YADS" (Young American Disaffiliates), in which it claimed that Burroughs had cut off a finger joint to avoid the draft" (Miles, Barry. Call Me Burroughs: A Life, pp.434-435). Berrigan drew from Burroughs's cut-up technique while writing The Sonnets (1964), his best-known work, and in 1965, he and Burroughs (along with Jayne Mansfield, Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, and Andy Warhol, et al.) were featured in Ed Sanders's 24-minute film Poem Posters. A cornerstone work of the Beat Generation and a significant copy, acting as a bridge between the Beats and the New York School. Maynard & Miles A1a. First Printing, a paperback original novel, bound together with Maurice Helbrant's Narcotic Agent. Octavo (16.25cm); original pictorial card wrappers; [4],5-149,[2]; 169pp. Inscribed by Burroughs on the title page to Ted Berrigan: "For Ted Berrigan / Editor of 'C' / All the best / William S. Burroughs / Dec.11, St. Daniel / New York." Modest wear and rubbing to extremities, a few faint creases to wrappers, tanning to text edges, with some dust-soil to upper edge of textblock; preliminary leaf on the Junkie side detached but present, though lacking on the Narcotic Agent side; just Very Good.