And Start West
When Naked Lunch: the Restored Text appeared in 2003, it changed the originally untitled opening section by dividing it up into three shorter sections, beginning with “And Start West” — but where did this title come from? It appears in no previous edition of the book and was not used when this material featured in Chicago Review or Big Table magazines in 1958 and 1959. Most literally, it derives from the section’s final phrase: “So we stock up on H, buy a secondhand Studebaker, and start west” (8).
However, as the editors of the “Restored” edition knew, the title does have an obscure history of previous use. Its sole prior appearance had been in the Edinburgh University Review, Jabberwock, which published this short section of Naked Lunch in early 1959, and where Burroughs appeared alongside an impressive line-up of other Beat writers (Ginsberg, Snyder, McClure, Creeley, Kerouac, Whalen, and — although not strictly Beat — Olson). Which still leaves unsolved the question whether “And Start West” was the title given by Burroughs himself or by Jabberwock’s editor, Alex Neish.
(Text: Oliver Harris)
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