The Word Hoard was a large body of text (approximately 1000 typewriter pages) produced by author

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

between roughly 1954 and 1958. Material from the word hoard was the basis for ''

Naked Lunch ''Naked Lunch'' (sometimes ''The Naked Lunch'') is a 1959 novel by American writer William S. Burroughs. The book is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes, intended by Burroughs to be read in any order. The reader follows the na ...

'' and the '' Interzone'' collection, as well as much of ''

The Soft Machine ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

'' and minor parts of ''

Nova Express ''Nova Express'' is a 1964 novel by American author William S. Burroughs. It was written using the 'fold-in' method, a version of the cut-up method, developed by Burroughs with Brion Gysin, of enfolding snippets of different texts into the novel ...

'' and ''

The Ticket That Exploded ''The Ticket That Exploded'' is a 1962 novel by American author William S. Burroughs, published by Olympia Press and later by Grove Press in 1967. Together with '' The Soft Machine'' and ''Nova Express'' it is part of a trilogy, referred to as ' ...

''. Central to the "Word Hoard" was the 200-page "Interzone" manuscript that

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian a ...

and Alan Ansen helped organise and type in Tangier in spring 1957, and which became, with later additions, ''

'' in 1959.

The Nova Trilogy

''The Soft Machine'', ''The Ticket That Exploded'' and ''Nova Express'' form a trilogy, sometimes dubbed ''

The Nova Trilogy ''The Nova Trilogy'' or ''The Cut-up Trilogy'' is a name commonly given by critics to a series of three experimental novels by William S. Burroughs. Volumes * The Soft Machine * The Ticket That Exploded * Nova Express Trilogy The trilogy of expe ...

'' or ''The Cut-Up Trilogy''. The overlaps between ''Naked Lunch'' and ''The Soft Machine'' confirm that both drew on the same body of manuscripts, but in the case of the other two volumes it is clear that most of the material did not. In 2014, Grove Press published new, 'Restored' editions, edited by

Oliver Harris Oliver C. G. Harris is a British academic and Professor of American Literature at Keele University. He is the author and editor of fourteen books, including a dozen editions of works by William S. Burroughs: ''Letters, 1945–1959'' (1993), ''J ...

, which established their complex manuscript and publishing histories.On the "word hoard," see especially the introduction to ''The Soft Machine: the Restored Text'' (New York: Grove Press, 2014). In ''The Beat Book'' from 1974, Burroughs claims that when he edits a novel, about half of the material is cut away and later recycled in the next novel. This explains the phenomenon of the plots and characters fading in and out from the different books. Although Burroughs never used the term himself, ''The Nova Trilogy'' was intended by the author as "a mythology for the space age."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Word Hoard Novels by William S. Burroughs