Burroughs, William S. Queer. New York: Viking, 1985.

Autobiographical follow-up to Junkie in which Burroughs's stand-in, Bill Lee, spends most of the time orating in Mexican bars. There's a fruitless jaunt down to South American for some theoretical telepathic drug. Sex between men is mostly hinted at in a way that's almost coy given Lee's ease with which he narratively drools over native boys.

It's the first time I've read Burroughs and I don't know that it won't be the last. I suppose Naked Lunch is the masterpiece, and should read that book before I write the guy off, but I'm not quite sure I see the appeal. Are the Beats a stage one moves through toward an "adult readership," whatever that means? There was a time I would have given credence to the Wikipedia fact that Kerouac liked Queer and thought it would go over well with "east-coast homosexual critics," but now such a thing makes my eyes hurt from all their rolling.

I read this in two hours. A good antidote to Dickens.