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THE SOFT MACHINE
Junky: The Definitive Text of “Junk”
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In the most visible change, this new edition also restores how material from the first edition appeared by putting back a thousand capital letters removed on the galleys in 1965. Changes to capitalization are a major feature of Burroughs’ revisions to the Cut-Up Trilogy, and he revised on a massive scale in both directions: on the galleys of Nova Express in 1964 he changed from lower to upper case; and for the second edition of The Ticket That Exploded in 1967, he changed from upper to lower. Burroughs’ own apparent inconsistency doesn’t lend itself to consistent editing across the trilogy. However, restoring capitals for The Soft Machine makes sense since the second edition was the odd one out: following the 1962 MS means respecting the appearance of both the first and the third edition, which largely retained capitals. It also brings The Soft Machine visibly closer to how Burroughs reconceived it in late 1962—the period when he was working simultaneously and most intensely on all three volumes of his trilogy.
The main reasons for turning to this 1962 manuscript in the first place are pragmatic: while there is something suitably Burroughsian about the status quo, with two quite different versions of The Soft Machine remaining in print, the great majority of readers have had to accept the edition that failed to grant Burroughs his “final intentions,” as textual editors used to say. However, the obvious alternative—to let the third edition replace the second—is even more unsatisfactory. Although Burroughs actually preserved more of the 1961 text in the British edition of 1968, through what he added much more was lost. This is the paradoxical value of his 1962 MS; in content it is close to the second edition, while in the appearance of its material it is close to both the first edition—his original—and the third edition—his last word on the book.
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