This rather tatty copy of William Burroughs's Nova Express has been causing squeals of delight here at Callum James Heights this morning and providing the occasion for one of our very occasional posts on "Things That Fall From Books". In this instance it was a real thrill to flick through the pages and find, suffed in between them, a number of slips of thing copy paper on which someone had types (with a real typewriter!) lists of words. Possibly this was for some essay on the vocabulary of William Burroughs, but the way they are typed in vertical lines and lots of spacing make me this it's much more likely that this was someone's attempt at emulating Burroughs's famous cut-up technique where entire paragraphs, sometimes nearly whole chapters are transformed from traditional prose into either avant-garde prose-poetry or complete gibberish (depending on your critical point of view). Anyway, these are the things that make me happy and you can't have too many of those in this world!
