Caretakers talk controversial Burroughs novel

Geoffrey Smith and John Bennett, caretakers of the William S. Burroughs collection at Ohio State University, presented a lecture Thursday at the Lilly Library.

They explained their restorative work on Burroughs’ unpublished novel, “The Revised Boy Scout Manual.”
 
The lecture was part of the campus-wide Burroughs Century celebration in honor of the writer’s would-be 100th birthday.

Burroughs was a pioneer author of the Beat Generation, among famous writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The Beat Generation was a writing movement that affected cultural change on a national level by addressing social, political and economic issues.

Smith and Bennett have compared a variety of documents, tapes and published sections of “The Revised Boy Scout Manual” to determine which is best to include in their finished version of the book.

“We hope we’ve done a very careful scrutiny of the documents at hand,” Smith said. “What we hope to end up with is a work that brings together all of the different editions.”

Each document differs from the others. Some have just a single word change, and other have entire sections that have been deleted.

Smith and Bennett said they hope to create an online database that allows scholars to have access to the documents they reviewed and note their decisions on all of the
inclusions.

“The Revised Boy Scout Manual” follows Burroughs’ writing style and is rather sensational, Bennett said.

One rumor as to why the book wasn’t published in the 1970s was that the original publisher was threatened by the Boy Scouts of America and had to eventually drop out, Bennett said.

Bennett and Smith even foresee problems getting the work published when they finish their work later this summer.

“It’s a terrorist document,” Smith said.

Bennett said the interpretation depends on how a person looks at it.

“You can read it as a terrorist manual or you can read it as comedy,” he said.

The two said reading the documents felt eerie because some of the weapon techniques described were used in recent bombings like the Boston
Marathon.

Despite the content, Bennett and Smith hope a publisher will pick up the work because of the anticipation surrounding its release.

Charles Cannon, co-organizer of the Burroughs Century celebration, said Burroughs will gain fans as more of his works are published.

“His living legacy isn’t over yet,” Cannon said. “We have to push past the boundaries we are familiar and comfortable with and go into territory that makes us a little bit nervous.”

Follow reporter Alison Graham on Twitter @AlisonGraham218.